Some days go by and when i’m online with social media, I tend to just shake my head. I try to be skeptical when I see something that just doesn’t make sense to me immediately, and wait for further information before I come to any conclusion about the accuracy of what I’ve seen or heard. Not so. much for some others.

I’ve fallen into the trap myself, and strive not to repeat egregious behavior without having all the facts available, or at least as many facts as there are. Others however, are quick to jump into the fray and condemn based on nothing more than a single tweet. I bet you know where I’m going with this.

A group of high school boys, were violently attacked on social media based on a single tweet, without any context provided. When I first saw this, I was indeed skeptical because the photo with the tweet, an elderly Native American man seeming to beat a drum in front of one of these kids, was deemed by most as being a racist attack on the man, even though the kid appeared to be just standing there, smiling. 

What is this about? Why are people attacking this young man for doing what appeared to be nothing? Oh wait! Now I see it! He happened to be wearing a Make America Great Again cap. Instant racism. Of course when some in the media caught the story, they too condemned the actions of the students, claimed that these students had somehow surrounded the man and others with him, and were making racist taunts at them.

As it turned out, nothing of the sort happened, even though the Native American man, also a Vietnam Veteran, was interviewed at least twice and basically said what the media wanted to hear. The school administration, without any further evidence, without hearing from any of their students, apologized for the incident.

Later in the evening, while the online mob was calling for these boys to be doxxed, and some were even making violent threats against them, more video came to light, We discovered that no, the students didn’t;’t come and surround the Native Americans, but the opposite occurred. We can hear at least one Native American tell these kids to “Go home to Europe. This is our homeland”. If there was any provocation, it wasn’t from the kids.

Of course, the online lynching continued overnight into the morning when more and more people, yes even some so-called skeptics, came to their senses after seeing the subsequent unedited video of the encounter and apologized for jumping to a false conclusion.

I’m happy they, at least some, have done that, but saying you’re sorry doesn’t undo the damage that has already been done to these kids. Even their diocese initially condemned the boys and I would have thought that before that happened, they would’ve at least tried to get the students version. But no, in today’s environment, you’re guilty for just standing and smiling.

This should be a wakeup call, at least to skeptics: the media are a lost cause. They are nothing better than those far-left attack dogs we witnessed overnight. Have any media that ran wild with this story actually issued a correction, a simple apology? Not that I’ve seen.

All of this because of a few red caps.