202 Comments

Uhm. . . you can't cure stupid. You can (let life) whack the spoiled out of the brat though. And you can let people disqualify themselves from life through their own actions, harsh as it may sound.

"We have three basic institutions that teach adulthood..."

I'd add a fourth: marry and become a father. That did it for me. Started working when I left school at 16, married at 20 and became a father the same year. Worked a gamut of menial jobs until I managed to qualify for university, so I didn't come into academia proper until I was about 30.

And you know, I think having to work a year or three being a doorman or working at a sanitation company cleaning up apartments and houses were people had been lying dead for days or weeks or combining night school and delivering morning papers and mopping floors (or military, if it's real military and not a rainbow parade) - I think having done something real before going into academia is essential for most of us.

Adult we may be, but maturity needs experience to blossom.

I remember thinking when I held my son for the first time, "I may not amount to much, but I'll do right by you!". To me, that moment in the delivery room is when I graduated as an adult.

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So well said, Rikard. I remember a friend of mine stating she was "too selfish" to have a child, and all I could think was, "yep, and you'll stay that way without one."

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At least she was self aware. 🤨

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Bandit, indeed. Why is it that some parents want to demonize those who are childless by choice (or by circumstance)? I personally don't believe everyone is fit to become a parent. But it is sad that anyone would call themselves "selfish" for wanting to live a different lifestyle, and even worse for someone else to say that that person will remain infantile. There are ways to be of fruitful service to community and to society at large other than having children, especially if the parenting style leads to the utter nonsense we are seeing these days in their children.

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My experience has shown that the people who demonize the childless are usually the worst parents. OR they're so miserable being "tied down" with the child(ren) that they wish that misery on everyone else and, therefore, put them down to feel better.

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I don’t demonize the childless. I do feel sorry for them. Half my friends are childless. I don’t think any of them have fully grown up. I see that everywhere. It isn’t demonizing. It is pointing out a fact.

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I see. Not fully grown up = having time for yourself, not boring people to tears while endlessly complaining/bragging about your ill behaved kids, lording over the childless how dedicated you are to your children, how wonderful it is to be a parent, while complaining endlessly how little money you have because junior has to (fill in whatever boring thing you're having to pay for for the kid(s)).

Yeah, I've not had one single friend NOT tell me they wished they never had kids.

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I agree wholeheartedly. Isn't it truly sad that people are so unwilling to work on themselves that they don't see how horrible they are to others?

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You must be a fantastic dad.

And yes, the best thing that could ever happen to these kids is that they have to work a low-level job somewhere, and if they have to work with their hands all the better.

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Well, the son knows his right from his wrong, and has a keen sense on justice and fairness.

As I told him when I caught him eavesdropping on me and his mom and some friends from our wild youth, sipping beers and swapping memories:

"Learn from us - especially what not to do!"

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As I have observed in my three sons, they learn from our mistakes so that they can make brand new ones on their own.

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Oh my God you are telling my story too. If there is any advice I’d give to a young person it is go into the skilled trades or establish your own business. There is nothing more demoralizing than saying “Yes ma’am (or sir)” to these overprivileged, entitled brats who end up being your bosses for the rest of your life.

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Well said buddy.

Same Rikard except I held two babies and said to myself:

"Better grow up real quick buddy....cuz these cute little munchkins are 100% effing helpless! "

Joys of my life.

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I can so agree with you! I did not marry until I was 37 and had my only son at age 38. That was not by design. I started working full time after high school, and most men I met were working because they were married with families already. Though I was a reliable employee (I missed only one day of work other than vacations in my first 20+ years at the company), my free time was pretty self-centered. Becoming a parent made me less selfish. My son, on the other hand married his high school sweetheart when he was 24 and she 23. They now have a 3 1/2 year old and a 1 1/2 year old, and he is a hard working, dedicated family man. Being a parent has really grown him.

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You can't cure stupid, but you can expel it from the university and make it go live in Mommy & Daddy's basement and work at McDonalds.

It's pretty simple. If you are involved in a pro-Hamas protest, your professional, white-collar, laptop class life should be over. Permanently. Forget learning to code; learn how to sweep.

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Congratulations on adulthood and fatherhood! Sisterly love.

