Posted on 02/22/2018 6:26:53 AM PST by Subcutaneous Fishstick Blues
Remember Sandra Fluke?
The Democrats brought her in to undermine religious freedom with a ridiculous story about being unable to afford birth control. They brought her in because she was an earnest, young woman. And a human shield. Republicans should have ignored her. Instead they attacked her. And that made her a celebrity and a victim. Soon she was the young woman who had been called a "slut".
Fluke rode that to a speaking gig at the DNC, where she claimed to represent all women, and several attempts to run for Congress.
Most importantly, the left got to shift the conversation from the religious freedom of nuns to whether the right hates female sexuality. That's exactly the conversation it wanted to have.
It happened because Republicans took the bait. Never take the bait unless you have a plan.
President Trump brought a lot of guests to the State of the Union. Democrats didn't attack them. They ignored them. (Some did in private and on Twitter, but not in ways that would get them noticed in a media environment controlled by them. Yes, it's an unfair double standard, but that's the structural power differential.)
When you attack someone like that, you shoot yourself in the foot. And you kickstart an activist's career.
That's especially true when you're dealing with teens who have little life experience and whose politics will change three of four times in the next decade. No, 16-year-olds shouldn't vote. The only people who think they should are very confident about controlling their votes. But neither should they be in the middle of a rough political game. The left is using them as human shields. The way that the Taliban and other Islamic terrorists hide behind human shields. Don't attack the shields. When you do, the guys behind them win because, unlike Afghanistan, this is a 'Hearts and Minds' war.
Now maybe it's inescapable. The media was always going to write this narrative. But the smart way is to go after the men behind the curtain, not the teens in front of it.
Pull back the curtain on the Everytown scam. Make it clear that it all comes down to Bloomberg. Challenge the hypocrisy of George Clooney and Oprah, who have armed guards, funding protests to disarm ordinary Americans.
Pick the terrain you fight on. Don't let the left pull you into the battles it wants to fight.
I will give these kids some time to digest what has happened to/around them and what caused those events.
Time will tell if they do it rationally or are coaxed by liberal parents or CNN enablers
Yes. That is what I see as the problem for these young people.
They have a vacuum of knowledge about this. All they know is what they have seen, and they don’t have a lifetime of experience to draw on to make sense of it.
And as we know, nature abhors a vacuum.
In a rational world, that vacuum would be filled by rational things. If their parents are rational and thoughtful, they will try to help and the kid can still come out of it.
But there are people out there (and we know who they are) who at a root level, don’t give a whit about the kid’s welfare, but do care a great deal what is inside that vacuum in their brains that has been created by these murders, and they are lined up one behind another to fill that vacuum.
Good parenting can help. But we live in a world where online message boards, texts, twitters, videos, web pages, and everything else under the sun are fighting to get in there too.
I don’t like that the kids are being used, and willfully allow themselves to be used. I see parallels in this in the way an adult would sexually abuse a young person. These young people are emotionally vulnerable, insecure, probably feeling survivor’s guilt, all that layered on top of the normal emotional rocks that any teenager has to navigate (self-image, etc) and an adult is going to come along, make them feel wanted...important...smart...valuable. They are going to cater to that and...yes...groom them. They are going to build them up, put them on a stage, and the kid isn’t being forced to do it...they WANT to do it, they WANT to go along with it. The way an abused kid might go along with a pedophile. They LIKE the attention.
My heart breaks for those young people. It doesn’t mean that in my heart I am not judging them, because I absolutely am, and a bit harshly. But I have to keep reminding myself that this is quite a different thing compared to that despicable Cindy Sheehan and her ilk.
They are just kids. Damn it.
Very good analogy. I think it is spot on.
I said this earlier.
As soon as they start paying taxes, providing for those the love, after producing those and then protecting them their minds will change,FAST
Those kids are seeing the leftist methods and tactics firsthand. Seeing some truths. What they do with it depends on the individual kid’s core. Some will sense the wrongness, some will feel empowerment, some will go quiet here on out.
That the leftists/progressives/cultural Marxists use our children in this way condemns them, to Hell I hope.
Thanks, the more I thought about it...
The problem is that the validity of the whole assertion is fading.
Reference also “Jesus wept.” The shortest bible verse. No polite “manly” tears. Per the Greek, He bawled.
If “conservatives” won’t fill that vacuum, “liberals” will, and it may not be the way that is best for America.
A word I have not heard used is ‘bullying’. It’s been a big subject in education.
A question that should be asked of the ‘ shields’: “Many of you likely know Nikolas Cruz, and from earlier grades. Was he bullied at school?”
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