Polyrantorous

This is beyond the pale. A Trump ally and sitting U.S. Representative just actively and publicly threatened a government witness the day before his testimony. This is an unquestionable violation of both 18 U.S. Code § 872 and 18 U.S. Code § 1512. He’s committing extortion and tampering with a government witness, and actively pretending that his statement is just to keep Mr. Cohen “honest”

This is cross-posted from Facebook and Twitter. It is also the first serious political commentary I can recall making publically in a non-queer space since I left my political career over four years ago:

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If you ever want to know why I laugh every time someone complains about a “liberal media”, just look at the way conservatives have this week so masterfully manipulated the national media into portraying perpetrators of openly racist acts as the victims.

Here’s what we actually know now:

A tax-exempt Catholic School in Kentucky bussed students to DC to join in a protest against the human rights of pregnant people. After they were done with that protest, a group of students - many of them wearing attire in support of openly racist political views - walked over to the National Mall, where another march in support of human rights for indigenous people was occurring.

At this march, a third group known as the Black Israelites was already present, saying some fairly bigoted things to the indigenous group, based on their own rather bizarre interpretation of scripture. So far as anyone knows, the participants in the Indigenous Peoples March were ignoring them.

When the white Covington kids arrived, they too were subject to bigoted statements from the Israelites. Being less used to finding themselves the targets of bigoted language than literally every non-white person in this country is, they shouted back, and according to all who have spoken about it, the situation appeared to be escalating. That is when Mr. Phillips stepped between the two groups.

This is where the initial viral video starts.

In that video (of which there were two versions, a short one on Twitter and a longer one on YouTube), we can clearly see multiple students wearing blatantly racist attire, surrounding a native man who is chanting traditional native music. Many of them are openly mocking native music and dancing while laughing at him and each others’ antics. On at least three separate occasions in the longer version of this video, we can hear people out of frame but in close proximity chanting, “build the wall,” or some other variation of it.

That’s what we know now, though we originally only saw the video.

In the initial spread and the paradoxical instant-gratification culture that has been created by the twenty-four hour news cycle, a couple of important details got muddled: specifically the idea that the students approached Mr. Phillips and not the other way around took hold, and the presence of the Black Israelites was omitted, since they aren’t visible from the vantage point of the person who took the video, surrounded as they are by the Covington students.

The first we know of their presence is the next day, when the mother of the most prominent student released a vitriolic statement decrying “black muslims” (sic). During the same day, Mr. Phillips released his initial statement, mentioning that he approached the students.

Because of the additional details that have come out, conservatives are using their well-honed talents for manipulating the media to suggest that the Covington students are victims of a smear campaign on the grounds that since the initial uninvestigated story omitted or inaccurately stated a couple of peripheral facts, the entire story must be a lie. As they always do, the be-fair-to-both-sides moderates have eaten this line up and rallied to the defense of racism in the name of civility.

The problem is, the additional details don’t make the Covington students look better. They make them look quite a bit worse.

-They were in town to protest against basic human rights.

-They were brought into town by an organization that is forbidden by law to engage in such political activity.

-They were wearing attire in support of a white supremacist political ideology, bearing a slogan popularized by a politician with a history of racist rhetoric and actions.

-They approached another march that was organized to support human rights and were seen to mock its participants.

-They were confronted by an unrelated group of non-white people who at least one of their parents later referred to in racially vitriolic terms.

-When the rhetoric between them and the third group became heated, a member of the indigenous group stepped between them, and they automatically assumed - by their own admission - that as a non-white person, he was probably associated with the other group of non-white people with whom they were in conflict.

-And they also assumed that as a non-white but equally non-black person, this indigenous man must be Hispanic, and that a wall would magically have kept him out of their white paradise.

When the video came out, all we knew was that white teenagers wearing racist attire were mocking a native man for his culture at an event meant to celebrate that culture, and guess what? That should be enough. Blatant racism happened right before our eyes, and the defense being offered by conservatives is that they should be excused because they’re actually bigger bigots than they first seemed?