Twelve Observations on the Covington Incident

On Jan. 18, 2019, students from the all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky participated in the March for Life in Washington, D.C. That evening, a video emerged of students in front of the Lincoln Memorial after the march. They were shown doing chants as they do at their sporting events, wearing Trump hats and appearing to be in a standoff with Nathan Phillips, 64, a Native American who was standing very close to one of them (later revealed to be high school junior Nick Sandmann, 16) and beating a drum while the student stood and smiled. This video produced intense backlash from Cathedral brahmins and establishment cuckservatives alike as it was spread throughout social media on the morning of Jan. 19.

Morevideos were later posted online that gave more context to the situation. These showed an earlier encounter between the students and the Black Hebrew Israelites, a racist hate group who were chanting slurs and obscenities at the boys before Phillips got involved. Several of the students were doxxed and threatened in various ways. Some of those who spoke out against the boys retracted their statements and apologized, while others have continued attacking them. Twelve observations on these events follow.

1. People see what they want to see. Monica Hesse at the Washington Postdescribed the story as “a Rorschach test,” writing, “As much as we might try to see what happened from Sandmann’s perspective, or from Phillips’s, the perspective we’re ultimately seeing it from is our own.” Julie Irwin Zimmerman at The Atlanticechoed this sentiment, writing, “tell me how you first reacted, and I can probably tell where you live, who you voted for in 2016, and your general take on a list of other issues.” Those who wanted to see a white male racist and those who wanted to see a white male victim each projected their desires onto Sandmann. This is why it is important to reserve judgment until enough facts are available to make a sound judgment, which in some cases will never happen.

2. Despite all of the establishment haranguing, Sandmann's smile and stance are perfectly understandable. A teenage boy was confronted by a 64-year-old man who started beating a drum next to his face. Sandmann's expression conveys the look of a young person who is observing an older person act foolishly but does not wish to confront the elder more substantively, both out of respect and out of a desire to avoid unnecessary escalation. The establishment media, however, treated his expression in an Orwellian manner:

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” —George Orwell, 1984

3. The Covington students deserve praise for their restraint. The boys stood through more than an hour of insults from the Black Hebrew Israelites and the provocation of Phillips. Though they would have been demonized much further if they had responded with more than standing their ground and performing the occasional tomahawk chop along with the drumbeat, it would be difficult for most people, including their critics, to endure so much and remain so calm.

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