Ralph Yarl, Kaylin Gillis, Payton Washington in Texas. What's the thread between these stories? I was so struck by the fact that these different places, different histories, different situation. Two young people of different backgrounds, different outcomes, and yet the beats of the story were the same. You approach someone's house and you are shot and in one case killed for driving up a driveway, knocking on a door, these basic things that people do in a free society.
What really struck me was that a friend of mine told me a while ago. We were talking about India and the United States. He was talking about the hallmark of American societies is anonymous trust. You don't have to know people to tract. You write checks to them....
We have built societies on the notion of anonymous trust. It's allowed so much of modern life. It occurred to me we're not just dividing us as a country. We are de-developing. We are moving backwards with millions of people, their brains now addled by this propaganda, feeling hat you are in danger, everywhere is a threat. We're going back to this "Game of Thrones" where a lot of our fellow citizens feel like they live in a castle and if anyone crosses your moat they need to be murdered because they are coming to murder you. It is national brain damage and it is deadly and it is eroding the foundation of what makes this a functional, free modern society.
It's a good point he has about "anonymous trust." Yet somehow he mentions Ralph Yarl, Kaylin Gillis, and Payton Washington without even name-checking William and Kinsley White, evidently shot by Robert Louis Singletary
when a basketball rolled into Singletary's yard from a group of local children playing basketball in the street. Singletary allegedly fired a gun at a neighbor before approaching a father and daughter, William James White and 6-year-old Kinsley White, who were both seriously wounded.
One woman was grazed by a bullet and a second man was shot at but not injured, police said.
William White remains in serious condition, according to police.
"Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid's dad?" Kinsley asked in an emotional interview, stitches visible on her cheek from the bullet fragments that hit her.
Family members said William White tried to draw gunfire toward himself to protect his family as Singletary unloaded an entire magazine toward his neighbor. White was shot in the back in his own front yard, according to his partner, Ashley Hilderbrand.
"He looked at my husband and my daughter and told them, 'I'm going to kill you,'" Hilderbrand said.
Singletary is charged with four counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.
Obviously, this crime would have fit neatly into Giridharadas' narrative of "if anyone crosses your moat, they need to be murdered." It would have fit the narrative- but not the preconceived notion of Giridharadas or of the network on which he was appearing. There is only one explanation for that:
There is no reason to fixate on race here, although the contrast with coverage of the shooting in Kansas City, Missouri is stunning. There, where Andrew D. Lester is appropriately charged with shooting Ralph Yarl, the refrain is "old white man shoots young black man."
This incident- crime, apparently- is receiving remarkably, though unsurprisingly, little attention from the race and gender left cable news networks. They need to address this if they wish to recover much of their dwindling credibility. They won't, however.
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