FTA: "But the story of the long, hot summer of 2020 is much more complex than the subplot concerning missing dads. More and more Americans, especially young Americans, have suffered not one but several ruptured connections to authority and community simultaneously.
That fact explains why even the young who do come from intact homes are affected to some degree by the crisis of Western paternity. The institutions that once anchored teenagers and young adults in paternal authority are in free fall. Their concomitant collapses generate a social anxiety that is contagious. This dynamic renders the occasional spectacle of well-off protesters from unbroken homes smashing people’s property more intelligible than it appears at first. The saying “People, not property” inadvertently points to what ails young America most: a people deficit.
Christianity, to name one institution that has connected Americans to other generations and one another, began a stark decline around 1963. That decline has accelerated with particular speed among the young. In 2019, 44 percent of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-nine were “nones.” “None of the above” is now the fastest-growing religious subset in the United States.
There is evidence that the loosening of family ties and the loosening of religious ties are linked—especially among practitioners of identity politics. A 2016 study of white nationalists by the University of Virginia’s Family Policies Institute turned up at least two suggestive findings. One was that subjects were much more likely to be divorced than to be married or never married. Once again, family rupture and extremist identity politics appear to be related.
The same study also confirmed that those drawn to white nationalism are unlikely to attend church (indeed, most white nationalists fervently oppose both Christianity and Judaism). Thus, religious rupture and extremist identity politics also appear to be related. The same seems true of BLM, which as a Marxist movement would oppose Christianity in principle. It seems unlikely that antifa members are tithing or spending Sunday mornings with a hymnal, either. Identitarian bands seem to function as “street families” for the soul.
If fatherlessness and secularization are two aspects of the decline of the paternal principle, there remains a third: attachment to country. Here, too, Millennials and Gen Z stand out. For many years, the decline of American patriotism among the young has been charted in surveys. Gallup reports a fifty-year decline in Americans’ trust in both political and non-political institutions (the military, the police, organized religion, the media). A headline last year summarized the point: “Poll: Patriotism, Religion, Kids Lower Priorities for Younger Americans.”
4th reason: cynicism.
Kids are sponges but not in the good-student, color-inside-the-lines sense. They witness, evaluate, decide, and act.
And what they see is hypocrisy, lip service, demagoguery, self-aggrandizement from ‘adults’ who act like kids themselves.
They hear how bad racism is but see the entire black race given license to commit crimes, use racial epithets directed at them (white kids), use the so-called horrible n-word freely even as a synonym for friend, compadre, or merely random person (often of any race). And, in the worst cases, they see the black race given license to loot, burn, assault and riot because some miserable violent junkie met an inevitable sticky end by taking on the police.
They hear that homosexuality and ‘transgenderism’ are valid, healthy things and are expected to ignore the obvious depression, alienation and outright mental illness that accompany these. They hear about gay/trans relationships but are expected to ignore the sordid, often dangerous hookup culture that is a large portion of the gay and trans world.
They are told wealth is bad, aspiration is selfish, having a job/family/house/car is somehow outdated or oppressive. Yet they see college profs fighting tooth and nail for tenure, to be published and to obtain significant compensation for doing less and less work. Same dynamic in politicians.
They are harangued about the environment by people who ride in motorcades, own multiple houses, own boats, fly first class or even fly on private jets.
They see funny things in comedies old and new but are deadly afraid of some killjoy telling them ‘That’s not funny!’ They are literally afraid to laugh - a natural human emotion. Among many young people clapping or whooping has replaced laughter although the clapping (or ‘clapter’ as someone termed it) and whooping are often of the mob variety as a ‘comedian’ tells unfunny jokes about designated targets eg white people, rich people, politicians other than Democrats.
They are told education is important yet often graduate from school with appalling abilities in language, math, history, logic, critical thinking and science. Their induced intellectual deficits lead to social embarrassment or shame which usually turns to anger. Screaming and shouting slogans is, they believe, an effective means of camouflaging their ignorance. They demand dialogue and when someone offers it they throw a tantrum.
They are told to be individuals but are expected to conform to the PC code even when nobody’s watching. They are told to be creative but their music is a mishmash of stock drum loops, autotune vocals and thugs mumbling rap. Their art is almost always political propaganda in some form that must ‘make a statement.’
They are told drugs & alcohol are bad but booze is easy to obtain and marijuana - and worse - are being legalized.
Women are to be respected as equals but they regularly view pornography and see respect rather thin on the ground.
In sum, they have been lied to. Constantly and repeatedly. Some recognize it but decide to go along to get along. Some don’t understand that their brains are rebelling against a flood of conflicting messages and become angry, confused, vengeful - so they pick an approved target and join a mob. A very small segment recognize the brainwashing and resist it, often with the help of family, religion, private schooling or a secret society of sorts among their friends.