Good Morning!
1 Doubling down on the Parkland thugs. I was chided yesterday when I wrote of this posed picture of the puppet Parkland student anti-gun hysterics…
...”They look like potential home invaders: if I see kids with those expressions hanging around my property, I’m getting a gun.” The commenter, who usually is more circumspect, deliberately misconstrued my clear implication that I would buy said gun to protect home and hearth from the threatened home invaders and invaders, should it ever come to that, not these specific children, obnoxious as they are. But this is the current MO of anti-gun, pro-citizen disarming activist: they create distortion and confusion while simultaneously demonizing their opponents. Those five, sullen, vaguely threatening teens above are especially good at it.
The photo itself is visual bullying. It mimics the bad-boy thug-vibes of various hip-hop and punk rock groups who use promotional photos to show they defy authority, hate people with real jobs and would stomp on your face if they had a chance. Photos like this, for example…
…of the band Limp Bizkit, and no, I don’t want to anyone looking like them lurking in my neighborhood either. These expressions and postures are menacing and intended to be, as is most of the rhetoric from David Hogg (the one with the “I’m about to kill you” glare in the center of the Time photo) and his fellowship. Notwithstanding the cynical and transparent packaging of the Parkland students, it is way past time for adults and those interested in serious policy debate to pronounce these over-their-heads baby demogogues for what they are now: media created monsters, funded and trained to carry a calculated anti-Second Amendment message in uncivil and dishonest terms that no adult could get away with.
It isn’t surprising that they are embracing their celebrity–most people embrace sudden celebrity, kids most of all—even though they are both being exploited, and exploiting themselves, in their case, the tragic deaths of their classmates. They have been led to believe that they are consequence-proof, like the bespectacled kid who harasses and annoys bigger children is “punch-in-the face” proof, because it’s taboo to hit someone with glasses. The Hogg Bullies can call elected officials corrupt, and murderers, and fools, proclaiming fake statistics and fearmongering at Defcon 5 levels, but if someone responds with the sharp rebukes such irresponsible discourse usually requires, he or she is told, in shock, ‘How dare you! These are grieving children!’
No, they are not. Not any more. They are full-fledged monsters engineered by the Left to distort civic discourse and policy debate regarding gun policy, allowing anti-gun zealots to bypass facts and law to go straight to mainlining fear and emotion into public consciousness.
For the second time in two months, thousands of students across the country walked out of class as part of a National School Walkout to demand action on gun reform. As with the earlier walk-out, the message was no more helpful or specific than “do something,” while expressing the irrational fear that the Hoggites have been allowed/ encouraged/funded to infect students with in pursuit of an anti-Second Amendment agenda.
The ends justify the means, after all.
Oh. What? Is she afraid of lockdown drills? I agree, they do make children unnecessarily anxious. That’s not the Second Amendment’s fault. If Arielle is “in constant fear” of a school shooting, it is the Parkland students’ irresponsible fearmongering (and the enabling of it by the Left and its complicit news media) that is at fault, not national gun policy, not the NRA, and not the second Amendment.
I will tip my metaphorical hat to whoever had the idea of using the Parkland students as messengers of the radical anti-gun message, because to treat their bad arguments and uncivil methods with the rebuttals they deserve would invite the “How dare you!” response. But they are just monsters now, or, if you prefer, entitled bullies, abusing their positions and status, spreading misinformation, hate and fear.
They are accountable.
Ethics Alarms 
I will repeat myself…they have no idea what they are talking about, and don’t want to find out. They are repeating what somebody else told them, because it sounds good. And, they are too young and immature to make a considered judgement on this issue.
I agree.
yes
Considering the amount of the spotlight he is taking, Hogg is well-named.
Personally, I’ve completely tuned out these ignorant sock puppets. It’s likely that these students are a lost cause, just like this idiot…
Talk about a lost cause. This babe wants to be a ‘New-Age’ Hippie so bad she can taste it. My guess, the circle with the “X” in it is supposed to be a Peace Symbol, what used to be called ‘Chicken Footprint’. Or, possibly a Mercedes logo. Either way, she got it wrong.
