3/24/18, Washington, D.C. Demonstrators fill Pennsylvania Avenue in preparation for the March for Our Lives Rally in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2018. (Gabriella Demczuk / TIME)
Things ain’t what they appear. A Washington Post analysis of the crowd at DC’s March for Our Lives shows that the youth were akin to albino gorillas. They were there but swallowed in a sea of adults, mostly middle-aged, college educated women.
While only slightly less skewed to lefty activism, last Saturday’s crowd would still be simpatico with the lefty, anti-Trump hordes of recent memory. Here are some of the numbers: 70% women, 72% BA degree, 10% under age 18, 49 average age of adults. The high number of BA degrees shouldn’t warm your heart since today they have little to do with wisdom.
Not surprisingly, following the political DNA of other lefty gabfests, 79% self-identified as left and 89% voted for Hillary.
At the March for Our Lives, 3/24/2018.
Even more interesting was the dissection of the first-timers, 12% of the swarm. They were even more aroused by “peace” or anti-Trumpism. The former is a staple of lefty activism since Vietnam; the latter is the incitement du jour; both have only a glancing relation to gun control.
The uproar after Parkland might have some relation to its location. Broward County went for Hillary by 35% (Ballotpedia.org). Now we’re in California territory. Remember the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre in Nov. 2017 – 47 casualties, 20 dead? That went down the memory hole.
Both episodes were evil on parade. But our legacy media chew on stories longer if they are birthed in certain places, and are pitches right into the leftist wheelhouse.
While the young-ins are a great face, many of the usual suspects of adults lurk behind the scenes.
A partial gallery of adult contributors to the collection plate for this latest lefty spectacle:
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for March For Our Lives
After all the speechifying, would any of it do any good?
A dose of reality:
RogerG
** “Here’s who actually attended the March for Our Lives. (No, it wasn’t mostly young people.)”, Dana R. Fisher, The Washington Post, 3/28/2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/03/28/heres-who-actually-attended-the-march-for-our-lives-no-it-wasnt-mostly-young-people/?utm_term=.77bc981ec327
Sorry, I can’t leave the gun debate alone. The reason: the people most stridently supporting gun-control are simultaneously most ignorant about them. They say stupid things like, “These guns [AR-15’s] are killing machines” (Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC, last week in a radio interview).
Stephanie Ruhle, MSNBC
Here’s a question: Comparing the 2 gun pictures below – #2 and #3 – which one is more likely to kill you? Answer: It depends on which one is pointing at you. Dahhhh! A bullet out of a “killing machine” (Stephanie’s words) acts the same way as one heading toward a deer.
Hunter with a bolt-action rifle.Sighting-in an AK-47.
Okay, one is a semi-auto AK-47 (pic #3) and the other is a bolt-action hunting rifle (pic #2). But many sport rifles are semi-auto. Depending on the direction of the barrel, either one could be a “killing machine” (Stephanie’s words). See below, pic #4, of a Browning semi-auto and an AR-15.
SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND – FEBRUARY 21: Students from Montgomery Blair High School march down Colesville Road in support of gun reform legislation February 21, 2018 in Silver Spring, Maryland.Red Guards — high school and university students — wave copies of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book during a parade in June 1966 in Beijing’s streets at the beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution.
CNN’s townhall (2/21/2018) on guns was staged in Broward County, the scene of the shooting, and also a Democrat bastion in a state trending Republican. Remember, Al Gore tried to cherry pick friendly counties like Broward County for never-ending recounts for manufacturing votes to reverse his loss of Florida in the 2000 election, only to be stopped by the Supreme Court.
Broward County canvassing board member Judge Robert Rosenberg looks over a questionable ballot, 25 November 2000, at the Broward County Courthouse in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. AFP PHOTO/RHONA WISE / AFP / RHONA WISE (Photo credit should read RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)
On 2/21, CNN conducted a theatrical display of ritual humiliation reminiscent of Mao’s Red Guards during the weighty days of the Cultural Revolution. Go view CNN’s tape of their event and compare it to this 7-minute exhibit of rage, youthful exuberance, and inhumanity from Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Today’s young firebrands, in their bullying antics towards Southern statues and the NRA/guns, has striking similarities to Red Guard attacks on bourgeois decadence and, of course, statues.
Toppling a statue in Durham, NC.
We don’t have to look far into the pages of history for evidence of adolescent cruelty. Movements built around coercive utopias have frequently found a receptive audience among the young. Italy’s Fascist Party youth, the National Socialist Hitler Youth, Stalin’s Young Pioneers, Mao’s Red Guards, Bela Kun’s Lenin’s Boys (Hungarian Soviet Republlic, 1919) show the capacity for enthusiastic intolerance among the young. The spectacle of orchestrated hate depicted on CNN is true to form.
