Trump Talk: or, Lift every voice and sing

[lionheart]

It's Black History Month and the fight goes on (plus, we all need a boost that does not come from ye olde hop flask).

Lift every voice and sing

Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,

Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might

Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand.

True to our God,
True to our native land.

James Weldon Johnson (1900)

See the final scenes in 'Godless' if you doubt me.

“I was almost a school shooter. I am not a school shooter because I didn't have access to guns. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people with guns kill lots of people.”

www.9news.com/mobile/article/news/local/next/i-was-almost-a-school-shooter/73-520738916

I'd say more but I'm conscious that blue may be reading this thread.

Whoever wrote the crib notes used primary school teacher writing.

Looks like the kind of bullet points you might see on a poster explaining how to resolve conflict peacefully e.g. in a school or youth centre.

I imagine somebody tried to brief him on how to talk before the meeting, and then not confident that he had taken anything in, thrust it into his hand. Apparently his staff don’t have much faith in him.

NRA Usually Shuts Up After Mass Shootings. Not This Time.

www.thedailybeast.com/nra-usually-shuts-up-after-mass-shootings-not-this-time?ref=home

I watched the listening session live. A selected group of people undoubtedly. However, they spoke so well and it was so emotional what they'd been through but it was uncomfortable watching Trump to be frank. His notes also say..
'What would you most want me to know about your experience' and 'what can we do to help you feel safe'.

A person who has to have bullet points to force him to feel compassion and empathy is not a caring human being in my eyes. It should come from the heart.

My heart sank when he started talking about arming teachers, no teacher should have that burden. What if they didn't get the gun out quickly enough or they froze... think of the blame. What if they accidentally killed a pupil whilst trying to stop the shooter? I linked a clip once before that shows how those placed in these sort of tension situations cannot react quickly enough to do anything.

The mother from Sandy Hook was inspiring, she knew her stuff at how hard they work on preventative measures.

(As an aside, 45 looked most odd, his spray tan hadn't worked and around his eyes he was totally white and orange elsewhere!)

It was a good thing to have this session but it always worries me when Trump asks people what he should do. It's like he hasn't a clue. He asked punters at Mar-aLago this question at the weekend too.

Pain, that 9news article is powerful stuff.
He’s a brave man for telling his story. I bet that actually, his experience isn’t particularly unusual - there are so many deeply hurt/hurting young people out there. Most of course would never act out on their darkest thoughts, but having access to assault rifles is obviously going to increase the risk.

Incidentally, the NRA supports arming teachers so them will have pleased them in pushing forward on that.

This was much more worthwhile. Rubio, surviviors and that revolting Loesch woman from the NRA at a Town hall meeting.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/feb/21/cnn-town-hall-gun-control-debate-live-florida-students-nra-marco-rubio

It’s a way of then saying “well this wouldve been precentanlenif the teachers had acted in time/properly”. Passing on responsibility for stopping any further massacres to teachers and being able to say “the buck doesn’t stop with us - blame them!”

My DH’s comment over breakfast just now when I said Trump had discussed arming teachers was “But surely shooters will just shoot the teachers first if there’s an expectation that they might have a gun?”

Indeed.

rousette if you want to watch the whole thing, there’s a link posted to it upthread somewhere, though I think it went on for nearly two hours

I suppose people who are comfortable with the police killing children will also be comfortable with teachers killing children.

However the argument seems to rely on the idea that the only difficult thing about killing somebody is being able to hit a mark. Obviously that is very important (although not really a good indicator of whether somebody can teach maths).

However, how do you decide when it’s necessary to kill a child? What happens afterwards when there is an investigation and they find out you made the wrong call? That the gun wasn’t loaded? That they had no gun? Who wants to be told to carry a gun to do their normal everyday job?

Thanks Pain I missed that

Trump also suggested that military weapon trained people could do something like hand out lunches. Yes, like that would work. Totally agree with you merrym.

The only thing I agreed with more on this tack from the discussion last night, was strengthening points of entry into schools. We've done it here to a degree. (not with screening machines, but gates and security. When my DCs were little anyone could wander into a school, not so now, I don't think).

Yep

cozie, that is awful.

Ouais, I think everyone has to come up for air sometimes. As someone posted a few threads ago just when you think you've reached the bottom of the barrel you discover it is only the middle.

Trump and his enablers have a bottomless barrel upon which to draw.

www.thecut.com/2018/02/march-for-our-lives-for-gun-control-will-be-on-march-24.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

Another part of the swamp.

time.com/5170103/harvey-weinstein-defense-female-celebrities-meryl-streep/?utm_campaign=time&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&xid=time_socialflow_twitter

The only thing I agreed with more on this tack from the discussion last night, was strengthening points of entry into schools. We've done it here to a degree. (not with screening machines, but gates and security. When my DCs were little anyone could wander into a school, not so now, I don't think).

I'm not convinced about this. I don't like the idea of turning schools and colleges into locked down prisons. The college local to us is for 16-18 year olds and has no security at gates. I actually cut through it on occasion as a short cut to the station and have seen people playing ball with their kids and walking dogs on the field. I really don't think this is that much of a big risk in the UK. Besides, unless you checked bags of everyone coming in they could easily shove a gun in a kit bag and walk right past. The issue is the guns not the security.

Thanks, lion.

I agree, Bigly. The security helps but it's not the main issue.

Yes, it's tricky Bigly and I have no idea at all what the security is like in US schools. Agree, the issue is the guns, here is a very interesting twitter feed on someone who is a college professor and is trained to use a gun.

He presents a very forceful argument against teachers being armed. The thread is well worth reading.

Josh Grubbs‏
@JoshuaGrubbsPhD
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Guys, I’m a college professor.

I’ve also been shooting guns my entire life and own multiple guns now.

I don’t trust myself to be able to capably defend a classroom against a shooter, and I’m a good shot.

Why would we expect teachers everywhere to bear this responsibility?

Caroline O.
@RVAwonk
Only 10% of mass shootings from 2009-2016 took place in "gun free zones." Out of the 156 mass shootings during that time period, none were stopped by armed civilians.

(link: everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootings-analysis)

So, there is Dan Rather who shines a beacon of sense amongst all the dross, but I fear he and his ilk are not enough to stop Trump and his supporters.

“We can have a debate about gun control. But to all those "adults" who mock or lie about the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High (and the waves of sympathetic students across the nation), to all those who rain vitriol down on children's heartbreak and nascent activism, to all those who spread outrageous conspiracy theories meant to dismiss those who demand to be heard, there is no place for you in civil society.

I know why the reactionary forces who have cynically played the status quo on our gun culture to their political and economic power are fanning the flames of these outrages. They know, as I do, that young adults with passion can change the world. I saw that in Birmingham, Alabama when African American children faced the fire hoses and dogs in the march for racial justice. I saw it in the jungle hell of Vietnam and the streets of America when young soldiers and protesters asked the chilling question: what are we fighting and dying for? I saw it in Europe where waves of youthful activism shattered the Iron Curtain.

The voice of a child is often a clarion call to action. In their purity lies passion and courage. They are our future. And when they roar, they will be heard and shake the political status quo of our nation.”