Our younger generation is bored, and their boredom might destroy Western Civilization.
I don’t think I can recall all the episodes of Star Trek where some kids, bad guys, or stowaways took over the Enterprise or a planet. They didn’t know how to run things, and their actions nearly brought about complete destruction. How many times did Mr. Scott warn about the antimatter chamber overheating or dilithium crystals becoming dangerously unstable? Just as a child can sit in the driver’s seat of his parents' car, he has no clue how to drive or how to make a dozen decisions a minute during difficult traffic in the middle of a nighttime thunderstorm.
The younger generation pining to take over the US via the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) never experienced World War II or Vietnam. They were born into great wealth; their standard of living would have been reserved for the wealthiest few only a few decades ago. I remember seeing an old Bogart movie where he used a phone in his car; at the time, it was the last word in wealth. Today, everyone whips out a smartphone, and what’s the big deal? In the original Home Alone, Harry asks Marv how the kid is going to call the cops from a tree house. It was a great gag. Today, kids wouldn’t understand what the issue is. “You only had a landline with a badly tangled cord in the kitchen? How quaint!”
People are only as serious as the times require them to be. The average age of a US soldier in World War II was 26. At that age, I was finishing up graduate school, trying to figure out where to do the next phase of my academic training. Many Americans at that age are after college and working some job. Some are in medical school, while some percentage do join the armed forces. A 26-year-old in the bocage in France was wondering if there were snipers in the trees ahead of his platoon. He thought about his friends killed on the beaches of Normandy and whether he would get home alive. While there may have been time for some jokes, there was zero time for frivolity. Picking up the wrong thing might set off a booby-trap. Sticking one’s head out a bit too much might be the last thing he does. Serious times do make for serious people. The generation of World War II stopped fascism and built the modern United States. It is no coincidence that nuclear power, air travel, and many other innovations came from those in the previous century. For many, life was not easy. Stories of kids going to work at 15 or siblings dying from diseases we no longer fear were common.
While nobody should ask to go back to an unheated apartment with unreliable electricity and no hot water, the question today is what have we created? Even Dr. Frankenstein would not know what to do with kids who have iPhones, cars, access to travel, and some level of advanced education who are demanding a system that has failed everywhere applied. Hasan Piker either ordered his Mao costume from AliExpress or had it made by his bespoke tailor. Either way, he tried to present himself as someone that he can never be. Has he read Mao’s Red Book? Does he agree with everything that the Chinese leader wrote? One can ape whomever he wants, but he still cannot be that person. Mao, for the worse of mankind, was a leader who succeeded in conquering China and driving out Chiang Kai-shek and his “Nationalists”. An interesting piece of historical trivia shows that the final weather report from China to the Americans prior to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was signed by none other than Mao Zedong himself. Mao used violence and ideology to conquer a people and a country. Estimates have 60 million dead through murder and starvation during Mao’s reign. It was very popular for Western liberals to come to China to smoke cigarettes with the despot. Mao would order the destruction of farming equipment to raise the amount of iron produced and thus guarantee agricultural failure.
So why would this wealthy clown dress as Mao as he demands the destruction of the United States? Why would universities allow him to speak to their students and sell his cheap-suit communism? The answer is boredom. Intellectual, religious, and civil boredom. It is very common here in Jerusalem to see older men running off to Torah lessons morning and evening. They may be retired, but they are never bored. Previous generations wondered if Soviet atomic bombs would destroy the US or how one might save enough money to send a kid to college. Today’s youth have inherited the wealth, technology, and knowledge of previous generations but have no challenges of their own. They have food and do not have to till the fields. They have clothes and don’t have to think about a second or third job to afford food. They have been given everything by their parents, and like most spoiled brats, they do not show appreciation but rather contempt. The cardboard communism they espouse could never produce an iPhone without which they can neither function nor live. The safe cars, reliable food, available gas—all of these wonders came from Capitalism, even if the government stuck its finger on the scales here and there. Communism produces nothing but failure, destruction, and despotism. China has two companies in the top 40 by market capitalization. And those companies are there because more recent communists have understood that their system needed a pseudo-capitalist market and economy if they were to stay in power. Thus, the communists rule, and people can own stocks and set up companies. It’s a hybrid system, but woe to the one who tries to get into the political side of it.
Imagine eating the same menu at home week after week. The food is great, you like the dishes, and they seem to be good for health. Then one child decides that there must be change for the sake of change. Out go the hamburgers on Wednesday and in comes tofu. The lefties have been given a great system that produces wealth and opportunities. They were born into it and have no idea how bad and difficult things used to be or could be again. But they are bored with their easy lives and fantasize about socialism and communism. While they spout empty pieties about the workers and landlords making too much profit, those who lived in places like Cuba and China are warning that the system they want is dangerous and destructive. Ancient fools like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Lizzy Warren (D-MA) have jumped onto the bandwagon, though they each have eight figures in money and real estate. It’s easy being a socialist when the crappy policies will not make you give up your swimming pool. It’s funny how all of those praising and braying for socialism and communism want to be at the head of the snake. I don’t see anyone asking to be a simple factory worker who does not get paid and stands in line for five hours for bread that ran out two hours earlier. I remember watching a video of one fellow saying that he used to travel by bus with his mother in Russia to a “city that had meat” and would stand in line to buy meat there. They would come home and celebrate their purchase. We’re not talking about Whole Foods down the road or Costco at the edge of town.
The kids are bored, and if they take over Starship America, then all that we have will be lost. The US cannot succeed under communism.