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Through A Tweet, Darkly
I understand lynching now.
The way the Covington boys were treated brought me a moment of clarity. The fundament for this understanding came not from the left (I know what to expect from them) but from the right. Watching in near real-time as thinkers, writers and pundits that I may not agree with but used to respect go off like Roman candles at the mere hint of a whiff of the notion that white teenage males wearing MAGA hats were everything bad in this world was a wake-up call. Those poseur “conservatives” are every bit as intellectually brutish, morally smug, and ideologically craven as those leftists that I despise so.
First, if you went off on a hair trigger after seeing a sliced and diced snippet of film taken at a political event and published by the mainstream media and assumed the very worst about people ostensibly on your side, then you are stupid. You aren’t bright enough to have gleaned the least clue as to the left’s hate-mongering, smear-hungry, hysterics-reliant playbook. Congratulations, you got played. It did not even occur to you that the March for Life would bring leftist provocateurs out of the woodwork to ply their sinister and dishonest trade. Really? Not even a little bit?
You are also stupid because, despite all your proclamations and protestations about being reasoned, balanced, phlegmatic thinkers, you cannot resist turning your opponents into two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. That’s what muttonheads do. Despite your smarts, you cannot see your opponents as three-dimensional moral agents. You cannot take a digital moment to ponder “why would they do that? Did they do that? What are the odds this happened as stated?” Sad.
Your provided aid and succor to those that would take your liberty, your property, and your legacy because you don’t like MAGA hats.
If you were willing to cast every aspersion upon a bunch of kids and throw in with the rabid digital mob that wanted to dox, punch and kill these kids, then I beg you to take some time for introspection. If you could do that digitally, then you could, in the flickering light of the torches, help body surf the rope over the crowd to string up that uppity black boy that allegedly looked inappropriately at a white girl. Honest truth.
C’mon. Wake up.
I wouldn’t presume to ask you to study critical thinking, reason, and rhetoric. You had to have had all those classes, even if you didn’t internalize them. I would admonish you to get off of Twitter. It’s hurting you. It’s hurting the way you think, the way you process information, and the way you weigh variables. I don’t know if it’s the thrill of being part of a digital mob, the instantaneous feedback, or them there dopamine hits all the egg-heads talk about, but it brings out your worst self.
If you are addicted to dopamine, c’mon down; I’ll teach you how to generate it unilaterally, internally. Because you aspire to be a conservative, I’ll give you a rate.
Published in General
Wow – that was good! If you’re not familiar, on the subject of lynchings take a look at http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm
Great Post Mongo. Perfectly put. The “conservative” pundits who piled onto these kids the way the left did, need to check their own bias. Also, I deleted my social media, it just makes you a bad person wallowing in that cesspit.
RAH, Boss!
The emotion and intensity of responses the came out when the first video went viral are a good example of why we are a Republic and not a Democracy. It is shows why our government is designed to take, what often seems like an unreasonable amount of, time to make changes.
If we were a Democracy and could make quick changes, we would react without all the necessary information, and be driven by emotion. Minorities are not protected in a Democracy. A lynch mob is a Democracy, as is a pack of wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner.
We have too many people screaming for Democracy. They don’t know what they are chanting for.
That is pretty much it. I’m sure some will say, “Well, the orginal video looked like . . . ” No it didn’t. And the reaction wasn’t just “Hey these teenagers are rude” (because whoever heard of a rude teenager), but they went over the top calling them evil, disgraceful, and worse than “spitting on the cross.” This from the alleged grown-ups?
Some people don’t like Trump. Nothing wrong with that, but if a red hat triggers you to that degree you should probably seek professional help.
You’re exactly right, @bossmongo.
I think there is a lot of herd instinct going on with some members of the conservative media. They are not “part of” the PC crowd, but are their contemporaries and they inevitably hang out with them socially; so I think there is a strong impetus to join in when something like this happens, so as to not be thought of as out of step with the crowd.
