Thursday, March 8, 2018

Meet the Conservative Parkland Massacre Survivor, @KyleKashuv, the Media Has Largely Ignored







On the afternoon of February 14, 2018, Kyle Kashuv found himself in the midst of a waking nightmare, huddled in a classroom closet for two harrowing hours, attempting to console and reassure terrified fellow students. An apparent fire drill had abruptly turned into a bloodbath after a gunman calculatingly lured potential victims into the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by pulling the fire alarm -- a ghoulish maneuver designed to maximize the bodycount.

...Kashuv is just as much a Parkland survivor as now-familiar names like David Hogg and Cameron Kasky, yet his views have only garnered limited attention.

I ask him why he thinks that's the case. "I don't know," he says, hesitantly. "Maybe because I don't use inflammatory language. I speak calmly and logically without much emotion. I don't necessarily make the very best headline." He's politely referring to some of his more "famous" peers' propensity to launch provocative and partisan attacks, such as repeated assertions that people who disagree with their political or policy preferences "don't care" about dead children, or have 'blood on their hands.' But Kashuv knows that the disparate treatment he's lived isn't merely attributable to stylistic differences; he's convinced that the substance of his views is what has diminished his appeal to many activists and journalists....

...He wasn't invited to participate in CNN's raucous and emotional town hall meeting in the wake of the shooting, watching it instead on television along with the general public (he says some of the pro-gun control students who traveled with him in Tallahassee were flown back for the event). He didn't like what he saw. "The entire CNN town hall was very ineffective. It worsened the divide," he laments. "It was so counter productive because Republicans would answer back, and they weren't really able to voice logical concerns and [talk about] what they wanted to do because they were just booed. It was simply counterproductive. That's the only word for it."...

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