Addressing Some Issues

I have to be honest with you as I write this - the modern political scene sickens me, and more so I am sickened by the lack of decent manners.   This came to light recently when a good friend of mine who is a minister in a Pentecostal denomination was viciously attacked for her posting on some things on social media, and the assailant was her own daughter.  I know the daughter of this friend well too - when she was but a little tyke, my wife babysat her back in the day, and at that time she was an adorable little thing.  As she grew into early adulthood though - notably in the past ten or so years - this kid moved to a major city on the West Coast and really became radicalized in her thinking.  As of now, this young girl - who was raised in church by her pastor parents - now has turned her back on the faith of her family, and has embraced both occultism and socialist politics (she is a very open "Bernie Bro," as a matter of fact).  As a result of this radicalization on her part, she has become increasingly combative and hostile toward her mother and literally anyone who disagrees with her, and to be quite honest, she has become a hateful, obnoxious, and vitriolic little brat.  Noting what I have witnessed on this the past few days, I wanted to comment some on these attitudes on the part of young people now, including a new insult that is flung indiscriminately at older folks consisting of the words "OK, Boomer!"  Some of the targets of that insult are not technically "Baby-Boomers," but are rather like myself Gen-Xers, but those of us who grew up as teens in the 1980's are now the "old geezers" I guess.   That is still something to get used to, being I have myself just turned 50 this past November.   Summarily at this point, this is not going to be one of my usually light-hearted posts about retrospection and reflection (more of those are coming though, which is the good news!) but rather this is a bit of a social rant today.  So, let me begin.

In the exchange between my friend and her oppositional (to use the psychological term for it, although I am by no means a psychological professional but my friend is) offspring, I noted several things about the discussion that just beg to be addressed in an appropriate way.  So, I want to take those one at a time and deal with them.

Like many spoiled brats under the age of 30, this kid was going off on her mother about how "respect has to be earned," but on this she failed to understand something that many of her generation are also guilty of ignoring.  Parental respect is not earned, but rather it is commanded of a child.  Kids like her need to understand that without their parents, they would not exist, and in that regard the parent has already earned the respect.  Even if you have conflict or issues with your parents (and some of us do even as adults), you still owe them a certain level of respect regardless.  Parenthood is not a merit-based position - it is a result of natural law.  If a male creature and his female mate join in some sort of conjugal union, biology dictates that offspring will more than likely result - it is the natural order of things.  Now, it is a fact that some biological parents really suck at their duties, and that often leads to abuse and neglect of their responsibilities to their offspring.  In that case, the biological parent should relinquish responsibility to someone who can fill the role, and also in this case biology may not necessarily define parenthood.  However, in the case of my friend and her daughter, this is not the situation - my friend doesn't claim to be a perfect parent, but at the same time I know for a fact she was a good parent to her children, including this obstinate daughter.  In examining this, I note what author John Horvat says in his text Return to Order (Hanover, PA:  York Press, 2013) when he writes on page 181 about the human family and the importance of preserving continuity.  He writes:

"Family members became trustees who shared not only a common blood of heredity, but a common spiritual and material inheritance that each generation must hold as a sacred trust to be safeguarded and increased."

We also note that a missing dimension in the American family today is the absence of faith.  As the late Russian Orthodox theologian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his seminal text on the theology of the Eucharist entitled For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 2004) defines it, the rising tide of secularism that fuels such disconnection between the younger generation and their elders is "the negation of man as a worshipping being" (p. 118).  When society divorces God from the picture, and secularism becomes the rule of the day, it only follows based on Thomistic principle that natural law is also defied and ignored because to acknowledge God as the author of Nature (as both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure defines it) would be to deny one's base selfishness (called in so many terms by Horvat as frenetic intemperance) and thus would have to acknowledge that there is something (or someone) beyond the self who keeps order and balance.  In his seminal text Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the late Brazilian Catholic thinker Plinio Correa de Oliviera notes that this mindset we see displayed in my friend's daughter - the "Revolution," as he terms it - is like a parasitic fig that grows in the Amazon jungle (noted by de Oliviera as the species Urostigma oleara, known as the strangler fig) that wraps itself around an unsuspecting tree, eventually growing and overtaking it until it kills it (Plinio Correa de Oliviera, Revolution and Counter-Revolution.  Spring Grove, PA:  American TFP, 1993. p. 78).  Like this parasitic fig, the forces of the "Revolution," embodied in much of what we see with many Democratic Presidential candidates running in 2020, are choking out many defining principles of Western civilization by either re-defining them or destroying them totally.   At the root of this is a selfishness that is secular in nature and definitely not atheistic, and I will now explain why.

