Who is the greatest victim of them all? Leave it to the mob to pick the ‘winner.’
"From The Ox-Bow Incident to To Kill a Mockingbird, novelists warned of the American propensity to become mob-like and often lethally so. Our Puritan roots, when coupled to elements of Athenian-style democracy, can on occasion vary wildly between dangerous bias and equally mindless self-righteousness.
"Update those traditions within the modern bane of electronically charged instantaneous social media, identity politics, the decline of journalism, and vicarious virtue-signaling, and we increasingly suffer psychodramas like the Virginia fraternity mess, the Duke Lacrosse fiasco, the Kavanaugh hearings, and the Covington nightmare.
"In such cases, predictable constructs often set afire the new mob. “Vulnerable” women or minorities or both are juxtaposed against young white males who have the scent of traditionalism, conservatism, or “privilege.” I say “psychodramas,” because the point is never to assess guilt or innocence or to establish some set of objective standards by which to condemn or exempt the accused. No, the aim is to vent outrage — the quicker, the more venomous, and the more public, the more advantageous either in a careerist or psychological sense."