I only wish that the people who need to hear this somehow would. I’ve been reading these posts on the Covington debacle and we have become our own echo chamber. How is the ‘right thing to do’ spread to those who cannot tell right from wrong?
Yeah, taking the worst reading of the original video, nothing happened. There was no violence, nothing that happened would impact anyone’s life an hour latter. It could have been taunting, similar to flipping someone off. There is no injury to their person or their life.
To say that this is “evil” and “spitting on the cross” is unbelievable.
Consider they might not be that stupid, they now have a different agenda.
These conservatives are, to those of us who came to support Trump, as elected Democrats are to the black folks who vote for them.
They never had our actual interests in mind, they have their own.
And they have underestimated us spectacularly.
Sad.
Bravo, Mongo.
And the only laugh I’ve gotten this week ;
realizing that so many who complain about President Trump’s twitter fingers went back and …
deleted their tweets.
Haha! Good point there.
Concur.
Two points, that I couldn’t fit into the post:
1. That kid behaved admirably. If some geezer (of any ethnicity) had gotten in my face like that when I was 17, I’d’ve punched him. Not proud of that, but I’ll guaran-damn-tee it’s true. Same with those Black Thugs Of Israel, or whatever they call themselves.
2. That “smirk?” That’s a stress reaction. I know that goofy smile. That’s a stress reaction to being exposed to stimuli one has no reference point for, while trying to figure out the appropriate response, while trying not to violate societal norms, while having the endocrine system dump its “what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on?” chemicals into the body.
I’ve been cautioned against using the phrase “aid and comfort to the enemy” on Ricochet because it suggests the constitutional definition of treason. I just want someone to tell me how many betrayals of one’s own (ostensible) side someone gets to commit before the phrase is permissible.
I hope this is a time for choosing for the anti-Trumpers. Either they’re deplorables like the rest of us, or they’re against us. Get off the fence, fellas. We’d rather have a reliable enemy than an unreliable ally.
Well, we do have a probable Dem Presidential candidate, that Beta fella, tentatively proposing that that musty, 200+ year-old Constitution falls short of adequate in these enlightened days. What’s word best defines an American citizen that wants to kick the Constitution to the curb?
Chauvie, gotta say: The ‘time for choosing’ was November, 2016. The choice was made: Trump won. He *is* the whole country’s President. Seems like it’s past time to take down the barricades – at least until after Labor Day, 2019.
Haha!
As people are wont to say: this.
Twitter is a cesspool. I understand that there are professional reasons to use it as an advertising medium. But no one should read it.
I agree with both of these.
Four years is a long time to maintain a hissy fit.
The barricades remain because the Left will never cease its attacks on our freedoms or our persons. NTs better decide which side of the barricades they’re on. Standing on top proclaiming one’s virtue is liable to get one shot by one side or the other.
But … but … but … Orange Man Bad!
Great post. As a companion piece, I recommend listening to Mark Steyn’s take.
https://www.steynonline.com/9150/the-respectable-right-and-the-revolutionary-left
And yet …
They persist.
It is unfortunate the degree to which Conservative pundits contributed to amplify the story. But most, if not all, have thoroughly and repeatedly apologized for their roles.
The urge to police one’s own side is not a bad one. When I saw the initial story I admit I found myself empathizing with the older vet rather than the teen boys. I don’t wield much influence but if I had, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have commented in favor of what is now obviously the wrong side.
You, and many others who have been cautioning against quick judgements and irresponsible use of social media influence, are absolutely right.
But there needs to be room for forgiveness also. Those who have retracted wrong statements or corrected false articles are not our enemies. A mistake does not make one disloyal.
Ah, @bossmongo, as usual we can depend on you for common sense.
Well Done Boss!
(I regret that I have but 1 like to give)
Very true about a mistake. However, this isn’t the first one and there have been no “woke” moments yet. Two + years later.
And these same folks won’t forgive “us” who placed this heathen into the WH. They will “show” us. No forgiveness.
They see a red hat and they become the raging bulls, seeing nothing but deplorables to gore.