CELEBRATING THE BULLIES.

Betsy Newmark has a roundup of reactions to Wednesday's CNN townhall on school shootings (the one at which students mau-maued Florida senator Marco Rubio and television pundit Dana Loesch, apparently to rave reviews from Our Former President.)  They'll never learn.  "Haven't we had enough of depicting people who disagree with liberal policies are deplorables clinging to their guns and religion?"

No, when you're taking a position On The Side Of The Angels (or of History) you get a free pass to hector, to condescend, to deplorable-shame.

Here's Rush Limbaugh, being outrageous to make a point.

Any number of early Drive-By Media reports focused on that, as they learned about the shooter, learned about how everybody knew who he was. He had 39 visits by local authorities, the FBI ignoring two warnings. All these signs, a plethora of them.

In the reporting on all that, it was also reported that the guy felt ostracized by fellow students, was eventually kicked out of the school. He never fit in. He was made fun of and laughed at and they mocked him all over the place.  My question to that was, “Well, who did that?  Who did the laughing at the guy?  Who did the mocking?  Who was making fun of him?  Who was making him feel like a kook and an oddball and not wanted?”  We all know how mean and vicious high school can be.

Obligatory social science disclaimer: looking for the root causes of a marginalized person's rage in no way justifies, excuses, or should be used to enable the rage.

From what little I've seen of the little darlings at the town meeting, dear reader, I can't help but think that they behaved so badly toward the senator and the pundit because they learned, all their life, that they could get away with it.  That is, attempting to make the senator or the pundit look like a kook and an oddball and not wanted.

Perhaps, there's yet another reason to rediscover the eternal verities.

Now that they’ve seen evil for what it is, they are being gathered up into the herd mindset once more, this time for mere survival. They demand that such a horror never happen again, that our society go back to the way it was in which life conforms to their feelings, not their experience. The herd is promising to make that happen, and it is gathering the forces of moral power that come with the herd to achieve the impossible end of utopia. Any dissent or seeming opposition to it is deemed an existential threat.

The mob frenzy leads to increased anger, dehumanization of anyone outside the mob, and inability to look for reasonable, albeit imperfect, solutions to an ongoing problem of evil. It leads our children away from their individuality, the reason of their own minds, and a stable strength based on real, intimate relationships. It feeds them to the gluttonous belly of groupthink.

If parents really want to help their children, they need to teach them the truth about life, good and evil, rights and responsibilities. They need to help their children overcome fear, not by engrafting them into the mob, but by surrounding them with truly functional and healthy communities, beginning with the family and religious groups.

Indeed.