There's something I've been wanting to address for a while now: The idea that the best new ideas come from the young; that it's the youth that have the more advanced vision, the most profound insights.
Both Obama and Gore have said as much....that kids "know things" their parents don't know - and have encouraged those children to school their ignorant parents.
Now, on the face of it, the statement is true. Kids know stuff their parents and other adults don't know. But somehow, nobody seems to ask what that knowledge consists of.
It's meant of course, by those who seek to manipulate our children, to imply that they are smarter, more knowledgeable than their parents - about pretty much everything.
And from a kid's limited point of view, it certainly seems to be confirmed.
After all, a lot of parents and adults don't know how to Tweet, or Text. They don't know who the cool bands are and which ones are so yesterday. They can't tell the difference between last year's teen fashions and this year's hot item. They don't know where the hottest club is, or the best tattoo artist. They don't know what the latest designer drug is or where to get it. They can't tell which girls are sluts and which are nice girls...because they all dress like streetwalkers. And they never understood why boys wore pants below their butt-crack.
Yes. Teens and twenties know A LOT their parents don't know.
The question is: What is the value of that knowledge? Why does nobody ask THAT question?
Stupid children...and their adult wannabes confuse being cool with being wise.
Our pop-culture mistakes being conformingly trendy with being smart.
This has been, of course, a symptom of brainless elitists for as long as there have been cultural classes. The shallow fools among the aristocracy were perfectly and smugly content to look down on a genius of humble birth because he didn't know which of 7 forks to use at a formal table.
The trendy conformism was all they knew...and the standard by which they judged everyone's worth.
But at least in those days, the small knowledge that the conformist DID have was elegant and graceful. Today we've turned everything upside down. Our children and their groupies find elegance and grace, even when paired with wisdom boring, tedious, uncool, pretentious, uptight.
Sure, children know stuff their parents don't know. They always have. And it's always been nothing more than the petty, mindless conformity of the immature herd, of whatever generation.
Children who believe they "know more" than their parents are, by definition, locked into a small, rigid social group whose mores and behavior are strictly defined and controlled by group-mind. Individual variation is not permitted, and individual excellence is defined only by the perfection with which the child adopts the rules of the herd. Ergo, anyone - a parent, or grownup - who does not adhere to, or worse, is not even aware of the "rules", is, by definition, ignorant, lame, clueless.
And it's these green, limited, immature, inexperienced, insecure, ignorant, frightened, baby conformists that our pathetic pop-culture is holding up as models for actual grownups to emulate, listen to, and learn from.
When people point out that the Tea Party movement is populated mostly by older people, this is supposed to be a slam at it. The idea is that the young, the hip, the movers and shakers among us are not buying into it, so it's just a bunch of old fogies without the sharp, cool, young hipsters that would make the movement real, viable, serious, or revolutionary.
Because the 60's has been branded as the template for "change" and political action in too many stagnant minds, the notion that without the children no movement has fire, has power, has energy, has momentum, or represents the future.
But it's quite the opposite. The young perpetrated the 60's indeed. And look exactly where that got us. And I'm as responsible as the next guy for it. I was right there approving every move. You see, I knew so much more than my folks...who were so lame, and patriotic, and believed in America, and decency and goodness, and fairness, and excellence, and hard work, and merit.
It is ONLY the grownups who know enough, are smart enough, experienced enough, have seen enough, gone though enough, watched successes and failures, learned what works and what doesn't, who can spot a liar, a grifter, a thief, a bully from a mile away, who have heard it all, been fooled, broken, betrayed, hurt, and have survived, learned and grown...
... that have what it takes to save a nation.
Don't ever let anyone make you believe we need the young - or that the Patriot Movement is somehow the less because, as yet, the young have not seen the need for it. We are the grownups. The young need us, even if they don't know it, the little bastards—just as they always have. It's not their job...it's OUR job to make sure the currently annoying clueless kids get a chance to live free when they finally get old enough to appreciate what that really means - in spite of their pop-culture icon enablers.
This is our destiny. It's a game for grownups. And the next time you hear a CNN reported note that a Tea Party is made up of "older" people, don't just get mad, get busy.
The Gunslinger
Grownup
Energetic Firebrand
Enemy of the Imperial State
Joebama American citizens 2024 print
9 months ago
Recommendation:watch "Wild In The Streets",a movie made in the late 60s about the voting age being lowered to 12 or so,a "rock star" gets elected Prez. Seriously...doesn't anyone remember the Kmer Rouge? Most of their "soldiers" were teenagers.Not to mention the bs that goes on in (pick your African hotspot)lately. They can always count on adolescents to be good Robots of the State,if they can get them out of their parents' "control". But,I repeat what you observed in the "Children who believe..." paragraph.Sorry! GREAT piece! Worthy of AT...Happy mending!
