“I have seen lots of people, kids, elderly gassed. I have been gassed. It sucks. The situation sucks but the point is to not demonize the men and women in duty without cause and to address the problems that lead to them facing this overwhelming group of people who deserve help.” — Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor.
I am completely disgusted by the things I am seeing in the news. No, I’m not talking about the horrific videos and images of children getting hit with rubber bullets and tear gas because they had the audacity to seek asylum in our nation of immigrants. As a very good intrepid journalist, I’m perfectly willing to look past the horror of children getting tear-gassed in order to embrace both-siderism at the worst possible moment.
Look, I have been tear-gassed myself. It sucks. It’s a total bummer. It’s a real downer. For some reason, I think it’s important for me to flippantly bring that up right now. But, the tear-gassing of innocent people is not what’s currently disgusting me. I find myself retching at something far more odious today: the criticism of our brave pseudo-troops who are spraying tear gas at helpless mothers and children.
How dare you demonize the heroes who are simply following orders? It doesn’t matter that those orders happen to involve unleashing poisonous gas on helpless civilians. Put yourself in the shoes of these defenders of liberty and justice. Like the courageous men and women who followed orders in Nazi Germany and Mỹ Lai, these American heroes are listening to their orders, making a conscious decision to follow them, and carrying out untold cruelty. That does not call for demonization. We should celebrate this sort of bravery. On that note, I also think the Nuremberg trials were bad.
As a hard-hitting journalist, I always speak truth to power. In this case, that means licking the boots of the lionhearts who are able to fire tear gas at children without resigning on the spot. The true victims here are the men and women of tremendous courage who are able to deploy noxious gas against the innocent, then look at themselves in the reflection of their glazed doughnut the next day without feeling nauseating shame.
Gassing innocent children is and always will be a partisan issue with many nuances. There are many discussions to be had about what led us to this point, but I refuse to let these discussions include the uniformed men and women who are carrying out the aforementioned crimes against humanity. I’m not choosing sides here. I’m just trying to seek out the truth, as long as that truth doesn’t implicate the people who have tear-gassed children.
Again, I am a very serious journalist.