As much as I questioned his persona in the previous blog entry, I will confess that after viewing his interview with George Stephanopoulis on Sunday's This Week (ABC-TV) my cage was rattled. Even before Hogg spoke, one sensed on his facial expression the hint of smoldering emotion, a quiet rage patiently waiting for an opportunity to emerge as words from an otherwise thin, sensitive and wistful-appearing young man. And what a speaker! As if presenting himself as the anchor on a TV news show, he wasted precious little time in condemning politicians, big money NRA contributors and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch. How rare to find somebody of this age piercing, not melting hearts with a camera-captured glare and a word.
Now, I think the kid's wrong about almost everything he said, but his composure and soft-spoken approach was superb, shaking my current attitude about some millennials to the core. If and when he tones down some of that inner rage after some healing time, his presence will only be enhanced, and our wish list would hope for activism aware of consequences to our basic rights. Okay, our enemies are many, but counting the NRA and Dana Loesch among them is a misjudgment reserved for the young and the uninformed -- just like the furor over those much-publicized 18 "school shootings," which aren't actually what the media portrays as the total is added up.
Will Hogg and his outspoken schoolmates someday help lead the charge in disinfecting both the Republican and Democrat parties, perhaps as Independents or Libertarians, or by embracing something different altogether? Please, no socialism. Not looking forward to becoming Venezuela orchestrated by millennials.
That millions of dollars are already pouring in to funding pages to "do something" about guns does not give us encouragement about gun freedoms in the future.
Oh, there were moments when I rolled my eyes as Hogg spoke, but after all he is a teenager, and it isn't strictly his fault that he's regurgitating the leftist pap he was probably raised with in school.
For instance, he tends often to begin his sentences with the word, Honestly. . ., and when people do that to excess I sometimes ponder whether they're truly true at all. No big deal here, I guess -- but I did shake my head when young Mr. Hogg referenced our "democracy," instead of classifying the U.S. as a democratic republic. The difference is kinda important, but maybe they'll teach that part before he graduates.
What we're seeing here is a seduction, the seduction of David Hogg by the leftist social media, and unless one considers the press a gender in itself, the conquest and electronic media deflowering of the photogenic Hogg is strictly business with benefits. The TV networks and print journos have discovered and used a fresh-faced youth -- star power, baby -- anxious to help them sell their wares because he shares what they share, and as time goes by I see the consummation of a marriage involving privilege and worldly pleasures between Mr. Hogg and wedding partners composed of the media, Hollywood and maybe academia. Education, entertainment, travel -- we suspect the sky is not the limit for David Hogg and, agree or disagree with him, we are today confounded, seemingly too old to know better.
But getting back to the gun issue, I also harbor a temporary in-the-bag love for ABC-TV because on multiple occasions they aired a dramatic video of a mother and daughter at a convenience store in Oklahoma, perhaps saving their lives when they engaged in a gunfight with an armed robber. If anything shouts love your guns, this surveillance video is the poster child.
Meanwhile, yep, here it comes, proposed firearm restrictions emanating from every frightened place in the country: Ban bump stocks (the Internet easily tells you how to make your own using belts and other easily utilized items), nobody should get a gun until reaching age 21 (why -- are all young folk aged 18, 19 and 20 convicted criminals devoid of Second Amendment rights, declared dangerous en masse via psychic revelations or something?) and people with mental illness must be deprived of owning a firearm. The last is interesting, because just who is mentally ill and to what degree will this blanket effort succeed? Should individuals (love that police word) with epilepsy and other neurological disorders be banned, too? Should migraines rule out potential owners -- and how about ocular migraines, which I experienced myself a few years ago, when a miniature "TV screen" flashing colors appeared in my line of sight and kept me spellbound for about two minutes? Does that make me unqualified to even look at a gun?
I don't mean to keep pushing this little tidbit, but increasingly popular 3-D printers are making and will continue to make firearms as I type this, and they shoot just fine and are untraceable for anybody considering doing the deed, if you know what I mean.
A final word on guns today: NRA, I'm not a member, yet I respect it. The list of corporations pulling out and refusing to offer member benefits anymore is an American disgrace unworthy of a free country, but certainly characteristic of wussie companies that are OH so good at bending with the wind.
School safety will be addressed and necessary changes made, but those hysterically striking out at the Second Amendment, the NRA and President Trump instead of confronting issues rationally are helping neither solutions nor the memory of Florida school students gone forever. In a society gone bonkers in so many ways, even assessing the scope of massive tragedies becomes a dizzying chore for authorities who once thought they had all the answers. No, they did not.