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Hah, I was going to say the same thing. I've a very similar story, too. Well done.

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“Maturity needs experience to blossom.” Great quote, Rikard! When and why was this basic truth forgotten?

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I don't know that I can give a definite answer, much less an authoritative one, but I'll make an attempt:

Think back to the mid-19th century, and its upper classes living in the posh areas of major cities. A common caricature of their offspring was the pampered Mommy's boy, dolled up so that you'd think it was a girl, and protected from /everything/ mumsy could imagine being a danger. (I'm using sterotypes and clichés and prejudice galore here.)

Back then, that class made up a few percent of the population, though their Views On Things carried an inordinate weight. Also, lots of things were more dangerous back then, so it wasn't all delusional hysterics as it is today.

As that class grew and class barriers/limits became diffuse and muddled during the 20th century, especially after WW2, so did their Views become commonplace in the collective mind, the "Sea of Ideas" so to say. Foremost amongst these were what we today would call "safetyism", accompanied by an erroneous understanding of the concept of Rights/Privileges and a very sheltered upbringing.

And for a neurotic mind susceptible to "safetyism", the safer it is, the more frightened it becomes - when it is perfectly safe in its sheltered home, the panic attacks come since that mind is alone with itself.

Add to that, that like calls to like, which resulted in things such as group therapy and special interest groups where people of like mind came together focused not on a tangible physical activity (surfing, down-hill skiing, whatever) but on shared emotional perception/experience (the eponymous "Women's Café"-s of feminist groups being a prime example and candidate for any thesis paper on this) and because groups enhance and reinforce the most dominant and prominent traits of the members - we in the 1970s entered into a self-replicating, self-reinforcing cycle of ever more equality, safetyism, and participation trophy-idealism.

Enter the internet, which added not just further reinforcement of the above, but made it a 24/7/365 thing, and an identity (read: tribal affiliation) to boot.

It is a great fear of mine that this cycle can only be broken by great turmoil and upheaval and suffering, much as it is often required for an addict to realise his/her's problem: to stop, one must crash.

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She'll have a long and productive career as a useless academic "expert", and end up as that crazy woman down the hall who claims you pee too loudly.

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Or the woman (9/10 it is a woman, but that 1/10 man. . . eugh) who files for two weeks sick leave because someone used her coffee-mug.

Because it made her feel unsafe.

Actual example.

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Pee too loudly!!!! 😂

bsn

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A friend of mine had one of those living under him for a while right after high school, but she claimed he was drilling holes through the floor to peep on her (and yeah, nobody wanted to see that, least of all a 19 year old kid). She was a doctor of... Something or other, Studies probably.

More recently I had a male version above me (male, but not man), who used to lodge complaints with management and throw toddler grade temper tantrums whenever we turned on the bathroom fan. Claimed it was too loud, as if there was something we could do about that or more to point about his bizarre neurosis in regard to fan noises. Don't know what he was an Expert in but it was something if I had to guess.

Anyway, I miss when we had asylums for people with these kinds of struggles.

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Can’t we be a little angry with the students themselves too? I mean, at some point your situation is *your own fault*. “My parents never taught me _________!” OK, forgive them and go learn it

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If I had ever considered, even for a fleeting moment, joining a protest like this my parents would have said no. I paid my way through college, it wasn't their money, but if they said no, no it was going to be. That's because my parents were of the generation when parents parented and laid down the rules, which is apparently no longer the case.

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The rules now might be, "YOU are going to be a girl!"

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And stay a girl and become a woman

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There's going to be a terrible backlash against the trans industry. They can't make you the opposite sex.

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Can’t happen soon enough

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In all honesty, it would be best, for the ones who have not yet embarked on the destructive and irreversible process.

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amen!

