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Who would have thought that we’d still be talking about pro-Hamas protestors, months after October 7? What or who in the world is behind their radical demonstrations and destruction of property? How long will this insanity go on? Who will stop it? How will it end?
These are the questions that I keep mulling, with no satisfactory conclusions. But the question that fascinates me the most is: What drives these people to act this way?
As I was reading Abigail Schreier’s book, Bad Therapy, I couldn’t help seeing her analysis of how modern child-raising is morphing the youth into seriously disturbed adults. (Fractad has an excellent review of her book here.) These were kids raised by hapless parents who turned their children over to seriously misguided therapists. She gives several descriptions of these kids:
“These parents proudly declare that they avoid ever saying ‘no’ to their children. They regard time-outs as cruel and ‘triggering.’ Isolating a child in his room? Emotionally hurtful—and out of the question.”
“What are young people today so pessimistic about? I asked Twenge. ‘Everything,’ she said. ‘At their own prospects, the prospects of the world. And you have to ask, what causes what? Is it because the world is so bad, that’s why they’re depressed? Or do they see the world as bad because they’re depressed? It could be either one.’”
“I think that’s probably the simplest explanation of the problem: that we’re just teaching people that they’re not adequate humans.”
“Many therapists are convinced that ‘climate anxiety’ is a real and important category of mental health disorder. A cottage industry has arisen to treat it: ‘climate-aware therapy.’ What with the polar ice caps melting, tropical disease raging, hurricanes and floods scheduled to land with Noahide vengeance, of course young people are depressed! Nature, the medical journal The Lancet, and NPR all agree: depression is merely a rational response to the greenhouse gases’ smothering fog.”
Schreier relates stories of children who are completely out of control, throwing temper tantrums, making unrealistic demands; children who have no boundaries, no guidance, and who are told that their lives are hopeless, resulting in chronic insecurity. As if that wasn’t bad enough, their parents are unwilling to take charge, set limits, provide realistic values, and they have raised children who are floundering in their day-to-day lives. And these comments only describe part of the problem.
So if these kids are so helpless, why have they become so destructive? That’s easy: their generation and other older people hate America and are willing to empower them, finance them and lead them against the hopelessness that has entrapped them. The Marxists, the pro-Hamas people, and the anarchists are having a great time organizing these people (and trust me, they are very well-organized) in these violent and angry demonstrations. For once, these misguided young people feel they have the power to rage against the world, against their circumstances, against their helplessness, and are fully supported to do so.
We’ve already seen that the universities are feckless.
Law enforcement won’t act without university approval.
Parents have already relinquished their caregiving tickets.
Great.
If this assessment has any validity, what can we do?
Discussion (30)
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Does the typical teenager really feel that the world is being destroyed by global warming and that the future is hopeless? When I was a teenager doom-mongers said the future will be horrific. Not much talk about global warming yet, but acid rain was going to kill all the forests. Pollution in general was going to make the planet unlivable. And if that didn't happen, surely the USSR would either take over the world one country at a time or we would have a nuclear war that would wipe out all human civilization, thanks to that damn cowboy Ronald Reagan. And if we didn't learn how to diagram sentences to our English teacher's satisfaction, we were all going to wind up getting terrible jobs at a pickle factory!
None of the kids I knew lived in fear of these things. For every Greta Thunberg acolyte, there are many, many young people who do not cry themselves to sleep at night out of fear of a roasting planet.
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Sorry to say this, Randy, but you are too old. If you read Schreier's book, the conditioning of these kids happens at several levels: parents, teachers, therapists, and don't forget social media. They are barraged with danger and destruction of the planet, in a way you and I never were.
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I guess we'll hear from the parents of Ricochet. Do your teenagers or their friends have great anxiety about the climate? Enough anxiety that they are taking steps themselves, or do they just opine that other people need to change the way that they live? Because a lot of adults say somebody should do something about climate change, but then when they are asked how much cash they are willing to give up (either due to taxes or higher prices) to stop global warming, most people say less than a couple hundred dollars a year. If people really believed that we are on the eve of environmental destruction, they would be willing to do something, not just exhibit sad feelings.
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Stop the self-absorbed and entitled childish nonsense, Portland police retake the Millar Library on the Portland State campus one month ago:
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Nature, The Lancet, and NPR all agreeing is a sure sign you're being snowed.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
— Richard Feynman, expert
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