Atheism is defined as not worshipping any deity of any sort, and if one is a true atheist, that means nothing is worthy of worship or of the voluntary subservience of the worshipper.  Although Schemann defines secularism as the "negation of man as a worshipping being," it must be understood this way - it is the negation of man as worshipping the true source of his being.  I have argued for years and will continue to do so, that actual atheism cannot exist, and I will tell you why.  It is hard-wired into the human soul to look at something as a focus of devotion, and the problem is not necessarily an absence of devotion in many cases, but rather a misplaced devotion.  To put it this way, everyone has to worship something, as it is a necessity.  That being said, many self-described atheists are not, in reality, true atheists, because often they satisfy that need for worship by worshipping themselves (which is actually a self-directed form of humanism if anything).  God's original plan, by creating man in his image, was for us to see him as the ultimate focus of our worship and devotion, and indeed that is how it should be.  But, human nature is corrupt, thanks in part to the Fall, and thus man now seeks other things because God is not considered to be real or necessary to many of these people.   In today's society, often the political ideology of a person becomes a god to them, and hence the rise of flawed ideologies like socialism.  Also, the propensity for man to sin by fulfilling what appeals to his base passions (called concupiscence in theological terms) makes God an enemy, since to serve God means to establish boundaries and self-control.   The problem here though is that often new boundaries (and bad ones) are established by devotion to an ideology which causes problems for others who don't conform, and thus in today's secularist, socialist-leaning mindset, it has resulted in the cult of political correctness.  While there are no boundaries in regard to how one self-defines (the fact that now we have "preferred pronouns" for people who are creating new gender identities with every selfish whim exists), there are boundaries that are set up against people who believe in traditional boundaries (very tolerant of them, isn't it?) and the result of that is the rise of domestic and violent terrorists such as Antifa and others who now even want to shut down free speech in the name of "progress" and "inclusivity."   So, for those who want to be "free" of traditional moral constraints, the answer is to institute radically different constraints against those who don't comply to the groupthink they propose.  And, we see that in my friend's daughter, whom I will now discuss.

My friend's rather immature and volatile daughter identifies herself as a "witch" (meaning involvement in occultism) and a "democratic socialist" (meaning she is a cleaned-up Marxist in her political ideology).  As such, she also now thinks that a contrary opinion to her own constitutes "hate" and should not be tolerated.  This is an example of a boundary the girl has set up for herself.  Ironically, while such a person preaches that "love is love" in regard to moral perversity, the same person is often very combative, hateful, and nasty towards those who don't see things the way they think everyone should.  And, it gets worse - these same people are now on a crusade to make people stop eating meat, practicing their religious convictions, and even owning and managing their own homes and businesses due to an eschatological dimension to their ideology which one of their "leading thinkers," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (real intellectual giant there - NOT!) has invented by saying that if cows don't stop farting the earth will blow up in 12 years (that number has changed - I believe she is saying 10 now).  This was carried on even further by the new superstar of the Left, a rather obnoxious Swedish brat by the name of Greta Thunberg, who actually was spreading this malarkey and then in a fit of rage said "how dare you!" at the UN to older folks who just want to live their lives in peace because apparently the rest of us are "destroying her future."  Really??  It gets even more bizarre because Ms. Thunberg has now decided to boycott school in protest of people like you and me supposedly "destroying the earth" - yes, in protest make yourself dumber by not allowing yourself to get a decent education (or, in their vernacular, "OK, Doomer!").  My friend's daughter actually accused her of much of the same thing, by basically saying that by her mother's support of President Trump she doesn't "give a damn" about her daughter's future, and that apparently constitutes "abuse."  Again, OK Doomer.  It is time to give a little reality check to these spoiled brats, and I want to mention a few facts.

First, for all their "care" about the environment and their lamenting over the earth blowing up in a matter of a few years because cows fart too much, many of these spoiled and entitled brats live in cities on the West Coast that speak of contradiction.  Cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are literally littered with the needles of drug addicts and the fecal deposits of innumerable homeless derelicts on the streets, yet they are trying to say that eating a New York strip or using a plastic straw to drink a Big Gulp (which billionaire Mike Bloomberg banned in NYC) is somehow "destroying the planet."   Here's an idea if they are so concerned - take a bag and some rubber gloves, and start cleaning the crap and needles off the streets of the cities you all live in, you morons.  Being a good steward of the environment is important, I will grant you - God gave us this earth and we need to take care of it, and no one disputes this.  But, instead of moaning and groaning about cow farts polluting the ozone, why don't you just pick up after yourself, plant some trees, and just better the area you live in?   Oddly, for all this "Green New Deal" claptrap of AOC's, I have yet to see the return of those Adopt-a-Highway programs that used to be out there years ago - those really had an impact, and it was Democrats through over-regulation and high taxes that ended these good programs, the same Democrats who often holler about cow farts and plastic straws ironically.   If I were my friend, I would tell the daughter to get off her butt, grab a large Glad Bag, and start cleaning up the piles of human feces and discarded drug paraphernalia in the major West Coast city she lives in where this stuff is prevalent.  She might be a happier person too if she puts her money where her mouth is instead of acting like a spoiled brat.  Of course, the ultimate goal of the Leftist is not to better their environment or do anything productive - their self-worship demands that they control others and force them into servitude, and thus nothing productive is accomplished.  This is true of every Left-leaning politician in our government.  Once people wake up to that fact, I think perspectives would change drastically.