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My kid goes to Columbia (lives WAY off campus, thank God), and last night sent me the link to the student radio station so I could listen to the color commentary as the NYPD broke up the jihadist jamboree in Hamilton Hall. Two things stood out: 1) how absolutely unprepared these kids are for life in the real world, and 2) how absolutely broken beyond repair “journalism” is. Student “reporters” were stationed across the campus, and the broadcast pinged between them at their various locations. They were genuinely shocked that “there are WAY more police here than there are protestors!” and “it looks like the police are going to ENTER THROUGH THE ROOF!! (as if they were breaking some unwritten rule of riot control etiquette). When one of the reporters read aloud the letter that President Shafik wrote to the NYPD asking for their help, and for them to remain on campus until 2 days past graduation, this poor little snowflake started CRYING and had to pass the mic to another reporter, so traumatized was she that there would be ACTUAL POLICE ON CAMPUS. I kid you not. So, these precious little darlings are in for a real ass whoopin’ when they leave the amniotic sac that is university. And what they’re engaged in, these wannabe Dan Rathers, is not the “unbiased journalism” they kept patting themselves on the back for delivering. Oh no. The could barely say the word “police” without spitting on the ground. They hate them. All of these kids are brainwashed ideologues, and it was crystal clear whose side they’re on—for a minute, anyway. When the Dean of Columbia College came out to try to keep the police from arresting the student journalists for not retreating inside one of the dorms and out of the way of police, he was threatened with arrest himself, at least momentarily. Instantly, according to my daughter’s telling, these kids began to rail against this unbelievable overreach by the NYPD (“you can’t arrest our dean!!!”) when only a day or two before they had brutally slagged that same dean on air for his complicity in genocide. A small but important point, too, is that the school should turn out students who have, as native English speakers, a better command of the language. At one point, the eyewitness reporter described the police as using “a police contraption that has a ladder like looking thing” to enter the window. If it weren’t so sad, I would have busted a rib laughing.

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5 years ago a columbia freshman was brutally murdered in the park up the hill. the whole campus was screaming for additional police protection. funny how times change

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Thank you for the laugh. It is very hard not to wish for Very Bad Things to rain down upon these mewling, officious, self-congratulatory and entitled infants, 95% of whom would be unable to point out Gaza on a map or give you any sort of factual narrative about the founding of the Jewish state.

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"a ladder looking thing" 😂 go go gadget fascist ladder looking thing! 😂

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I am so tired of people blaming everything on MAGA republicans. There needs to be an equally clear name for the agenda that the Democrats have been pushing. I think I will will begin referring to them as TATS Democrats as in Turning America To Shit Democrats. I can imagine a sneering Trump and his next rally referring to those evil TATS Democrats.

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May I use that? TATS is perfect!!!

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Of course.

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Every time I see one of those stupid checkered scarves around someone's head or neck, I want to puke!

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Looks a little like cultural appropriation to me.

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Jew Hate, *so* hot right now!

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Jews are the new whites. Which would raise some amused eyebrows among the Ellis Island generation, who had their race recorded as “Hebrew” on ship manifests and census sheets.

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It is precisely that.

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LOL - touche!

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😂

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Yes I know this is all indicative of the hastening slide of western civilization into oblivion, but we've really reached Monty Python levels of absurdist comedy with this event.

"We're violent revolutionaries who have seized a whole building in our war against the Man. We now demand: juice boxes, snackies and pillows and blankets for nap nap. We oppose any reactionary elements denying us our humanitarian aid during our nap time!"

This would be high comedy and the fact that our actors here think anyone is taking them seriously only heightens the mirth.

I can not laugh hysterically at the whole goofy farce at this point. These people just aren't ready for real life.

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The ‘revolutionaries’ on the UCLA campus asked that their food baskets not contain bananas because one of them was allergic. The counter-protesters waved bananas at them! Lol

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Someone should tell the university types that the problem with saying stupid things is that people will start to think you're stupid. (I am a retired university type.)

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I would never hire an Ivy. As an employer.

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In many cases, the best teachers of adult behavior and demeanor are at home; the parent(s) are the role model with the greatest impact. I have to wonder at the home life of many of these college students. I fear much of this intolerance and narcissism was taught at home.

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The affluent parents of children now in their 20s and 30s are TERRIFIED to upset their children. This is a cohort who spent the last few decades trying to be their child’s “best friend”, which is not compatible with good parenting. I see it with so many of my friends — their children are trans, SJW, or otherwise “captured”, and these parents have uncritically adopted all these causes.

