Last night, yet another battle erupted online. Two distinct types of Americans are on the frontlines now—apologists for murderers and apologists for racists.

How it started:

How it’s going:

Luigi Mangione shot a CEO point-blank on the streets of New York, allegedly. Karmelo Anthony allegedly stabbed and killed a young student over a seat at a high school in Texas, allegedly. His family claimed self-defense. And then, money was raised on Give Send Go to the tune of $500+.

In any sane world, most people wonder how that could happen. How can that much money flood in for the murderer and not the victim? How did we end up here? How can everyone have lost their moral compass?

Until now, the moral high ground in this case would go to the not crazy side, the Right. But the Right said, Hold my beer.

How do you manage to do something even worse than raising money for murderers? Why, raising money for racists, of course.

This video was posted two days ago.

Now, she’s raised over $600K.

The guy who recorded her, according to that video, is a charged and convicted sex offender. So yeah, great all around!

It does seem almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? Almost like this is a set-up? Can it really be that the perfect situation emerged where the villain would be so clear-cut and the victim a Black kid with a disability? A man with a cell phone just happened to be right there to catch it and then film her?

None of it has ever felt authentic to me in any way. But it is what it is. The job of the MAGA movement should be to resist falling into this obvious trap, whether it was a set-up or it really happened.

“Shiloh” wrote the following:

My name is Shiloh and I have been put into a very dire situation. I recently had a kid steal from my 18month old sons diaper bag at a park. I called the kid out for what he was. Another man, who we recently found out has had a history with law enforcement, proceeded to record me and follow me to my car. He then posted these videos online which has caused my family, and myself, great turmoil. My SSN has been leaked. My address, and phone number have been given out freely. My family members are being attacked. My eldest child may not be going back to school. Even where I exercise has been exposed.

“I called the kid out for what he was,” she says.

I’m guessing once the fundraiser went up, plenty of people on the Left were there with their clicking fingers ready to drive up the donations to even higher than Karmelo Anthony’s. They want America to see all of MAGA as on the side of Shiloh, just as many on the Right see all of America on the side of Karmelo.

The top donations are:

$1,000 from anonymous
$ 2500 from Ariann Pentza (betting a fake name)
$2025 from N
$2005 from I
$2004 from Anon
$2003 from Anon
$2002 from Anon
$2001 from Manfred von Richtofen
$2000 from Anon
$1776 from Anon
$1488 from “Average White Man”
$1488 from White Lives matter

Like, who has that kind of money to throw around?

Then there are smaller donations with overtly racist names that conveniently repeat, which I won’t repeat here, but you can see for yourself on the donation page.

Granted, many white people on the Right are sick of everything being about race and blamed for everything because of the color of their skin. And stealing is wrong too. But so? Using the “n-word” is only something you would do if you harbored hate in your heart for Black people. I would never use that word. I would never even think of using that word.

It reminds me of that scene in Bull Durham where the ref tells Kevin Costner that if he calls him a c*cksucker he’ll be thrown out of the game. He taunts and he taunts and he taunts and finally, Costner snaps.

I get it that there is an impulse to use a slur no one is allowed to use when angry - that is what slurs are for. That is why our brain calls them up in times of extreme stress.

But it is still wrong. It is wrong because it is the one word that does cause harm when said by a white person to a Black person (even if they say it all the time).

The rise of the real racists on the Right is the downside of Elon Musk buying Twitter. Now, they have a voice too. They will be working hard every day to gain prominence. Those who use the app must hold fast and true to their own principles to resist it.

The Woke Right

I can’t stand the term “woke Right.” The word “woke” is already stretched beyond its usefulness by now. I suppose what those who use it mean is that many on the Right are living up to the stereotype by allowing themselves to be influenced or manipulated by evil.

Here are some of the comments to Rikki’s tweet that are now allowed on X where they would not have been on Twitter.

I have spent the last five years making the case that the MAGA movement is not driven by racism. I don’t believe it is. I know too many non-white people in the movement, and never have I seen overt racism at a MAGA rally or in a Trump speech.

If this becomes the MAGA movement, will they allow it to become the dominant ideology or groupthink? Stick a fork in it. The war is over. The Left will win.

If this makes you mad and you want to unsub, you can do so in the top right under “manage subscription.” If you want to cancel your paid subscription, you can do that also by scrolling all the way down to the bottom.

I believe most people, on the Left and the Right, are decent. We must wrestle with our better angels every day. In a time of chaos like this one, authoritarianism will rise, as it did in the 1930s. Back then, moderates could not hold back the stronger threats of Communism (Stalin) and Fascism (Hitler).

We’re not a species designed for chaos. We like leadership. We need structure. But that power can’t fall into the wrong hands. Don’t prove them right. Don’t validate all of their madness of the past ten years.

Just as with the Karmelo Anthony and the Luigi Mangione cases, there is a clear right and a clear wrong here. Stealing from a child’s diaper bag is wrong, but that does not come close to using the worst racial slur anyone can use in modern-day America, especially in this Civil War.

A friend of mine told me that once Trump won, it would bring back all of the slurs and hate speech that the Left overpoliced. A while back, she called me and said, “See, I told you so.” I didn’t agree with her example of people calling out the fire chief in Los Angeles for being a DEI hire.

But this? This is Checkmate. Don’t fall for it, MAGA, no matter how mad you are at the Left.

People like me hover in nomad land without a real place to call home. We are the ones the Left is trying to convince to come back to the party. All they need is an easy way to say, “See, I told you so.”