For three months, we told teenagers that they couldn’t even go to school, let alone see their friends, play sports, or do anything else useful or fun, all because of a disease that won’t kill more than a handful of the teenagers who contract it nationwide.
So the kids are not all right, mainly because they’re bored as hell. And now it’s summer.
Naturally, they’re doing what all bored teenagers do in the days leading to the Fourth of July — though this time in the weeks leading to it. They’re blowing stuff up.
We likely have a surplus of fireworks from canceled Fourth of July festivities. Teenagers have a surplus of boredom. Occam’s razor gives us a pretty strong theory about the uptick in fireworks going off — that they’re just the natural result of that combination.
Social media worrywarts began by voicing ample concern at the sound of fireworks this summer, and now crackpot conspiracy theorists have taken it a step further. They hypothesize that the occasional crack booming from across the neighborhood comes not from nihilistic adolescents, but from a clandestine government initiative to convince people that gunplay has dramatically increased as a result of reduced police presence.
The notion is so absurd that it’s honestly embarrassing to have to write about it. But it’s a conspiracy theory now seriously promoted by supposed “experts” from a CNN national security analyst to the New York Times Magazine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning social media bully.
This is the third post I’ve seen of people complaining about random fireworks going off every day. Various geographic areas. Starting to feel not so random. What’s going on?? https://t.co/0MRxB8zlkH
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) June 22, 2020
This is incredibly irresponsible on every level. pic.twitter.com/hFSmxe8HtA
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 21, 2020
People don’t need to be convinced that the police are important because public confidence in law enforcement is already overwhelmingly high.
Yes, people are taking police bias and brutality more seriously than ever — and they also value the police as an institution. What’s more, outside the ivory tower and elite media institutions, most people possess common sense and understand that it’s nuts to suggest the government would stage fireworks to sound like gunshots to instill public fear.
There is certainly no need to increase fear. We have all the evidence we need — video and photos of streets and stores looted and cars and buildings set on fire. Less than 20% of people want to abolish the police, even if the public supports modest reforms to make bad officers more accountable for their illegal actions.
If anything, this sort of kookery, spread by major media figures employed by CNN and the New York Times, with no evidence or plausibility whatsoever, should serve as a reminder that we don’t need Russian internet trolls to be deceived.
