The following is the second installment in our A World Awash in Bullshit series. I didn’t publish the first installment because the subject is such a powder keg of explosive bullshit that it’s not worth the trouble of posting.
From the “live but don’t let other people live, but instead fuck with them hard” file, comes a recent spate of attacks involving MAGA hat wearers. No, it isn’t MAGA hatters run amuck, perpetrating hate crimes and leaving behind a trail of murder and mayhem. It’s folks going about their daily lives wearing MAGA gear and getting harassed and assaulted by so-called tolerant, anti-racism, anti-hate individuals for whom the first amendment apparently means, “freedom of speech, just watch what you say.”
Most recently, a Mexican-American woman was attacked in a California post office for wearing a MAGA hat. The perpetrator, a woke white woman, taught this brown lady a lesson in racism by hurling insults at her and smacking her around. We know this because the MAGA hat lady got it all on video.
This incident is just one of a number of attacks that have taken place just in the last few months. In Massachusetts, a woman was arrested in February for battery and disorderly conduct after harassing a man and grabbing his MAGA hat. In Oklahoma, a high school boy is confronted by another high schooler who takes his MAGA hat and his Trump 2020 sign and throws them on the floor. This incident took place in the high school hall and was captured by cell phone video. In New Jersey, a 19 year old male threw an 81 year old man to the ground for the offense of wearing a MAGA hat. The teenager faces assault and harassment charges.
Wearing MAGA hats while shopping resulted in one Kentucky couple being given the finger and having a .40 caliber Glock stuck in their face. The perpetrator allegedly threatened, “It’s a good day for you to die.” He’s been charged with first-degree wanton endangerment. Even a sword wielding MAGA hatter who slashed another man’s hand in San Francisco was provoked when the man knocked his MAGA hat to the ground. As he drew his sword, the MAGA hatter was heard to mutter, “You have besmirched my honor, rogue. Now you shall have a taste of my steel,” – not really.
These are just the incidents where charges were filed and/or the attacks were caught on video, and all happened within the last two months. There are many other reported episodes of harassment. Try googling “MAGA hat attack”. Almost every result involves a MAGA hat wearer coming under harassment and assault by someone who’s going to teach them why Trump is so terrible.
Of course the feather in the MAGA cap event that preceded the ones described above involved a group of MAGA hat wearing teenage boys from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. One member of this group became the target of widespread media hostility and public antagonism from the left for allegedly smirking at a Native American. We now know the narrative the media originally spun was almost entirely false and that it was the MAGA teens who were the victims of racial and homophobic insults. But what if the media’s original accusations had turned out to be accurate? Would the MAGA hatted teens really have deserved the media and public pile-on they received from folks on the left? Is it really okay to dox and advocate violence against a smirking teen who’s wearing a MAGA hat, or to call for their lives to be ruined? Isn’t a high school kid, of all people, deserving of a break for an ill-advised smirk? I mean, he didn’t physically assault the man or even verbally assault him. Where is this MAGA hat derangement coming from? Personally, I can’t help but cringe every time I encounter someone wearing it. But there is simply no equivalence between the MAGA hat and a KKK hood or a swastika, so this is a call for people on the left to quit acting like a bunch of frightened lunatics when you see it.
At this point, I wanted to launch into an impassioned plea for a more “live and let live” attitude by folks on the left. I was going to hearken back to days gone by when the left was the place where tolerance and free thought found a welcoming home. Where freedom of speech was sacred and people weren’t so convinced of their rightness and the other guy’s wrongness, or at least we could respect each other’s ideological differences.
But then, like a song you can’t get out of your head, my thoughts were invaded by the shrill voices of scores of SJWs, LWIs, and woke activists shouting at me that I’m wrong. Well they must be right, I thought, because they’re so damn loud and irritating. It’s a new day, there’s too much at stake. “There is no other side.” When you’re right, you know you’re right and the other guy probably knows in his heart he’s wrong. So it’s not the time for “live and let live” anymore. It is the time for doubling down. It’s the time for total outrage and getting up in each other’s shit. Don’t just knock that MAGA hat off that guy’s head, defecate on it while it’s on the ground. That will probably convince them of their wrongness, and they’ll probably thank you for it. “Dude, I didn’t realize I’d become such a white supremacist asshole. Thanks for shitting in my hat and waking me up.” And maybe he’ll turn around and shit in some other person’s MAGA hat and, in that manner, everyone will come together and all racism and inequality will be eradicated. And next time some heteronormative jerk starts saying something you don’t agree with, maybe you can just stick your fingers in your ears and yell “la, la, la, la, la, la” over and over until they stop talking. You can even do it as a group at your university when they invite a bad person to speak who you don’t want to listen to.
Oh wait, you already do that. My bad.
If there is something 