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.

Students Lobby For Gun Control - Republicans Hatch A Conspiracy

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel visits 15 YO
Florida shooting survivor Anthony Borges on Sunday 

Today marks one week since 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz left 17 students and faculty members dead during a deadly shooting rampage - one of 34 mass shootings in the United States in 2018.

While it's been seven days since Cruz fired more than a 100 rounds into classrooms and hallways in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, today marks a monumental shift in the polarizing debate over gun control in America.

For most Americans who listened to some of the emotionally-wrenching testimony and comments earlier today at the White House in what was described as a listening session, it was hard not be affected by their words and the emotion in their voices.


With Republican lawmakers on the national and state level being eviscerated by mainstream popular opinion during the past week because of their willingness to place their slavish obedience to NRA gun money and archaic interpretations of the 2nd Amendment over public safety and reason, GOP leaders were forced to do something Wednesday they rarely do.

Listen to advocates of gun control as well as some of the victims and relatives of victims of the epic gun violence (there were 15,593 gun deaths in America in 2017) that is ripping this country apart.

If you didn't get a chance to hear the anguish and anger of Andrew Pollack, the only parent of one of the 17 killed in Parkland, Florida to attend the White House event earlier yesterday, take a couple minutes to check out Julie Hirschfeld Davis' New York Times article and watch the 27-second clip of him laying Trump out, or read his comments.

Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of the 17 killed last Wednesday, asked the question that so many different Americans of different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths have wanted to ask some of the Republican politicians who now control all three branches of the federal government:

"How many schools, how many children have to get shot?"

Thousands of students rallied outside the state
capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida

18-year-old Samuel Zeif, a student who survived the shooting last week but lost his best friend, asked Trump how it was that someone can still just basically walk into a store in Florida and purchase an AR-15 after the deaths in Columbine and Sandy Hook.

He's one of many Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS students who have appeared on mainstream national news outlets or social media to express outrage and dismay over notoriously lax gun laws.


Intentionally-watered down Florida gun control laws that gave us "Stand Your Ground"  and allowed a disturbed individual like Nikolas Cruz to purchase an AR-15, large amounts of ammunition and tactical vests without any red flags popping up.

According to a source that spoke with CNN, investigators say that Cruz purchased at least 10 different rifles; but his adopted parents claim there was nothing unusual about his behavior.

Sadly what's not unusual is the reaction of many conservative far-right extremists, who've taken to social media in droves to denounce the MSDHS students as part of some kind of liberal plot to strip away the rights of gun owners.

It's actually remarkable to watch the loony "pizza-gate" faction of the right-wing conspiracy troll movement become enraged by high school students who just survived the 9th worst mass shooting in U.S. history exercising their 1st Amendment right to free speech.

Remember, these are the same folks who fetishize the 2nd Amendment as if it was hewn into rock by a deity that sanctions the slaughter of thousands of Americans each year.

Republican Florida political aide Ben Kelly fired
for forwarding right-wing conspiracy theories 

Don't think that kind of right-wing nutbaggery was limited to anonymous trolls hanging around in the murky corners of Reddit conservative conspiracy porn pages either.

As Tampa Bay Times reporter Alex Leary reported yesterday, Benjamin Kelly, the district secretary for Republican Florida state legislator Shawn Harrison, was fired after he claimed that MSDHS students Emma Gonzales and David Hogg were not students at the school but "actors that travel to various crisis when they happen." 

Both students, survivors of the shooting, have appeared on TV frequently in the past few days calling for stiffer gun control laws.

So trolls started the rumor that they were actors paid by left-wing gun control advocates and immediately started demonizing them - sound like a familiar tactic?

Frankly that's is right down there with Alex Jones' wacky claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged.

If you can stomach it, check out Travis Andrews and Samantha Schmidt's Washington Post article (reprinted in the Chicago Tribune), which offers a sampling of the right-wing sleaze bag all stars who came out of the woodwork to fan the flames of fake conservative conspiracy theories.

Dinesh D'Souza kibittzing with Steve Bannon

Including ex-Fox News serial sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly and the fake-Christian conservative adulterer Dinesh D'Souza.

Whose windbag conservative pseudo-intellectualism has long since been relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party.

Why would a guy with a life-long Ronald Regan fetish take to social media to dance by the fire of a loony 3rd rate conspiracy theory?

Now that there's no Obama for D'Souza to bash, perhaps he was desperate to kick up a fuss and earn some street cred with the Trump-happy alt-right movement that ironically sees him as a dark-skinned foreign threat.

D'Souza had the gall to to use his Twitter account to mock MSDHS high school students who travelled to the Florida state capitol building to spend the day furiously lobbying over 70 different state lawmakers to enact stiffer gun control laws.

In an effort to show who's the adult and who's the child, when the Florida state House voted down a measure to debate a bill that would ban assault weapons, D'Souza gleefully mocked the high school students who had the guts to try and influence the political process. 

Sadly, these shameless conservative attacks on these high school students (who have the nerve not to want to be shot and killed in their own school because of shitty gun control laws) were not to promote a rational policy position or anything, or offer substantive debate on the merits of the 2nd Amendment.

No, it was just to try and paint high school students who witnessed 17 classmates gunned down in cold blood in the halls of their school seven days ago as liars and opportunists.

Ladies and gents, I give you the modern Republican Party; whose tone-deaf actions in Florida over the past couple days probably just recruited a whole new generation of Democrats.