Our future will not improve until we raise a generation of actual adults, who can then raise a generation of children who will be adults. It kinda makes me wonder if we should have a year of compulsory military service for young people: they could do Civilian Conservation Corps-like work; and be forced to learn discipline while helping others. I think we’d have a lot fewer “Death to America”-screaming kids if they were made to be PART OF the American experience.

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" . . . I think we’d have a lot fewer “Death to America”-screaming kids if they were made to be PART OF the American experience."

Unfortunately, they ARE part of the American experience, willingly or not, ruled by bought-off WEFfenfuhrer "leaders" doing everything in their power to kill the golden goose and everything that made it possible. Fall of the Roman Empire. Weimar Amerika.

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"This is a cohort who spent the last few decades trying to be their child’s “best friend”, which is not compatible with good parenting."

That cohort conveniently began their socialization just as 'a new thing' called the Internet went live. I'm well aware that correlation doesn't equal causation yet I have a nagging sense that the beginnings of 'social media' engendered by this Internet thing derailed traditional socialization patterns in a major way.

It once was that – if you were brought up to be a responsible human being – you grew out of the grade-school social interaction models as you matured into adolescence ,then adulthood. Now, with social media available 24/7/365 to one and all, that no longer happens. Social media prevails, constant habituation to peer pressure and 'me too-ism' where before there were responsible adults who understood the difference between truth and propaganda, morality and perversity, temptation and intolerable.

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We've always had things that, left uncorrected, put kids in danger of becoming idiots. The difference now is nobody expects them to grow up, because most of the people responsible for raising and teaching them never grew up.

This is toddler behavior. You leave it alone, they keep behaving like this as children; leave it alone, it keeps up into their tweens and teens and young adulthood; don't demand adult behavior at college or on the job and soon your employees are staging "walk outs" from their six figure jobs over alleged oppression; and then they get promoted, or run for congress. Which brings us to the present.

Social media is what it is because it was designed by adult infants for adult infants, to reward infantile behavior. It's a symptom, not the disease.

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Or more likely, literally nothing was taught at home. So somehow they entered into college as completely blank fucking slates to be written on by leftist professors.

These campus protests are really just the poorly trained attack dogs turning on their handlers. The hardcore communists turning on the champagne-socialists who formed them.

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For me, becoming a parent made me want a better life for my children. That I OWED them a better life--the best I could muster. I went to school full time, worked part time made hard decisions and lots of sleepless nights. I had three jobs at one point and volunteered at my kid's school so I could keep them out of the terrible public school system they would have to attend because of where I could afford to live. I am no different than millions of people with a goal.

My children, in particular my daughter who is now a very liberal lawyer, still blames me for things I didn't do, things she needed I couldn't provide. She called one Mother's Day and left a message on my phone saying" you're probably at work, like you always were". She believes in socialism, anarchy, every conservative is a racist at heart, Christians are stupid. She didn't get that at home. She's 40 now, still identifies as a 'punk" and an organizer and received many awards in law school for these values and actions. ( She went to school a little later in life). She judges my decisions so harshly as a parent( I was pretty strict, no spanking but def consequences for bad decisions) and blames my parenting skills for the bad choices she has made in her life. Part of me wishes she had a child to see that it's not easy being responsible for the lives of others, but the other part of me is grateful that someone so narcissistic and self involved chose not to have a child She's drowning in school debt but took out money to live on so she wouldn't have to work. She believes society should have to help pay for those choices.

I made the commitment and did my best to honor it. I feel I did fairly well. She heartily disagrees. But faced with the situation and choices I had, and choosing not to use the system to assist me ,I think she would see my path in a different light and with a little more respect. I think I worked too hard to make her life easier.

You only grow up when you realize that life isn't all about you or your feelings. And when you accept that the bad choices you make are yours alone and there are consequences for every choice good or bad. Stand strong for what you believe, by all means but being an adult means don't then expect your "oppressors" to provide you"humanitarian aid " because you missed a meal, you're thirsty and you need to change your tampon .As one of my daughters favorite bands says"if your life sucks, you suck"

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Horrible. Hope she grows out of it. A little old to be waiting to grow out of that, but still.

