Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: It's about much more than gun violence

We begin today with Charles Blow of The New York Times utilizing racist text messages sent by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to examine why lynch mobs behave the way they do. (Warning: link contains narratives of extreme violence.)

The Times reported Tuesday that one of the texts that most likely contributed to Carlson’s firing from Fox News was one he sent to a producer, describing a video of a street fight in which “a group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid” and beat him. “Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously,” Carlson continued. “It’s not how white men fight.”

He then confessed: “Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: This isn’t good for me.”

That’s a lot to unpack.

To start, Carlson attempts to racialize the idea of dishonor in combat, exempting white men from it, which is ridiculous. Human beings behave both honorably and dishonorably, regardless of race.

But more important to me was his description of his immediate descent into sympathizing with the savagery, and how that kind of descent is a mental progression that has, in so many instances, fostered or tolerated all types of violence in this country and around the world.

Note: The collection of relics from public executions and lynchings isn’t necessarily racist; no matter whether the relic is real or imagined or fake. I do think that collecting “souvenirs” from public executions and lynchings is rather macabre which is also to say that I find relic collection to be somewhat fascinating.