The Hanging Judge, Part 3

This essay follows my prior entries, The Hanging Judge in the Court of Public Opinion and The Hanging Judge, Part 2

So there I sat, watching the Facebook furor over the Covington Catholic kids burn itself out, in the time-honored online moral panic style, when something happened. Somebody posted a story about a Lincoln, Nebraska, woman who abused an animal. Apparently this twenty-something woman let an adult pitbull starve to death inside its kennel in her home. So this responsible citizen posted a Facebook story about the case.

Including the woman’s photo, full home address, and date of birth.

If you wanted to deliberately put somebody in danger, I cannot imagine a more effective way than posting everything necessary to whip readers into outrage than sharing a rage-inducing story, then tacking on the target’s full identifying information. I can imagine no way this person didn’t know this action would result in people demanding righteous payback, a common coin of online discussions today. (No, I won’t link to the story. This woman has been jeopardized enough.)

The responses to this story were predictable: I hope this woman dies in a fire. Somebody should lock her in a kennel and starve her. What an evil bitch, she deserves everything coming to her. Imagine any vile, repellent response you want, I read several of them. And when I posted a comment suggesting it was irresponsible to dox a private citizen, the same sort of comments got directed at me, accusing me of being complicit.

This mirrors the patterns I witnessed with the Covington Catholic kids. Complete strangers, who know nothing of the accused’s background or what might have precipitated the shameful action we learned about later, rushed to demand summary retribution. And if you demand people slow their roll and maybe let cooler heads investigate, you risk getting caught in the rush to condemn.

Because yes, it’s infuriating that somebody would starve a dependent animal to death. You know who else was infuriated? The local PD, who, according to the story, had already arrested her. She now rests upon the mercy of the court system, dedicated to fairness and justice. Which is how it should be: if we let people undertake vigilante justice, then “justice” becomes the purview of whoever has the biggest muscles and strongest sense of self-righteousness.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, dedicates an entire chapter to the pitfalls of an honor-based society. His definition of “honor” involves two important elements: maintaining a positive personal reputation, and avoiding offending others. I’ve known several people, mostly current or former military, who believe America suffers today from a paucity of honor. But evidence over the last two weeks makes me think we, perhaps, suffer an excess of misplaced honor.

Nick "the Accused" Sandmann

Because social media groups people by shared values, people like me get flooded with progressive fellow-travelers. Thus I’ve seen people attempting both sides of the honor equation. People I know post several politically themed memes and diatribes daily, but don’t much get involved in direct actions like public protests or contacting their elected officials. This form of “reputation progressivism,” also called virtue signalling, aims mostly at maintaining good image.

Simultaneously they take highly visible offense at perceived transgressions. From Covington Catholic to Calvin Trillin, I’ve had the distinct displeasure of watching good friends flip their shit about perceived public sins on FaceTube and InstaTwit for several years now. By whipping themselves into a highly public lather, they reassure friends that they’re still “allies” of whatever oppressed people have fallen under their rubric this week.

Watching this same outrage directed at a local story, I understand, most people expressing their anger at this negligent dog-killer probably aren’t evil. Most probably won’t pursue this woman and hurt her. But most don’t have to; it only takes one self-righteous arsehole to do something which feels right in the moment, but only makes things worse.

Because, deep down, honor is never wholly satisfied. If somebody punches me once in the nose, I don’t feel redressed punching back once; I keep punching until my aggression is depleted. Then, because I escalated, they escalate again. We see this in multiple honor-based cultures, from medieval Europe to the America of the Hatfields and McCoys: if you kill one of ours, we’ll kill one of yours, and I don’t care who started it.

Somebody needs to step off this wheel and let lawful justice have its say. From national concerns to hometown criminals, we must stop displaying public outrage as righteousness theatre. Because we can never, truly, see the consequences further down the line, until they’re close enough to run us over.