The second thing this kid is harassing her mother about is that she somehow is "deprived," yet I know how this kid grew up as my wife used to babysit her.  She had a beautiful home - it looked like a dollhouse actually - and was granted a lot of advantages others her age didn't have.  I definitely didn't have those advantages when I was her age, and although I have more justification to bemoan them I also learned that sometimes adversity brings out a person's resourcefulness and creativity, while the frenetic intemperance of getting everything handed to you often makes one lazy, disrespectful, and ungrateful.  The parents of this particular child worked hard to provide a good life for her and her siblings, and I think her mother even had to resort to selling tropical fish or something to get her some cheerleading uniform or something like that.   Yet, now the ungrateful little brat treats her mother disrespectfully, and it is a scandal.  However, in all fairness the daughter is not the only one this day and age - there are way too many kids like that, especially those under 30, and it is becoming a problem.  So, when a socialist loser like Bernie Sanders comes along and tries to woo them, they fall for it.  Bernie extolls dictatorships like Castro's in Cuba and even Stalin's, and it is easy for him to do because he is what is called a "limousine liberal," meaning he thinks socialist policies should be forced on everyone except himself.  Many of these kids act the same way, and it is interesting how rich White kids are all of a sudden spouting Bernie's and Ocasio-Cortez's rhetoric when their lives have been extremely comfortable.   Many of these spoiled brats need to visit Miami or Tampa and talk to some of the Cuban-American immigrants that live there - they are the ones who could give them the real story of what living under Castro was like, and why they live here.   It is also time for Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago is made required reading in schools - after reading that and seeing what so many have suffered under socialism, I think some people would change their tune quickly.  Of course, many of the brats in question don't know how to read anymore anyway - they are too busy with all the gadgetry that they possess to pay attention and exercise their God-given brains, and thus the problem.  Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, spelled out some of this in his book The Theft of America's Soul (Nashville:  Nelson Books, 2019) when he writes on page 97 of that book the following:

"This same incivility spills into our streets too.  Protest after protest makes the news, and I watch as men and women of all colors and creeds take to the streets.  During the writing of this book, a group of neo-Nazis took to the streets of Charlottesville for the express purpose of raising a racist ruckus.  Their sin opened the door to a group of counterprotesters, folks from the surrounding area who wanted the neo-Nazis run out of town on a rail (as all neo-Nazis should be).  Some of those counterprotesters also turned to violence and incivility.  The result?  A young woman - a peaceful protester by all accounts - was mowed down in the streets by one of those neo-Nazi types in an act of pure evil.  This is the result of incivility: death.

(p. 98) If we only noticed a lack of virtue in our politics, protests, and on the internet, that'd be enough.  But hasn't virtue all but left American culture?  Haven't so many in America become lazy, slothful, overweight people addicted to entertainment?  Hasn't our society been plagued by addiction, by drunkenness and pill-popping?  Aren't we a nation of overconsumers, people in debt up to our eyeballs? Haven't we lost sight of justice and the rule of law?  In short, haven't we lost sight of virtue?  And haven't a bunch of folks who'd identify as Christians been guilty of this same loss of virtue?  

God was declared dead, and in came the enemy with a new lie - virtue died with the God you killed."

Phil essentially defined what John Horvat calls in his writing frenetic intemperance, and over 40 years ago another noted celebrity, late bandleader Lawrence Welk, noted a similar thing in his book This I Believe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, 1979).  I am a collector of vintage big band records, as everyone that knows me can attest, and therefore I have always loved Lawrence Welk's music (I used to watch his TV program religiously years ago when we could get it on PBS).  However, what many people didn't know about Welk was that he was a devoutly Catholic Christian who also had a very conservative and common-sense worldview that he annunciated in a series of books he wrote a few years before his retirement from the music industry in 1982.  On pages 172-173 of This I Believe, he has some good wisdom for this generation to follow, and they would do well to pay attention.  He writes:

"I'm not pointing the finger at anyone.  I'm just stating the case as I see it today.  We simply must take steps to reduce our government to a size where it can operate with more competence.  And we must return to the people the right to participate more fully in the decisions which affect them on a daily, personal level.

