Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Covington Pile On

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This is how the Left destroys itself. I’d sure like to think so.

Via David Bernstein, who notes:

Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.

It was pretty obvious to me.

[Friday-morning update]

Treacher: “I’m about ready to buy a MAGA hat just to spite these child-hating A-holes.”

[Bumped]

[Update a couple minutes later]

The politics of aggressively standing. Yes, there is nothing he could have done to avoid criticism. Because hat.

[Saturday-morning update, before we head to Vegas]

The Left’s culture of hate. It’s not accidental. And this is why the Founders distrusted democracy. And rightly so.

[Update a while later]

Long term, how do we live with these human dumpster fires?

while SOME liberals did at least admit that they got the story wrong, most of them doubled down and continued portraying an innocent 17-year-old kid as a racist and a Nazi. When the pushback on that came, the basic response came down to, “He’s a smiling white kid wearing a MAGA hat, therefore he deserves everything he gets.”

It would be nice to make it into a joke by calling it what it really is, a “hat crime,” but it’s not funny. If you’re willing to falsely brand a kid as a racist, a Nazi, and a horrible person because he stood there and smiled while some weirdo beat a drum in his face, where do we go from there? Do we declare every person who wore an “I’m With Her” shirt to be a pedophile? If Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination in 2020, is it acceptable to try to destroy the lives of random liberal teenagers for wearing “I’m With Joe” shirts?

This is the world liberals are dragging us into with their myopic vision, unquenchable hatred for people who disagree with them, and their raging intolerance. Is this good for the country? No way. Will it produce a better America? No. Is it entirely possible that this sort of thinking could lead to increasing amounts of political violence? Absolutely, because you can’t live in harmony with people who think there’s no punishment too great for people who wear hats designed to support their political opponents. We keep hoping against hope that saner heads will eventually prevail on the Left, but so far voices of sanity are few and far between.

Yes.

5 thoughts on “The Covington Pile On”

    1. Linking favorably to something in the Atlantic might explain part of it:

      It’s the easily extracted concern for these grinning boys—amidst the deportations & family separations, the harassment & assaults, the low wages, poverty & incarceration, the shootings & police brutality, the lack of access to medical/repro care—that’s going to finally do me in.

      Ugh.

      Speaking personally I definitely sense the conflict. A large part of me is in alignment with (a probably not-insignificant part of) the left: This thing should quickly be vacated from the headlines. Our reasons aren’t the same of course, my perspective is we’re talking about minors who should be allowed to continue on with their lives un-hindered. Continuing to pile-drive the Laura Wagner’s and Ruth Graham’s of the world really isn’t doing them any favors.

  2. The politics of aggressively standing. Yes, there is nothing he could have done to avoid criticism. Because hat.

    Exactly.

    This was a set up. Early in the longer video, you see one guy with a camera buzz the kids. This guy comes back later with the group of adult Democrat activists. They had lighting, dedicated video cameras, expensive still photography equipment, and a group of ten or so they used to wedge into the kids. The video and pictures were then spread via social media bot network.

    The kids had no role other than existing. The purpose of the Democrat activists was to create the viral PR assassination. There was no action anyone could have taken to stop them from their purpose.

    The media participated, continues to double down, NBC even tried to crucify the kid in a rigged interview, and didn’t even cover the attempted storming of a church the next day. They didn’t even ask the old dude if this was all a set up, why his story keeps changing, and why he brought so many camera people with him.

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