A commitment to tell the truth doesn’t mean one must blurt out just any true thing that comes to mind. But we’re at risk, it seems to me, of unduly valorizing the survivors of the Parkland high school shooting, which does neither them nor our gun debates any favors.
Of course the Parkland survivors have suffered a real loss, and in terrifying circumstances. But of course they’re being aided, advised, even scripted (and possibly funded) by adult gun opponents. Both things can be true at the same time. There is no contradiction.
This isn’t a slam of the kids. It’s just a realistic assessment of what grieving high school students could and could not pull off without help from activist adults who are delighted, not at the deaths, but at the opportunity to thrust into the limelight some kids with the Victim’s Immunity from Criticism.
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Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
(Philip K. Dick)
The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.
(Sir James Fitzjames Stephen)