Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Cameron Kasky, center, reaches out to clasp hands with Jaclyn Corin, below left, while David Hogg, top left, and Alex Wind, right, applaud at the conclusion of a panel discussion about guns at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

I think the use of Stoneman Douglas high school kids by the gun control lobby is really just an extreme example of the “woke child” trend.

People putting words in the mouths of their children for political purposes is a sign of our times. It’s not a practice unique to the left or right. Both sides seem to believe that children carry some sort of moral authority on big issues even when they haven’t mastered skills like blowing their own noses or chewing with their mouths closed. On the left, we’ve seen a big spike in the practice coinciding with the election of Donald Trump.

Met a young Hispanic boy while riding Metro. Saw my press credentials and asked me "why does the President hate me?" @realDonaldTrump

— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) August 24, 2017

It’s an embarrassingly transparent ploy that has perhaps reached its peak with the exploitation of the Parkland students.

Whether the kids are coached into saying exactly what the adults believe or the adults are just flat out lying varies directly with whether we actually hear the child being “woke” or if the adult with an agenda is reporting the child’s wokeness second hand via social media.

The exploitation of the Parkland student anti-gun activists has been sickening to watch mainly because kids who just survived a traumatic event are being used as props by adults with a long standing and wrong-headed agenda to penalize law abiding citizens for the actions of criminals. These kids were not even given the opportunity to process what happened to them before being pushed in front of television cameras and screaming crowds.

One reason these kids are so useful to the left is that it’s easy to defend them from criticism no matter how wrong they are. How dare you attack these brave children who nearly lost their lives? Perhaps that’s the whole reason people use children for props in the first place, they’re like human shields. RedState’s Kimberly Ross commented on this earlier today.

But the real problem with the Parkland student activism involves the Leftists and their creating pseudo-celebrities out of affected teenagers. Never have I seen such a glossy, hashtagged display from self-described victims and their handlers.

It is becoming a monstrous, trendy, flashy thing.

Worst of all? These youths are allowed to say whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want.

As an emotional strategy it often works, but the fact remains that experiencing a trauma doesn’t grant anyone any particular expertise in any particular policy area. If we’re honest we have to admit that no one is more easily convinced that they possess knowledge and wisdom that they really don’t than the American teenager. Banty rooster David Hogg’s only real accomplishment in all this is re-proving that the there is no more generally annoying person than a cocky, know-it-all, high school boy.

Still, Hogg is really a victim here. He did not get shot by Nikolas Cruz but he has subsequently been victimized by adults who stroked his inflated teenaged ego to use him as a tool for plucking heartstrings.

He’s a guitar pick who has been convinced that he’s the rockstar.

For the left he is disposable, as are the rest of these kids. Meanwhile they’ll go on saying that kids his age have the authority to lead on gun policy while they simultaneously can’t be trusted with an actual gun.

The March Against The Second Amendment For Our Lives was leftist political demagoguery and use at its most blatant and banal. It had nothing to do with addressing the real issues behind school shootings, but with scoring political body blows against Republicans and the National Rifle Association for an unconstitutional movement that was around long before any of these kids were even born.

Everyone in attendence or on the stage was either being exploited or orchestrating the exploitation.