We all have heard volumes about the case of Nick Sandmann‘s smirk, the Covington H.S. pro-life march in Washington, and the provocateur. So I won’t belabor you with derivative blather on leftist bias against the march, their refusal to apologize after the truth came out, the record of the now discredited Mr. Phillips, and the general media crucifixion of a high school kid for smiling.
But there are a couple of angles I think the media gods missed. Can’t blame them really, as they were covering their own coverage and they also think that Sandmann is the modern equivalent of Dr. Mengele. Silly, yes. But expected from this lot. What strikes me, among other things here, is the wonderful implied turnaround of the left on perhaps the most contentious issue in this country of the last one hundred years. For apparently now, just fifty years belatedly, they support our military effort in the Vietnam War.
If not, why have they made a fetish out of the, now exposed as a lie, provocateur’s service in Vietnam?
The lapdog leftist media thinks that American military power, unless applied towards supporting a Bolshie regime or a quagmire in the making, is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. From Vietnam, to tiny Grenada, to Desert Storm, to both more recent adventures, the media has told us what international villains we are. And in Vietnam specifically? Well, many of us are old enough to remember our troops coming home to be spit on and referred to as baby killers by the left. Their fellow travelers in the press have generally kept up the tradition.
When I joined the Army in 1980, less than a decade after we left Vietnam and the war ending with an enemy victory, many of the NCOs and officers who had served in that war told me stories of their homecoming. It was disgusting how badly they were treated. But apparently now, all is forgiven if you have morphed into a hard-left agitator. Now, that service is to be looked upon with reverence and awe. Even if you never actually served in country. Which would, of course, make me a battle-scarred veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. Sure, I never even got close to the region. However, I was in uniform at the time. So that should count.
Another 60s hangover apparent in this case is the abrogation of adult responsibility in the face of Bolshie screeching. We’ve read how both the school principal at Covington Catholic and the local bishop just could not wait a millisecond before they denounced the supposed actions of their own students and flock. To hell with waiting for the facts, the leftist media said it, showed it (some of it), and there is your final judgment. Now that the truth is out do we hear their profuse apologies? Nah. They have just hunkered down and are praying the news cycle goes on and forgets them. Well, as a Catholic myself, I’m not in a very forgiving mood when it comes to this latest idiotic outrage from the Church and its associates. When they should have come to a sober judgment after at least a modicum of time, they rushed to condemnation of their own people and went looking for a noose. They are, and have been, rank cowards in this and other matters.
Their cowardice is reminiscent of the faint-hearted actions of 60s era university administrators when faced with young Bolshie protestors disrupting college campuses and occupying the said administrator’s own offices. With some conspicuous exceptions like Sam Hayakawa at San Francisco State, these adults cut and ran and sent a message to the children that they could get away with anything as long as they clothed their childishness in left-wing garb. It was a capitulation to the cult of political adolescence we still see in the worshipping of toddlers like David Hogg and a great disservice to the kids who were at school for an education. Those agitators who went on to be professors and editors got the message and still apply it today, hence their continuing hatred for any authority not plunged neck-deep in the socialist groupthink morass. That long ago adult spinelessness by various deans and college presidents was the first spark in the conflagration we see on our antifa-friendly campuses today.
When you have people who literally get mightily agitated over a teenager smirking as if it was a weaponized facial gesture, these are individuals who haven’t been through a hell of a lot and who also have a lot of personal issues they are projecting onto this kid.
I mean, it’s a bloody smirk. A smirk. But to some it was Hiroshima by mouth.
That kind of sentiment comes from a society, specifically a male society, so bereft of real rites of passage for the majority of its group, so basically weak in the knees, that some kid’s smile is going to send them into swoons of apoplexy. If that is your idea of a threat then you have led a pretty nerfy life. You have likely never been challenged in the slightest to push yourself to the edge of endurance or get past a problem with discipline and stoic determination. It is the moral equivalence of seeing a small insect in the kitchen, screaming, climbing on top of the frig, and then dialing 911.
But it also is something way more personal than that for some.
So many talked about wiping that smirk off his face with such vehemence that it must have struck a very raw nerve. With the types around here in DC, I’ve seen that nerve struck before. It is the decades-long loathing of bitter outsider adolescents for kids who seem to be happy at that point in their lives. How dare Nick Sandmann be content and cheerful when others are morosely whining their way through homeroom!
With certain people that bitterness stokes an inner fire that propels them to success later in life. That’s why the White House Correspondents Dinner is called The Nerd Prom here in DC. But others hold on to those imagined slights for the rest of their lives and the continual emotional acidity colors their perceptions way past adolescence. So much so that they take it out on teenage boys whom they’ve never met or talked to.
That’s what I think we saw here. A venting and gnashing of teeth by, to clean up the Army phrase, those who didn’t find physical romance in high school.
Hopefully Mr. Sandmann (yes, I played the Chordettes song on Facebook in honor of him) puts this silliness behind him and goes on with his life. His vicious critics won’t. They are caught in a never-ending loop of personal vitriol that is expressed through their politics. I’d feel sorry for them.
But then, I really had fun in high school…