"I'm An American, First And Foremost"

   The title of this NYT series--"This Week In Hate"--is a bit dramatic for my taste (as is the Washington Post's current tag line "Democracy Dies In Darkness")...but I'm not going to nit-pick. The stories in the piece are angrifying in the extreme, and they seem entirely credible. Unlike all the obvious and probable hoaxes that fit the Known Hoax Templates, these are all-too-believable to my mind.
   As we used to say back home, people are no damn good.
   Not really, of course. But an awful damn lot of them are. In dire need of ass-kickings, for one thing. Threw a bottle of pee at somebody? Really? You assholes...are...what? Just toting around a bottle of pee all the time? But then what? "Hey, Stuart, what do you think I should do with this bottle of pee?" "I'm not sure, Travis...oh...there's a Hispanic-looking fellow...perhaps throw it at him?" Or was this a pre-meditated pee-hurling incident?
   And as for Ms. Russ's case, it adds just that little extra bit of whatever that her family has undoubtedly been here longer than the jackass telling her to go back to Mexico. And she's right: other people should have stood up for her. Though, in their defense, people are often shocked into silence by crazy shit like that. Also, of course, we're basically encouraged to be passive and not stand up for ourselves and others.
   Meh, there's really no reason for me to go on about this stuff. There are enough people going on about this already. I prefer to go on about the stuff that isn't being gone on about by everybody else. Kinda goes without saying that this bullshit is bullshit. But every now and then I just feel like typing angrily about it.