The connection is that you gave your view of your personal experience. I quoted it and gave mine and spoke to pessimism vs. optimism which I found had no intersection with this story.
I'm with you on most of what you typed save for the idea that questioning a tragedy makes someone insensitive. Wouldn't, by definition, the best way to quell speculation is to put people into a place where they'd be labeled as such if they did? Lyerla found that out the hard way.
If I came here and told you about some personal tragedy and you were skeptical I wouldn't find that insensitive. How are you to know that what I'm telling you is accurate? You don't know me and you wouldn't have witnessed any of it. If i got all bent out of shape that would be my issue not yours. However, I fully understand what you're getting at...as I said, who wants to go around questioning people's grief and loss?
Did Sandy Hook happen as reported? I don't know and will never know. What do I believe? I believe that some of the questions raised are fair questions to ask despite the issues with sensitivity. I believe calling someone a liar is wrong but to be skeptical is completely in bounds.
Control is achieved when the masses don't question. I think everything should be questioned. The media is not your friend is often a tool for an agenda. If that could be stipulated to I don't see how questioning Sandy Hook is really all that awful of a thing. I never really gave this one all that much thought. Like the masses, I tuned in that AM to horror and shock on my TV. I was off that day. I cry when I see things like this. Something about schools and violence really gets to me. I never really thought to question anything about it. One night my wife was watching "conspiracy" videos and one happened to be about Sandy Hook. I watched it and thought it raised some compelling questions. I've since read the debunking of some of these items. Some of the debunking I found to be solid and some not so much.
One of the things I find interesting about people, in general, is that they speak like they know things they don't know at all. It is a human flaw I guess to want to come across as authoritative or knowledgeable. So many in this world are, at this very moment, speaking about subjects they are completely clueless about, but they were told or read something so it becomes truth to them. It can get a little crazy when you really apply what I'm speaking to within your own life, but you literally don't know when you sit on a chair if it'll break, you don't know the bridge you're driving over won't collapse, but you do know that is probably isn't very likely...yet, it does happen. So, I've tried to live my life with that in mind that I know next to nothing, believe a lot of things, and question most everything. If I hold Sandy Hook up to that looking back on it, it puts me in a spot where I realize I don't know what happened there and to speak like I do is pure folly. That would not stop many people though from telling you that you're this or that for asking questions. Those people don't know any more than you do but they've fully persuaded themselves that they do. I find that dangerous and not a very good way to go through life.
I feel for Colt Lyerla that he expressed a viewpoint and was censored as he was. This county is completely out of control with taking offense to things. If Colt Lyerla thinks this was a giant ruse, how does that affect you? How? Does what a young college kid who happened to play TE that comes from a troubled background bring any more grief to anyone? I know this much, if I lost one of my kids, nothing anyone could say could ever begin to touch the grief the loss would bring me. Would it potentially annoy me or anger me? Maybe.
Here's a question...for those who are convinced this happened as it was reported by the major networks have you ever looked at anything counter to what you believe? Have you found nothing that makes you question? Or... have you chosen not to look? Not necessarily for this board, but I believe the masses never cared to look. I like looking at all the sides. No preconceived notions that anything is the truth and go from there.
Ted Thompson sits on his hands per former GM: "because they’ve had 25 fricking years of great quarterbacks. Of course it works. Try it without a special quarterback."