As published on the rec list by NextConservatism, and documented in detail by Mark Sumner here, this is the video of MAGA-hatted Kentucky Catholic school students mocking Nathan Phillips, a Native American Vietnam War veteran, in front of the Lincoln Memorial today. The full video of the “incident” is below.
A charitable view would be that these are ignorant children, encountering something and someone they’ve never seen before and laughing at it, all in good fun. Gang mentality and such. But the face of the kid prominently featured in the video staring incessantly, mockingly at Mr. Phillips (to background chants of “Build that Wall”), belies that comfortable interpretation. These are children who have been taught (by their Catholic school) and their parents who put them there that intolerance is a virtue, and at best, something funny, a joke to be shared amongst themselves. According to New York Magazine:
Although parents and chaperones were present, multiple witnesses on social media say they did nothing to intervene.
Remember, these kids were there for a specific purpose. They were participating in the March for Life, an anti-choice dogma that is pushed into their heads and sanctioned by their school and their parents. They are not simply innocent children reacting to an unknown--they have already been co-opted by forces larger than themselves. And by virtue of their proudly-worn MAGA hats, that force is Donald Trump, who has through his own behavior, statements, and attitudes has promoted and legitimized a philosophy of racism and exclusion, writ large. What was once innocent “mocking” will one day mature into full-blown intolerance and hate, fostered by a sense of camaraderie that they first discovered today.
Some of these kids will look back on this video one day and ask themselves what they were thinking. But many of them won’t. And they’ll take that intolerance, that ridicule, about anything or anyone different from themselves, into the voting booth with them, knowing dimly in the back of their heads that such feelings were once A-OK with the President of the United States.
That’s the real poison of Donald Trump.