|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
The current generation “Z” — those now roughly between 13 and 28 years old — is becoming our 21st-century version of the “Lost Generation.” Members of Gen Z are often nicknamed “Zoomers,” a term used to describe young adults who came of age in the era of smartphones, social media, and rapid cultural upheaval.”
Males in their teens and 20s are prolonging their adolescence — rarely marrying, not buying a home, not having children, and often not working full-time.
The negative stereotype of a Zoomer is a shiftless man who plays too many video games. He is too coddled by parents and too afraid to strike out on his own.
Zoomers rarely date, supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household.
Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate.
All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.
In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males — 9-10 percent of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League — are of no interest to college admission officers.
So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations — and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.
Traditional pathways to adulthood — affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living — had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.
Orthodox and loud student advocates on campus — climate change, DEI, the Palestinians — had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house.
During the Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter — prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.
Gen Z males seemed bewildered by women and sex — and often withdrew from dating.
Never has popular culture so promoted sexually provocative fashions, semi-nudity, and freewheeling lifestyles, and careers of supposedly empowered single women.
And never had the rules of dating and sexuality become more retrograde Victorian.
Casual consensual sex was flashed as cool everywhere on social media. And when it naturally proved in the real world to be selfish, callous, and empty, males were almost always exclusively blamed as if they were not proper Edwardian gentlemen.
Soon, young men feared sexual hookups and promiscuity as avenues to post facto and one-sided charges of harassment — or worse.
For the half of Generation Z who went to college, tuition had soared, rising faster than the rate of inflation. Administrators were often more numerous than faculty. Obsessive fixations with race determined everything from dorm selections to graduation ceremonies.
Zoomers were mired in enormous student debt.
Yet they soon learned that their gut social science and “studies” degrees proved nearly worthless. Employers saw such certificates as neither proof of traditional knowledge nor of any needed specialized skill set.
Unemployed or half-employed Zoomers then ended up with unsustainable five-figure student loans, and the insidious interest on them. Their affluent, left-wing tenured profs, who had once demonized them as oppressors, could have cared less about their dismal fates.
Add it all up, and Zoomers puzzled their parents. And they found scant guidance from the campus.
Instead, they sought needed spiritual inspiration from a Jordan Peterson, entertainment and pragmatic advice from a Joe Rogan, but sometimes toxic venting from a demagogic, antisemitic Nick Fuentes.
What would shock the lost generation back into the mainstream, barring a war, depression, or natural catastrophe?
One, an end to DEI hectoring and blame-gaming, and a return to class rather than race determining “privilege.”
Two, some sanity in the war between the sexes. When women represent nearly 60% of undergraduates, why does gender still assure an advantage in admissions and hiring?
Three, the federal government needs to stop funding $1.7 trillion in student debt, often for worthless degrees, and wasting away one’s prime 20s and 30s.
Let universities pledge their endowments to guarantee their own loans. They should graduate students in four years. And they must slash the parasitical class of toxic administrative busybodies who cannot teach but can hector and bully.
Four, society needs to stop granting status on the basis of increasingly meaningless letters and titles after a name.
Skilled tradesmen like electricians and mechanics are noble professionals. And their status and compensation should reflect their value to society — far more so than a bachelor’s degree in a- studies major or years vaporized in off-and-on college.
Finally, incentivize building homes, rather than overregulating and zoning them into unaffordability.
If the lost Gen Z is not found soon, the result for everyone will not be pretty.
The Lost Generation weren’t lost at all. Burned out by the suffering of World War I, and the lack of definitive victory, they shed their despondency during the twenties, and provided the officer class and the statesmen who won World War II. Gen Z is more likely to accept Islam rather than do the hard work that freedom demands of those who love it.
I think you are right, but it is because most young Zoomer men are still people, and most people are of average intelligence and initiative. They are followers and not leaders. And even though they are people, they are also MEN, who will naturally follow and give loyalty to the male leaders among them.
But great movements and civilizations need great men – an elite group with higher intelligence, capacity and initiative. I have hope these exist among the Zoomers.
This is the result of the 19th Amendment. The power filtered down to the ugly girls who could not get a date in a Turkish prison. If women are not disciplined by society in their search for a meal ticket, this type of chaos results. The birthrate will drop, more drugs for the members of the group will enrich the drug companies. Our population of competent men is dropping and the primitives will run the society. Fortunately I will not be around to enjoy it.
AGREED. Women should not have the vote – and I am a woman in your cohort, who will probably not be around to “enjoy” it.
And women have largely been responsible for voting according to their new “husbands” – the post-war liberal consensus that is ravaging our once-great nation. Women are unsuited to politics and warfare (politics by another name). They will revert to their natural roles when the men once again take and control regain power and the will to use it to save our country, starting with massive deportations and overturning the 14th amendment.
