Listen Up, and Learn, Junior. The Stunning Ignorance of Millenials
Last month, here at Clash Daily, I asked you to answer the following question: Who do you hold responsible for the current chaos, misery and deliberate destruction of our country? It was completely foreseeable even before he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, that Barack Hussein Obama, a hard-wired radical leftist, marinated in Marxism from an early age, would try to carry out his dream of “transforming” America.
As you would expect, Clash Daily readers had a lot of interesting comments and insights to share when responding to that question. They pointed to a variety of factors, and I share their opinions that the lapdog, dinosaur media, the spineless Republican party that offered no opposition and offered no compelling vision of liberty to counteract Obama’s “hope and change” BS, and ultimately, “the people,” dumbed down by public education, are all to blame. I want to dig a little deeper into that last one so we can see what we’re really up against.
At the risk of sounding like the crabby old man who, back in the day, yelled at us to get out of his yard, and take our damn balls with us, I ask you to consider the stunning ignorance on display by the current generation, sometimes called “Generation Y”, but more often known as “Millennials”, roughly those born between 1980 and 2000. I have had the opportunity to operate undercover frequently among this cohort, silently observing them, and I’m sorry to report from the front lines that if we hope to save our country, we have our work cut out for us.
Please don’t misunderstand. Like any global statements, what I’m about to say does not apply to everyone born between 1980 and 2000. I’m sure that any of us grown ups can point to young people who are bright, hard-working, patriotic and eager to read as much as they can. They understand the value of life experience, and seek to learn from those who came of age back in the “olden” days. These are not the young people I am talking about.
The ones I am talking about are long on opinions on every subject, regardless of their familiarity with it, and more than willing to share these opinions loudly to anyone and everyone within earshot. The areas where they fall short, I am sad to say, are knowledge, facts, basic information, historical context, and critical thinking.
I have listened to their vacuous blathering about foolishness. I have watched their cringe-inducing, attention-getting behavior. Worst of all, I have heard them pontificate about serious public policy issues. From what I hear, many of these people can name more Kardashians than Supreme Court justices, and they think Benghazi is a brand of designer jeans or a hip new restaurant. Their ignorance about history is breathtaking, but that doesn’t matter, you see. If you mention a historical event to many Millennials, you will be greeted by a dumb look, a nervous laugh to fill the awkward silence, and then inevitably the statement “Oh, I wasn’t born then.” Are you kidding me? I wasn’t born in 1863, but I have heard of Gettysburg.
It’s not just my being a curmudgeon here. A recent story in the Atlantic, reporting on the results of a Reason Foundation poll of 2000 Millennials, sums it up in its headline, “Millennials’ Political Views Don’t Make Any Sense.” Subhead: “That’s not a harsh assessment. It’s just a fair description.” From the piece:
Millennial politics is simple, really. Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They’re for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they’ve heard of. They’d like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn’t run anything.
Are you starting to connect some dots here?
And, we’re not describing only some mentally-challenged airhead who works at the yogurt kiosk at the mall. A couple of weeks ago, as part of his “Meet Young Journalists” series, radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt interviewed on his show 31 year-old Zach Carter, the Huffington Post’s “senior political economy reporter,” a 2005 graduate of the University of Virginia. Mr. Hewitt had invited Mr. Carter on the show to discuss a report Mr. Carter had done at Huffington Post about Dick Cheney. During the interview, Mr. Carter displayed a complete lack of knowledge and understanding about the War in Iraq, and Mr. Cheney’s role in it, so much so, that after playing a clip of his remarks, Hugh asked Mr. Carter if had been drinking or had been on medication when he made his boneheaded remarks. Mr. Carter incorrectly claimed that Pres. Bush and Dick Cheney had never given any credible answer for the 2003 liberation of Iraq. He admitted that he had not read Dick Cheney’s memoir or George W. Bush’s. He had also not read The Looming Tower, one of the critical books for understanding 9/11 and its aftermath. Not only that, he had not heard of Alger Hiss. He did know that Bill Clinton had bombed Iraq in 1998. He did not know who A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan bomb, is.
Ronald Reagan famously said “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so,” and that ignorance and belief in falsehoods is on prominent display during Barack Obama’s never-ending campaign, featuring demagogic speeches delivered to audiences of clapping, backward children. As we watch him continue running his con, relying on the young and clueless to fuel his political fortunes, consider also these words from The Communist Manifesto: “In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”
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Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikbenson/214904874/
