Teens Are Keeping Up Gun Violence Protests. The GOP Can’t Or Won’t Do Arithmetic!

The GOP should take a look at the picture, and of a clip in an article Ursula posted earlier in which students are chanting what just might become an iconic three phrases that will someday haunt Republicans.  (If there are any left.  Their Party might go the way of the Whigs)  Powerful stuff.  I’m sure TN legislators shook their heads at the first day walkout by Nashville students.  And experienced a mixture of bemusement and irritation that hundred of them marched to the Capitol.  But that (or so they thought) would be the end of it.

Except students in Nashville and countless other places around the country haven’t stopped walking out of school and taking part in protests.

Things really got going with the Thursday evening planned vote to expel three Democrats who didn’t actually break rules, other than offend the snowflakey fee-fees of butt-hurt Republicans for having the aduacity to join in with the students (and some parents too) making plenty of noise outside the chamber earlier in the week.  (The rule I guess was “Thou shalt not mess with our NRA/gun lobby money – and screw up our mastubatory fantasies that involve guns”) And while the GOPers hated that, they really got their a$$es chapped at the noise during the “trial” (KKKangaroo KKKourt as it turned out) when in a stunning yet what shouldn’t have been all that surprising turn of events TN House GOPers (barely) let the WHITE woman keep her seat (for the time being) and expelled the two black men.  Of course, they insist race had nothing at all to do with it and are offended at the mere suggestion!

But again they figured that would be the end of it.  They began the week mostly blowing off but in some cases speaking condescending too and even insulting the students, and then decided to teach what I maintain they considered “uppity n!##ers a lesson.  And their show of force would FINALLY shut those students up.

Except it didn’t.  Check out Ursula’s article.

Like Parkland, this could be another game changing moment.  The GOP didn’t get the memo then in 2018, and despite young voters breaking the conventional wisdom that was as as much a law of politics as Newton’s laws were of physics they showed up in droves again in 2020.  And 2022.  Anyone care to guess if they’ll do it again?  Show up in 2024 and beyond to tell the GOP they can either get with the program or see them increasingly voted into irrelevancy?

Census data indicates upwards of four million people turn 18 every year.  That’s four million potential new voters a year.  The important thing is that the Parkland students knew how to use social media and instantly network with other students and groups around the country and while they did go on TV and stuff, the bulk of their energy went into organizing two things – voter registration, especially with people around their age and getting those people to cast ballots.  It  Made  A  Difference.

More importantly, many of those students and others around the country haven’t stopped since then.  A lot, a LOT of people 18-24 have registered and are voting in percentages that have defied conventional wisdom.  Gun violence was and remains the catalyst but there’s more to it than that.  I should also note that while by a large percentage these new young voters vote for Democrats some are raised in conservative households and vote Republican.  I have more to say about them in a minute.

The point I want to make is that Democrats overall support real gun control.  Not as much as these new voters want (I think) but enough they are willing to cast what for some are tough votes.  And, as it so happens we have a Democratic President who just happened to be a key player when the assault weapons ban (which the GOP allowed to sunset during the Bush 43 years after which mass shootings including school shootings began steadily increasing) and to a great degree he’s got their backs.

However as I hinted at a moment ago there’s more to it.  These young people will have to live most of their lives in a world my own and prior generations didn’t protect from global climate change.  They know as does any rational person climate change is well underway and for decades to come the most we can hope for is to mitigate the amount of damage.  They and their children and grandchildren (assuming they don’t get mowed down but some a-hole with his/her gun!) will have to deal with.

They know conservatives will fight dealing with the problem tooth and nail, the same way they fight gun control.  And that Democrats won’t.  That Democrats, who might not do as much as they want will do their damndest to try and take at least some meaningful steps!

They know racism is real and systemic.  That being white (better still if male too – sexism is also systemic) provides a benefit at birth that non-white people have never had.  They don’t like that!  They recognize how unfair it is.  Young people today aren’t nearly as wedded to the racial attitudes older people grew up and lived with all our lives.  Social justice matters to young people.  Democrats fight for it.  Republicans fight against it.

