I Hate That When Some Dickhead Sets a Car on Fire, We Have to Talk About It for a Week

Can't I just think "what a dickhead" and move on?

***Hey! I’m going to do a Q&A on the podcast this week, so please send your questions, comments, and AI-generated ads for herbal viagra to questions@imightbewrong.org.

---

At the moment, the picture above and the video below are on my social media feeds more than ads for diet supplements plugged by jacked 70 year-olds who — I’m told — doctors HATE.

Think about what it’s like to work at a TV news station and have this video show up on your screen.¹ You’re working on some ho-hum, instantly forgettable segment — maybe it’s a piece about the local Boy Scout troop fixing the handle on mailbox (local news), or an alderman in West Horsefuck County saying something insane on a podcast (cable news). At a meeting that morning, someone pitched a piece about the “current law” versus “current policy” debate in Congress, and you could feel your brain turning to cement from boredom. And then — WHOA!!! — a video shows up of a Waymo car on fire like that monk from the Rage Against the Machine album! And there are protesters in masks and police firing tear gas — it’s all pretty fucking rad! A wave of excitement bordering on sexual ecstasy sweeps through the newsroom, and everyone drops the humdrum shit they were half-assing to the finish line to report on…

This story is everywhere. As I write this, both the New York Times and Washington Post have riot videos front-and-center on their home pages. The story is on Fox News more than blonde womens’ legs. And it’s dominating my social media feed even though I try to train the algorithm to just feed me sports bloopers, awesome guitar solos, and women in yoga pants giving home renovation tips.

The right loves these videos because they further the “OUR CITIES ARE BURNING!!!” narrative. Everyone on the right knows something that leftists will never learn, which is that public disorder typically benefits those promising to restore order. Trump didn’t hesitate to federalize the national guard — he has clearly been dying to do this. If this excuse hadn’t arisen, we probably would have eventually seen the headline: "BEE POLLINATES FLOWER; TRUMP FEDERALIZES NATIONAL GUARD IN RESPONSE”. The signature move of Trump’s second term is to declare an emergency and then claim exceptional powers, and this riot gave Trump the excuse he needed to dial his authority up from “Andrew Jackson” to “Mid-’80s Bobby Knight”.

The far left loves these videos because they support the “THE PEOPLE ARE RISING UP” narrative. Here’s The Guardian lamely trying to will the proletariat revolution into existence — they breathlessly report that “thousands of Angelenos” are “flooding” the streets. Whoa…THOUSANDS??? So, like, perhaps two thousand people, i.e. Saint Patrick’s day in a small-ish city when it falls on a Tuesday? Look closely at the videos — I would describe the crowds as a “smattering” of people, or perhaps a “cluster”, definitely not a “flood”. Below is the video of the Waymo car in question meeting its fate — notice that there are dozens of people filming the one guy vandalizing the car. That doesn’t looks like The Glorious Revolution to me — that looks like some jackass who happens to be dressed like a tee ball coach with a slight rap rock edge smashing out a window.

I don’t want to minimize what’s happening; there are riots and vandalism, and Trump’s quick use of the National Guard is overly aggressive and maybe illegal. But let’s try to keep this in perspective. As far as I can tell — and this Los Angeles Times article is the most detailed description I’ve found of events on the ground — a few thousand demonstrators with a high vandal-to-peaceful-protester ratio have committed property crimes over the past several nights. Things appear to be winding down. Is this a revolution? An “insurrection”, in the words of Stephen Miller? That’s in the eye of the beholder. But the description that seems most accurate to me is: “It’s a smallish demonstration that included the vandalism-happy idiots that show up at every left-wing protest, exacerbated by Trump, and amplified by media figures who are influenced by the bias towards sensationalism that has existed in media since the beginning of time.”

And, of course, the dramatic visuals grab our attention. For all that’s been written about media trends, we maybe haven’t talked enough about how the switch from the written word to video has changed news. Any semi-competent TV news producer will put video of a flambéed Waymo car at the top of their broadcast — if you lead with Chuck Schumer in front of a pie chart, you should arguably be fired. And video is far more common on social media than it was back when wireless was 2G and you wouldn’t walk into, say, a funeral home and expect them to have WiFi. Even the New York Times and Washington Post are leaning towards video, which feels a bit like the French Laundry admitting defeat and putting a Beefy Gordita Crunch Supreme on its menu.

Stories with great visuals get a big boost. Those stories have drama and excitement; they make us feel like we’re living in exciting times. Let’s admit: Most of our lives are boring. The most exciting thing in my life right now is the other half of the sandwich that I got at Panera last night waiting for me in the fridge. I understand the buzz that people feel when a “holy fuckballs” video is on the news because I feel it, too, and I admit that there’s a small, fucked up part of me that’s excited by the prospect by something big happening even if it’s bad. Maybe the worst thing a human can feel is inconsequence, and exciting footage of possibly major events makes us feel important just because we’re witnessing them.

But if I temper that excitement and take a step back, it looks a lot like some arsonist dipshit just hijacked our national dialogue. We were talking about the Trump/Elon breakup and the terrible budget situation; now we’re talking about this. Yes, vandalism is bad, and yes, the person who did it should face legal consequences, but I don’t need a report-out on every fucking property crime that happens in this nation of 340 million people. This isn’t even politics — this is run-of-the-mill assholery by the same cosplaying dipshits that show up at every protest. They’ll be there whether the issue is an ICE raid or a police shooting or McDonald’s giving you two ketchup packets when they used to give you three. Fuck them — I choose to ignore them as much as possible. And — inflammatory video or no inflammatory video — I invite the media to do the same.

---

1. I think I can speak to this, because though there are important differences between working at a TV news station and my former job at the John Oliver show, there are also important similarities, namely that it’s a news-based show and your job gets easier or more difficult depending on what’s happening in the world.