Posted on 06/21/2022 5:18:05 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Note from Jane Menton: The OG MC (Francis Menton) is currently recovering from Covid and will return later this week.
One of my roles here at Manhattan Contrarian is acting as the cultural correspondent and translator, giving some insight into the views and beliefs of the millennial generation and younger. Unfortunately, it gets harder every day to present those views as rational when they’re so often based on magical thinking. For example, the same people who have been haranguing us for years for not doing enough to end our dependence on fossil fuels – the same ones who cheered the shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline – now can’t believe the prices they must pay for gas. The same people who thought stimulus checks were the bare minimum the government could do for people struggling during COVID, are now shocked by surging inflation. “Buying less alcohol so that when I sell my kidneys they get a better price,” reads one quote in the article about inflation.
All the articles linked above are from Buzzfeed. For members of the older generation who may not be *in the know,* (aka, my dad the Manhattan Contrarian) Buzzfeed is the primary cultural hub for the millennial generation. It’s a one-stop shop, covering everything from pop culture to news. I sometimes doubt my generation reads anything else (forget the Wall Street Journal). I follow it too, occasionally because it’s entertaining, and mostly because I have to follow it in order to know what my peers are thinking and feeling.
One of the most useful things Buzzfeed does is collect the soundbites on current events from young “influencers”. Multiple times a week, Buzzfeed puts together twitter roundups on different subjects – e.g. gas prices, climate change, dating as a queer 20-something – that can be neatly summarized as “What the Cool Young People are Saying.” I read these roundups at the end of every week, and every week it gets harder and harder to ignore the glaring contradictions in millennial thinking on policy. Just last week I read one such roundup of complaints about our current economy and inflation that was stunning in its complete lack of awareness. A few excerpts:
We’re all supposed to cheer along with these tweeters’ outrage, as if there’s any surprise gasoline prices are rising when, in his first few months in office in 2021, Biden pledged he would prevent oil companies from drilling on federal land, pledged to ban fracking, blocked construction of oil and gas pipelines, and so on. Or as if inflation isn’t the natural consequence of dumping $4.6 trillion of newly-printed money into a stalled economy. Meanwhile, here are excerpts from another roundup of tweets on Buzzfeed, this one from 2017, complaining that we aren’t doing enough about climate change. Of course, this was back when gas was affordable:
It is remarkable that Buzzfeed can promote these twitter roundups without ever seeming to realize that suppressing fossil fuel production in an effort to address climate change would ultimately cause the price of gasoline to go up. How could the editors of these lists not see that raising gasoline prices, such that people are forced to use less of it, is not a policy accident. It is part of the plan. It is in fact the most important feature of the plan. A plan they have spent years advocating for.
And how could they not realize that the ramifications from rising oil and gas prices would trickle down throughout the entire economy, affecting all of our everyday expenses: the cost to grow food (using modern, fossil fuel-enabled technology), to heat a home, to drive a car, to buy a plane ticket? How could they not see that they are the source of their own problems?
We can only hope that prolonged inflation and record high fuel prices are the wakeup calls this generation needs.
Who cares about green energy if it bankrupts everyone and then then can only afford to walk?
.
The Left is at war with reality.
Climate change is a religious cult for losers and fools.
Whoever these so-called “government policymakers are, need to be doxxed: names, addresses, phone#s, etc.
What gives these unelected bureaucrats the right to decide what’s best for our country and society? Who made them god? Screw them!!
I doubt that no one here on FR is against sound technological advances for the common good of mankind, but one cannot go out and outright kill the very lifeblood of our nation over unproven politicized BS with no viable alternative...an alternative that can stand on it’s own two feet in the open market. These people need to be removed and run out of the country on a rail.
The voting age should be 50.
“And how could they not realize that the ramifications from rising oil and gas prices would trickle down throughout the entire economy, affecting all of our everyday expenses:...”
Because despite their “education”, they are both stupid and ignorant, indoctrinated political sheep, controlled by their emotions and suffer from delusional thinking. And they all vote demonkrap. I’ll stop here.
Buzzfeed has readers? I guess AIDS isn’t the death sentence it used to be.
If it weren’t for magical thinking democrats and televangelists would be extinct.
And you should be a property and land owner to vote as well.
What does one expect when an entire generation plus has been taught to in-think.
Put your hand on hot stove, get burned. Response:
My generation: I am not doing that again.
Millennials: Its the stove’s fault!! I should be able to place my hand wherever I want!! Racist stove manufacturer!!
there is no such a thing as a fossil fuel
They are children in the mind...........................
Stop calling it fossil fuel! This is another rhetorical leftist trick to subliminally suggest it’s outdated. Call them petroleum products!
“What gives these unelected bureaucrats the right to decide what’s best for our country and society?”
There is a lot more to it than the bureaucrats - they are the implementers. Let’s assume climate change by human beings is an imminent threat to life (I know it is hard but stay with me here). Why would the marketplace not be where the technical innovations be driven to the “problem”.? After all, why aren’t the radical leftists investing their money in private enterprise to solve the “problem”? ALl I read and hear is the givernments (especially EU driven, French-speaking John The Bloviator Kerry following along) pushing it, and big companies, universities and media falling in line to keep what they have, and get their slice of the pie, and be indeminified against any losses. No one is saying the problem needs to be solved by private enterprise, that is if it truly is a problem.
THAT should be made into a t shirt!
“Call them petroleum products!”
Why?
Nothing remarkable here. Infants aren’t wise, but they think they are.
You really can’t talk to them about climate change they will get violent. I caught a little of NPR in passing the other day and I marveled at how they program people. The constant repetition and droning voices with the always pleasant vocal fry and upspeak that the speaker feels sounds educated and intelligent.
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