Today’s paragraphs come to us from an editorial in the Richmond Post-Dispatch, via the Charlottesville Daily Progress.
Here they are – in rust, with my comments in blue:
It should not have been too much to hope that Charlottesville’s atmosphere of cerebral gentility could withstand the temporary invasion of a backward mob, however cretinous. But few likely anticipated the horrific scope of the violence that erupted. The blackhearted spirit of the alt-right movement mars whatever it touches — and in Charlottesville it did much worse than that. Lovely. First we have the smug superiority of that “atmosphere of cerebral gentility” line. Then there is the “alt.right” description – which has, for months, been used equalize the worst hate-filled scum with people whose “crime” is nothing other than reasonably mainstream consevative views. Nice start.
Even before Friday night was over, fights were breaking out around the University of Virginia, which white-power marchers defiled with a torchlit rally that would not have looked out of place in Nuremburg. Fair enough. And now you will talk about how the left wing Mayor of Charlottesville, michael signer, was on top of things, right? On Saturday morning more white nationalists rolled into town, some dressed up as soldiers, some heavily armed, and at least one wearing a quote from Aldolf Hitler. And now you’re going to sing the praises of signer, right? They were met by masses of counterprotesters, including those from the so-called Antifa movement. (The name is short for anti-fascist, although the group’s behavior is sometimes anything but.) NOW will you tell us what Mayor signer did?
The ostensible reason for the rally — Charlottesville’s recent controversy over what to do with its Confederate monuments — merely provided a pretext, a convenient catalyst for neo-segregationist hell-raising. Would any such hell-raising have taken place if the two groups had been kept apart? Isn’t this where Mayor signer comes in? Soon the racists and some counter-protesters were brawling, chucking water bottles at one another, and gassing one another with pepper spray. “The” racists and “some” counter-protesters? Fascinating that you do not mention who started the physical confrontations – which, from what I’ve read, was the people you benignly define as “some counter-protesters”. And we are STILL WAITING TO FIND OUT WHAT MAYOR sIGNER DID TO PREVENT THIS.
Law enforcement moved in. Wait a minute. This is when law enforcement moved in? Not when racist/nazis were marching, not when the “counter-protesters were on top of one another, but only after a full-scale riot broke out? But despite the best efforts of the police, this is what you call “the best efforts of the police”? To stand back and let it happen, then move in only after there was anarchy and violence in the street? What planet do you come from? a car careened into a crowd of counterprotesters marching downtown, killing at least one person and injuring at least 19 more. From the video, it looked like a premeditated, cold-blooded act of mayhem. Of, indeed, terrorism — no different from the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice, France. A premeditated, cold-blooded act of mayhem that was facilitated by the fact that police did absolutely nothing until then. How dare you ignore this. Had been carried out by, say, a Muslim immigrant, nobody would call it anything else. Donald Trump condemned the hate and the violence, though he undermined his own words by initially and falsely treating all sides as equally culpable. I see. A condemnation of President Trump – who wasn’t there and had nothing to do with it – because, although he condemned what happened, he didn’t say it the way you would have liked him to. But not one word of criticism, let alone condemnation, for the architect of what happened, Mayor michael signer.
I award Paragraphs Of The Day (dis)honors to the editorial board of the Richmond Times-Dispatch – for exactly the reasons you just read above…
…and for providing a textbook example of why so many people do not trust news media anymore.
