The Angry Reader

By Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers

From an Angry Reader,

“Keep your shit views to yourself.  You disgust me – go kiss trumps ass somewhere else.  The armed insurrection was leaderless and officer Sicknick only was “allegedly” murdered?  ??! You’re delirious you sick f!#?!”
— Deb C  

Dear Really, Really Angry Reader Deb C

In a mere 4 sentences you hit the angry reader score out of the park. 
1) How did you cram in ‘sh-t’, ‘ass’, ‘f—k’ in so little space? 2) The vocabulary of derangement was present too: “disgust me”,  “you’re delirious”, “you sick f—k’.  3) You managed the adolescent grammar well: trumps for Trump’s, ‘sh-t’ is a noun not an adjective, etc., 4) You slipped only by not including the Angry Reader style of  block letters and three three exclamation marks (rather than the less impressive ??!).

As for content. I’m paid not to keep my ‘sh-t’ views to myself; you seem addicted to them. So instead you should just tune me out and go “somewhere else”. There is a huge world out there on the Internet and air waves, and there is no need for you to self-inflict by fixating on me.  
If the armed “insurrection” was not leaderless, then would you please name the leaders who were arrested or are now under warrant for carefully planning and leading the assault? (Was it some heroic Napoleonic figure like the bare-chested buffoon, with the body tattoos, and two-horned fur hat?)

Since you, not I, used the adjective “armed”, please produce the evidence that at least one of those arrested in the Capitol either had used, or even possessed when arrested, a firearm. 

The death of Officer Sicknick was tragic. But there is as yet no public release of the autopsy or a toxicology report. So we do not know the cause of death, and his family so far has not released a statement concerning his exact demise. 

No one except  the New York Times and a few marquee newspapers, before their retraction, believed Officer Sicknick died from a violent physical assault from the protestors. He certainly did not die from head trauma from a weaponized fire extinguisher as was widely reported. 

Again, his death was a terrible thing,  but likely either due to natural causes aggravated by stress or, more likely, by an allergic reaction to pepper or bear spray, or some similar chemical agent, used by either the protestors (most likely) or the police or both. 

No jury would find anyone under those circumstances guilty of either first, second, or third degree “murder”. Involuntary manslaughter might be plausible if the toxicology report identifies the agent and a video shows an attacker with just that agent spraying it into the officer’s face. If that proves true, then I hope the suspect is prosecuted on manslaughter charges to the full extent of the law. But again, there was no murder as the law defines it, and you have no proof otherwise in spite of your venom.

I am afraid that you project the charge of “delirious”, and so Mutato nomine de te fabula narrator.  

What is the point of dashing off an unhinged rant full of smears,  profanity, and statements that are either false or without any support—other than the Angry Reader rankings?
Calm down for your own sake, 
Vic Hanson

Source:

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won and The Case for Trump.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal.

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