Our Tribal Warfare

We have already all heard enough – and more than enough – about the Covington Catholic boys involved in one of the morality plays that social media these days conjure up instantly, out of thin air. White Catholic boys wearing MAGA hats, marching in Washington to end abortion, from a “prep” school in the South? They just had to be racists and smugly affirming “white privilege.” And don’t forget: denying women reproductive rights.

So what, in reality, began near the Lincoln Memorial as an attack on the boys by Black Hebrew activists calling them “faggots” and worse (it’s on the tape); followed by the encounter with an Indian activist that (again to judge by the full tape) shows no more than some confused interaction, pointing to absolutely nothing; we have, once again, full-blown tribal warfare in America.

Social media are largely now a sewer of outrage – your virtue signaling is greater the more it’s sensitive and offended, outraged and violent towards the other side. Worse, the mainstream media now also get into this shameful act. Outlets like the New York Times and CNN repeated the slurs about the boys – and then were forced to admit that further video “changed the context.”

Serious media are supposed to get context and balance right before they enflame the kind of social divisions already only too evident now. None that I’ve seen has issued a retraction and apology.

Click here to read the rest of Dr. Royal’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .