Are Republicans Indoctrinating New Democrats?

A civilian after a Saudi airstrike in Yemen [Reuters] 

Journalist Nicolas Niarchos' gripping New Yorker Radio Hour segment on WNYC, titled "The American Bombs Falling on Yemen", sheds light on a dark corner of American and British foreign policy.

The role of the U.S. and U.K. governments in the systematic bombing campaign against Yemen being carried out by Saudi Arabia.

The ongoing conflict has claimed an estimated 12,907 civilian lives.

But Niarchos' New Yorker Radio Hour piece focused on the death a highly-regarded Yemeni politician named Abdulqader Hilal Al-Dabab during a Saudi airstrike on a funeral in Sana'a on October 8, 2016 that killed 140 civilians and injured over 500 people.

The Saudi government blamed the airstrike on poor intelligence - one can only wonder what the reasoning is for the disturbing number of innocent people killed by airstrikes at weddings in Yemen.

Aside from the shocking civilian death toll, as an American, one of the most troubling aspects of "the forgotten war" is that most of the bombs, missiles, rockets and aircraft being used by the Saudis in Yemen are made by American, British and French defense contractors.

U.S. military aircraft also conduct airborne refueling operations for Saudi military aircraft and assist with targeting in Yemen for the 100-plus airstrikes per-day that currently take place - airstrikes that have destroyed homes, hospitals, markets, roads, schools, airports and port facilities.

Niarcho made the troubling observation that one of the long-term costs of America's role in what some experts are calling the world's worst humanitarian crisis, is that untold numbers of young Yemenis angered at U.S. support of the Saudi's, are being indoctrinated by radical Islamic terrorist groups eager to use the war as a recruiting tool.

Saturday's March For Our Lives protest in Washington

Given the borderless, asymmetrical nature of terrorist attacks by splinter groups associated with or funded by ISIS, the idea that the U.S. military and American defense contractors' engagement in a destructive proxy war in the poorest nation in the mideast is having the unintended effect of bolstering the ranks of ISIS (who may in turn attack innocent western civilians) is a truly frightening irony to ponder.

I was thinking about that on Saturday as Americans took to the streets in support of stricter gun control laws.

Members of Congress may be on their spring break, but the hundreds of thousands who turned out in cities and towns across America and the world for the March For Our Lives protests over the weekend left little doubt that Republicans have their homework cut out for them.

Given the numbers of people who turned out over the weekend, it's pretty clear that the Republican Party's worn rhetoric about protecting American's 2nd Amendment rights is not going cut it when it comes to the upcoming mid-term elections.

Saturday's protests made it clear that people are fed up with the Republican-majority Congress refusing to pass gun control legislation despite the thousands of Americans killed by gun violence over the past eight years that the GOP has controlled the House.

The recent spending bill passed by Congress (once again passed at the last minute with little in the way of public input or feedback) did contain goodies for both conservatives and liberals, and it rebuked the Trump administration's efforts to gut federal agencies like the State Department and EPA by underfunding them.

But there was little meat on the bone in terms of the kinds of meaningful gun control legislation that a majority of Americans now support.

Including reinstating a ban on selling semi-automatic rifles, banning large capacity ammunition clips and bolstering federal background checks for firearm purchases.

You've seen clips of some of the emotional and impassioned speeches made by young Americans mobilized in support of gun control to stop the senseless mass killings that are making America less safe.

Republicans are not going to hold onto a congressional majority by placating the NRA and the tiny fraction of the American populace who view any type of reasonable gun control law as some kind of blasphemy against the 2nd Amendment.

Mainstream Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike support the 2nd Amendment.

But they want students to be safe in schools and colleges and people to be safe in public places like churches, movie theaters and clubs.

Bottom line: a majority of the American people, including licensed gun owners like myself, people of different ethnicities and religions, Republicans and Democrats, old and young - all support stricter gun controls.

A WWII U.S. Army vet who fought under General
George Patton at the Battle of the Bulge

To me it's like the U.S. backing the Saudis' war against Yemen having the effect of indoctrinating people into a radical Islamic, anti-American mindset.

By dragging their feet on gun control and refusing to respond to calls for reasonable legislation that will help stem the flow of civilian deaths by firearms in this country, Republicans are inadvertently indoctrinating a whole generation of young people into the Democratic Party.

That's not good for the long-term prospects of a political party whose average voters are older than average Democratic voters.

A party who aren't attracting as many new members either.

Republican members of Congress sitting at home watching Trump implode and quietly hoping the March For Our Lives protestors are going to slowly fade out would do well to think about which party those young activists are going to register for when they turn 18.

Aside from the odd reflexively-right-wing Tomi Lahren wanna-be, Saturday's protests gave an awful lot of soon-to-be voters a master class in influencing the legislative agenda of the congress that represents them.

And they're going to be voting the issues that directly impact their lives.

Many of them have already been indoctrinated into the Democratic Party, not necessarily because of what Democrats did, but for what they stand for.

And for what Republicans ignored.