The summer the nation went mad
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/13/wesley-pruden-mob-hysteria-in-america/We’ll remember this as the summer the nation went mad. Lynch mobs are usually brought to the boil by a heinous event, encouraged by heat, humidity and harangue. There was a heinous event, now all but forgotten, but this is hardly a long, hot summer. There’s a drought in Southern California but June and July have been moderate and pleasant, with considerable rain, nearly everywhere else. Nevertheless, a lynch mob with tar, feathers, rails and ropes has been on the scout for somebody to harass, hurt or hang.
Mobs are usually raised from the ranks of the poor, the wretched and the hangers-on from the refuse of the shore, as in Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem at the Statue of Liberty. But not this time. The usual masters of successful rabble-rousing, Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have taken a holiday. We can’t blame them. The usual shouters on all sides have been strangely quiet.
This time the leaders are the “respectables,†as the elites imagine themselves: know-it-all academics, the usual pundits looking for attention, rectors and reverends and other divines out to get a few lines in the public prints, governors, senators, mayors and assorted politicians in pursuit of voters with unrequited grievances.
So true. Things will get worse.
