Krugman writes: "On Wednesday, after listening to the heart-rending stories of those who lost children and friends in the Parkland school shooting - while holding a cue card with empathetic-sounding phrases - Donald Trump proposed his answer: arming schoolteachers."
Students staged a "lie-in" outside the White House on Monday to promote gun control reform. (photo: Zach Gibson/Getty)
25 February 18
n Wednesday, after listening to the heart-rending stories of those who lost children and friends in the Parkland school shooting — while holding a cue card with empathetic-sounding phrases — Donald Trump proposed his answer: arming schoolteachers.
It says something about the state of our national discourse that this wasn’t even among the vilest, stupidest reactions to the atrocity. No, those honors go to the assertions by many conservative figures that bereaved students were being manipulated by sinister forces, or even that they were paid actors.
Still, Trump’s horrible idea, taken straight from the N.R.A. playbook, was deeply revealing — and the revelation goes beyond issues of gun control. What’s going on in America right now isn’t just a culture war. It is, on the part of much of today’s right, a war on the very concept of community, of a society that uses the institution we call government to offer certain basic protections to all its members.
