The left loves to use victims to score political points. A recent case in point: the survivors of the Parkland school shooting, who are everywhere on the mainstream news media. They are being re-victimized in a sick and twisted scam.
The news media grants victims expert status and moral authority, making them unassailable. To differ with the victims’ ideas is to be heartless and cruel, denying their suffering. The aim is to stop debate by shaming conservatives into silence.
Trotting out victims as spokesmen is a trick liberals have used for years. James Brady, President Reagan’s press secretary, was ignored and criticized by the left and the news media (same thing) until he was shot and became a spokesman for gun control. Thereafter he was lauded. Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq, became an overnight media sensation when she began to criticize President Bush, a Republican, for the Iraq war.
Victims always speak for the left against Republicans and Conservatives. This is always amplified, if not initiated, by the leftist operatives that are the news media.
The most recent example is the CNN article titled Four Reasons the NRA Should Fear the Parkland Student Survivors. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21us/parkland-shooting-youth-social-change/index.html
The article is absurd, but let’s take a look at one of its points: kids lead and adults follow. Really? Churchill, Washington, Lincoln and Gandhi were grownups. Can you think of one adolescent who led a major political movement? This is a piece of propaganda that would make Goebbels blush. High school students don’t have the education, life experience or wisdom to be leaders. Of course, if the Parkville students were pro-Second Amendment, you’d never hear a word about them.
The same people who accuse conservatives of being anti-science ignore the neuroscience research on the adolescent brain. The teen brain is still developing. The amygdala, which is responsible for immediate emotional reactions, is developed in teens, which explains why teens are impulsive and emotionally over-reactive, but the frontal cortex, which enables us to think and make prudent decisions, is not. The frontal cortex is not fully developed until well into adulthood.
The left must always be victims. Therefore, NRA must be portrayed as a rich, all-powerful bully. In reality, according to OpenSecrets.org, the NRA are pikers compared to public employees’ unions. In the 2016 elections the NRA’s campaign contributions totaled a little over a million dollars, given mostly to Republicans. Meanwhile, the SEIU gave over $39 million and the NEA gave over $29 million to Democrats. Who’s the little guy now?
The Marjory Stoneman students have been victimized three times: first by the shooter, second by the government that failed them at every level, and third by the political left, which is exploiting their grief, pain and suffering.
Michael A. Morrongiello, Ph. D.
