The kids from Parkland,
Florida have embarked upon a campaign to change the laws that currently allow
anyone over the age of eighteen to purchase an assault weapon like the one that
terrorized them and which took the lives of seventeen fellow students and
faculty at their high school.
A few days later those
youngsters asked their representatives in the Florida House to use their
positions of power to stop the easy sale of assault weapons. Of course,
the students discovered that having both truth and justice on their side means
nothing to politicians indebted to the gun lobby.
Some of the students met with
the President in front of a national audience on television.
He nodded and appeared to be
listening compassionately while knowing that his staff had carefully prepared
his responses. In the end, he attacked the FBI; and, after due
consideration, offered a plan that would not upset the NRA: “Arm the Teachers!”
The
right-wing echo chamber
immediately launched the same verbal weapons that they used to demonize
Hillary
Clinton in the 2016 Election. They accused these kids of being paid
actors while they were fresh from escaping the most terrifying
experience we
can imagine: racing away from hundreds of bullets flying at them at
speed of
more than 1000 mph…. tearing flesh and crushing bones wherever they hit a
human body. Meanwhile, we saw pictures of armed deputies hiding behind
their
cars outside the building, knowing that their handguns were no match for
an
assault weapon.
These young survivors had
seen friends and teachers gunned down when they stopped to help others.
They heard the screams of terror and agony… knowing that they might be
next. Some hid and texted family often believing that they were about to
die
With the entire nation aghast
at the horror our American children had just experienced, the political leaders
of our country tried to balance how to say the right things to the outraged
young people seeking a change from the madness while these political hacks were
really concentrating how to save their seats in the next election or how to
save the big donation that they had received from the NRA.
The political leaders’
decision? 1st: support the NRA, next: save their seats in Congress, last: consider
the kids.
In what kind of country could
this have happened? How can we allow them to keep control of our democratic
institutions? We can only recover the
dignity of the American dream at the ballot box! And we can only succeed at the ballot box by
calling out the liars, the haters, and the propagandists!
The elections of 2018 and
2020 are likely to be the last chance to save our country!
Al
No comments:
Post a Comment