About #PizzaGate

Last Sunday, a man walked into a pizza shop in the Washington, DC area with a gun. He had driven there from North Carolina, and came to "protect the kids." Up until that point, I had little to no interest in this story, and thought of it as just a Twitter fight between the activists on the left and right who have nothing to do right now, after the election. The man showed up there to "protect the kids" from Hillary and Podesta, who the right-wing internet trolls claimed were running a child-sex operation out of there.

I shot down plans with friends to go to this exact spot on Saturday night, mostly because it was far from where I wanted to go, and I wasn't interested in this fight. Once someone drives across a couple of states with a gun to be a vigilante though, the whole story changes. There are several issues to unpack here, at least from my perspective.

1. Vigilantes are always a bad thing. Look, let's say for a second that there was an actual child sex ring being run out of a pizza shop in Northwest DC by a couple of super-power politicians. What should you do? Should you, with no arresting authority or evidence, get in your car and drive across several states, strapped up with your gun, and walk into an establishment full of innocent people, and shoot it up? Or, should you call the police? The biggest problem I have with our gun culture is the idea that it makes some of us "like the cops." No, it doesn't. Police officers, despite the news stories you see about .000001% of them who screw up and shoot an innocent person, are actually well trained and have the authority to handle a situation like this. They won't kill a bunch of innocent people eating their lunch/dinner, and they'll find out if there's a child sex ring. Let them do it.
2. Ridiculous internet stories are going to get people killed. This is probably the most scary part. Literally anyone can write a ridiculous story on the internet about anybody. You can accuse anyone of anything. You have no idea what kind of meat-head moron is on the other end of the internet reading your crazy stories, and how they will interpret it. The "fake news" being pushed by people, particularly the negative stuff, can trigger a nut like this one to drive across several states with his gun to "inflict justice." Crazy people don't have a filter, and if we feed them conspiracy theories, they're going to kill people. Considering that I almost went there last weekend, this is hitting home to me. What if I had been there when a gunman were there? It almost makes me want to get out of politics and not go out anywhere ever again.
3. The Washington Post's coverage made him sound like a decent guy. Seriously, stop. This is not okay. I don't care that this gunman "seemed like a good guy," he's not. He brought a gun into a pizza shop to inflict harm on people whom he had determined were guilty of a crime that no one is even going to be charged for. If that's not evil, i'm at a loss moving forward for what is. He doesn't believe in our justice system, he believes he can decide who lives and dies, and he believes crazy conspiracy theories. If a gang member had come in the same way, we wouldn't talk about what a decent guy they were otherwise. That he thinks this of his political opposites tells you a lot about him.
4. I'm actually afraid for Hillary Clinton's safety. In normal times, when a candidate loses for President, they fade from public view and people actually start to like them again. I don't think Hillary is going to be afforded this. The past quarter-century of shade thrown her way by the American right-wing seems to have no ending. They are still pedaling theories about her running a child-sex ring a month after they finally defeated her in an election. Just think about that for a moment. This was never about defeating her in an election, it's about destroying Hillary. I don't see an ending.