Ugly Americans in America

Park Hills, Kentucky, home of Covington Catholic High School, is 1.65% African American, according to the Census, and 96.64% white. If you do the math, there are about forty-six black people there. Oh, and it's 0.07% Native American, which means there are two Indians in that town.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are an SPLC-certified hate group found in Eastern cities. They're a rude, offensive, off-the-wall, sometimes funny and weird cult. They've been around for more than a century, if you live here you've seen them at Gallery Place or somewhere, quoting scripture and insulting passersby. It's part of the sound of the city.

Black guys on the street giving snot-nosed, privileged white Covington boys a hard time? Back home in Park Hills this is impossible. These Kentucky kids had never seen that. In the city, when this happens you walk past it or you stand back and watch to see what's going to happen. In Park Hills you would need to put somebody in their place.

I've said this before -- the problem, the reason we have a "Trump," is that Americans don't travel. There is nothing like that feeling in another country where the locals look at you like you're the dumbest person ever born. You don't know how to count the money, what the food is called, you stare like yokels when they strip at the beach. The lesson you learn is, our "way of life" is one of many.

If you lived your whole life in an isolated colony like Park Hills, Kentucky, you would not learn that lesson. Thrown into a diverse community -- and this situation was comically diverse, between the lily-white MAGA anti-abortion mob, the insult-hurling street-tough Black Hebrew Israelites, and the tom-tom beating Native Americans -- these teenagers continued to act like they were back home, like this was a skit or a pep rally or something. A couple hundred of them thought they could cheer and jeer and mock people in the foreign land of Washington DC, like an audience seated in the dark, like it didn't matter.

These boys treated our city like it was their private toilet, without learning how we live here. They were stereotypical ugly Americans in an America they did not know or respect.

Four percent of DC voters supported Trump, which rounds to zero. We are the nation's capital and are well aware of political differences, but we know where we stand individually. DC is 40.4 per cent Caucasian -- a minority, in case that math is too hard. These obnoxious boys in their stupid MAGA costumes did not know their place in the big city.

BTW, of course DC gets a lot of tourists, and they don't know where to stand on the escalator or when to talk to a stranger on the Metro, or whatever. Nobody minds that. Locals roll their eyes and try to be polite and helpful. There's nothing wrong with being out of your element, if you're respectful and a little humble about it.

The middle of the country doesn't look like DC. In the diverse, mostly coastal, cities of the US there are all kinds of people, and you don't survive if you don't adjust to encountering people from every continent, with every philosophy and religion, every belief and attitude and bizarre idea that exists. They aren't going to change to be like you in your stupid MAGA uniform, they don't even want to be like you. The locals will tolerate you, but don't try to force your expectations on anybody else, because nobody cares.

That kid should have stepped aside when the Omaha elder came through, but he could not appreciate being in the presence of a kind of power clearly superior to his own. His young-Brett-Kavanaugh smirk was disgusting. The whole disrespectful mob was disgusting. The situation was more complicated than it first seemed but in the end you have to believe your own eyes.