Shooting and Crying

The focus of a recent conversation on the New York Times’s “The Opinions” podcast with Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker, hosted by Nadja Spiegelman, was whether stealing from large corporations is justified and/or constitutes a meaningful form of protest or political action. Most of the controversy that ensued had to do with the fact that while Tolentino denied the latter (“Any successful direct action in history has to be ostentatious, has to make itself known, it’s ideally collective”), she affirmed the former, and not so sheepishly admitted to stealing from Whole Foods herself. Commentators expressed outrage at her glib affirmation of petty crime. What caught my attention however was something different altogether. It wasn’t a matter of questionable conduct, or a specious form of moral reasoning, per se. What struck me was a peculiar understanding of what it means to be moral at all.