It’s hard to write about the fraternity rape at Cornell. Not because the story is surprising by any stretch of the imagination, but because it isn’t.
Hope has felt like a lost cause lately. Even if the seven directly accused in this case all went to prison, it wouldn’t change frat culture nationwide (where I would imagine stories like this happen far more frequently than anyone wants to think about). This incident is a symptom, not the disease. And this disease in particular is just like, a variant of a larger, deadlier one rotting away at everything in this godforsaken country.
These days I’ve been thinking a lot about Confederate flags. There was this whole segment of the United States that had to be literally beaten into submission and practically burned completely to the ground due to an unflinching support of a great evil. And still today, people fly that flag with pride, hoping for a systemic resurrection.
All I know is that everything is cyclical. We are in a moment of opinion, and at some point, someone is going to say, “Talk is cheap,” and the first domino in what happens next will fall. Violent institutions and the systems that protect them inevitably create a violent response, and every day we’re getting new examples as to why it’s time to burn it down, flags and all.
