Why we ask? Because many of those attacking them feel their words, their protests, their feelings don’t fit the script of this new, hateful era of Trump conservatism we now live in.
Ultra right wing fake news bloggers talk about eating Tide pods and we wonder what stupid things they may have done in their youth? Did they fill paper bags with glue and huff with all their might? Did they get someone to buy them booze or beer and go on drunken adolescent forays which ended in crashes or cow tipping?
They don’t talk about that because they want us to believe in their holier-than-thou blistering columns they are the epitome of perfection, never did anything remotely stupid like smashing pumpkins, egging cars or throwing reams of toilet paper on people’s houses.
Everyone has done something stupid in their youth and it doesn’t make them stupid for life.
We remember the stupid things we did as a child — throwing bricks in the air and watching one fall squarely on a friend’s head resulting in stitches; us playing football in the house with a paper cup and running squarely into the doorpost, the outcome being more stitches and several other things including up through college when, for retaliation, we took a sulfur fire extinguisher and sprayed through the crack of the dorm room door because the same thing was done to us. No stitches that time but a hefty fine our parents weren’t happy about.
So, yeah, we’ve all done stupid things and that doesn’t make these kids who want change in the world simpletons.
Enter this week where on Sunday we were invited to the Eagle Scout ceremonies of two young men — Aaron Purser, whose pursuit of the rank we followed in three stories — and his troop mate, Ayden Coggins, who we talked with while doing the stories on Mr. Purser.
These young men are some of the youth who get shrapnel wounds when the misguided writers at Infowars and Breitbart News fire their sour garbage at our future, saying they deserve no voice simply because it doesn’t fit their script.
Both Mr. Purser and Mr. Coggins learned about the system in their quest for Eagle Scout. No, they weren’t protesting, they were simply going through municipal government to seek permissions and explain their projects, learning to speak for themselves, something which strikes fear in the hearts of the Breitbart and Infowars crowd.
And then, of all things, today we witnessed students exercising their right and privilege to vote.
What struck us most about this exercise in the process were the answers they gave us, one saying she didn’t pay attention to Tide pod-obsessed bloggers trying to shame our youth.
Another saying “It says we can be informed and make educated decisions about what we want for our community, that even 18-year-olds can be informed.”
And then another told us, “I really want to show other young people our voices really do matter.”
To us, these comments show us a side that folks like Alex Jones and other fake news bloggers don’t want us to hear — that eloquence is in their bloodstream, that intelligence flows through their brain cells and the spiteful vindictive bloggers are more than likely the ones chewing on Tide pods, huffing glue and tipping cows — Editor
