OPINION:
Like sick moths to a flame, Democrat politicians flutter brainlessly to every catastrophe — their willful dishonesty and shallow stupidity outmatched only by their misplaced confidence in the doomed government solutions they offer.
Vice President Kamala Harris zombied her way out to Highland Park, Illinois, this week to pay her political respects after the horrific shooting at a Fourth of July parade.
Her message to the victims and survivors was bizarre: People need to take the massacre in which seven innocent people were killed more “seriously.”
In her defense, however, her comments were incomprehensible.
“We’ve got to take this stuff seriously — as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously,” Ms. Harris lectured to the bewildered and grieving people of Highland Park.
“The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy to understand that this could happen anywhere [to] any people in any community,” she said. “And we should stand together and speak out about why it’s got to stop.”
The internet charitably calls this “word salad.”
It was enough soggy roughage to bury the White House Easter Bunny, who unfortunately was not available to hop Ms. Harris away from the microphones before she opened her mouth. You know the situation is hopeless when President Biden is only the second most incoherent person in the White House.
Other Democrats quickly chopped their way through Ms. Harris’ word salad to get to the protein of the matter — as they see it: more gun control.
Yes, the state of Illinois has some of the strictest gun-control laws of any state in the Union. Yet the solution according to Democrats is more gun control.
At every level, the government has failed to prevent these unspeakable crimes. So, Democrat politicians respond: What we really need is more government failure.
But simply blaming the government is perhaps too broad a brush. More specifically, the government run by Democrats is to blame.
It is not a coincidence that the vast, overwhelming majority of “gun” crimes in America are committed in places like Illinois and Chicago where Democrats reign supreme.
In Chicago over the same holiday weekend, 10 people were murdered and 62 others were wounded by “gun” violence. Ms. Harris did not stop in the Democrat-run city to offer any word salad for those victims.
In some places, the glare of failure burns too brightly even for the willfully dishonest.
Probably the worst time for politicians to threaten to strip American citizens of the right to defend themselves is after a crazed gunman slaughters innocent humans under the baleful eye of failed government. People’s natural response to such senseless tragedy is to say a prayer for the dead, hug their children tight and check their ammo.
In Uvalde, Texas, authorities are still reconstructing the endless layers of government failure that allowed 19 children and two teachers to be mowed down by an armed lunatic who was allowed inside an elementary school.
The average American citizen cannot comprehend why police waited for a full hour outside the elementary school while the gunman rampaged inside and children cowered in terror under their little desks. Or smeared themselves with classmates’ blood to play dead. How on God’s earth could someone place the safety of police officers over the lives of children?
Parents were arrested and shackled to prevent them from going inside to save their children while police waited outside for the gunfire to subside.
Now comes the latest news that a police sniper had the school gunman in the sight of his rifle scope before the gunman entered the school. The sniper radioed supervisors asking permission to smoke the bastard — but his request went answered.
So the gunman went inside the elementary school and feasted on little children whose caskets had to be custom-made.
And Democrat politicians seize the tragedy to offer word salad and vow to disarm you.
To be fair, the evil in American society today is deeply complicated. Far beyond the capacity for Democrat politicians to comprehend — especially those reliant on the Easter Bunny to lead them around.
Anyway, their “solutions” make everything worse. Just check out the neighborhoods of Chicago, where former President Barack Obama proudly earned his political chops as a “community organizer.” How is that working out?
In Highland Park, a profoundly confused young man with tattoos gouged into his face dressed up as a woman and picked off seven innocent people from a rooftop lair with guns he never should have had. The poison and rot of his feeble mind blossomed online — the closest thing to real-life that he knew.
His father and uncle were quick to dodge any blame, insisting there were no warning signs that the son and nephew they lived with could commit such carnage. In fact, the warning signs are obvious to anyone who surveys the young man’s “rap music” or his online rantings.
The little man’s life was so utterly purposeless that the last job his uncle could remember him holding was at a Panera Bread — two years ago.
Responsibility in life is a privilege. Young men with no purpose will eventually find one — and the one they find very well may be to destroy all that is good around them.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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