It seems that all one has to do nowadays is make an allegation against a law enforcement officer, and if the accuser is a minority and the officer is white his life is thrown into turmoil. The most recent example occurred in Texas where a Texas State Trooper named Daniel Hubbard arrested a woman named Sherita Dixon-Cole.
Dixon-Cole accused the trooper of a number of sordid acts while she was in his custody and the accusations went viral, promoted by reprehensible racial activists like Shaun King and Dixon-Cole's lawyer, S. Lee Merritt. As a result of the incitements of these people on social media thousands of mindless dunderheads have posted death threats against Hubbard and another Texas trooper with the same last name, as well as his family.
Unfortunately for the reputations of both King and Dixon-Cole trooper Hubbard was wearing a body cam and the whole episode was recorded. Every word of the allegations against him turned out to be a lie.
So, a good man doing his job has his life turned upside down by a vicious woman and thousands of unthinking cretins whose first reaction is not to say "Let's wait and see what the evidence is", but rather "Let's kill the guy and his family."
This is the America that has resulted from fifty years of progressivist identity politics, hatred, and Nietzschean ressentiment. Progressivist racial politics have spawned a lynch mob mentality that cares not a bit for facts but which feeds instead on pure emotion and irrational prejudice.
Nor is this the first time that we've seen this scenario play out. The present episode is reminiscent of the 2006 Duke Lacrosse Team case in which a black stripper accused members of the Duke University lacrosse team of assaulting and raping her at a frat party. The District Attorney, a man named Michael Nifong, took her word for it and almost ruined these young men's lives. It turned out that her story was a complete fabrication but until that was demonstrated, the young men suffered grievously.
In any case, besides the fact that there are lots of people with the rational capacities of five year-olds inhabiting the social media world, what other lesson can be gained from this current episode?
One lesson, perhaps, is that the best policy when hearing about these sorts of reports is to approach them with an attitude of open-minded skepticism until the evidence is dispositive that a crime has actually been committed. A steadfast refusal to jump to conclusions would be difficult for many people to implement in their personal lives, of course, requiring as it does a self-discipline beyond the capacities of many who were eager to shout threats, denunciations, and imprecations upon the troopers and their families, but it would save a lot of people a lot of genuine grief and a lot of others a lot of embarrassment.
It'd also be a salutary lesson, as well as condign justice, if the two Hubbard troopers were to sue Dixon-Cole and Shaun King for everything they own for defamation of character or whatever else their lawyers can come up with. Dixon-Cole richly deserves to pay for her mendacity, and King deserves to pay for stupidly endangering the lives of completely innocent people by promoting Dixon-Cole's lies.