Senator Mike Lee commented on a video that has been going viral around the net that is honestly stunning. Originally posted by Libs of TikTok, the video contains another person who was caught vandalizing a Tesla. These videos are a dime a dozen lately, but what made this one interesting was the kind of person who was caught, and their reaction to being confronted.
The thing is, the person in the video wasn't a young radical with neon hair in a black hoodie. It wasn't a middle-class white woman screaming at the top of her lungs. It was a middle to upper-class white man who seemed honestly scared, and after being informed he's been caught and police are on the way, borderline surprised at his own behavior... or so he seemed.
He tried to weasel his way out of it, downplaying what he did before switching it up to making it clear his beef is with Elon and not the man, as if that was going to make it better. Once the Tesla owner informs him that he was caught on camera and identified by Facebook, including the business he owns, the man seemed to look cornered and scared as he should. He winds up saying "obviously, I did not intend to do this" as a defense, and a part of me actually believes him.
This Tesla vandal says “obviously I did not intend to do this”—that is, carve a swastika into a Tesla
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 31, 2025
How does one do such a thing unintentionally? https://t.co/wXojyryUsc
Lee asks how one does such a thing unintentionally, and while I'm not a psychologist, there are studies that show conscious intention does take a back seat, but it only makes the person look worse, not better. Definitely not any more innocent.
In 2014, a study was done to see if leftists actually allow their emotions to guide their decision-making more than right-leaning people, and sure enough, every test was found to be true. Moreover, it didn't even matter the subject or population. If the person was left-leaning, their reactions were more emotionally driven.
"Across different conflicts, emotions, conflict-related contexts, and even populations, leftists' policy support changed in accordance with emotional reactions more than rightists' policy support," reads the report.
Keep that in the back your mind, because there's more science to be considered here, and this research was conducted back in 1980 by a German psychologist and published in the Schriftenreihe der Polizei-Fuehrungsakademie.
The German researcher found that vandalism in Europe and the United States, where it seems to happen very often, is often the result of psychological feelings of oppression and anger toward something, with vehicles actually being one of the most popular targets:
Vandalism permits powerless individuals to strike out against the institutions which control them and to take charge of the situation themselves, arousing fear in others and raising their own self-esteem. An inhibited person who acts aggressively and is not punished feels relieved and encouraged; psychologically, these pleasant feelings demand increasing reinforcement, escalating aggressive behavior. As several American studies show, automobiles, a symbol of wealth, invite vandalism.
[...]
Destructive behavior by one individual tends to stimulate similar behavior in others, especially when individuals are highly excited and aggressively oriented.
So we have a perfect storm here. Leftists are easily manipulated because emotions are easy to manipulate. As they embrace their anger, empathy, or prejudices far more readily than others, causing them to think in terms of catastrophic outcomes — especially when their side is losing cultural or political battles — they're far more likely to act out before thinking.
With cars being the most common target for vandalism based on emotional responses to various negative stimuli, Elon Musk's Teslas are ripe for acts of aggression.
So, you see people of all stripes, some of them grown, well established adults, fully capable of making better decisions, make very stupid and childish decisions because they allowed themselves to be led by the nose by the media who is scaring these people to death intentionally in order to get them to turn their fear into anger. That anger then translates to acts of violence and vandalism, which has its own affects. As the research shows, these acts result in more acts, ginning up more division and anger.
It's only when confronted directly with consequences does the emotionally driven person seem to truly get the hint that they goofed, just like the man did in the video above. When he says he didn't intend to scratch a swastika into the man's car... he's partly telling the truth. He wasn't thinking at all. He was letting his emotions guide him, and he ended up doing something stupid he could've avoided if he just allowed himself a moment of common sense.
But this doesn't make people like this guy innocent. If anything, it makes him both guilty and weak-minded. It proves he can't be trusted to make adult decisions when he's emotionally compromised on something. It means he's a danger to those around him if he somehow finds himself on the losing side of a political battle with a member of his community.
He is a problem to those around him... which is pretty par for the course for leftists.
