It took a fresh jihadist attack for a lie-spewing identity-politics group to take down its perilously incendiary political ad

Astute observer of the current scene that you, as a LITD reader, are, you know about the Latino Victory ad that ran on Virginia television in this final stretch of that state's gubernatorial race. The four carefully selected-by-demographic children - Latino, Asian, Muslim and black (four cartoonishly broad categories intended only to be juxtaposed against an equally cartoonishly broad category of "white") - trying to outrun a pickup truck:

The truck is festooned with a giant Confederate Flag, a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate, and a prominent “Gillespie for Governor” bumper sticker. It runs the children into a dead end, its lights washing out their terrified faces. The children wake up in their beds. We then flash to video of the Charlottesville white-supremacist march, as a voice asks, “Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American dream?”

One need not be a genius to see that the intent was to put Gillespie in a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife position, a corner of accusation from which he could not escape.

But in the aftermath of yesterday's bike-path jihadist attack in New York, the group has seen fit to stop running it.


Gotcha-level gloating is not what's called for here. Yes, there's rich irony aplenty in the fact that leftist trot out the not-all-Muslims-are-jihadists card whenever the discussion turns to the Western world's peril. Yes, there are signs of slippage in minority support for the Democratic candidate Ralph Northam.

But I think the more appropriate response is a sigh of relief that decency won a victory in this culture-war battle.

How much more gratuitous provocation can our brittle society stand?

Let's send up a prayer that somehow those who would ratchet up the tension ever-further can be appealed to.

No one is expecting a completely healthy society five minutes from now. But stopping the toxicity would be a start in the direction of safety and order, not to mention goodwill and the fostering of civic bonds.