U.S. Outrage Campaigns Don't Create Change

Tony Hovater, the Ohio man whose profile in The New York Times caused much indignation last weekend, would have been in jail or at least under close police surveillance if he lived in Germany. In the U.S., Hovater is free to keep posting swastika-filled pictures on Facebook -- but the writer and editors who published a piece about him that was bleakly neutral in tone face ferocious anger for "normalizing" the Nazi sympathizer.

A certain part of U.S. society's desire to set rules has been frustrated by the election of Donald Trump as president -- though, in fact, it was frustrated even earlier, by years of Republican majorities in Congress. That frustration is manifesting itself as vocal outrage campaigns on the same social networks that have enabled Trump supporters to organize and white supremacists to find like-minded people in other parts of the country. But rather than bring change, the outrage will end up deepening rifts.