"An Investment in Hysteria"

A recent fake news story originating at Buzzfeed was then promulgated without proper vetting by the main stream media. It led virtually all of the progressive commentariat and their trained hamsters in the media (but I repeat myself) to condemn a bunch of high school kids. The now infamous "Covington Kids" (as they have become known) were participating in a demonstration and were approached by a Native American who opposed their position and was banging a drum and otherwise got in their faces. Their crime—wearing M.A.G.A hats and smiling/smirking which the usual suspects interpreted as .. wait for it ... "Racism."

The Left, never far from hysteria caused by Trump Derangement Syndrome, immediately concluded (without the facts or context) that Donald Trump was poisoning America's youth as evidenced by the Covington Kids.

In an epic rant, Kevin Williamson comments on their faux outrage:

... the fact that a couple of children in MAGA hats engaged in boorish behavior — which isn’t even a fact, as it turns out, but a lie constructed and wholesaled with malice aforethought — wouldn’t have told us one damn thing about Donald J. Trump, his administration, or his political supporters at large. The fact that we had a momentary national moral crisis over the (as is turns out, fictitious) actions of a couple of nobody teenagers is all the evidence anybody needs of the fundamentally hysterical and unserious times in which we live. In a sane world, nobody cares about whether a 16-year-old boy somewhere . . . smirked.

Everybody who has pretended like that smirk tells us something serious about the state of the world is a liar and a fraud. I don’t mean the people who were legitimately taken in by the deceit — especially those who have had the honor and self-respect to admit their errors and correct them — but those who willfully persist in the lie. I’m talking about you, Ruth Graham of Slate, still trying to justify by whatever pathetic means are available what everybody with any sense knows to have been an exercise in pure horses***. I’m talking about you, editors of the New York Times. You sorry specimens are poor excuses for journalists, which, of course, we already knew. What’s more relevant here is that you are bad citizens. Trafficking in lies and distortions because you think the guy in the White House is kind of gross is unworthy of adults with responsible positions in a free society that depends on honest and functional institutions.

As some of you may recall, I wrote a little book called The Case against Trump. I didn’t think much of him in 2016. I don’t think much of him now. But we aren’t three tweets away from the Holocaust. Nobody seriously believes that we are, unless they are insane. Sane people who insist that the United States in 2019 is something like Germany in the 1930s are liars. They don’t really believe it. They have an investment in hysteria.

Those of you who play along with that — who enjoy being lied to and manipulated — are pathetic in the literal sense of that word. What the hell is wrong with you?

Like Williamson, I'm uneasy with Donald Trump's style, but I'm a lot more uneasy with leftists (media included) who whip themselves into outrage over people who oppose their ideas and narrative. I'm also uneasy with their continual accusations of "racism" when it is far from clear that any racist actions occurred. I'm also uneasy with the vicious politics of personal destruction that was evidenced during the Kavanaugh hearings.

And ... I'm even more uneasy with those who manipulate others into believing that we're Germany in the 1930s, particularly when they know damn well we aren't. It's dishonest, it's venal, it's vicious, and it's a cynical win-at-any-cost strategy that is ... despicable.

Indeed ... what the hell is wrong with them?