I have 5 children, three of whom are men. The competent population of men is not dropping, but is and has been minimized and attacked with an aim to destroy them.
Let us do all we can to strengthen and encourage this young men while we yet live.
No woman whose obvious interest in politics and world affairs prompts her to submit comments to FPM believes herself unworthy of a vote. The popular misconception that women support the left and men, the right is absurd…A plethora of “exceptions” include male leftist icons: Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Chomsky, Alinsky and every Democrat president. I seriously doubt that either you or “Madame” DeFarge are actual females.
I am married for many years and the mother of 5 adult children, two of whom are female.
That some women might be fit to vote does not vitiate the rule that most women are not and that we, as a group, should not. Removing the female franchise is the best way to love them. Our instinct to nurture and submit to power makes us dangerous in politics — even in low-level politics, like corporate HR departments where we dominate. We women lack critical discernment in political matters and will reliably and stupidly vote for our own destruction. We are more easily deceived than men because we tend to think from and be guided by our emotions and heart.
We women, especially when we are untrained in and lack virtue, sin in the arena of excessive empathy that translates into compassion for and tolerance of evil. We desire to be loved and protected by a strong, virtuous man who will save, protect and love us. This is why little girls love princess stories. We are hard-wired to be in relationship to a man.
In modern life, many of us lose faith in men and marriage. Those of us who can will resort to displaying ourselves in OnlyFans to feed our desire to be loved and admired while not risking the true intimacy and relationship for which we are made but eludes us.
I am also one who ruthlessly pursues truth even when it is ugly and not to my liking. Although this may not be as common among women, I am far from alone in this attribute. Many women also share my opinion on this topic.
Your response, Kynarion, leaves me all the more convinced that you are concealing your true gender behind a female facade, – which is not objectionable in and of itself, unless used to falsely assume authority and credibility. Such patronizing nonsense has been recycled ever since Kate’s male-authored lecture in “Taming of the Shrew”. It would certainly be convenient for men if it were true. (BTW, “Only Fans” performers are motivated by easy money. Duh).
Your view of women is most certainly much narrower than mine. How interesting that your view would not include women like me. What about Heather MacDonald? Phyllis Schlafly? I wonder what boundary I violate in your definition of female? Knowing that would be fascinating.
And I am worthy of the vote, but my sexual cohort is, in the main, not. For this reason, I perceive it would be good to deny women the right to vote.
Look at electoral map results without the female vote. It is stunning – a place where I would want my children and grandchildren to live. This thinking of mine is actually typical of a good mother who desires a future for her children and their posterity. Do you think all women are selfish, and because I am not, then I must be male?
The sad reality is that most people of either sex are too ill-informed to cast a responsible vote. Incidentally, the myth that women are more emotional derives from the fact that they more easily produce tears. We now know that the hormone prolactin, which is more plentiful in females is responsible. (Men’s barroom brawls and knife fights are are also motivated by emotion, not logic.) The exclusion of women from public life has been imposed by many cultures over time – always with the disingenuous claim that it is for her own good.
So you believe that voting in a democracy is a selfish act, Kynarion (Dec. 11) It is every citizen’s duty either to inform himself or herself on the issues and cast a judicious vote, or if uncertain, abstain. BTW, prefacing your condescending assertions with “we women…” is a dead giveaway, buddy.
You and the Taliban aspire to confine women to their “natural roles” and banish them from participation in politics. I hope my daughter never has to live in the dystopia you envision, dude.
This is a preposterous notion. Of course women should vote as women paid taxes. The empowerment of women was the result of men yielding due to guilt and shame of brazen sexism that ruined many workplaces for women. Women truly were abused physically and sexually without restraint as domestic violence laws were shallow and not enforced until the late 1980s. Women were kept out of jobs and careers for which they were well suited by men who would not yield their arrogance and entitlement for far too long. Today’s post-modern feminism has many flaws but men are responsible for men. They can stand up for themselves and take control of their lives without punishing women.
It is a rare thing when I disagree with every presupposition of a commenter. Tax payer = sole voter qualification? Female empowerment caused by men yielding to guilt and shame that ruined workplaces for women? Women (as a group) abused physically and sexually without restraint? Women kept out of jobs and careers by men who would not yield their arrogance and entitlement?
Your comment embraces the anti-male antagonism responsible for so much of what is wrong with our culture, especially for the younger cohort coming of age during the poisonous years of peak feminism.
Women need to be disciplined by society, Madame D.? They HAVE been – for centuries: Purdah, public stonings, “honor” killings, FGM, the Magdalen Laundries…Forget jihadists, warlords, grooming gangs…WOMEN are what’s wrong with the world!
