Thursday, July 16, 2020

The young are always messed up

I found another "Little Library" on my walk this morning. Good thing because the librarians our taxes pay for are cowering behind their computers (like our pastors). I picked out "Give war a chance" by P.J. O'Rourke, c. 1992, now almost 30 years old. Wow. He's not a favorite writer, but I did see one essay that I found interesting--at least the opening paragraph. He's an aging boomer from Ohio who doesn't like Trump. He's now like a pet for the liberals who don't realize that their country has been stolen from them. Anyway, this paragraph was right on, as we said in the 70s.

SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THE 1960s

What I believed in the Sixties

"Everything. You name it and I believed it. I believed love was all you need. I believed you should be here now. I believed drugs could make everyone a better person. I believed I could hitchhike to California with 35 cents and people would be glad to feed me. I believed Mao was cute. I believed private property was wrong. I believed my girlfriend was a witch. I believed my parents were Nazi space monsters. I believed the university was putting saltpeter in the cafeteria food. I believed stones had souls. I believed the NLF were the good guys in Vietnam. . . and so forth . . . With the exception of anything my mom and dad said, I believed everything." p. 90

The usual stuff kids think, but that was somewhat revolutionary in the 60s, even looking back with a little tongue in cheek snark. Those 60s guys are now the grandparents of the ones roaming the streets with detailed plans to break windows, close businesses, hit police with baseball bats, and demand recognition for auto zones. O'Rourke's generation almost sounds charming, because in our minds' eye we know they finally matured after the grown ups stepped in.

Not today. The screaming, hysterical white college-educated women who have joined in with the gang thugs and Antifa to make no lives matter are not about to back down or go home to mommy. Those born in 1997 are a very different ilk from those born in 1947 like O'Rourke. These charmers have grown up with the schools tearing down everything the boomers thought they had to rebel against. In order to rebel against anything, by the time they get to college, it all has to be torn down to the last statue, church and Broadway musical so the latest totalitarian dictator can take over. And not by voting--that's so 1960s--it must be violence.

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