I was in my truck last week during a time when countless indoctrination centers (euphemistically but unconvincingly referred to as schools) used tax dollars to parade children about as if they were trained monkeys in a socialist circus. America’s Pravda (NPR) gleefully shoved announcements of it up my ass twice hourly.
I was not surprised by the pointless marching but was mightily disappointed to see teenagers actively requesting they be treated like helpless little pets. Stuffing teenagers in a cage is nothing new. We put ‘em there because they’re Tide-pod eating, fidget spinning, Facebook surfing, half beings who can barely wipe their own ass. It is the job of teenagers grow strong and escape into young adulthood (possibly while sneering like James Dean, listening to bad music, and dressing like an idiot). They are meant to prove their completeness by thriving as adults; get a job, buy a car, get laid, move out, make bad choices and bear the results, make good choices and enjoy the results, discover that life is not fair, raise kids of your own, mow the lawn, bitch about taxes, save for retirement, and keep on keepin’ on until you’re dead. Leave the sandbox of childhood and move on; that’s the whole point!
Teenagers are usually imbued with the restless desire to go about the business of being men and women. It’s an atrocity to train it out of them. The “protesters” were whining though the cage bars, “please don’t let me buy a .22 plinker because I’m a drooling imbecile who’s too fucking dumb to handle it”. How are idiots like that ever going to be awesome?
Teenagers marching into a cage is alien and disturbing. When I was younger I recall efforts to remove certain “rights” from young Americans and teenagers did not go lightly into that dark night. Recall when they got serious about stopping tobacco sales to minors? Teenagers aren’t total morons. We all knew smoking was bad for you. Some kids smoked, others didn’t, but NOBODY, not a single goddamn fuckwit mamma’s boy was out there marching around the streets like a brainwashed shitweasel begging the government to stop them from buying the demon tobacco. Later, uptight prohibitionists misused interstate highway funding to force States to raise the drinking age. There wasn’t a single goddamn 19-year-old screaming and carrying signs demanding the terrible burden of self-determination be lifted from their sagging shoulders. “Oh, please massa, don’t let me buy Budweiser at 19. I’m just so damn stupid I can’t handle it. I’m only mommy’s little baby after all.” Whether a kid wanted to wait until they were 21 to legally drink shitty canned beer or not, NOBODY wanted to be told we couldn’t do it. Any kid who was in favor of limiting teenager’s rights was sure to get his ass kicked by teenage boys and the cold shoulder from the young ladies… as it should be.
I don’t really care that kids have opinions about politics. They’re practicing to be adults after all. But they’re kids, they don’t know a fucking thing. “Teachers” and “journalists” pretending to seriously listen to kids are lying. They’re the bastards that trained the barking seal to clap. They’re cackling with glee as the clapping seal affirms what they wanted to hear. They trained the damn sheep to love their cage and that makes thundering herds of Dolores Umbridge clones’ little withered hearts beat pitty pat. They took obnoxious, brash, arrogant, future humans and made them small and weak and docile. The perfect clay to mold a lesser society.
I call bullshit. I can train a parrot to call me handsome but that doesn’t mean I’m handsome. I know that because it’s just a fucking parrot. Even when I keep my dog on a leash it’s only when I have to and only because it’s a fucking dog. I’d no more turn the thumbscrews on real humans, future men and women, than I’d stick my dick in a light socket. And furthermore if I had any role in a century of socialist indoctrination that produced teenagers who will march en masse like poodles in a dog show because they want less rights for themselves I’d hang my head in shame. I’m shocked and deeply saddened to see young Americans angrily complaining that they have certain “rights” and they want them removed. That’s a new and depressing lowering of the bar. Schools should be ashamed of what they’ve become.
Here’s a Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight meant for the marching teenage Facebook zombies:
Teenagers must prepare themselves to handle free will, make choices, and take personal responsibility. Fail at that and they have failed at all. Schools gathering teenagers in herds to demand their rights be forcibly removed infantalizes the weak to feed the politics of the unworthy. It keeps their victims at the kid’s table on Thanksgiving. Turns them into pajama boy for life. Don’t let that happen. The world doesn’t need another dithering nincompoop watching Frozen with the toddlers until they lose steam in their sixth year of pointless college. Nut up and earn a seat at the adult’s table. Don’t march around like your teacher’s plaything! Fuck them! They’re the useful idiots that would be the first up against the wall if they ever got their way (for that matter they have succeeded at it more than once). Wash your hands of their tawdry little mind games, think for yourself, and aim higher.
