The Lack Of Moral Outrage

It’s like crime in the country has come to be regarded as the weather.

A man was horrifically beaten in the streets of a major city by people engaging in criminal activity. Nobody cared. Source

One of the most disturbing aspects of our current moment is how there seems to be a total lack of moral outrage about anything anymore. Except racism, maybe. That seems to be the only thing we’re allowed to get morally outraged about. Oh, and mass shootings involving AR-15s. Perhaps mis-genderings, too. Either way, it’s a short list.

In an update to my last post, I shared video of an incident of street brutality in Oakland, California:

https://twitter.com/ppv_tahoe/status/1653044073010167810

For further context and another angle:

https://twitter.com/activeasian/status/1653120088156041216

The man had thrown a bucket in anger at one of the cars performing stunts in the intersection, clearly incensed by the blatant, rampant lawlessness unfolding in front of him. For that act, he received a beating which nearly resulted in his death. Even if throwing a bucket was ill-advised, relentlessly beating someone after they’ve already been knocked down isn’t self-defense, especially when the bucket was thrown in response to illegal behavior.

Did you hear about this story on the national news? Have any officials beyond the local area said anything about this? What were President Joe Biden’s thoughts? Have any celebrities shared their unsolicited thoughts with the rest of us? You can critique the victim’s actions all you want (confronting a clearly violent mob is never a good idea), but these were criminals in the streets and a threat to public safety and order. They proved it when they beat this man within an inch of his life, with great exuberance.

Here’s an equally-distressing incident that occurred earlier this year in North Carolina. The woman survived, but her unborn child was murdered in the process:

https://twitter.com/WilliamA_33/status/1652693152745025536

It’s the woman’s testimony that underwhelms me. Again, it’s not my place to be upset on behalf of the victims. However, I still can’t help notice an apparent lack of anger on the part of the victim. I’m sure she’s sad and badly-affected by what happened to her, but missing is the rage we saw when, for example, George Floyd died in police custody or Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in an incident ruled self-defense. Not only did you know people were angry over what happened, but you knew you were supposed to be angry as well.

Let’s look at an incident that didn’t involve direct physical violence, but was violent, nonetheless. What happened to this young woman at the hands of a malicious liar with aspirations of being a “social justice activist.” Here’s a comprehensive write-up from Reason:

The story went something like this: A white woman pulled up to a Black Women Matter protest in Charlottesville and told attendees they would make "good fucking speed bumps." When protesters confronted her, the driver cried and called the police.

If you were a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) during summer 2020—as I was—you almost certainly heard this tale. It was repeated hundreds of times, over group chats and Instagram posts and viral tweets. The rumors were given a sheen of legitimacy by local news reporting and were acknowledged by the university administration.

The allegations first attracted attention after Zyahna Bryant, a 19-year-old UVA student and social justice activist, made them on Twitter during the demonstration. Her account would be retweeted more than 1,000 times. "The woman in this truck approached protesters in #Charlottesville, and told us that we would make 'good speedbumps,'" Bryant wrote. "She then called the police and started crying saying we were attacking her."

The White woman in the story is named Morgan Bettinger. Long story short, nothing described in the passages above ever occurred:

Bettinger denied she made the threat. A student-run investigation agreed with Bettinger's, not Bryant's, version of what transpired. A separate investigation by the school's civil rights office concluded that none of Bryant's allegations had sufficient evidence to support them. Bryant's most damning claim—that Bettinger had told protesters they would make "good fucking speed bumps"—had no corroborating witnesses, even though it allegedly occurred in front of a crowd of more than 30 people. Reason reviewed additional documents previously not made public, all of which back up the findings of the investigation.

But none of this would come out until nearly a year later, in June 2021—with the results of the investigation kept largely under wraps. The only story that most UVA students heard, the one repeated over group chats, Twitter threads, and Zoom meetings with almost manic fervor, was Bryant's.

This is the story of a rumor mill that rushed to collective judgment, a pervasive climate of anger and outrage, a weak campus administration, and a unique higher-ed justice system that faltered just when it was most needed. It's the story of a woman who was informally ostracized and formally sanctioned for a story that seemingly everyone on campus had heard and believed, but which was never proven.

…a story that seemingly everyone on campus had heard and believed, but which was never proven. Well, that’s a strong way of putting it. How about just calling it a lie? Why lament a supposedly “post-truth society” if we’re not even going to call blatant falsehoods for what they are? From what little I can tell, the only person who paid a price in this story is Morgan Bettinger, for crimes she never committed. Meanwhile, the false accuser, Zyahna Bryant, who is Black, has seemingly paid no price for her atrocious actions.

This short entry was more of a thought-dump on my part. It’s just very bizarre seeing what tugs on our sense of moral outrage in this country and what doesn’t. There’s obviously a lot going on that’s very wrong, but only certain things are we allowed to speak out on publicly, while other issues, we’re supposed to notice only quietly, if notice them at all.

It’s like crime in the country has come to be regarded as the weather. It’s terrible, but it’s just something that happened we all need to learn to live with. Meanwhile, the moral outrage is reserved for incidents where citizens, police, and security fight back against criminals. Bizarrely, we’re more troubled by the idea we can fight back against those who prey on us than the fact we can be victims. It’s indicative of a society that has it’s priorities backwards and has become so decadent, it simply won’t accept dangerous people exist and they will stop at nothing to have their way. It’s instead up to us to adjust to them or, at worst, accommodate them.

I know I’ve shared some of my deeper, darker thoughts with you here and I try to avoid doing too much of that. My purpose, I believe, is to help you all understand things as they happen. But I couldn’t help myself here. There’s something deeply wrong with our country and so much of our problems are self-inflicted. There are far too many among us who refuse to live in the real world and instead, like sheep, take order and peace for granted, waiting to be herded.

Even when those herding them are the predators.

Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.

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