Then the crazies began constructing conspiracy theories for real. They aren't really students, they're "crisis actors" that go wherever something like this happens and pretend to be student survivors. Someone even put together a video that went viral, purporting to show David Hogg -- the astute, articulate student journalist and Parkland massacre survivor -- as just an actor who's made previous videos.
Come on. David is a budding journalist. He makes videos of news events. He's also an 18 year old senior at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. He was hiding along with classmates in a darkened classroom while the shooting was going on; and he began recording what it was like on his phone.
No, you crazy guys. You're just gonna have to accept it as fact that these are smart, sophisticated, well-educated kids you're messing with. They will expose you as the sniveling beggars at the NRA door that you really are (take note, Marco. You failed miserably in your town hall with these kids.)
Ryan Cooper, writing for "The Week," calls these attacks on the kids "a dizzying demonstration of the moral abomination the conservative propaganda machine has become." He was referring to the far-right "Gateway Pundit," Lucian Wintrich, who cooked up the idea that, because David Hogg's father is a retired FBI agent, he must have coached his son on "anti-Trump lines" because this kid speaks far too smoothly and articulately to have come up with it by himself.
Further, these kids are aware enough of the political climate that they know when to drop the protest-rally mode and address politicians with respectful confrontation. This was superbly evident in the ones who spoke in the meeting with President Trump.
Cooper explains further why these conspiracy theories link the FBI and these Parkland kids:
"Republican propagandists don't like the FBI now due to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation turning up alleged jaw-dropping corruption and crimes among President Trump's inner circle, and a Russian campaign to influence the election that, at a minimum, the Trump campaign embraced with open arms.
"Movement conservatives dealt with this the same way they deal with everything: by dreaming up an unhinged conspiracy theory. Suddenly, conservatives from Sean Hannity on down began braying that the FBI is part of a Deep State conspiracy to undermine the president.
[Cooper digresses to raise the irony of the FBI -- "composed overwhelmingly of middle-aged Republican men who furiously despised Hillary Clinton, and whose major significant electoral action was then-director James Comey giving Trump a huge leg up a week before election day" — as now their enemy in its supposed political vendetta against Trump.]
"Now comes yet another gun massacre at a high school, only this time it turned out some of the people who survived were smart theater kids, who could speak eloquently in front of a camera . . . . Naturally enough, they advocated for gun control, stoking instant conservative fury. . . .
"But slavish hero-worship of Trump and furious pummeling of anyone who criticizes him are now the basic operating principles of conservative politics. So like some truth-resistant outbreak of flesh-eating mold, conservatives started attacking the kids by invoking their previous conspiracy theory about the FBI. . . .
"That's the modern conservative movement for you. Every political faction has its blind spots, its hypocrisies, and its inconvenient facts . . . But the Republican Party is far and away the most intellectually diseased of any major party in the industrialized world. Any political problem they face is immediately deluged with a frenzy of unhinged nutcase brain slop. Climate change? Hoax. Inflation staying stubbornly low? Hoax. Polls looking bad? Unskew! President breathtakingly corrupt? FBI hoax. . . .
"Indeed, the conservative fever swamps now routinely belch up stuff literally out of nothing, as seen with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex dungeon out of a pizza restaurant.
". . . Only one thing is for sure: You'd be a fool to think there are any depths to which the conservative movement will not sink."
* * * * *
Remember the old adage: "When your opponent is in the process of shooting himself in the foot, don't get in the way."
I'd say just ignore these fools and madmen. Let these kids' voices be heard. Just clear their way to platforms all over this country. We are seeing a movement building. Combine it with the energy of the Women's Movement -- and we've got dynamite. The November mid-term is barely seven months hence.
Ralph
PS: And watch out for the Russians trying to mess with the process.
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