ReplyDeleteIt's not that they don't know anything.
ReplyDeleteIt's that a lot of what they know is wrong.
They can tweet. Meh. Can they change their own oil? Or even a tire?
Whether it is the Nazis, Communists, Khmer Rouge, Red Guard or now the Obama Youth, all organizations that attempt to enforce control over the "masses" start with the youth. For the very simple reason that and adult can say "I have seen this shit before and I know what is going to happen", a youth has not seen it and is so much easier to brainwash.
ReplyDeleteThe youth of today is the voter of tomorrow and if you can capture them early enough they have got them for life. The Jesuits claim that if they had a child before the age of 5 they would have a Jesuit for life. So did Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Obama is not going where no man has gone before, he is treading a well-trodden path.
"Yes. Teens and twenties know A LOT their parents don't know.
ReplyDeleteThe question is: What is the value of that knowledge? Why does nobody ask THAT question?
Stupid children...and their adult wannabes confuse being cool with being wise."
Bingo.
"Children who believe they "know more" than their parents are, by definition, locked into a small, rigid social group whose mores and behavior are strictly defined and controlled by group-mind."
Yep... and you know what those within the group call their beliefs and actions?
"Common Sense"
It's become a buggaboo of mine recently... the human mind has very few error handling proceedures, and unless you skilled at looking for them, you'll likely think everything is going along swimingly.
"It is ONLY the grownups who know enough, are smart enough, experienced enough, have seen enough, gone though enough, watched successes and failures, learned what works and what doesn't, who can spot a liar, a grifter, a thief, a bully from a mile away, who have heard it all, been fooled, broken, betrayed, hurt, and have survived, learned and grown..."
What kids don't have, and don't understand they don't have, is experience and the knowledge that experience can help create. And while they recognize there are things they don't know, they easily write it off with something like "I may not know about X, but I can see that this is wrong!"... if it were a computer program, we programmers would have thrown up a dozen error pop-ups before they even got to that point, but we humans easily spin a 'on error resume next' and continue on as if all is well.
Parents and adults need to stop seeking to be seen as 'cool', and start seeking to be wise, and get a pair and stand up to these idiots... algore and his kind will destroy us all if we don't.
And in the political realm, the sort of place We The People need to begin discovering what we don't know we don't know, is with something like this Preamble, and working our way on through to at the very least this Amendment.
BTW, if you haven't heard of Obamao's "Race To The Top" program, it's deliberate. It's in 40 or our 57 states now, and gaining steam, and what state legislators, teachers and a very few parents are discovering, is that once they open the door to it, the Fed govt owns their schools, curriculums, and school boards, which they'll soon disolve into multi-state consortiums.
ReplyDeleteI only found out about this thing last week through a teacher desperate to get the word out. It's being sold with all the favorite conservative buzz words like 'Charter Schools' and 'tough reform', but as with most leftie measures, it completely redefines their meaning out of existense.
Look for it in your area and sound off while you still can. Alarmist? You betcha.
I've got a post on it here, with links to several online articles... seriously... do something!
Ciccio said "For the very simple reason that and adult can say "I have seen this shit before and I know what is going to happen", a youth has not seen it and is so much easier to brainwash."
ReplyDeleteOne of the people who heard a presentation on this 'Race To The Top' program, was grew up in Nazi Germany, her reaction was "Welcome to the Third Reich".
This thing ties in AmeriCorp... mandatory community service... and all of cass sunstein's darkest dreams.
Once again, while we've all been watching out for HealthControl (as we should) the real transformational change has been getting pushed through behind our backs.
Take notice.
"...Obama is not going where no man has gone before, he is treading a well-trodden path...."
ReplyDeleteMandatory ´kindergarten´ from toddler´s age on, is what our commie german government is seeking hard to push down our throats. No surprise, given Chancelor A. Merkel having been raised in the "FDJ", the former eastern German Youth Organisation, communist equivalent to the ´Hitler-Jugend´
There are some "kids" who pay attention - couple of examples:
ReplyDeletehttp://bigjournalism.com/lloudon/2010/03/02/hey-kids-wake-up-its-time-for-young-americans-to-fight/
http://www.theyoungcons.com/Young_Conservatives/Welcome.html
Last Sep09 when I visited Chicago, my friend advised her daughter, a freshman in college, was very busy forming a young Republicans group.
Parents need to give their kids guidance instead of letting TV and the school do it.
advice: get involved in your kid's school!