{"id":4597,"date":"2019-01-21T09:08:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T08:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4597"},"modified":"2019-04-22T14:30:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:30:24","slug":"to-wake-up-the-most-despised-person-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4597","title":{"rendered":"To Wake up the Most Despised Person in America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lincoln Memorial Washington DC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Did you ever get caught doing something really stupid when\nyou were a kid? If you are anything like me then you have so many that you have\nhad to construct another memory room in your brain to hold them all. If you\nanything like me, then you completely ignore this room. If you are anything\nlike me, then you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and think to\nyourself: yeah, I should write to that guy and apologize. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was in the eighth grade, I think, I got called out\nfor not only telling a bunch of people a secret that had been given to me, but\nalso for lying about it. That is, not only had I handed over a friend\u2019s secret,\nI had decided that it wasn\u2019t jazzy enough, so I edited in some embellishments\nthat I found really spicy, and then I told people that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I wasn\u2019t the sharpest tool in the shed. Yes, I am\naware of my verb tense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, you can imagine what happened next was something out\nof a bad 80s teen movie. I got caught, of course, and when I got caught\neveryone decided to share notes and so not only was I disloyal and not to be\ntrusted, I was also a liar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sunday night before having to face my class I remember\nthinking how crazy it was that my mother was so cheery at dinner. Didn\u2019t she\nknow the world was coming to an end? But everyone did normal things all day; my\ndad watched an Eagles game, my siblings played in the woods and talked about\nHalloween costumery. My life was over. Everyone at school, i.e. my whole world,\nhated me, and I was going to have to deal with it the next day. I slept about 4\nminutes that night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, social trends and tendencies of late grade school being\nwhat they are, I was humiliated, outcast, mocked, and made a pariah. For a\nwhile. It passed. People forgot. People forgave. By Thanksgiving, most people\ndidn\u2019t remember anything happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Times have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I woke up to nineteen million different sources showing the same picture: the smug face of a white teen in a MAGA hat mocking Native American activist Nathan Phillips while a bunch of smug white faces cheer him on. The subtext is all there. Hate. Racially motivated aggression. A massive amount of disrespect. Trump\u2019s America. The divide. A face of white privilege smugly taunting a native American Vietnam veteran.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boy, whoever he is, has become one of the most reviled\npeople in America. His face has been visually likened to those of the\naggressors in the lunch counter sit-ins in the 1960s. Overnight, he has\ncaptured the attention of the country (and world) and is being bashed by\nhundreds of thousands, politicians, athletes, and celebrities. I imagine that\nsome of these celebrities he loves. If I woke up tomorrow and learned on\nTwitter that Nick Offerman or Neil Gaiman hated me, I would honestly cry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kid has woken up today the most despised person in\nAmerica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does he deserve it? Arguable. There are a couple of different sides to this story, and both of them on video, but he’ll likely be the pariah at someone’s hands. He could be the visual link to the bad guys of this time period, not to mention the bad guys of other time periods (cue 1960s lunch counters comparisons). He might be expelled as his school tries to play damage control for their image. Already on Facebook the pictures of these kids are up with a public message for those who know them to hand over their names so we can (ironically) \u201cmake them famous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what are we doing? He’s an asshole kid in a MAGA hat, so we’re going to crucify him for it? Did he do something wrong beyond that and are we going to ruin a kid\u2019s life because he was an asshole as a teenager? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come on, people. We\u2019re the adults, which means two things.\nFirst, as adults we should be conveying the message that these actions have\nconsequences \u2013 unpleasant, sometimes damaging consequences. But we should not\nbe vindictive towards a teenager. Why? Because it doesn\u2019t work. And you know\nhow we all know that? Because we\u2019ve been there! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who reading this didn\u2019t do something terribly regretful as a\nteenager? If you got caught and if it wasn\u2019t a felony, then you probably\nsuffered for it, either within your family and community, legally, or all of\nthe above. And you know what? Life went on. You learned a lesson. People forgot\nand people forgave. You grew as a person. The rest of your life wasn\u2019t dictated\nby a foolish action. It is part of growing up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not suggesting that we forgive this sort of ignorance\nto the world of \u201coh he\u2019s just a kid\u201d but let\u2019s be honest, openly trying to\ndestroy young lives is something we never had to deal with until recently. If\nit had been a possibility to do such grand damage when we were younger and\nstupider, do you think we\u2019d be a little more forgiving in our social\nsentencing? Maybe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all we know this kid would be stuffing a bong in a\ntie-dyed T-shirt at Boneroo in a few years telling people how he used to wear a\nMAGA hat and how much he was an asshole. For all we know he may still do that.\nFor all we know, this will be the reason he does go on to do that. Take away\nthe MAGA hat and made Boneroo a Phish show, then you have me. How many times we\nlook back at our young selves and wince. But we are more fortunate, as we don\u2019t\nhave permanent reminders captured for the world to see.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We, the adults of the world, have a responsibility to dole\nout punishment in a reasonable fashion. We need to be more compassionate. We\nhave to allow the possibility of redemption. Because if we keep going in the\ndirection we\u2019re going in, then what kind of world and society are we looking\nforward to.        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, I really hope Neil Gaiman still likes me even after my\nstory of eighth grade intrigue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lincoln Memorial Washington DC Did you ever get caught doing something really stupid when you were a kid? If you are anything like me then you have so many that you have had to construct another memory room in your brain to hold them all. If you anything like me, then you completely ignore this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1c9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4597"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4606,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions\/4606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}