The Cruelty of the Online Liberal Mob
Today, the Washington Post published an article stating that based on their investigations, of the defendants charged in the Capitol riots for whom they could find financial information, nearly 60% had recently experienced a major financial setback. The financial hardship could involve evictions, unpaid tax debt, foreclosure, bankruptcy, tax liens, etc.
My first response to this finding is that it is now more imperative than ever that America works to address the economic woes of its citizens. People who have become disenfranchised, watching the rich get richer while the rest of the population falls behind, are the most prime targets for falling down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories. To this point, I believe that Andrew Yang is fundamentally correct: we must fix the American economy in order to bridge the now extreme divide in ideologies.
Sadly but predictably, the response from the social media liberal mob has not been as thoughtful or open to understanding:
These are but a small sampling of the prevailing response to the Washington Post article. These responses generally state that there are a lot of people hurting financially who did not make the choice to join the Capitol riots. This is true, but so what? These statements help absolutely no one except the writers, who revel in their righteousness. Their response is so completely devoid of a willingness to understand the problem.
The Capitol mob consisted of individual humans — people with emotions, hopes, and dreams. As someone who identifies as socially and fiscally liberal, I absolutely condemn the actions undertaken by those people. However, I would prefer that we all try and understand the underlying problems that led these people to believe that they had no choice but to riot. The statistics provided by the Washington Posts provide some insight into that. Let’s all try to be a little less cruel, and a little more understanding about the reasons why others might do things that we disagree with. That’s the only way that we will have even a chance at fixing our nation’s great divide.
