Catholic and Enjoying It!
Whenever there is a mass shooting, the Gun Cult immediately says that critics of our Gun Regime that enables mass shooting must be silent, “out of respect for the victims”.
Decent people understand respect for victims does not mean “Shut up about trying to prevent the last slaughter.” But the Gun Cult has no interest in the victims of this slaughter or the next. Their first, last and only thought is, “Screw you. Don’t touch my gun.” That, not gun ownership, is the mark of a Gun Cultist. Many gun owners actually want gun law reform too. But the Gun Cult cares only about itself and its precious, precious gun.
Exhibit A: the moment a victim dares to open his mouth and call for reform of our insane gun laws that make this the only country where this regularly happens, that same lying, blood-soaked Gun Cult instantly turns on the victims and accuses them of a host of lies, fraud, conspiracy, and false flag operations.
They did this to the parents of the children at Sandy Hook, for instance. They actually claimed (with the help of the NRA) that the slaughter at Sandy Hook was a hoax. Alex Jones and his legion of mouth-breathers called it a “false flag operation“. The charge, leveled incessantly at the shattered, crucified parents of the children butchered at Sandy Hook was that a) either nobody died at Sandy Hook and the parents were lying or paid actors, or that b) the parents were such liberal gun-grabbing fanatics that they actually handed their children over for a gruesome human sacrifice coordinated by evil black Muslim atheist gun-grabber Obama. The nuts have kept at these parents for years. It is a second cross they must bear because the Gun Cult is without pity for victims who get in their way.
Exhibit B: The victims of Vegas who are charged with being government actors and who received death threats from the heartless, selfish Gun Cult scum while they still lay in the hospital.
And now, here is Exhibit C: the unspooling Right Wing Gun Cult Lie Machine that seeks to insult and defame the kids of Parkland who have spoken out against the slaughter they witnessed and the accomplices and butchers of the GOP and the NRA who fight to put guns in easy reach of Nikolaus Cruz.
The good news is the kids themselves. In a sort of miraculous irruption of grace into a country that is radically unworthy of them, the students of Parkland and many other schools around the country have simply said, “Enough!” and begun to organize protests. The Parkland kids are acting like leaders while our leaders are acting like kids. (Nota bene: The selfish children at the White House remarked that the slaughter was a “reprieve” for their Russia investigation woes, and the Pig-in-Chief immediately tried to make the tragedy All About Him, a spectacle that was crushed into the dust by the kids who endured this slaughter):
More than this the kids of Parkland have been smart and articulate and have chosen to turn their trauma into action:
And so, scarcely a week after enduring the slaughter of their classmates, these kids are having the full might of the Gun Cult Information War turned against them by the utterly disgusting liars who blabbered about “respecting the victims” last week.
It started with the usual BS from Limbaugh about how the kids are being manipulated by liberals. Some imbecile GOP ex-lawmaker then repeated that, claiming that sinister left wing groups were “coaching” the victims. Then the kids themselves pushed back. Then the utterly reliable and infallibly wrong Matt Walsh repeated the same stupid charge, coupled with the equally disgusting use of the unborn as human shields for his gun fetish, the most disgusting tactic of the “prolife” Gun Cult.
But none of this was enough, for the simple reason that the victims themselves were making clear, articulate, and humiliating hash of the “victims are being manipulated” lies with their on-going, passionate, and relentless demand that the Party of Gun Slaughter get off its ass and act. As one wry tweet noted:
The Gun Cult knew it was not getting traction and that old lies weren’t working. One GOP muckity muck actually cracked and said that maybe, just maybe, at long last the bought-and-paid-for GOP should authorize the bleeding obvious CDC study on gun violence they have blocked for 20 years. Trump made some noises intended to sound like he cared that, tepid as they are filled the Gun Cult with panic. The NRA has fallen deathly silent. The mayor of Dallas, TEXAS!!! told the NRA to take their convention elsewhere this year.
These kids have the Gun Cult on the run like nothing in living memory. These kids, who were live-streaming the slaughter and the terror as it happened and forcing the world to watch and boldly standing up to this depraved cult of narcissist have put the Gun Cult and the GOP on the run.
And the fearful, angry resentment from the Gun Cult is clear. You can smell the stink of fear on them. Here, for instance, is the despicable man who used to be Dinesh D’Souza, gloating as the victims of Parkland weep when the Florida GOP looked them in the eye and said, “Screw you! Sorry about your little dead friends. Thoughts and prayers.”:
Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs https://t.co/Vg3mXYvb4c
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 20, 2018
Oddly, CPAC suddenly wants to make it clear it has nothing to do with this moral leper and wife-beating adulterer who, despite all, remains a trusted oracle for the Wrong About Everything Right Wing Noise Machine–because he writes books full of culture war lies and false prophecies that stampede the herd in the Party of Trump and that is all that matters to the Party of Power, Mammon, and Lies.
But the viciousness doesn’t end with D’Souza’s heartless tweet. The strategy yesterday swiftly turned from “manipulated naif” to “vicious conspirator and liar” and the Gun Cult lies are now all focused on poor, brave David Hogg, whom the Gun Cult liars and their lying accomplices (many of them pious Christianists) have suddenly branded a “paid actor” who never even went to Parkland. Snopes has tracked the whole, swiftly unspooling Information War in real time:
On 20 February 2018, as a group of students from the Parkland, Florida mass shooting attack traveled to their state capitol to lobby for tighter gun safety measures, far right conspiracy blogs pushed increasingly hysterical claims that at least one of the survivors of the massacre was a “deep state” pawn.
