My own suspicion is that this moment of mass hysteria, like other hysterias before it, eventually must collapse under the weight of its own tediousness. But I cannot say with any confidence that I expect that to happen soon. And it will not happen at all until Americans start deciding to take on the difficult responsibilities of citizenship, which starts with acting like a goddamned grownup. Nicholas Sandmann is a 16-year-old kid — but the people who made this empty episode into a national crisis are not. They are grown adults, and answerable for their actions.

It’s time for them to start acting like it.

Abraham Lincoln, who endured harder times than any of you idiots are likely to see, insisted: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” And you’re out there trying to get some obscure nobody fired from her job at a bank because her son was standing 20 feet from a guy who had a look on his face you don’t like? Grow up.