That's a good point, it's classic ad hominem style stuff that isn't relevant to the substance of the debate. I guess I just wish that the "public faces" were acting more mature and less divisive... but that's on some levels an unrealistic expectation for teenagers.
I agree, but really, we cant get adults to behave that way either.
I think another angle to consider is that the "public faces" that emerged from the student body were marked as "Crisis Actors" as soon as they made their first statements.
As soon as some on the far right realized that these kids actually had a voice, they went into "This Was A False Flag To Take Our Guns" mode.
I wonder how much that fueled the kids after their initial statements, and everything started snowballing... did the kids get more brave or bold in their comments because of the efforts by some to discount them and act like they weren't actually connected to the shooting? Or is it just teenagers starting feel emboldened, and showing the occasional immaturity that you would expect?
I live in Kentucky and am connected to a lot of, uh, very *Blindly Conservative* folk, we'll call them, but even they usually have their limits. But I can't tell you how visibly excited and how hard they were shouting both on social media and in person when these "False Flag/Crisis Actor" conspiracy posts started popping up. As soon as their guns came into center view, they latched on to some ridiculous shit, and it spread like wildfire in my area.
That happens every time a tragedy occurs, within every group that feels like they are the opposition, but this time it was more prevalent than I've ever seen or heard.
(And the funny thing about the "Crisis Actor Evidence" posts that were making the rounds, if you look at them, is they have a bunch of red circles around kids connected via red lines to other photos of the kids, as if they are evidence of something... but they are just additional pop-out photos, not even connecting the kids to other events that supposedly prove anything. It's literally just red circles to make people go "Ha yeah! They are fake!" even though the red circles and lines don't signify anything. I saw one post where the girl with the shaved head had long hair... and that was the whole post. They were calling her a crisis actor because she used to have long hair at one point.)