Bela Kun’s Lenin’s Boys, the enforcers of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919.
We must understand these things for what they are. They are not forums for calm deliberation, but devolve into kangaroo courts for compulsory humiliation. Let’s stop the pretense of calling it a “townhall”.
David Hogg has thrust himself into the difficult gun control debate. There’s a reason for the age distinction of minority/majority in law. There’s a reason for the separate existence of juvenile courts. There’s a reason for the determination of minors to be not fully capable in law of “consent”. It’s the same reason they cannot be a representative, senator, or president. Mental immaturity, raging hormones, and victim status aren’t qualifications for the seat of Solomon.
Hogg has been treated with “kid” gloves (pun intended) as he has thrust himself onto the public stage. His opinions have the depth of reasoning of a kid’s Christmas wish list. His demands should be confronted and dispatched, not indulged. There’s too much at stake for millions of others to let rantings go unanswered.
David, you wanted a debate; now you should get it.
Nikolas Cruz and Douglas Stoneman High School on the day opf the shooting spree, 2/14/2018.Missoula, Mt., student protest against guns, 2/21/2018.
The children’s marches in the wake of Douglas Stoneman High School shooting elicit gut-wrenching sympathy for them. Let the aggrieved have their mourning. But the traumatized may not be a proper catalyst for good public policy. It’s a reason for the elevation of the issue, not the dictate for a particular approach … if any.
Parents wait for news after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Joel Auerbach
I’m loathe to raise the matter as many are in the grips of great sadness. Nonetheless, many are exploiting the event to pursue their own pet causes. They must be confronted before trauma is allowed to escalate into bad policy.
Protest at the Florida State Capitol building on February 21.
Reasonable analysis of mass school shootings goes way beyond guns. We have created a breeding ground for alienated and disconnected young males. Girls infrequently appear on the lists of mass killers and suicide bombers. What’s happening to our young men?
Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, and Adam Lanza (l to r).
A toxic culture permeates: fatherless homes, the decline in traditional spirituality, a biased and incomplete education, the pervasive emotional detachment of a digital world, absentee parents, a girls-girls-girls contemporary obsession to the exclusion of boys, an emphasis on extreme behavior in pop culture, etc., etc. I could go on, but it is a culture of our own making.
Next, we have been softened to accepting state aggrandizement. This happenstance is partly a product of urban lifestyles, of a large part of the population acclimated to a coddling government. It goes further, though. Our schools propagate the benign state. As a result, our discussion is limited to the different ways to expand the powers of the state.
Progressivism’s view of government is approvingly taught in our classrooms (an advanced placement U.S. History teacher at Appomattox High School).
Lost in the debate is the reality of government’s potential for great malevolence and huge waste. “Civil servants” can be what Churchill was alleged to say of them: they can be neither civil nor servants. Whether a person is employed by the state or elsewhere, deep down we are the same, with all our flaws.
More waiting periods, gun bans, gun registrations, and liability regs will not repeal human nature, will not reorient the disoriented, or do anything to create an informed citizenry in dealing with traumatic situations. Until we get a handle on our toxic culture, all the state embellishments will be worse than wishful thinking.
What to do? First, up-armor the schools to survive in a toxic culture. Next, get parents back into the home and into the kids’ lives. Next, more church-going will help. Next, the relationship between an armed citizenry and a free state must be taught to counter progressivism’s state-love. And more could be done, before we ever get to the assault on “assault weapons” as a realistic option.
Nikolas Cruz being subdued about an hour after the shooting spree.Students gather at a memorial in Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Fla., in honor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victims. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times).
A school shooting reflexively leads to calls for gun control, and currently for Trump to be a “Nixon-to-China” emissary to the NRA to make gun ownership more difficult. Lost in the noise is whether any of this will do any good, and any suggestion that there be a Pelosi-to-the-Gun-Control-Lobby or Schumer-to-the-Gun-Control-Lobby. It’s only Trump-to-the-NRA.
This boilerplate, one-sided prescription ran at the top in “Axios AM” for 2/16 by MIke Allen: “1 big thing: Why Trump drags his feet on guns”. According to Allen, a Trump delegation need only go to the NRA. I’m waiting for Bernie, Nancy, Chuck, and the rest of the Democratic Party apparatchiks to be envoys to the Brady Campaign. Allen’s blinders don’t seem to allow a place for moderation of gun control zealots in his field of vision.
Probably Allen’s blinders has much to do with the sociopolitical nest that he inhabits. Speaking of sociopolitical nests, we’ve got a national one that goes further to explain the gun violence than anything off the lips of Nancy Pelosi. The straws of the nest include: (1) many no-dad-in-the-home families; (2) insular lives in an obsessively digitized world; (3) a craven fixation on girls, girls, girls that leaves little room for boys – except for Ritalin; (4) the attempt to embed morals through secular means only; (5) the segregation of faith into the home and sanctuary; (6) absentee parents in pursuit of material comforts, etc., etc., etc.