But it's the plight of our young people that concerns me the most.  Our youngsters are so fine, so full of promise.  And yet somehow, they have become one of the most neglected segments of our society.

My recommendations for helping our younger generation are all based on the experiences of my own life.  When I suggest that "work" may be a better choice for some youngsters than years of formal schooling, it's because that has been so effective in my own life. 

When I say that removing the restrictions that keep our young people from working will open up their lives for them, it's because I've seen it happen time and again in our orchestra or other enterprises.

I don't want to make our youngsters work and I want to make that very, very clear.  I just want to give them the opportunity."

What Mr. Welk is saying here is this - give the younger generation some purpose and direction, and encourage them to productively channel that so that it shapes their characters and makes them better participants in our society.  He's right too - many kids are so coddled, spoiled, and entitled that they have no incentive to do anything better, and with all that wasted time on their hands, they end up getting involved in things they shouldn't.  And, it has created a nasty monster that I don't think Mr. Welk could have seen coming, but Phil Robertson definitely has witnessed, as have many of us.  Putting this on a more philosophical level, we now turn to noted Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, who in his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992) notes on page 47 that the true enrichment of man comes not in the technical exploitation of nature's wealth, but rather a purely theoretical cognition of reality.  Pieper further asserts that man's existence becomes more fulfilled as he further explores and understands reality.   True knowledge, then, as Pieper would conclude, leads to true freedom.  Much of what goes on today in the name of "knowledge" is a redefinition of reality based on the feelings of the individual rather than upon objective truth, and thus now it has become commonplace to "feel" one's gender, or to "relativize" one's perception of truth (thus making it subjective) rather than understanding natural law or objective truth as has been understood and observed throughout much of human history.  So, if as Welk proposes, a person is compelled to work to develop oneself, that is seen by the postmodernist-minded Millenial now as being "icky" or "oppressive," because now truth is the subjective whim of the individual rather than universally understood and observed fact.  This then makes biology and other observable phenomena subject to language rather than science, and thus it creates the confusion (in this instance anyway) of an infinite number of fictional "genders" which are real because the possessor of said "gender" feels that way.  It is ludicrous at best, but also dangerous when implemented on a societal scale as some are attempting to do.  Fact is still fact however, and despite how the facts of a matter may "hurt someone's feelings" who doesn't like it, the objective and observable fact still exists.  That is a true fact many of these whiny Millenials need to understand.

I could go into more details of what the actual issues were specifically between my friend and her daughter were, but time doesn't allow.   I will say this however - if you are going to grouse and gripe about "exploitation of indigenous land," then perhaps you need to pack up your stuff and move, because you may be now occupying a piece of ground that once belonged to some Cherokee, Seminole, or Tlingit tribesman somewhere.  That is what is called "virtue-signaling," when a person with no stake in the conversation all of a sudden starts yelling "racism" or something else moronic at people who disagree with them.  Take this whole thing about slave reparations as an example.   The majority of Americans are of some immigrant heritage, and many these days have ancestors who moved here after the Civil War.  So, does that mean an Italian-American pizzeria owner in New York "owes" reparations to the Black community?   No, it doesn't.  Also, what if some Blacks have slaveholders as ancestors (and it does happen!)?  Do they pay reparations to themselves?   Just some things to think about regarding the absurdity of some of this garbage floating around.  In truth, the majority of White people in the US (even in the South) have little or no connection to actual slaveholders in the antebellum South, so the issue of reparations is not even applicable to the overwhelming majority of Americans honestly.  If it were, I could claim reparations based on a variety of things myself just due to the complexity of my own heritage - I have Indian ancestry (Mvskoke Creek specifically) so maybe I should tell some Leftists in southern Alabama hollering about reparations that they need to pay me for occupying my ancestor's homes there.  Or, perhaps I should submit a complaint to the government of France for chasing my Huguenot ancestors out of their homes, or to Spain for their treatment of my Converso forebears - see where this can go?   Fortunately, I have little desire to pursue any of that, because frankly I have more important things to do with my time.   Too bad some of the younger crowd doesn't feel the same way, as America would be a more productive country if they did. 

I have ranted enough for today, but no doubt I will be revisiting this issue soon.  If you are one of those Leftist Millenial "Bernie Bros" reading this, I have this to say - suck it up if it offends you.  Maybe you should listen to what is being said instead of being "triggered," and perhaps you might learn something in the process.  Thank you for allowing me to share, and will have more pearls of wisdom to share later.