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Thanks. I DID try to teach her to follow her convictions and she does. For that I'm grateful. She does choose to work for a fraction of what she could make to help the poorest in her community and of that I am respectful and proud. I am hopeful.

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She didn't get it at home, she got it from whoever was there while you weren't. Not casting blame here, just pointing out cause and effect. Sounds like you were in a tough spot. But either we raise or kids or somebody else does, and that someone else probably had something to do with ensuring you had to choose between providing and parenting.

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My husband i and decided he would stay home because I made more money. So the kids were never in daycare. My friend's child learned Spanish before English because their live in was Mexican. It had occurred to us that it's not just the language they are absorbing. So we made sacrifices to make ends meet on one salary. One was moving out of California, but probably too late. I probably should have paid more attention to the values of her peers and friends and their parents. I really did fall down in that department.

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It's everything in culture, and all the other kids grow up totally immersed in it no matter what you do with your own. Best you can do is try to steer them in the right direction.

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Agreed. I don't know why I feel the need to explain myself lol but... After a few decades of reflection on myself it came down to 1) I wished I had been strong in my faith and raised my children that way and 2) it seems the way I gave them love wasn't necessarily the way they needed to receive it and vice versa. For ME I used this knowledge to reestablish the broken relationships in my life that surely influenced my children in who knows what ways. For US it is working. Is it perfect? Hell no. But we can have conversations about meaningful things with respect and love as the underpinning, regardless of our differences of opinion and discovering our sameness. We were totally alienated from each other for years because we couldn't do that. It's a work in progress but it IS progressing. It gives me hope. Now, if I could only learn to do this with the people that make me crazy I'd REALLY be into something! Lol. But that was cathartic! Thanks for listening( insert smiley face)

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Yeah I hear you on that. My parents did the "Love Languages" thing sometime after I had moved out. I thought it was pretty dorky at the time, but it did genuinely help us reconnect and mend some serious rifts, and I carried some of it on to how I interact with my own kid. Stefan Molyneux's take on "nonviolent communication" and parenting in general was also a big help. YMMV on the latter; his views on faith are sometimes a deal breaker for people of faith. But some combination of those things seems to have worked out pretty well for us.

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Fukitol,I have really enjoyed this thread with you. I'll check it out. Thanks

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My dog drinks from the toilet. Just sayin'

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LOL

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May 2
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NYC tap water is pretty good. But apparently they all think potable water only comes in plastic bottles that cost $5.

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exactly. first thought: did the woke brigade take out all the water fountains in Columbia?

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No, they just divided them into “Pro-Palestine only” and “Jew.”

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such a woeful state of affairs all around.

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Let’s not forget she is receiving this “education” “free” as Biden is paying another $6 billion student loan “forgiveness” today. Sorry for all the quotes, but this is maddening.

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I'd like to add that another way of learning how to be a responsible adult is by having loving parents that put expectations on their children and when those expectations aren't met, there are consequences. You're not loving your child if you don't set boundaries for them.

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Parents are responsible as well.

This is what the coddling of the American child's mind looks like; snacks and plenty of water for your protest playdate.

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Every siege that ends peacefully was on a dry tongue and empty belly. They will leave, unless it in an occupation-hunger strike. I don't these babes thought this through.

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I learned how to be a man from my father.

He's almost 80 and has never told me or my brother that he loved us. He's never told us and we've never doubted. He worked his ass to the bone to put a roof over our heads in a good part of town that cost more than he could really afford and he put us through college, something he never experienced because he was working full-time before he turned 16.

He thought us how to fish, how to drive, how to shoot and gave us more than a few well-deserved asswhoopings, how to treat ladies, how to change a tire, how to rebuild a carburetor, how to respect our mom and grandparents.

If I had been cosplaying at being a "real" revolutionary at college, he would have gone down and kicked my ass in front of all the other revolutionary idiots for wrecking my future, the future he spent his whole life building.

I wonder how many of those beta cucks manning the barricades had both parents at home and a large, supportive extended family while they were still kids? Not a bunch of dudes rotating through Mom's bedroom, but actually real Uncles and Aunts that helped them grow and learn.

Lots of those protestinf kids are gonna learn a lot of hard lessons over the next few weeks, but I doubt most of them grow up to be adults anytime soon.

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