Idiot unties Betsy DeVos’s boat, sets it adrift in Lake Erie

I was going to say “leftist loon,” but I’ll be a better man than Paul Krugman and wait until we find out if politics really was a factor. I have my theory and I imagine you do as well, but hey. Maybe it’s just someone who likes to untie other people’s boats. This happened two days after someone took a pick-axe to Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, much to the delight of the left on social media, and once people hear about this I imagine you’ll witness the same cheerleading. And if you view it from the leftist mindset, it’s ready-made for Twitter wins, even if it also happens to be a pretty obnoxious thing to do:

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A 163-foot yacht owned by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was vandalized while moored off of Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio over the weekend, according to a police report. Huron Police Chief Robert Lippert said Thursday the incident is under investigation and can’t provide any additional details at this time. A police report said the Seaquest captain called police early Sunday morning to report the boat had been untied and set adrift. The boat hit a dock, causing large scratches and scrapes that could cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to repair. Officers were looking for surveillance video to find the person who untied the boat. Worth a reported $40 million, the Seaquest is one of 10 boats owned by the DeVos family.

Now there are two ways you can look at this. The first is the decent-human-being way: That’s someone else’s property you’re messing with. It doesn’t belong to you. You did $10,000 worth of damage someone else is going to have to pay for, and you risked the destruction of a private piece of property worth millions. You also took policy disagreements outside the political realm and chose to attack the personal property of the person with whom you disagree. You also caused law enforcement resources to be used up chasing down the boat you set adrift, when those law enforcement officials could have been using their time and money on other things.

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You’re a jerk. But that’s how decent people look at it. Let’s consider how political people will look at it: No one is going to have sympathy for someone who owns a yacht. The DeVoses are super rich so who cares? Boo hoo, something happened to your yacht. There are people who can’t eat. Woe is you. The optics are terrible for DeVos and her sympathizers. And she’s an awful person (you think) so anything that happens to her is well deserved. If you look at life in political narratives, this wasn’t such a bad thing to do. You’ll get high fives on Twitter while highlighting to the rest of the public how Betsy DeVos is not like everyone else and can’t relate to our day-to-day problems. This is why you shouldn’t look at life in political narratives. It turns you into a bastard. You don’t have to like or agree with another person to respect his or her property, or to choose not to waste the time of law enforcement. If you want to make the case that she’s doing something wrong as Secretary of Education, make your case. There is no shortage of ways you can do so. But what this jerk tried to do is damage something that belongs to her because he figured, probably correctly, that he would get more applause than condemnation for it in the present political environment. Serious question: I know some liberals read this site. Are any of you willing to say that this is not OK? I’m not even talking about whether it’s helpful to your cause. I don’t care about that. Are you willing to simply acknowledge that this flat-out isn’t right?

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