Nor did I. I specifically looked and noticed that the OP referenced “the right wing” which I think of as being even more conservative than the average red voter. And they, in general, are trying to discredit the survivors, moreso than whatever passes as “moderate” conservatives these days.
Any bets as to how soon the tiny-fingered vulgarian will parrot Limbaugh and the others in his Twitter feed?
He’s pretty well known on the right, and to those of us on the left who look over that way from time to time. Googling “Gateway Pundit” gets you 1.1 million hits, and Hoft has 91,000 followers on Twitter. So this isn’t exactly the right-wing equivalent of a student group at Reed College.
So besides Marco Rubio, anyone on the right denounced the fever swamps’ claims that the kids are all pawns of The Left? Because that’s the other side of the coin. Who’s finding this intolerable, and who’s content to condone that sort of behavior from their allies? Here you’ve got Fox News and the National Review, as well as a number of other not-insignificant players on the right, playing this card. Who’s trying to stand in the road and say “Stop!” ? If few people on the right are, then the message is, the political right is a safe place to say things like this.
There’s an article in Slate that argues that these fringe theories are getting close to Trump’s media diet, and since he live tweets Fox and Friends, I’d say by the end of the week. Parkland survivor conspiracy theories creep closer to Trump's media diet.
This just in: Donald Trump Jr. is liking tweets that repeat this conspiracy theory. Massacre survivor rips Trump Jr. for boosting conspiracy theory
But he’s just an obscure nobody.
The important thing to keep in mind is that Both Sides Do It.
Never mind that one side does it a lot more avidly, and from within the halls of power. Just keep repeating that Both Sides Do It, keep dragging in irrelevant and obscure Lefties who create and repeat conspiracy theories, and you, too, can dodge all attacks on your viewpoint while looking all even-handed and shit. No, you’re not nutpicking, they’re nutpicking, and the fact the nuts they find are in the halls of power is to be studiously ignored, whereas the fact the nuts you find get a massive signal boost from you picking on them is just a nice side effect.
Equating the influence of Donald Trump, Jr., to an obscure blog or free alternative weekly: It’s the adult thing to do.
Thanks Derleth! This makes my life so much easier, now I don’t have to try to do anything about the world’s problems. “Both sides do it,” it makes me sound kind of world weary and wise.
Taking on the role of adult is an amazing way to move your ideas into the realm of wisdom, where wisdom is any idea nobody feels confident enough to challenge.
The role is jealously guarded, therefore, and in former times most people never got to assume that mantle: It has historically been limited by race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, national origin, and political affiliation, with only a few combinations thereof being acceptable to pass through the stringent filters, which, of course, only made it more important. Yes, the recognized adults got a lot of power, but they were the selected, the chosen, the fully-human; I mean, it wasn’t like any gay dude could sashay in and be taken seriously as a person. Only the most successfully closeted could do that, which is why there can never be an argument about gay marriage: It’s wrong because it’s morally wrong, and it’s morally wrong because the adults say so, and the adults get to decide such things, without having to explain themselves to the lesser beings.
The cracks in this facade begin to appear when you’re twelve or, in broad socio-political terms, after World War One in the avant garde, and spreading further into the mainstream after World War Two. There’s a reason Existentialism has been a defining force in the Twentieth Century: That’s what happens when the adults leave you, when you can no longer shove morality onto some higher agency, and now you get to make your own decisions.
So back up a bit, and invert it: What happens when you don’t have to explain yourself? You never get good at it. You never develop argumentation skills beyond pointing out that you’re an adult and waiting for the other person to back down, suitably chastened. In extremis, you end up making arguments against things like marriage equality which sound like utter alien gibberish to anyone who isn’t either you or someone who has already ceded their moral sense to you. And then you go on a screaming tirade when those… children have the gall to not simply agree that you won.
In the gun debate, there are three kinds of arguments from the anti-gun-control crowd:
[ul]
[li]Constitutional, which rests on the notion that the last judicial word has been said on the subject of the Second Amendment[/li][li]Defensive, which takes the effect as the provocation and ignores mountains of evidence which turns things right way 'round[/li][li]Jingoistic, which is both the least sane and the most honest, in that it most accurately reflects the policy of the Gun Nation while least accurately reflecting the culture of the nation it ostensibly claims[/li][/ul]
The Constitutional argument is easily dismissed. The Supreme Court interpreted it into what it is, and it can interpret it differently at some later time. In the words of the wise man, it follows the illiction returns.
The Defensive argument is the classic “I need an AR-15 for home defense” statement, and ignores a lot of evidence which has been posted so many times I won’t repeat it.
The Jingoistic argument is the one I want to focus on, because it ties back to my point: It is the “If you don’t respect our gun rights, we’ll revolt” argument, usually couched in the notion of defending against tyranny, where they explicitly define a tyrant as anyone who takes guns away. This is the Ultima Ratio Regum of the adults in the gun world, the final argument of those accustomed to being treated as kings and queens to the point they don’t have any real arguments. It’s the Gun Nation, the nation which takes gun ownership as the cornerstone of their identity, thinking it’s the majority in America because it’s been told it is, and because it’s run by adults who cannot imagine not being taken seriously, at the very end, even if that seriousness must flow from the barrel of a gun.
There’s a fourth argument that Rubio just trotted out: the genie is out of the bottle and you can’t do anything about it. I found it jaw dropping that a US Senator is basically arguing that we’re all fucked.
… I suppose the utter abnegation of responsibility could theoretically be called an argument.
I’d put that in the “alien gibberish” realm, myself.
(I wonder how the NRA feels, now that Rubio has said they’re redundant.)
If you don’t feel like you can do anything about it - it might be time for you to step down and let someone else try.
Yeah, if Rubio had been a senator in 1941, “whelp, the Japanese caught us napping, looks like we’d all better learn how to use chopsticks because this war is over.”
Yeah, that was a cute little dog whistle to all the Jew hating Nazis out in Rightwingland. I almost missed it.
People are talking about how people are talking smack about the Parkland survivors, and at least one person is making a list.
Missed my edit window trying to find the response to one of Dinesh “I’m an enormous jackass” D’Souza’s tweets:
Hilarious, right? :dubious:
Speaking of lists, there’s nothing so morbidly ironic than Righties accusing these kids of having their lines fed to them, only to witness this at today’s POTUS “Listening Session”.
There are no epithets vile enough to describe the behavior of these bottom-feeding scum-sucking swine. (See how inadequate those were?)
My favorites are the ones who think the 2nd Amendment starts with an ellipsis. I think that’s group 1.
Spotted on a friend’s Facebook:
Do you really need an AR15 ?
Did Rosa Parks really have to sit at the front of the bus ?
No, you don’t.
Yes, she did.