Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Future

Link to Latina.com article
This is Emma Gonzalez.

She is one of the teens who survived the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland FL.

She is just eighteen years old (or close to it).

She probably hasn't even figured out what she's wearing to her prom, if she's going.

She's facing down the NRA, the Republican Party, the gun crazies, everyone who doesn't support gun safety laws.

She's terrifying them to the point where they're openly insulting her, creating fake photoshopped images of her, doing everything they can to dismiss her.

She won't go away.

Emma Gonzalez is the future. Her and hundreds of thousands like her: teenagers and college students who grew up in the shadow of Columbine and are sick to death over the inaction and cowardice of the Republicans refusing to do anything to reduce/end gun violence in our nation.

She's going to be old enough to vote this year, her and hundreds of thousands like her. All of them single-issue voters willing to vote every pro-NRA pol out of office. Which affects every Republican pol currently in office.

If she can't vote this year, she certainly will by 2020, when it's a Presidential cycle and there's more at stake for the GOP. Her and hundreds of thousands like her.

I should say "millions" instead of "hundreds of thousands", but you get the drift.

The Republican strategists saw decades ago a demographic shift away from white majority population, and then gambled hard on going all-in on stoking white voter fears to create a voting base that gave them victories but declining overall support. That white voter base - mostly older, mostly uneducated, mostly wingnut - is getting outnumbered by the Millennial generation that's more educated, more tech-savvy, more angry at injustice. We're getting to the tipping point where that Whites-Only strategy kills the GOP.

We're getting to the point where the Face of America isn't Ivanka Trump.

The Face of America is Emma Gonzalez.

The future is hers.

1 comment:

dinthebeast said...

Add to that the majority-minority status which is now at about the first grade, and the times are indeed a-changin'...
I hope I live long enough to see those first graders old enough to vote.

-Doug in Oakland