Fortunately I’ll solve all “dumbass teenager” problems in the next post…
“I’m concerned that I could, if I wanted, buy a .22 plinker. I should be stopped from that!
I’m going to protest in the streets just like my teachers want. I won’t stop until I’m locked in a lecture about intersectionality and fed a Tide-pod.”
“My school bused me to a protest and my teachers told me what to say and I did everything I was told. We were in a big group and it was lots of fun. I like doing exactly what I’m told.”
It’s not that teens want fewer rights – it’s that they want more, specifically the right to be safe and not be killed by someone whose teenage brain hasn’t developed enough to know how to handle the right to own a gun.
I put a lot of thought into this reply. I don’t want to be flippant or rude. I’d like to disagree without being mean or dismissive. I’d like to disagree without making light of the horrible tragedy that happened at Parkland. Nor ignore the past sorrows that have always happened and those that will happen in the future. Nobody wants to see children suffer. Nobody at all. I also apologize if I was a bit harsh while I was standing on my electronic soapbox. I value your heartfelt comment. Presumably in other matters of life, such as my less political posts about antique saw blades, talking maple trees, and free range chicken on the lawn, we can find common ground.
I speak of rights with an older vocabulary than the modern day. I am deeply invested in the enlightenment ideas of liberty, freedom, and free will. And of course rights. They matter to me because I think the greatest thing a human can do is to live free; to be as fully and completely whatever they choose. What a luminous concept!
Liberty, freedom, free will, and natural rights; none of these things can be construed in any way to assure safety. I know! It totally sucks! But that’s the way of it.
Teenagers who want the “right to be safe” aren’t going to get it. They protest in search of something that doesn’t exist. There is no “right to safety”.
Nobody and nothing is ever powerful enough to conjure up a right to “safety”. No school, no nation, and not even the warm embrace of one’s mother can provide a “right to safety”. Learning that is part of becoming an adult. We all must suffer the difficult and painful discovery that there isn’t a magic wand that can make things safe.
I don’t have a “right to be safe”. I’d love to have it. Wouldn’t we all? For that matter you don’t have a “right to be safe” either. I could be stuck by lightning by lunch. You could be hit by a Buick before you read this. Every day we get up, get out of bed, and face the day knowing that we are not safe. Or, more appropriately, we know roughly what risks we’ll encounter. Wisely we mitigate them as best we can. Being mere mortals, we can only do so much. Small inconveniences and large disasters are part of life; we could slip on the ice, be stricken by cancer, have a heart attack, or yes… in very very very very uncommon circumstances encounter a violent person.
The good news is we are as safe as any humans at any time in history; especially our children. Most of my readers live in the safest parts of the safest towns in the safest nation in the safest time on Earth. Statistically, kids are safer in school than in their home. Yet tragedy strikes and it’s terrible; so we wish with all our heart we could provide a “right to safety”.
At this point I can imagine you’re rolling your eyes and thinking of me as a pedantic nitwit who’s more obsessed with vocabulary than life. Not true. I don’t hate kids. I have kids. I’m not in favor of crazed maniacs shooting schoolchildren. Nobody is. But I also know that taking away rights, real natural rights, from soon to be adult humans comes with a cost. It takes them one more step away from the free adult person that they might one day become. I worry about marches and staged events perpetuating the fallacy that there’s a “right to safety”. I love it when little children talk about Santa Claus. It’s beautiful and sweet. But it’s weird if a teenager does it. Eventually we don’t talk about Santa; we try (imperfectly!) to be Santa; knowing all along that nobody can be Santa. Teenagers stomping around seeking the understandably attractive but unattainable “right to safety” isn’t unlike seeing a teenager talk about Santa.
Suppose we removed gun rights from everyone under 21. Would that be the “right to safety” teens seek? Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook was under 21 and he didn’t own a gun. Is that not relevant? Nikolas Cruz was by all accounts mentally ill and everyone knew he was dangerous. Would tinkering with gun rights for those under 21 have fixed that? Wouldn’t we also need to fortify the school? Surround it with a moat, fence, concertina wire, metal detectors, install armed guards, and lock the place down tighter than a maximum security prison. Would that do it? Do people get hurt in maximum security prisons? Are there pros and cons? What part of childhood is lost if one attends school in a prison? Is it worth it to create the “right to safety”? Would turning a school into a fortress assure as much safety as other options? What about teenage drivers en route to school, what about the cafeteria’s food supply? Which is worse; a car wreck or e coli? Every year, cars kill about 30,000 Americans and e coli kills about 30. Which of those two should we eliminate first? Both? No driving cars until 21 and no organic lettuce? Would that produce the elusive “right to safety” teenagers are seeking?
