On Friday night, David Brooks announced on the PBS NewsHour he attended the "March for Our Lives." He said "I went to watch. And I went to be with the marchers as a journalistic observer, of course. And it shocked me as a very moderate march."
That's funny. I was also there in DC as an observer, with my son, helping him capture crazy liberal signs for MRCTV. I didn't think it was "very moderate" at all. But he continued:
It was focused on the issues, specific issues of banning assault weapons, a few specific moderate pieces of legislation. And I was greatly heartened by it, frankly, because sometimes it seems like the extreme on this side feeds the extreme on this side, and our entire political system is gyrating, without any sense of moderation.
But this was a moderate march. And the people were good-hearted. There was a good spirit. There was no culture war fighting. There was no radicalization. It struck me as democracy the way it’s supposed to work.
And then I followed the feedback on the march on Twitter, frankly, and it’s like I was at a different march. It’s as if it was, they were all radicals, and one set of radicals was shouting at another.
So it was revelatory to me that the world you see on Twitter is not the real world, and that there are a lot of decent people who have positions, this or that, you can agree with or not, but there’s a — it gave me a much more hopeful sense about our democracy, frankly.
The signs we found at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 11th were not "moderate." Repealing the Second Amendment to the Constitution -- part of the original Bill of Rights -- is NOT "very moderate." But then, "conservative" New York Times columnist Bret Stephens took this stand, so it must be moderate? This guy stood right behind me.
The National LGBTQ Task Force, a real bunch of centrists, printed out signs that read "Police + Guns = Death." That's "good-hearted," no culture war? I only caught the Spanish version on my camera.
Many signs smeared the NRA as murdering terrorists, or as Satan.
And a few signs trashed Trump as taking NRA "blood money" or having a urinal for a mouth. (Very moderate in tone, Mr. Brooks?)
I didn't get a shot at a sign the crowd on my corner loved: "TRUMP IS PUTIN'S BITCH." It was a pretty liberal crowd.
None of this even mentions the speeches from the podium. My comical favorite was Parkland student activist Alex Wind claiming the NRA wanted to not just arm your teacher, but your minister or your rabbi, and even Mickey Mouse at Disney World. Then there was David Hogg starting his speech by suggesting Sen. Marco Rubio valued each Florida child's life as worth $1.05. Hogg has been the opposite of "good-hearted."
