The left's red hat bigots

Rich Lowry:

The fundamental offense of the Covington Catholic high-school kids wasn’t so much allegedly mobbing, mocking or getting in the face of an American Indian drummer at the Lincoln Memorial.

It was wearing red Make American Great Again hats. That was the actual, incontestable conduct that created the predicate for the presumption of guilt and all the rest of the grief they’ve been subjected to since.

For much of progressive America, if you are wearing the hat, you are suiting up for Team Racist. You are marking yourself out as a bigot and a goon. Your individuality doesn’t matter anymore, only the cap.

The entire Covington incident might have played out differently if the kids had been wearing red Washington Nationals caps. The imbroglio might not have gotten any attention at all. Even if it did, progressives taking a critical view of the students might have been more inclined to view them as immature teenagers rather than totems of hate.

As an analysis at Vox noted of the Covington incident, “The hats extinguished pretty much any benefit of the doubt a liberal observer might have given these kids.”

Exactly.

Alyssa Milano notoriously tweeted, “The red MAGA hat is the new white hood.” Which would be close to an apt analogy if people donned MAGA hats to carry out hideously violent crimes against African-Americans and other people uncongenial to them.

In a similar vein, TV writer and producer David Simon pronounced, “Once a campaign prop, a MAGA cap now fronts for such raw evil.” He makes it sound like a red baseball cap with an embroidered American political slogan on the front is the equivalent of the totenkopf.

This is, to put it mildly, an uncharitable view of their fellow citizens, who voted by the tens of millions for the guy who invented the red cap.
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Some of this flows from the left's false narrative about Trump being a racist.  He is clearly not.  He sometimes strikes back at black critics the same way he strikes back at white critics, but his policies have benefited blacks and Hispanics much more than Obama ever did.   He is also clearly comfortable around black supporters. 

What is happening is that the Democrats have broken out their racist playbook to try to dissuade black voters from abandoning their failed policies and support Trump and the Republicans who have done more to improve their lot.

What happened at the Lincoln Memorial was a group of black radicals and "native American" drummer attempted to intimidate a group of high school kids who responded with grace under pressure.  That some on the left saw this as kids being disrespectful is more than passing strange and it appears they jumped to this conclusion because of some innocent hats.