When is the “right to be safe” attained?
In Parkland there was an armed guard at the school, would two guards have been better? How about six? Twenty? There were a couple of Sheriff’s officers at the school. Did that provide the “right to safety”? Do we need more cops? How many? President Clinton famously added 100,000 of cops and apparently that wasn’t enough to stop the Parkland event. How many more would finally create a “right to safety”? 200,000? 600,000? There’s something like 15,000 gun laws in America. How many more would be enough? 20,000? Suppose we really go for it and next year that school has 6 armed guards, and there are a half million more cops on the streets, and another 20,000 laws on the books. Even now have we created the “right to safety” that teenagers demand? Are there drawbacks? What happens in a world that’s increasingly un-free? Will teenagers grow to adult age without learning the adult lesson that life is risky and nobody can make the world safe on your behalf?
So you see, I really do care about kids but they’re going about it all wrong. There’s no “right to be safe”. No amount of marching around in front of TV cameras will ever make it so. The best one can do is prepare for and become the best adult one can be. I wish them all luck.
Can I post this in the local paper here?
The whole damn thing? Doesn’t the paper have limits?
Oh man, I’m such a geezer! It just dawned on me that the “paper” isn’t printed on paper. Duh!
Why don’t you grab a couple of snippets that are the part you like best, or the introductory paragraph or two, paste ’em over to the paper, and include a link along with your personal commentary. Something like “this idiot talks to squirrels” or “this guy’s dog is a great theologian”. OK I’m kidding about the theologian… my dog just growled at me, the dog was never an ivory tower sort and prefers to be just an editor. 🙂
Anyway a couple quotes added to public commentary is part of the fair use doctrine and is totally cool. I’d be honored and the paper is probably happy with such things. Just slapping my whole 1000 word rant into their open forum is different and would probably annoy the paper.
Also, be warned that part 2 is where I gave free rein to all sorts of fun ideas like tattooing the full text of the constitution on Supreme Court Justice’s ass. It’s satire but who among us wouldn’t pay good money to see Trump chasing Ruth Bader Ginsberg around with a tattoo pen.
Also, if it goes viral and I get a bunch of hits, I’m officially putting you in charge of social media marketing. 🙂
You are a bit behind the times. Try to keep up.
This will … amuse (or appal) you:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/42825/
Americas brightest and finest, apparently.
Jesus Christ!
“Oh please Apple, stop us from using the product we bought and carry around in our pockets.” OK some kids are misled but others are fucking blockheads.
OMG! I just realized these are university students. Every phone in creation can be turned “off”. What’s with these fools?
That is really sad and frightening; these are the people who hope to be running the world some day.
If these young adult students said they were going to use guns to defend themselves against anyone forcing them into school, would you be on their side or obey the police?
Interesting thought. I can’t see myself on the side of dragging anyone into a “education center”. For kids, there are alternatives; home schooling, distance learning, drop out and get a job, etc… In current law (if not general practice) kids can tell the system to “fuck off” and no guns are needed. Thank goodness it doesn’t involve anything more violent than paperwork!
I have a real issue with state compulsory anything but especially education. School is so amazingly invasive and (for some kids) cruel. It doesn’t have to be that way but it is. There’s a vast difference between the theory (free education giving every individual their best shot to rise to their full ability) and the reality (thirteen years sitting in rows mouthing whatever you’re told punctuated by group projects far removed from STEM). So no, I wouldn’t side with police dragging crowds of kids against their will into a school. I’m not sure I’d side with police dragging crowds of anybody into any building.
Part of this is visceral. Burly dudes in battle rattle shoving kids on a school bus would seem like an echo of a cattle car to me. I wouldn’t want to see that.
But hey, I’m just a blogger so lets not be so dark eh?
If you can’t buy a weapon, lovingly craft one from inadequate shop tools and inhomogenous mystery metal with a low melting point. My brother and I put *craters* in the field behind our house (and were chased around by the farmer’s tractor afterwards.)
My grandfather blew up the municipal wastewater treatment plant pump shed with a homemade howitzer. Back then, it was just one of those stages incipient engineers went through. The only acts of terrorism were by the mayor when he caught him.
Do you remember Max Headroom? One of the episodes opened with the cops breaking into an apartment and someone says “Look at the TV!” The lead cop goes, “Huh! It’s got an off switch. They’ll get life for that!”