Greg Gianforte’s election to Congress has given the American media the opportunity to condemn violence and lecture the rest of the country about their hypocrisy and the evils of violence in politics. What will get lost in all of the lecturing, righteous indignation, and charges of hypocrisy is any meaningful acceptance or examination of the truth. The truth is that in one district in Montana and likely large sections of the country, you can now get elected to Congress after assaulting a reporter. In fact, since Gianforte raised more than $100,000 after the assault came to light, “body-slamming” a reporter might actually help your chances of getting elected. That fact says more about the media than it does about Greg Gianforte or this election.

First, the election shows that you can’t justify or ignore some political violence. You either have to condemn all political violence or understand you will have to live with it. The media has spent months cackling over the video of some masked thug punching Richard Spencer. They have spent the entire last year ignoring and excusing really shocking instances of leftist mob violence in Berkley, NYU, Middlebury College, and other places. Of course, the media will say this is different. This is a Congressional candidate and a reporter. And to some degree they are right. But it doesn’t matter. That is not how people see it and how things actually work. People don’t see the video of Richard Spencer being sucker punched and think “he deserved it, he is a Nazi.” They see it as the media thinks it is okay to punch someone whose political views you don’t like. Well, the media doesn’t like Spencer but most of America doesn’t like the media. It works both ways no matter how many clever or even valid arguments you make saying one is different than the other. The media can’t celebrate or justify political violence they like and then suddenly expect the country to be shocked by such violence when it affects a reporter.

Second, it shows just how disliked the media is in this country and the price that it is going to start paying for that. The media has spent years or maybe even decades openly loathing large segments of the American public. Eventually, that feeling was going to become mutual. And as the media is finding out, it is no fun being unpopular. In an ideal world, people should stand up and defend those they don’t like where an injustice occurs. In the real world, most people have better things to do and some people like to see injustices happen to people they don’t like. The media makes no secret of its disdain for most Americans. It cannot do that and then expect those same Americans to care when some politician beats up a reporter. Again, that is not fair or the way things should be, but it is the way things are. And the media needs to come to terms with that and start improving its relations with the rest of the country.

The other thing that this incident illustrates is the effects of the general decline in civility and decorum among the media and the political class in general. If this incident had occurred 50 years ago, it would have likely ended with an apology on both sides with Gianforte apologizing for losing his temper and the reporter apologizing for letting the confrontation got out of hand. In this case, of course, the reporter didn’t apologize or do anything but using the event as an excuse to show his righteous anger. The thought that perhaps he didn’t act appropriately and had something to answer for even if it didn’t justify Gianforte’s response never occurred to him. And this is unsurprising and not a good thing for the media or society.

Last year a video of a student at Yale confronting a university official over some Halloween party controversy went viral. Most of the commentary about the video concerned the woman’s absurd and oppressive opinions. What struck me about the video, however, was not her opinions. I have long known people who go to places like Yale generally believe absurd and stupid things and the woman’s views were exactly what I would expect from a student at such a place. What I found striking was the way she expressed those opinions. The woman seemed to have no understanding of how to act around other people or confront someone. She believed that was perfectly okay to scream in the face and physically confront anyone she didn’t like or whose opinions she didn’t agree. Worse, the students around her cheered her. Not a single one of them stepped in and told her to calm down or act differently. The man at whom she was screaming didn’t seem to think it was inappropriate either. Apparently, at Yale and a lot of other places, this is how you act when you disagree or don’t like someone.

The problem is that people who graduate from places like Yale and who largely make up our media think that because in the abstract screaming in someone’s face or acting in completely inappropriate or disrespectful ways doesn’t justify the other person resorting to violence, that acting that way is never going to result in violent consequences. Sadly, life doesn’t work that way. If you go around screaming at people and confronting them in offensive ways, the fact that they do not have the moral right to assault you will not stop some people from doing it anyway. So, if you don’t want to be assaulted, you ought not to behave in ways likely to cause people to lose their temper and do so. If the media wants a civil and restrained political environment, they need to act in restrained and civil ways themselves.

Now, it may be that the reporter was sitting quietly reading his Communist Manifesto or Michael Foucault, and Gianforte went berserk and attacked him. I, however, seriously doubt that was the case. Whatever happened, Gianforte’s actions were the end of a confrontation that was likely initiated and escalated by the reporter. That again does not justify Gianforte or say it is okay to choke and punch someone who confronts you. It is to state the reality that no matter how wrong doing something like that is, if someone acts obnoxious enough long enough, eventually a target of that obnoxiousness is going to lose their temper and do something wrong.

The easy thing to do in response to this, and of course what 99 percent of the media is doing, is to stand in righteous anger about the need for everyone to condemn violence. Doing that, however, accomplishes nothing except making the speaker feel good and making the media’s constant excuses for leftist violence look all the more hypocritical. What needs to happen, and likely won’t because the media is completely incapable of self-reflection, is an honest examination of how it is that the national media could get so alienated from the rest of the country and the rest of the country so cynical that a Congressional candidate can assault a reporter and have it end up not hurting his election chances but likely helping them. Fat chance. If the media were capable of doing that, we likely wouldn’t be in this situation. That, however, doesn’t change the need for such a self-examination to occur.

One small note: it may be that this entire thing is a hoax and Gianforte is innocent. I don’t know. But for my purposes that doesn’t matter because whatever the truth people at the time of the election thought it was true and voted for him anyway. So, the fact that Gianforte might be proven to be innocent doesn’t change the fact that he could have been guilty and still won the election.