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“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein
While support and unqualified praise for the youthful leaders and participants of the March For Our Lives protest marches and rallies streamed in from virtually every continent on planet Earth, the naysayers perched from their alt-planet Hate and its satellite moons of Cynical, Irrational, and Assault attacking their efforts.
As expected, the National Rifle Association mocked and demeaned March organizers and other survivors of gun violence. An NRA membership-drive video ran the caption:
“Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.”
A video titled “A March For Their Lies” featured NRA TV host “Colion Noir” (a.k.a. Collins Iyare Idehen Jr.) who asserted:
“From where I’m standing, it looks like a march to burn the Constitution and rewrite the parts that they don’t like in crayon,” referring to the youthful participants.
In another NRA TV clip, Noir scolded the Parkland survivors, saying “no one would know your names” if someone with a gun had stopped the shooting at their school….These kids ought to be marching against their own hypocritical belief structures,” Noir continued. “The only reason we’ve ever heard of them is because the guns didn’t come soon enough.”
Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) shared a meme on Facebook attacking Douglas High School leader, Emma Gonzalez’ Cuban heritage:
“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”
In fact, though, guns are not banned in Cuba. Fidel Castro headed an armed revolution against the government that involved citizens owning guns. Also, as my Jewish heritage does not depend on my knowing Hebrew, Cuban heritage does not depend on speaking Spanish.
Former Pennsylvania Senator, two-time presidential candidate, and CNN pundit Rick Santorum, dismissed the demonstrations and their so-called “phony gun laws” from Hate’s moon, Irrational, advising, instead, that if a violent shooter enters and injures people in the school, students should “do something about maybe taking CPR classes.”
Santorum, who joined Donald Trump’s Catholic Advisory Group to bring more Catholic voters to the campaign in front of the 2016 elections, opposed the leader of his Church’s characterization of the recent worldwide calls for firearms safety in the United States.
On the beginning of Holy Week leading to Easter, Pope Francis encouraged young people to keep speaking out and not allowing older generations to silence their voices or destroy their idealism.
“There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive,” he said.
And to his credit, Pope Francis touched on the importance of youth activism in bringing about social change, which has advanced societies throughout the ages.
Young people, with their idealism, honesty, and integrity still intact, those who are free from the constraints of traditions and entrenchments, of failed past solutions and dominant power structures, maintain the vision and abilities to think out of the proverbial box, to perceive different ways of thinking and being, of proposing and demanding in unity a new world of possibilities.
So let the residents of planet Hate and its loons circulate around their own solar system. I choose to support and follow the courageous, passionate, and inspiring lead of this new generation of truth tellers who have exposed the full shining rays of the Sun.
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