The recent comments regarding the activist kids who survived the Florida shooting have me puzzled. Pundits and trolls alike have been calling for these ‘kids’ to ‘keep quiet’, or ‘grow up’. I’m paraphrasing here, because the actual words used in many cases are vulgarity-laden tirades not worthy of my keystrokes.
It seems to me that, by finding a cause to stand up for, and actively working to change a broken system, these kids are doing at least part of what the trolls are wanting. They are growing up; far faster, and in ways we’d never hope anyone had to, but growing up just the same. And we should be proud of them.
For a generation who gave us stupidities like the ‘Cinnamon challenge’, (and don’t even get me started on the Tide Pods), we should be more than proud that these kids actually understand. They represent the best of their era, and they give me hope for the future of our country and our world. We have worked as a society to give them an education, to teach them ways to think and act for themselves, so they can be contributing members of society, and these kids are stepping up to the plate to knock that out of the park.
It seems hypocritical to call them out for doing exactly what any good citizen should do – which is take part in the national conversation, and support their views with logical facts and well-reasoned arguments. We cannot urge people to participate in our governing processes only to ridicule them for doing so when we don’t like what they have to say. That is *not* how it works.
And, for those who say, ‘these are just kids; they can’t even vote’, I would urge you to consider adding something to that thought. They cannot even vote “yet” . Their time at the ballot box is coming fast, and their voices will be heard. Considering that most of the criticism is coming from generations where barely half of the eligible voters actually take the time to do so, this seems like just another hypocritical argument.
We should be proud of these kids. The last thing we should want is for them to ‘keep quiet’. This is their country, too.
