Exorcisms are the new gun control — at least according to Fox News contributor Bill Bennett. During the conservative network’s coverage of the mass shooting at a 4th of July in a Chicago suburb, the former secretary of education suggested exorcists as the solution to ending gun violence. And he wasn’t joking.
“You need police. You need parents for sure. You need schools… But you know, you may need an exorcist, too,” Bennett, who served in the Reagan administration, said. “Before your audience shakes its head on that: If you look at these young men, they have deeply spiritual problems. Deeply.”
He added, “If you go into the labyrinthine caves of the internet — way down and I don’t recommend it — it’s ugly stuff. These guys dwell there. They live there. They drench themselves in it. And it’s as ugly and evil as it gets. Where are the ministers? The rabbis? The priests?”
Bennett seems to refer to the Highland Park shooter’s affinity for the rarely moderated social messaging platform Discord, where he shared nihilistic political memes and music among users, even joking about R. Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania politician who committed suicide during a news conference in 1987. (“I wish politicians still gave speeches like this,” he wrote per NBC News.)
“Look, I don’t want to suggest something that would seem farcical to a lot of your audience,” continued Bennett on Fox News. “It’s a deeply spiritual void that I think that the semen have in their hearts and their souls. And I think it needs to be addressed.”
He ended his rant by saying, “We need to do it all but we need to do more.” What?
