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The fact that Richard Spencer got punched on Buzz Aldrin's birthday is a gorgeous cultural convergence that I hadn't noticed until just now.
Remember when half the country's chattering class freaked out for two straight months because Buzz Aldrin punched a moon landing denier? Me neither.
We don't in fact have a cultural prohibition against punching people in the face because of their beliefs or public statements. We think we do, but we don't. We make all sorts of exceptions.
In general, by the way, my view remains that punching people in the face because of what they believe or say is a bad idea. But the question of who gets to be an exception to that rule is a question worth pondering.
And just to close out this particular meander, it's well worth remembering how small of a thing the Richard Spencer punch wound up being, in the life of the nation.
Spencer himself was publicly humiliated, and made very famous in a way that turned out not to be fun for him at all. So that was a good thing. But the tsunami of Nazi-punchings that many anticipated never materialized.
Political violence in the US was overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the far right before Spencer got punched, and it stayed that way after. Left political violence was extremely rare then, and remains extremely rare today.
But Richard Spencer doesn't appear in public anywhere near as much as he used to, and people know better than to talk shit to Buzz Aldrin now. Draw what lessons you choose.
Lemon out!
