I have a distinct distaste for people who use children to push whatever it is they're pushing. Religion, politics, whatever, leave the kids out of the line of fire. Because the last thing we need in this world is people with lifelong enemies because their parents couldn't fight for themselves.
The youngest person to ever try to kill me and come close was a fifteen year-old boy. Set off the first car bomb that hit me. I'm alive because, like most fifteen-year-old boys, he went off a bit early. So I wound up with an armored door full of fragments and lost a handful of decibels instead of getting the engine block of an Opel to the face.
Another unit rolled him and his family up a while later. Given that he failed completely to hurt anyone, I'm glad I never had him in my sights. I do, however, have a deep disgust for whoever took a kid who should have been worrying about school and soccer and convinced him that killing Americans was what the cool kids did.
I lost a lot of respect for people when the pigtailed scandanavian girl became the puppet of the climate movement. I didn't believe the story that she did it on her own initiative and I still don't. Her parents and her handlers used a teenage, possibly abused kid and put her in a place where she'll have international enemies for the rest of her life. And for what? Scolding "how dare you!" at Germany on the climate when India and China are sitting right there is piss-in-a-hurricane useless.
I understand why. Height of metoo and there she was, all Katniss Everdeen braids and Lyanna Mormont sass, spouting the same shit out of a brave new face. Only now the movement could whip up their base to calling shame on anyone wanting to contradict a child. Fucking cowards. Moral equivalents of the guys who jerked off to J-law's stolen nudes. Didn't exploit her themselves, but didn't mind getting their rocks off when someone else did it for them.
And now Kenosha. I'm honestly surprised. I thought some dumbass protester was going to use their own crotch fruit as a human shield so legions of phones could catch the brutality.
But no, turns out some utter dipshit in Illinois thought to arm a cop-obsessed kid with a long gun, cross state lines, and drop him off with no backup, command, or control. Even if I thought the whole defending the property of people who've never heard of you was a good idea, that's just a special brand of what the actual fuck.
Yeah, we enlist 17 y/o's in the military, but they have an entire chain of command behind them waiting to yank their ass out of whatever stupid they wander into. Most times, they've got an assigned battle buddy so any really stupid idea has to be run through TWO sets of rubbing together brain cells. Worst place the military drops off a 17 y/o on their lonesome is at a mall with dorky clothes and a fresh haircut, not in the middle of a riot zone with a longarm!
I openly despise Illinois' gun control laws, with an extra helping of disgust for Mayor "personal security for me but not for thee" Lightfoot. But someone out there drove this kid across state lines armed and armored. Someone owns the FOID card attached to that rifle. And I hope Illinois throws the fucking book at that person.
We're fucking up this world for kids enough without bringing them in to shovel the shit early with their own hands.