There’s long been a tendency to demonize and delegitimize those we disagree with. It was pioneered by the left. But today’s Republican right outdoes them.
Typical was a radio commentary by Herb London, the once-weekly “conservative” pundit on our local NPR station (a slot I once filled myself). London has intellectual chops and used to be a responsible, articulate conservative voice.
Look in the mirror, Herb!
Others have accused the students of being paid shills, or even actors. Anything to deny the reality of what they represent and the plain reasonableness of their pleas. They want to outlaw mass killing weapons. Nikolas Cruz could not have killed 17 people with a knife. The Las Vegas shooter could not have killed 58 and injured 851 with a knife. Nor even with ordinary guns.
And like so much else in today’s Republican discourse, their gun-rights absolutism is marked by disingenuousness. Saying anything to cloud the waters. After every mass shooting they splutter about mental health (which they never act upon either).
And of course arming teachers. This crackbrained idea is so obviously problem-fraught that nobody (except perhaps the fool in the White House) takes it seriously. It’s a sham, cooked up to distract us from the real issue: the insanity of allowing anyone to obtain military-style assault weapons whose only raison d’etre is killing a lot of people fast.
Yet this insanity has actually become part of the GOP’s own raison d’etre. Partly it’s because of the NRA, once a responsible gun hobbyist group, now transmogrified into a fire breathing fetishizer of The Gun as holy object.
The students were not proposing to take away anyone’s guns; yet still they were declared the enemy. Here we have high-schoolers, for a change, stepping up to the plate and making their voices heard on a momentous public issue, of great personal concern to them. To quote what has become a ubiquitous chant, “This is what democracy looks like.” Such civic engagement by young people is a wonderful thing. And most Americans agree with them; after all, they’re marching against a policy that is literally insane.
Nevertheless the Trumpian NRA Republican right insults, demonizes, and delegitimizes them. What a disgrace that is. By smearing the students’ honest nobility, Republicans cover themselves with shame. Yet again.