On issue after issue, including several that matter most to new/youngish voters Democrats align with their values.  And Republicans DON’T  That’s why by a significant margin new voters are with us and not voting Republican.  Better still, they can look and see how in three straight elections they’ve made a difference and for the better.  Just as importantly, even though they are too young to remember Obama’s address from Grant Park on election night in 2008 unlike way the hell too many of us older folks young people got the most important part of what he had to say.

(Edit) I can’t believe I left this out of the original post but let’s talk reproductive rights.  These new, or youngish voters are mightily pi$$ed about Roe being overturned.  They also know that for many a GOP politician but more importantly to Federalist Society groomed judges and Justices even birth control is on the chopping block.  It’s tough enough for younger folks to get started in adult life (tougher than when I turned 18) without having “Christian” fanatics preventing them from deciding whether or when to have children!  Even young Evangelicals are giving indications that they’re uncomfortable with the fire & brimstone, uncompromising “every fertilized egg is a human being and WILL be carried to term.  Even if it kills the mother or ruins her health.  Even if it dies in utero, or will be born with horrific medical problems and at best might live less than an agonizing (for both baby and parents, as well as the medicos) hour.  Not to mention cases of rape and incest.  Maybe (the younger ones) think there should be some exceptions carved out in the “Christian” (the version they grew up with) belief that at least until it is born those babies in the womb have to be “protected” at all costs.

That the work was just beginning.  That for all the effort that went into that victory and the incredible joy so many tens of millions felt that night, that more and even harder work was yet to come.  That the fight wasn’t over.  That we’d need to keep showing up in force in election after election because the GOP wasn’t going anywhere.  As we now know, at that very time Mitch McConnel was already meeting with GOP cronies to start what they intended to be the process of obstructing anything the new Obama administration wanted to accomplish and make him a one-term President.  But far too many of us didn’t pay attention that night, or afterwards.

And look at what it has cost.

These young voters appear to understand history as it’s unfolded during their lifetimes.  And by all appearances an awful lot of them have decided to be activists for the long-haul.  i just hope enough of us old, or older than them if not as old as me get dragged along by them and realize we have to run good candidates in every single race right down to local stuff like school boards. (Thinking of that kid in Idaho that got elected to one) And get out and vote in every election.  That the long (too long) history of Democrats voting in Presidential years and taking it easy the other three years won’t cut it anymore.  That’s sure as hell not how young people seem to see it.

We older folks should be ashamed that instead of us leading them, they are the ones leading us but the important thing is that someone is stepping up to lead and lead with the right values and goals in mind!

I mentioned Arithmetic and I’ll close with it.  As I said, every year upwards of four million people turn 18.  Which means they can vote.  For three straight cycles they’ve been beating what prior to 2018 was dismissed as “the youth vote” and pundits smugly enjoyed noting how for all the hype it hadn’t materialized.  Maybe someday they said…

Well, “someday” is here.  Four million people turning 18 every year.  Seventy percent or more support what Democrats stand for.  And frankly many older Democrats need to start supporting what these young voters want.  Sooner rather than later.  The GOP either can’t do Arithmetic (and it’s pretty simple) or refuses to do so.  It’s cost them three straight elections.  Once?  They could blow that off.  Twice?  They should have said “let’s take a look at this.”  Three times?  In a row?  The Arithmetic doesn’t bode well for them so what do they do?  They go out of their way to condescend and even insult young voters who want action on some important issues.  Hell, GOPers keep doubling down on their out of touch, idiotic efforts to create an old black and white “traditional family” sitcom, and when non-white people “knew their place” and played subservient roles.  If they even had one.

And a final point (i said I’d get to it) with Arithmetic and that twenty-five percent or so of those who will vote Republican.  There’s some evidence that while they disapprove of “gay stuff” and believe in the model of dominance of Americans of white European ancestry they aren’t moved to frothing at the mouth “we gotta stop this” beliefs like their parents and preachers.  It doesn’t seem to matter to a small but apparently growing percentage of them.  And there are indications they are actually open to considering information about climate change that doesn’t come from their church.  And Republican leaders.  And they too worry about dying in a school shooting.  In fact, since it was a Christian school in Nashville and white kids and a couple of white adults too (only one victim was black) they are likely once again daring to question, if only to themselves if the GOP is who they should unquestioningly vote for.

More Arithmetic that’s bad news for the GOP.