THEY SAY BELIEVE HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE, AND NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR

In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote: “You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

As someone with a human mind, I’ve thought about that last sentence a lot, and it makes a lot of sense to me. It’s not a bad single-sentence summary of the worldview articulated 2500 years ago by Shakyamuni Buddha, and it seems to have the support of contemporary quantum physics.  Not that I claim to be an expert in either field.  And since I live in a world where most people never question appearances, I often get sucked into that mode of thinking myself.

Which begs the classic Zippy the Pinhead question:  Is it 1984 yet?  Maybe the concept of Doublethink is the Rosetta Stone that will unlock of the mad ravings of Rudy Giuliani, who says one thing today and the opposite thing tomorrow.  The press calls that “walking it back.”  I don’t know whether there’s a method to Rudy’s madness or not, but if we ignore the specifics of his statements and look at the larger pattern, it’s clear that Giuliani is simply the living embodiment of Donald Trump’s world, in which reality is whatever Trump says it is in the moment.  Those moments are ephemeral, and so is reality.

Which brings me to the latest battle in the War on Reality, which started on Friday.  No doubt you have all seen photos and video of those MAGA kids from Kentucky mocking a Native American man.  Perhaps you’re aware that the initial version of the video was tweeted out by a fake Twitter account registered in Brazil but claiming to be a school teacher in California.  Soon enough, a longer version of the video surfaced. 

That was all the right-wing noise machine needed.  They claimed that the earlier video had been edited to make the kids look bad. (Pro tip:  the MAGA hats all by themselves accomplished that.)  They demanded retractions from people who criticized the MAGA boys.  Remarkably, a lot of pundit types on twitter and even in the mainstream media backed down.

But here’s the thing.  The longer videos, the different angles, the larger context – none of it changes what happened.  The original video, however shady its origin, got the most important thing right.

Here’s what I think happened.  There was an anti-abortion march in Washington, D.C., an annual event with substantial participation by field-tripping high school and college students.  That’s why the MAGA kids from Kentucky were there.  Earlier that morning, there had been an Indigenous Peoples March.  That’s why Nathan Phillips was there. 

And then there were a handful of professional disruptors known as the Black Hebrew Israelites, who appear to be an African-American equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church (the “God hates fags” cult).  They showed up to heckle everyone else. 

The Black Hebrew Israelites were exchanging ritual insults with the MAGA kids from Kentucky when Nathan Phillips tried to defuse the situation by walking into the space between them.  The MAGA kids quickly turned their attention to Phillips, and began mocking him.  And then came the MAGA smirk seen ‘round the world.

The smirking kid’s parents hired a public relations firm, which wrote a press release claiming that he was just trying to be friendly.  Sure, that makes sense.  If you’re a wealthy white kid, and you’re looking for some non-verbal ways to appear friendly towards minorities, nothing works better than a smirk and a MAGA hat.

The PR spin was ludicrous on its face, but that didn’t stop conservatives from embracing this counter-factual narrative.  After all, hadn’t they uncritically accepted an improbable story last summer to excuse the actions of another wealthy white teenage boy back in the 80s?  And now, Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Before they decided that the MAGA kids were pure as the driven snow, conservatives reached for the “boys will be boys” excuse.  Hey, they’re teenagers.  Cut them some slack.  And it’s true that teenage boys behave like jerks sometimes.  This is known.  It can be anticipated, and even planned for, you know, in situations like high school field trips, just to pick a random example. 

Which raises an important question: where the hell were the chaperones?  Why didn’t they step between the MAGA kids and the Black Hebrew Israelites and herd their charges out of harm’s way?  Nathan Phillips was trying to defuse a tense situation.  That wouldn’t have been necessary if two or three of the adults tasked with representing Covington Catholic High School had done their jobs.

So yeah, the situation as a whole was a little more complicated than the original video revealed.  The MAGA kids got sucked into a shouting match with the Black Hebrew Israelites, and testosterone was already flowing when Nathan Phillips decided to play peacemaker.  But the kids from Kentucky obviously weren’t averse to confrontation.  They chose to wear MAGA hats, which, in civilized quarters, is clearly confrontational.

Yeah, I’ll cut them a little slack because they’re just kids, whose capacity for empathy is, shall we say, underdeveloped.  And they’re from Kentucky, where MAGA hats are probably a common sight.  Teenage boys don’t have much experience with conflict avoidance. I get that.

But that doesn’t mean that I have to deny what I see with my own eyes.  The initial video of the confrontation followed the classic Latin formula, “in medias res.”  Never mind the context, cut to the chase.  I saw nothing exculpatory in the later videos that conservatives claimed were game-changers.

Sure, it’s not a bad idea to hold your fire until all the facts are in.  And sure, the MAGA kid may have been nervous, maybe even have been scared. Sometimes life comes at you fast. But he responded with a classic white privilege move, and the rest of the Kentucky MAGA contingent joined in with gleeful mockery and insults.  They were high school boys acting like assholes.  That’s not a hanging offense, but it’s fair game for criticism. 

Covington Catholic High School was right to be embarrassed by the behavior of the students and adult chaperones they sent to Washington, DC.  Luckily, this is a classic teachable moment, and I hope CCHS has the sense to use it as such.