Good article, but you missed some BIG issues that haunt GenZ males- they were in their teens/ high school when Covid lockdowns hit. They were isolated, locked out of the classroom, and human contact. They did not have proms, graduations, or dormmates, and they did not have the socialization at that crucial point of their social development. Many of them went online to ” chatrooms” like discord and the darkweb, gaming sites,where they found groomers willing to give awkward lonely adolescents the human contact and interaction they so craved and society was denying. Now, 5 years later, they would rather interact with the AI chatbot or the groomer radicalizing them online than a human being. I’ve seen this firsthand. The young men, in particular, ages 20-25, are not alright at all. I am a parent to one, and know multiple other parents who are experiencing the same. Send them to college, and they get swept up and radicalized by groups who know how to prey on the vulnerable. It’s a great recruiting ground for Antifa, etc. It’s no accident Tyler Robinson and Matthew Crooks were 22- 23 years old., as well as the recent trans shooters. This has not happened by accident. They knew what they were doing when they locked us down.. I would like to see some form of compulsory natiional service corp- forcing actual socialization while teaching real skills- maybe some of them can be saved and learn the socialization skills for interacting with other humans, dating, etc, and be saved form a lifetime of isolatation and darkweb chatbots. It’s bad. With AI coming in, we’re looking at a bladerunner future if this isn’t reversed, and quickly.
Men of every age and race are “demonized for their ‘toxic masculinity’ that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.” We are all “scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations.” We are all “superfluous losers of the ‘wrong’ race, gender”.
Like everything else about feminism (and nearly all women are feminist to one degree or another) “rules of dating and sexuality” have become viciously anti-male. Feminist have spent the last 50 years demonizing everything male they could think of; and they’re still coming up with new “offenses” every week … non stop.
Given all this one can only consider men’s reactions (and Gen Z has learned this early on) to be rational responses to the tsunami of hate coming their way. The only self-respecting response to any male who wants to keep his dignity is to stay away from women … especially marriage and children. It turns out to be not that hard. Men can make good livings in honorable trades, but none of the upwardly mobile women in college will have anything to do with a carpenter or plumber no matter how much they make.
Men need to spend 40 years in the wilderness before the current corrupt and stiff necked generation dies off. So be it.
To save the generation of those who have been turned into puppets to their own memories, just like us, we need to change the system. See “We Change the System We change the World” at JamesSarafin.Substack.com.
All of these are good comments and reasons as to what’s happening to our young generation(s), however, we are missing the overall view. The elites of our day love their power over us—they want us as slaves who work for next to nothing and they hate our freedom. This is why we are witnessing the decline of ONLY the western world. The elites already have control of third world countries so no need to bring them down. It’s the freedom and Christianity loving western world that needs to go according to our elites. And they’re busy destroying us and we are seeing the results.
First of all, the elites use mind control methods that they learned after several world wars and from communists (such as China and Korea) over the years. They are using it on U.S. currently!
Second, if you do not know anything about Agenda 21 (the Agenda for the twenty first century)please take the time to read up on it asap! It’s being implemented now and has been since the nineties. The elites also use Agenda 2030 as a marker point because they want certain items accomplished by that time period. It’s up to us to be aware of it—it’s hiding in plain sight! Look up Rosa Koire and LISTEN to her before they take down all her videos. She’s not with us anymore but some of her information on this topic is. The elites are using unelected boards to get legislation through so our voting is becoming useless. Also, they are using our land to say what we can and cannot do with it which squelches our freedoms. Agenda 21 is implemented locally but controlled from the top!
Once you have an overall view of Agenda 21 and how it’s working, you’ll clearly see all the details that are happening on purpose! It’s all in this Agenda!!
As Rosa Koire always said……I’m NOT crazy, the agenda is crazy!
whichever institution you nominate , all are run by the left whether it be govt. education , the courts , corporations , all are infested with the left . nothing can be done to save this generation or the u.s. after reading the [ campus rape frenzy ] by johnson and taylor the death knell has been passed . all thanks to the worst pres. in u.s. history , obama . . the insidious outcome of the book is still in place and those who implemented it are still in their jobs . they never get the boot they are just moved sideways .
I have two children in this category – one a son. He says young women have almost impossible standards and when he does find someone who sounds decent they disappear when he suggests meeting in person. He also informs me that the younger end is racist and belligerent by self-training online, aware that they are blamed for all manner of things they did not do, and do not put up with much. I find this a huge positive, except for the race categorization, of course. Many of his friends would love to get married, have children and have a normal life but society (young women and their low standards) and the economy work against them. I feel sorry for all of them. Our children work, live on their own and pay all of their own bills but we find that is not the norm at all.