For example, TheGatewayPundit.com posted a story calling it a “red flag” that David Hogg, a senior who survived the Valentine’s Day attack at the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, volunteered during a CNN interview that his father is a retired agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigations as he criticized the Trump administration. President Donald Trump had accused the bureau of “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign” and thus failing to follow up on warnings concerning the suspect, Nikolas Cruz.
Hogg, who has become a high-profile advocate for tighter gun safety legislation since the attack, said during the interview that: “I think it’s disgusting, personally. My father’s a retired FBI agent and the FBI are some of the hardest working individuals I have ever seen in my life.”
But according to the Gateway Pundit:
Anyone who has been following the news could tell you that many in the FBI have been working against the president from the start, with the most notable case involving collusion between the FBI, Obama Administration, and the Clinton campaign to push the false ‘verification’ of the junk Steele Dossier. It has also been widely reported that the FBI received tips well in advance of the Florida school shooting and decided, for whatever reason, not to act.
The fault for this tragedy lies squarely on the shoulder’s of the FBI, who could have prevented this back in January.
The site also accused Hogg of “not remembering his lines” while posting a video of him making statements and stumbling over his words prior to a pre-taped interview.
The Gateway Pundit is one of several blogs that was named in a federal defamation lawsuit filed in Michigan earlier in February 2018, accusing them of falsely identifying a teen as the driver that killed Heather Heyer during a counter-protest against white nationalists in Charlotesville, Virginia in August 2017.
Another blog published a story calling into question that Hogg would be interviewed by CBS News less than a year after his footage of a friend’s contentious encounter with a lifeguard was covered by the network’s affiliate in Los Angeles — although despite new rumors about the viral video, no guns were involved. Conspiracy theorists and trolls alike heavily implied that a months-old video (despite the facts that he readily identified himself with the same name, that people occasionally travel across the United States, and that his family moved to Florida from Los Angeles) is somehow “proof” that he is a trained “crisis actor,” a baseless rumor that is inevitably pushed after horrific mass shootings:
However, Hogg posted on Twitter last August that he was visiting Los Angeles, and Hogg, who runs his high school’s television station, made a video under his own name documenting the altercation afterward — hardly the actions of a “trained crisis actor” who needs to keep his identity secret:A related rumor appeared later on 20 February 2018, when hoaxers tried to further sow doubt by claiming that Hogg graduated from a Los Angeles-area high school in 2015 — even going so far as to create a Classmates.com profile. However, the page’s source code clearly shows when the profile was created (highlighted):
This claim also appeared alongside an image purporting to show yearbook proof that Hogg graduated from the California school in 2015:
This was quickly debunked by Sarah Chadwick, another survivor of the mass shooting:
She claims it’s not a Douglas yearbook (which I promise it is, I know multiple people in that picture) yet there’s someone in the pic wearing a douglas t-shirt????
The president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., highlighted the Gateway Pundit story about the FBI and another by another far-right outlet, True Pundit, on his own Twitter account. Hogg described his actions as “immature, rude, and inhuman,” saying:
I just think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to peddle conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died and it just makes me sick. It’s immature, rude, and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, an aide for one state lawmaker, Republican Rep. Shawn Harrison, provided this response to a picture of Hogg and fellow student activist Emma Gonzalez:
Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen.
We contacted Harrison’s office seeking follow-up comment or documentation supporting the remark from the aide, identified as Benjamin Kelly. In reply to a request for more information, Kelly reportedly sent the Times an e-mail containing a link to a YouTube video promoting the conspiracy theory against the two teens. The lawmaker told the Times:
If my aide disparaged a student from Parkland who is grieving than I will deal most strongly with my aide … Clearly it was inappropriate for him to send that.
Harrison later said on his own Twitter account:
I was just made aware that my aide made an insensitive and inappropriate allegation about Parkland students today. I have spoken to him and placed him on leave until we determine an appropriate course of action. I do not share his opinion and he did so without my knowledge.
Kelly later confirmed on Twitter that he had been fired:
I’ve been terminated from the State House. I made a mistake whereas I tried to inform a reporter of information relating to his story regarding a school shooting. This was not my responsibility. I meant no disrespect to the students or parents of Parkland. Rep. Shawn Harrison is an honest and respectable man. In no way should he be held responsible for my error in judgement.
He later deleted his account entirely.
Despite the presence of the Douglas High students in attendance, the Florida House voted on 20 February 2018 not to consider a bill calling for a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines for firearms.
Of course, the morons who now believe the shooting a conspiracy or hoax give no thought to all the *other* kids who are speaking out, both because they are too dumb and hypnotized by the Hogg FBI “plot” and because they are liars and don’t want you to realize that there is an entire school full of victims, staff and student alike and their families who are speaking. As I say, the Gun Cult is desperate shrieking the old lies louder in the hope their failing power will still win the day.
So here is where we stand right now:
Throughout his campaign, Trump told the suckers who fell for his con job, “The world is laughing at us.” The horror of yet another gun slaughter at yet another school is no laughing matter, but the tired spectacle of the evil, lying gun cult trying to smear these kids deserves nothing but scornful laughter. The people generating these lies are simply scum. There is no other word for people who would smear the victim of a school shooting for speaking the truth. But the people instantly believing and spreading them are not innocent dupes. They no longer enjoy the luxury of feigning ignorance. They are accomplices, not only in the destruction of a good kid’s reputation, but to the murder of his classmates, as is every person who labors to make sure that our gun regime remains exactly as it is.
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