Discussion for article #243324
Ah, the joys of having grown up during a time when the wildly stupid things any of us said or did were ephemeral. Gone and forgotten in short order, as they should have been.
I have no idea how serious Campbell’s threats were, so it’s tough to say whether the reaction of law enforcement is warranted or not. At a minimum, I hope they searched his place for guns. Let’s face it - a loudmouth without an AR-15 is just a loudmouth. A loudmouth with an AR-15 is a serious threat to the community.
I do have some sympathy, however. I gather he was responding to student complaints that the college’s mascot, a Viking, was racist. Oy. That might push me over the edge, too.
Freedom of speech in the U.S. is dead. Millennials and Twitter killed it. There was a time when we did our best to distinguish between a loudmouth to be ignored and a credible threat to be addressed, or even between ill-considered phrasing and actual intent. Now we just panic over everything, absolutely everything.