Elliott Williams

Kyle Rittenhouse, and believe it or not, Luigi Mangione, who also felt that the systems in the country were not acting in an appropriate manner.

Therefore, he had to take the law into his own hands.

And all of these folks were heralded by a major

if not majority portion of the public.

What is that about?

And what I say, a thread running through five bullets is two of the most motivating influences in American history have been fear.

And we as humans are united in our fear, but also a fear

fixation or fetish or fantasy or whatever else about vigilantes.

And all of these guys were lifted up on account of sort of doing what people didn't feel like they could do on their own.

I would say chicken and egg.

And that's a wonderful question, Don.

So a couple of things.

One, again, despite this youthful mean that I might have, you know, I was eight, younger than you, but I was eight when it happened.

And, you know, I would urge everybody to think about the formative news stories of your childhood.

They really stick in your brain.

And the Bernie Guts story was probably one of the first big,

big local but not local because even though i lived out you know this is brooklyn my teacher you know um brooklyn nets hoodie i'm wearing now but um even though you know i was born in brooklyn grew up in new jersey and it was local news for us but it was a national story and one of the first really big really polarizing ones i remember and it was formative for me in terms of how to see the news how to see media bias how to see public safety and so on so there's always been a personal connection to it one

and i think too to your point a lot of these issues we're still living with today this whole idea of full stop does the media make you feel scared yes the answer is yes and that's something that people feel today quite viscerally does the country celebrate and lift up vigilantes often white guys uh for doing the things they do and the answer is yes um are there biases

whether implicit or explicit, that we all hold, but particularly that lead people to commit violent acts and particularly often violent acts against people that don't look like them.

And the answer also is yes.