What the Covington Catholic debacle tells us about the internet today

On Friday, a conflict at the Lincoln Memorial captivated the country, moving quickly from viral tweets to the national news. Three groups — Catholic schoolboys in Make America Great Again hats, indigenous rights activists, and black nationalists — collided at the Capitol, and the ugly confrontation that followed has dominated the national conversation since. What you take from the story will vary depending on how you identify, your politics, and what you make of the attending video footage. Most likely, you’ve made up your mind about it already. My own feeling is that wearing a MAGA hat broadcasts a strong allegiance to a racist president and his racist policies, and to swarm around a Native American elder and block his path is to menace... Continue reading…