She’s awfully cute though.
I will give you that, OB, but she could be suffering from DBS.
Cute is only skin deep, it’s inevitable that they’re eventually going speak!
Be very afraid of illogical and politically ignorant cuties like this, they eventually turn into California politicians that look like this…
Fair point.
I was completely shocked when a coworker fifteen years told me about the security and increased rules at the high school we both graduated from. At the time, I was thinking about the tame freedoms we had at that age and the famous Stanford prison experiment. The regulation and regimentation added was a huge shock and it seems to have worsened since them. No wonder a tiny portion graduate and act more like ex-cons, than people with their lives ahead of them. They have been taught to fear, to be angry, and to be bullies.
People of the last few generations didn’t have my teacher who went over FDR’s inauguration speech. “…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Our national consciousness seems to have gotten addicted to fear and more fear and the power it gives the most power-hungry.
We need to choose another emotion to key on, I would like more hope.
Hey! That would make a great theme for a Presidential campaign! And it needs something else…how about “change”?
Some thoughts:
1) I’m happy when my opponents offer forth unpleasant representatives more likely to repulse those who might otherwise join their cause. Bring on Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and the thoroughly unlikable David Hogg (and his Negasonic Teenage Warhead sidekick)!
2) Like probably others here, I grew up in a time when we had (completely ineffective) school drills on how to cope with a nuclear attack. We had neighbors who actually built underground fallout shelters. Recently, I heard a girl in a local anti-gun rally unbelievably compare their “plight” to teens who were sent off to war in WWII and Vietnam. These fools have truly earned their “snowflake” appellation.
3) Not to hijack your topic, Jack (delete this part & I’ll save it for another day, if you wish), but I’d like to hear a lawyer’s take, if possible, on a firearms question that touches on this issue a bit: If states pass laws requiring the registration of particular firearms, should it be legally required that their registration period be open-ended (maybe with a nominal late fee, and guarantee against prosecution) in order to comply with Haynes v. U.S., since anyone otherwise making a “late” registration would have to be admitting they previously violated the law?
I am old enough to remember the 1990’s.
The media focused on gang violence. They kept telling stories about how kids get caught in drive-by shootings, how some gangs use murder as an initiation ritual.
I remember an ad featuring President Bill Clinton with a survivor of inner city gang violence.
I remember Time magazine putting a picture of Yummy Sandifer on the front page.
I remember a columnist for the Long beach Press-Telegram ran a series of columns titled “Javier’s Legacy”, which was about gang violence.
I remember the murder of Stephanie Kuhen.
And yet, somewhere along the way, gang violence ceased to be a problem. None of the politicians nor network pundits mention the problem of gang violence anymore.
I wonder why.
The Parkland bullies remind me of the little children monsters some as young as 12 called the “Red Guards” who were given a little power by Mao and then immediately ran amok.
You mean like when they made their classmates and professors stand up and confess their ‘privilege’ and those who weren’t contrite enough were sent off to labor camps? Nope, no similarity to anything going on in the US right now.
perhaps the grandparents and great-grandparents of these drill fearing children should remind them of the air attack drill, the duck, and cover drills, and the siren drills we endured. Yet we did not emerge paranoic or phobic.
I really disagree about the Limp Bizkit photo. I realize that the nicer people in my neighborhood look like that. That is the look most of the people that go to the church down the street are trying to emulate. You need to realize that the ‘Limp Bizkit’ look is the new ‘macho’ look that many responsible men with jobs aspire to these days. I would much rather have a bunch of them walking down the street or moving into the houses on my block than that group of teenagers. Of course, those teenagers would never be on my street because the not-so-nice people look like gang members, prostitutes, or drug addicts. I mean, if you can’t handle wearing clear backpacks, you can’t handle a 6’3″ woman having a violent argument with your trashcan that comes to blows and eventually involves 3 police officers.