Winters Mill High School is in Westminster, the country seat of rural, deep-red Carroll County, Maryland, which is about 40 miles northwest of Baltimore. Earlier this week a student was quietly sitting down for the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag when another student suddenly kicked his chair over, knocking the victim to the floor. This was filmed by a friend of the attacker, and as of two days ago the video had gone viral, with more than 500,000 shares on social media. Millions added vicious comments applauding the attacker and expressing death threats toward the victim.
The Carroll County Times is a small newspaper now owned by the Baltimore Sun. Its coverage of this incident has been first-rate. See this main article: www.carrollcountytimes.com/…
The online comment thread to that article is much more active than usual on the CC Times. It’s appalling to see how many wingnuts approve the attack, but not unexpected for Carroll County. It’s encouraging to see so many people strongly condemning the attack.
I agree with one of the commenters that this was much more than bullying: it was a premeditated criminal assault, and the perpetrator should go to prison. The victim could have been seriously injured. As you’ll see from the article, the school administrators have so far been very squishy and cowardly, presumably intimidated by the punk and his family, and perhaps by the whole Trumpist community.
Given the reality of county politics, the CC Times tends to be squishy too, offering a fairly equal number of liberal and conservative cartoons and op-ed pieces, but the letters to the editor are dominated by the wingnuts. For example, last week some wingnut letter claimed that the Nazis were a far-left party because they were National Socialists! The paper’s editorials tend to be boring, mainly focusing on local issues like school closings and road work.
But this week the editor, Wayne Carter, really came out swinging in a great editorial denouncing all those who are praising that criminal student. See www.carrollcountytimes.com/…
Here is the key paragraph:
But it’s wrong, no matter which side you are on, to escalate the situation by resorting to physical violence. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have the right to commit a violent act against someone you disagree with. Beyond that, there’s a word for coerced patriotism: Fascism.
That’s right. The Carroll County Times just called the county’s many right-wing nutjobs “fascists.” I’m sure we’ll have an exiting few weeks of offended wingnuts, who will claim that the punk is the real victim here.
The original article quotes from Facebook entries about the incident by both the perp and the victim. The perp’s statement is illiterate, blockheaded, stupid and threatening. The victim’s statement, in contrast, is literate and very sophisticated politically for a high school student. He’s the one who made the statement that coerced patriotism is fascism.
Incidentally, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protected students from being forced to salute the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of_Education_v._Barnette
That was decided in the middle of World War 2. It is, of course, still the law today.
This local story made some national news outlets. The story may not be over.