Alan Jacobs wrote this in his newsletter yesterday:

On Tuesday morning, January 22, I read a David Brooks column about a confrontation that happened on the National Mall during the March for Life. Until I read that column I had heard nothing about this incident because I do not have a Facebook account, have deleted my Twitter account, don’t watch TV news, and read the news about once a week. If all goes well, I won’t hear anything more about the story. I recommend this set of practices to you all.

On his blog, he continued the thought.

After reading the Brooks column I checked in on the social media I have access to, and I cannot readily express to you how strange the commotion seemed to me. The responses of people to this issue struck me as — this is going to sound very strong, but I promise you that it’s precisely how I felt — it struck me as the behavior of people in the grip of some manic compulsion, of some kind of mass hysteria. There are no rational criteria in light of which what happened between those people on the National Mall matters — none at all.

And then I was filled with relief that I hadn’t got caught up in the tsunami — which, if I had been on social media, I would have been as vulnerable to as the next person, I’m sure — and filled with determination to make my way to still higher ground. Maybe you can’t do that, but if you can you probably should. (And, to be perfectly straightforward, there are a great many people who say they can’t disconnect from social media who in fact just don’t want to, or are afraid of what will happen if they do.)

I find his approach to all of this fascinating.

I didn’t watch the video, the short viral one or the 100-minute one, of the event that happened at the National Mall. I’m tired of the bigotry, misogyny, racism, and homophobia in our daily discourse. However, two writers I admire did watch and took their time with their commentary. Andrew Sullivan and Brian Beutler have interesting takes on the whole ordeal.

I like context in my news. It’s more fun to throw out Molotov cocktails about everything, but I’d rather have a more nuanced and thoughtful approach. Both writers take on the context of the event and offer a more intelligent observation of what happened and why.

Sullivan cites the appearance of the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group akin to the Westboro Baptist Church. They are a hate group that screams bigoted, racist, and homophobic inflammatory language in public. He admonishes the media who jumped on the story and dismissed the Black Israelite’s appearance. He’s not wrong in calling them out.

Beutler takes on the MAGA-hate-wearing high schoolers and calls them emblematic of the “ugly trends that have thrived in certain communities since before Donald Trump won the 2016 election.” He calls this Trumpism and, in turn, the Republican conservative movement.

Trumpism isn’t solely based on bigotry, misogyny, racism, and homophobia, but it is based on the desire to say whatever one wants because of privilege or admiration.

It all seems so pathetic. I hope our country rejects these backward thinking Neanderthals.