Thread by @kurteichenwald

1. One message I have repeated since a Congressman screamed "You lie!" at Obama is my condemnation of the collapse of both public decorum and standards of behavior. Mutual respect has given way to bullying, cursing and disrespect by our leaders and ourselves. Each time I...

2...do so, whichever side I am criticizing attacks me. I have been called a libtard, sexist, racist, liar, SJW, etc - depending on who is the person who was violating standards of common decency and, in leaders, institutional respect.

Which leads me to Covington Catholic and...

3...the sudden "everything is okay" line going out. On the day the first video came out, I did not argue this was discrimination - I had no idea what was in their hearts. What I saw was behavior that is unacceptable. As one of the women who was there guys said in the full video..

4...they were acting like a mob. I will deal with the behavior of the Black Israelites and the reaction further down. First, focus....

These boys were lined up on the stairs, blocking much of the access to the Lincoln Memorial. An old man approached them, engaged in what...

5...was obviously some sort of cultural ritual. These boys saw nothing but an old man walking towards the steps that lead to the Lincoln Memorial. They had no idea his intent. But they did not let him pass. This idea he "walked up to us" is ridiculous. They were blocking the...

6...path. ANYONE in a decent society, seeing these folks marching forward, playing a ceremonial drum, should have stepped aside and let them through. The Covington kids did not. They faced them down, they "tomahawked", some yelled "ha-ya, ha-ya." They bullied an old man because..

7...they would not open a path. Instead, they did not move aside to let him pass, and one stayed straight in his face, staring at him in the eyes, unmoving. Does anyone believe they would have reacted this way if a Catholic priest was leading a group up toward the Lincoln...

8...Memorial? I don't. And the idea that this guy was "praying" while staring down the man is ludicrous. There is no reason to block the path for prayer. This was rude, uncivil, like refusing to offer a seat to an elderly person on the bus. They were, as the woman who was there..

9...said on the extended video, acting like a mob.

Now, the Black Israelites have always bothered me, even when I was a teenage walking through NY. There are loud, insulting and aggressive. There behavior is often unacceptable. While I would hope kids would have the smarts...

10...not to engage them, these kids made a bad decision. Which goes to the other group - the adults. There should have been wiser people exercising mature judgment, the same judgment I exercised at 16 when I encounter them in Times Square - walk on. Given that the kids appear...

11...to have received an ok from the adults, I do not expect them to have reacted maturely to these provocateurs. It was stupid, but it was teenagers. Where were the adults to tell them to move on?

There is another video out there right now, of a woman screaming at black teens..

12...who in turn are crowding her with their bicycles and then a man comes running up with a gun yelling "nig***" I have the same condemnation here. The woman was out of control, and hideously rude. The teens were behaving terribly by crowding her, riding their bikes around her..

13...and the man with the gun is behaving like a racist and illegally. (He has been arrested.)

I condemn the disgusting hatefulness that oozes out of Trump's mouth and twitter feed on almost a daily basis. I condemn the congresswoman who called....

14...the President of the United States a motherf'r, I condemn the Congressman who sneered happily about white supremacy, I condemn the college students at Dartmouth in the 1980s who tore down the shanty-town protesting Apartheid, I condemn the falsehoods spewed from Fox....

15...on a daily basis. I condemn, I condemn, I condemn.

Why? Because no one has a monopoly on truth. When there are no standards, there is no possibility of progress. And we have no standards anymore.

So I still condemn Concord for their behavior. And Trump. And Rep. Tlaib...

16...and racists, and everyone who screams obscenities or treats those who disagree with face-to-face rudeness.

You can call me a libtard. Or a sexist. Or a scum. Or flood my feed with trolling.

You'll just be proving my point.