https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/andrew-sullivan-the-abyss-of-hate-versus-hate.html

To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about “micro-aggressions” for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face.
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Even after the full context was clear, Graham refused to apologize to the kid, or retract her condemnation: The context didn’t “change the larger story” which, she explained, was bigotry toward Native Americans. She cited Trump’s use of the name “Pocahontas” for Elizabeth Warren as evidence. But using a bullhorn to call Native Americans “savages” and “drunkards at the casino” to their faces a few minutes earlier on the same tape was not worth a mention?
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“Racism” now only means “prejudice plus power,” so what the adult Black Israelites yelled was nowhere near as bad as what a white teenager didn’t say.
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There’s a reason why, in the crucial battle for the legitimacy of a free press, Trump is still on the offensive. Our mainstream press has been poisoned by tribalism. My own trust in it is eroding. I’m far from the only one.

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[so far so good, but then he gets stimulus and response backward, like most of the Left and a good many of the Right]

From my perspective, the Trump threat to liberal democracy is deepening, largely because its racial animus and rank tribalism are evoking a response that is increasingly imbued with racial animus and rank tribalism, in an ever-tightening spiral of mutual hostility.
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A campaign slogan for a candidate who won the votes of 46 percent of the country in 2016 is to be seen as indistinguishable from the Confederate flag. This is not the language of politics. It is a language of civil war.

I can understand this impulse emotionally as a response to Trump’s hatefulness. But I fear it morally or politically. It’s a vortex that can lead to nothing but the raw imposition of power by one tribe over another. There can be no dialogue here, no debate, not even a State of the Union in which both tribes will participate. And none of us is immune.

What was so depressing to me about the Covington incident was how so many liberals felt comfortable taking a random teenager and, purely because of his race and gender, projected onto him all their resentments and hatred of “white men” in general.
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Judging — indeed demonizing — an individual on the basis of the racial or gender group he belongs to is the core element of racism, and yet it is now routine on the left as well as the right.
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t’s reasonable to note the social context of bigotry and see shades of gray, in which the powerful should indeed be more aware of how their racial or gender prejudice can hurt others, and the powerless given some slack. But if that leads you to ignore or downplay the nastiest adult bigotry imaginable and to focus on a teen boy’s silent face as the real manifestation of evil, you are well on your way to creating a new racism that mirrors aspects of the old.

This is the abyss of hate versus hate, tribe versus tribe. This is a moment when we can look at ourselves in the mirror of social media and see what we have become. Liberal democracy is being dismantled before our eyes — by all of us. This process is greater than one president. It is bottom-up as well as top-down. Tyranny, as Damon Linker reminded us this week, is not just political but psychological, and the tyrannical impulse, ratcheted up by social media, is in all of us. It infects the soul of the entire body politic. It destroys good people. It slowly strangles liberal democracy. This is the ongoing extinction level event.

If There’s One Thing I Despise, It’s a Mob
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Excellent story about your grandfather, and the lessons for today. Thanks.

How many times have we heard THAT excuse?!

The Bishop screwed up by jumping on that twitter bandwagon, but really, it doesn’t matter what he does, it will never be enough.

Believing the teachings of the RC Church to be true means losing trust in many of its leaders and institutions.

The most devout are the first ones thrown under the bus.

He was bullying, abusing, the underage teens, joining an e-lynching.

The PC-Klan e-lynching won’t stop until the PC-Klan bullies get sued, and lose. Over and over.
Until it stops.

1. The Roman church WAS silent when given clear evidence of abusers in its priestly leadership.
2. Finally justly raised howls from inside and outside the church forced some limited action from bishops. (I still don’t think the Roman church has acted adequately to bring its pedo-faction under scrutiny of law)
3. A lynch mob was baying at the CovCath boys and this bishop jumped in foolishly…perhaps in an effort to not get caught being silent. I don’t really know him or his rationale…but I can speculate with some understanding based on 30 years inside-experience in institutional churches.
4. Foys was dead wrong this time. I don’t know what he’s done about his diocese re child abusing priests…so I can’t say “wrong again.”
5. Now he’s rightly walked that back…but still defends the institution like he’s supposed to do as a bishop.

He needs to step down & let the pope appoint someone else…who is likely to be just as politically & institutionally invested as Foys…and who may well make similar or worse mistakes. It’s the nature of bishops…protect the institution of the church above all things. They don’t necessarily get the pointed hat & purple shirt because they’re great shepherds/pastors.

If I was unclear earlier…or missed your point here…I apologize. I do understand HOW Foys might have thought jumping into the manure pile was the right thing to do…THAT he did so is inexcusable.