The Dems’ only answer is some form of chant about gun control. If guns were confiscated or regulated and priced out of society, would we be any safer? In other words, would making the whole country into one big soft target be preferable? I doubt it. The preferred method of mayhem would shift to cars, machetes, pressure cookers, box cutter/commercial jets ….
Here’s a suggestion: Let’s turn our schools from soft to hard targets. It’s what we might have to do in a culture of our own making.
A chant applied to the Las Vegas massacre, almost anything bad involving guns, almost anything bad involving kids, and almost anything that’ll agitate the news cycle for more than a day.
The mass shooting in Las Vegas around 10 pm, Sunday, 10/1/2017.
Lately, we’ve developed a nervous tic nearly every time an incident of mayhem invades our tranquility. It won’t be long before a grandstanding politico trots out in front of a mike and cameras to announce, “We have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” The fact is, it will. So what is up with the nonsense declaration? It’s the intro to the politicization of tragedy.
It begins with the unquestioning belief in the magical healing powers of legislation. Someone demands that we “do something”, and “do something” means “write a law”. Encapsulate the cure in a 20,000-word statute. What’s up with that?
Has anyone ever taken a look at the “geniuses” who’ll craft the cure? Sorry, high-wattage thinkers don’t heavily populate the upper rungs of those who play the game of politics (i.e. acquiring power, or getting elected), especially on the lefty side of the political spectrum. They may know the art of gaining power, but once in power we quickly learn that they really don’t know or understand much. They’re fumbling, and sometimes dangerous, empty suits.
Nancy Pelosi, (D) San Francisco, Democrat majority leader.
They normally trot out their ready-made, off-the-shelf nostrums. They don’t even have to be relevant to the issue at hand. Just plug ’em in anyway. In a recent CNN townhall after the Las Vegas shooting, Nancy Pelosi (D, San Francisco) quickly pivoted to her current favorite: background checks. The question directed to her was about actions to prevent the Las Vegas shooting. Her answer was nonsense. Do we have background checks? Yes. Would of any of their proposed changes to them make any difference? No.
Simply put, she didn’t answer the question. Besides, her response wasn’t pertinent. The killer, Stephen Paddock, passed background checks as he went about building his arsenal. It’s not that he didn’t go through any. The guy simply flew way under everyone’s radar, including his family’s.
On those “background checks”, all relevant records to a gun purchase are digitized with instant access for any government agent sitting time zones away from the site of the purchase. It doesn’t take long to do a check. States don’t vary that much in doing the look-see, only in the amount of arbitrary inconvenience for the buyer with their waiting periods. Nothing much is accomplished with waiting periods; much is accomplished in irritation.
Still, even with the Democrats’ background enhancements, Paddock would fly under those too.
And with Pelosi and her gang’s proposals, she’d effectively put “dead” to due process in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments for gun buyers. The Constitution is quite inconvenient for those in a hurry to win the political brass ring.
So, what’s she up to? She’s up to politics, gaining the majority in Congress, and impatient in imposing blue America’s values on the rest of the country.
I could bore you to tears with examples of politicos and their love affair with silliness. Here’s congresswomen Carolyn McCarthy, (D) New York, back in 2013 unable to describe a gun item (barrel shroud) mentioned in a bill that she supported.
You think that she’s the only one? Here’s 2 New York state politicos intent on their own bans.
Incendiary bullets are “heat-seeking”?
The confusion among the left about semi-automatic and automatic guns is rampant. The mixup extends to the progressive punditry. CNN’s Don Lemmon steps into it.
The ignorance is pervasive. The bulk of these people don’t own guns, haven’t really lived among them, and have SNL skits running around in their heads about rednecks and working stiffs. Their’s is the world of gentrified neighborhoods, bistros, smartphone-saturation, and the college bubble. Yet, they want to legislate for the rest of us. When they get their hands on the levers of power, the result is absurdity.
From where do we get get this tic to legislate our way to nirvana? It’s built into the progressive worldview. Progressives are intoxicated with the idea of using state power to manufacture a new world, and new human beings to go in it. That means legislation, laws, rules, decrees, and other such commands. Out goes anything not familiar to them in their cloistered existence.
Maybe something can be done about “bump stocks”, but don’t expect it to change the dynamic of fevered imaginations intent on killing large numbers of people. If the desire is there, a means will be found. In other words, it will happen again.
Evil resides in the souls of some men and women … but, first, you have to recognize the existence of evil. Now that’s something to scoff for your average run-of-the-mill urban sophisticate.
