If you are not familiar with the story of Jussie Smollett, allow me to provide a brief summary: A little over a month ago, the gay and black actor from the show “Empire” walked into a police station beaten up and with a noose around his neck, claiming he had been a victim of a hate crime committed by two men who jumped him, beat him up, and called him racist and homophobic names. After an investigation by police, it was revealed that Smollett’s allegations were false and that the whole thing did not actually happen; it was determined that the hate crime was staged by Smollett.
If you’d like to look further into it, here is an article from CNN covering the story in more detail.
When news of this “attack” came out, many people believed it fully. Twitter was mad. Celebrities and politicians alike were in an outrage.
Image via Zero Hedge
Then, after being wrong about everything, a new liberal talking point arose on twitter and on the news, and all of them go something like this: The REAL tragedy is that, now when people hear a story like this, they are going to question it; now they are going to be skeptical.
Image via ScaryMommy
When did it become a bad thing to question a story or be skeptical? Is that not the proper procedure when seeking the truth? It is absolutely stunning how people are so willing to accept something as truth as soon as it fits their narrative, despite the lack of investigation supporting either side. For far too many people, they only need to ask themselves “does this go against my politics or in favor of my politics?”, and then they decide whether or not something is true from there. If you ask me, the REAL tragedy here is that all of these people were gullible enough to believe this story in the first place.
No, we shouldn’t just automatically believe someone because they are supposedly the victim. Total belief without question or investigation is completely intellectually dishonest. Truth is determined via skepticism. The idea is that you should seek to try to disprove a claim in order to find out if it holds true or not. Therefore, we should not shield wild accusations from examination when it is entirely possible that their story could be false.
It’s also important to note that questioning something doesn’t mean disbelieving, it just means that you’re going to hold your horses and wait for the facts to come in. There is nothing wrong with saying “there are elements to this story that we are not sure add up or not. For that reason, we are waiting for the facts to come in. In the meantime, we stand with him, but we cannot fully commit to believing him because all people are, in fact, capable of lying.” But they couldn’t be bothered to do that. They chose to believe it and grasp for something to be outraged at in order to further their narrative.
If you were someone who allowed Jussie Smollett to play you like a cheap fiddle, and your response is “this sucks because now we can’t be as gullible anymore,” then I don’t know what to tell you. Blindly believing people is what got us here in the first place.
When your sole method of determining truth is strict adherence to this “always believe the victim” mentality, and you start believing everyone who cries wolf, you leave yourself wide open for someone to take advantage of you, just like how Jussie did. You would think that people would learn this lesson from the Salem Witch Trials, when the only evidence they had against the accused was the “spectral evidence” of those who claimed to be “victims” of witchcraft.
*Update*
Upon writing this article, it has been announced that Jussie Smollett had all 16 felonies against him suddenly dropped by prosecutors before it could get to court. Smollett maintains his innocence and completely denies his involvement in his staged hate crime, despite much evidence to the contrary. He has come out as saying that he is ready to go home and put this whole thing behind him. I’m sure he is ready to go home, because an individual who was telling the truth would want to stay in court, clear his name, and seek justice for the crimes committed against him. Jussie is relieved to be going home because he knows if the trial went through he would have been found guilty on up to 16 felonies.
The Chicago police department and mayor of Chicago held a press conference today (Tuesday) stating how they are upset that the charges were not taken to court, since the city of Chicago spent tens of thousands of dollars investigating. They do not think that jusice was served. Jussie Smollett basically got off scot free.
Here is a video of the press conference
Here is an article from this morning discussing the dropping of charges