TTF70.3 wrote:
big kahuna wrote:
TTF70.3 wrote:
I like the comment immediately below:
Or ... hear me out here, he's participating in what's supposed to make this country great by bringing to light what he thinks should be changed or altered so things like this doesn't happen again?
Using, oh shit, freedom of speech
That definitely makes him a commie.The problem is he's acting like a young fascist in trying to suppress the views of those who don't agree with him. He and the other teenagers -- with their overblown rhetoric about guns, about politicians supposedly being "bought off" by the NRA, with they and any other gun rights advocate having "blood on their hands" for being so -- are making the public debate about guns even more poisonous and less civil than before (and it was already pretty bad). Because they're teenagers. Meaning they're still kids. And kids are precocious that way.
Students at that Parkland high school experienced a trauma, no doubt about it. No one should deny them their grief or blame them for being impassioned. We should also make allowance for the fact that Hogg and the others speaking out for gun reforms are but teenagers, and teens universally believe that they know better than their elders about every single subject known to humankind. I can live with that, as long as the adults in the room understand that what we're hearing from them is teenage-level discourse, often devoid of facts or logic.
Hogg's and the others' passion also doesn't excuse sometimes-scurrilous smearing of the other side in the gun debate. All it does is make the millions of law-abiding gun owners out there dig in their heels even more, and then they start fighting back.
You don't find ironic that you accuse him of trying to "suppress the views of those who don't agree with him", yet in multiple rants in multiple threads you accuse him of being a fascist, a commie (can you be a fascist and a commie at the same time?), devoid of facts and logic, gun grabbing, dark money, barely able to take care of themselves, Kiddie Krusade, etc.
Another irony is that you make the comment "the 2nd Amendment, which also helps to guarantee the 1st Amendment they're using so vociferously" yet in a number of posts, including the one above you make thinly veiled threats to "fight" back and suppress your opponents free speech.
1. I've found, since my return from self-imposed exile, that folks on the left here in the LR have the habit of labeling any opposing speech they personally don't like as a "rant." That's nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to get us to sit down and shut up while we're being lectured by those here who supposedly know what's best for everyone. (Hint: they don't.)
2. You confuse criticism -- which the leader of the Young Red Guards is deserving of in many cases, especially after he engages in yet another attempt to silence those with whom he disagrees -- with censorship. Has anyone told Wannabe Che that he isn't free to speak? I think not. Has anyone also told him that his speech is protected from criticism? I hope not, because it's certainly not.
3. The trick that gets pulled whenever one of these Parkland kids says something obnoxious or scurrilous against supporters of gun rights and the 2nd Amendment more generally is obvious:
a. First, we're admonished that we need to listen to these teens because they've been gifted with wisdom and insight from having been a shooting survivor (newsflash; survivorship doesn't typically convey such things, and also: these kids definitely DON'T represent the views of all the Parkland survivors).
b. Then, when they receive criticism for having said something obnoxious against 2A supporters (such as young Hogg's declaration that all NRA supporters -- and you can count me among that esteemed group now -- "have blood on their hands") and adults in general, we're hit with cries of "Hey! Can't you see they're just kids? Give 'em a break!"
Young master Hogg can't have it both ways. Either be prepared for the give-and-take that's a part of entering the public square or sit down and let the adults work these things out through reasoned public debate. Because all Hogg and the rest of the Kiddie Korps are doing is, as I've said before, poisoning the debate and making it even more difficult to have a civil discourse with pro-gun-control folks.
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."