How Low Can You Go?

It says a great deal when something as sick as the school shooting in Parkland where 17 people died can be followed by something so sick on its own level -- and that's the concerted effort by so many on the Far Right to actually demean the teenagers who survived the massacre and are speaking out on it.  It's shameful, pathetic and other Republicans should admonish them...but few have, more to their disgrace.  It's one thing to disagree with the opinions of the teenagers, that's fine.  But to trash them as people, to disparage school children who saw 17 of the friends murdered and for the grace of heaven they survived is another step into hell by a the base of a party who claim to be the soul of "family values" and "evangelism" yet have supported an accused child molester and a leader accused by 19 women of sexual abuse.

How bad was it?  I saw a comment by Republican messaging consultant Frank Luntz, who has made a career trying to obscure reality, trying to convince people, for instance, that a GOP measure to cut back on EPA requirements should be called the "Clean Air Act," and even he was sickened by it, asking if this was the low we've not come to, attacking the child victims of a massacre.

The thing is though, as notable as it was to see such a comment by someone like Frank Luntz, it was also empty and disingenuous.  Because this isn't what we've now come to.  This has been the standard of his own Republican Party which has been demeaning the family victims of school massacres ever since Sandy Hook.

In fact, it's still going on with those families.  Worse, the conservative Far Right attacks on the families of Sandy Hook are at levels almost unbelievable in an adult, mature, sane society.

This article was sent to me three months ago from someone in Florida (of all places...) who lives nearby the events described in the piece.  I was trying to figure out the best time to link to it.  This is that time.  It tells of a Jewish family who had a child killed at Sandy Hook and was getting so much hate and physical threats directed at them by the Far Right that they finally had to move and ended up in Boca Raton, in hopes of being anonymous -- yet even there, what they've had to put up was so horrific that they've now had to move yet again.

It's a gripping, galvanizing story.  You can read it here.

"Is this what we've come to?"  Spare me the shock and dismay.  The Far Right went there almost six years ago and have been squatting there ever since.