Gen Z

GEN Z, KIDS BORN 1997-2012 WHO HAD MID-CHILDHOODS IN THE 20-TEENS VOTE D. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  They have high rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm , and suicide. Social psychologist began to notice this in 2013 as these things began to suddenly rise.  But the syndromes were not higher in older adults—just Gen Z. By 2020 25% of teen girls had symptoms of major depression. So what happened in 2012 or just prior? First iPhone 4 came out and selfies became all the rage. The helicopter parenting of years prior meant instead of kids 7 or 8 years old being allowed unsupervised socialization (the traditional age) this had extended to 10 or 12 years of age. Thus instead of the normal rough interactions causing psychological strengthening in early childhood, kids spent a childhood largely through the phones.  The depression numbers weren’t so bad in boys, 9%, but larger than the old normal of 5%.  Boys were playing video games and groups of boys competed, a healthy interactive activity.  But girls were drawn to ‘visual platforms’—instagram and tiktok.  Those are about display and performance. You post your perfect life and then look at others who have even better perfect lives. This phenom is called “compare and despair”.  It seems social because you are communicating but it’s performative. You don’t actually get good relationships. People in despair usually go defensive. Defensive mode is when you focus on threats.  Discover mode is when you seize information and create.  And sure enough, Gen Z is seriously behind in innovation, not inclined to take risks.  This has dire implications for the future of business in USA. Also the new ideology of woke/CRT valorizes victimhood. Those not inclined to take risks, seek accommodations and play it safe.  You are not going to swing for the fences or start a company. Here’s what is interesting about this.  It occurs in English-speaking countries.  Slavery guilt has rapidly spread to Canada and UK, but not Germany or Russia or China. And it has spread to US business. When the manager is afraid to speak up  honestly because of fears of being shamed on social media, the corporate culture gets dishonest and backfires in its purpose.  The impact of political discourse then moves conversations from honest personal interaction to the Colosseum of social engagement.  We don’t talk to one another, we perform. Amazingly Gen Z is not in denial.  They recognize the app-based life is really bad for them.  They wished they had childhoods more like their parents—playing outside, riding bikes with friends, having adventures. And as jobs expand when the R’s get control of government, socializing comes back, and Gen Z may seek a new normalism. 

Single Af-Am women are most motivated to vote pro-abortion

 

Biggest supporters of unlimited abortion are low income, single, Af-Am women.  They see it as their “out” for broken relationships. This is the group Democrats often take for granted but it is who D's mean when they say that abortion rights will be big in the midterms. 

    Studies of lower class women in European sectors (no race involved) show that the prime differences that keep these communities poor is low married rate and sporadic income.  Women will often take a stop-gap job to support a family at low income whereas men, with much pride and effort invested in a career, are loathe to take a minor or different job to simply support a family. They stay unemployed longer. Men grow up knowing they must work, whereas women see a career as something to choose.  (Maybe they will work, but maybe they will be a housewife or live on welfare.)  Men have no choice and their life is aimed at work.  Until they believe they have arrived as productive members , they are forever Peter Pans--boys.  Once they become warriors of some skill they are then valued members of a team. But golly, the world is a big place and they need a partner!  Only then is marriage something they desire.  Women, don’t see their entire identity tied up in career, so they will often take a small or temporary job, but men hold off until they get meaningful career work. 

    Women truly want love and a relationship. They want to be beautiful in someone's eyes. Throw in a great (but safe) adventure, and there's a wonderful life. 

            Many impoverished males are out of work a lot.  Those who are consistent providers are fought over by the women. Women poach on other women. Single motherhood and abortion abounds. This affects Af-Ams more than other minorities in USA, but is true of all poor people. Yet among Af-Am Christian women, abortion is unpopular as is sexual immorality. In middle class Af-Ams, fidelity is common and abortions are not.

            There is a lesson for Republicans in this.  Sunday mornings are the most segregated time in America.  Encourage your church to team in ministry with black churches as well as other minority congregations. Jobs, jobs, jobs is the theme for improving the poor side of town. (Trump's roaring economy won more male Af-Am voters.) Invite black middle class friends to enjoy things together. . Of course these things won’t come about in time for the midterm elections. But it will get us back to our Republican roots as a party with a plan of freedom, faith, family and free enterprise that extends to all Americans.The Grand Old Party of America’s Grand Old Ideas.  

Progressives will lose because they don't understand humans

 

If you read liberals—Week, Moveon.org, Huffpost, or Euros like The Economist, it becomes clear what motivates activist progressives.  They are utopians who want a world sans prejudice, and morality as well.  But the big dream plans don’t take place spontaneously.  Plans require guidance/control by the state.  Evolution to the dark side--Power Hunger, Socialism, Authoritarianism--happens.  Dictated policies lead to dictators, the pitfall of European kings and Marxist/facists.  So after 1763, British American colonists grew wary of directives from government.  They wrote a constitution that espoused Liberty, limited federal govt, and low taxation.

            These last two years under Biden have been eye-opening for average guys with other interests than politics.  Parents who went to school board meetings with suspicions were labeled “domestic terrorists” by the Justice Dept., a frightening development.  Biden called anyone who voted for Trump a “semi-facist” after first alleging them to be “white supremacists” ( in league with KKK?!) That stunned a lot of people, to be deemed criminals as it were by none other than the President.  It’s one thing to be labeled a “chump” or “deplorable” or a phrase that meant “bitter clinger”.  We are used to name-calling in politics that invokes stupidity.  But to tag as an enemy of the state is quite another matter.  And most of the President’s supporters are cheering this. Just fans or are they aching for civil war? I should hope the prior!

            How does this happen?  To be a lib, you only have to think yourself smarter than most people.  You envision your own opinion that of a superior elite which aspires to rule. The elites of Europe, the aristocrats, panicked in the 1800s worrying that a French Revolution would spread and behead.  So they came up with reasoning called nobilese oblige “obligation of the nobles”.  Don’t kill me, I’m a good aristocrat who, albeit rich, understands your plight.  Behead that other evil exploitive guy!  We call this a limousine liberal in USA.  Note the aristocracy doesn’t want to step down.  They just want to convince you they care. Of course, America has wealthy, a few of whom make money by getting in cahoots with government money. Plus, as F. Scot Fitzgerald noted, “The rich are different than us.”  They love loose morals that would get an ordinary middle class person in lifelong troubles.  Drink and get addicted?  The rich just check themselves into a plush rehab center. Have an affair? Abortion. The poor man with addiction is likely to die in a gutter. She lives with the consequences of child-bearing. Thus elites desire not just central planning, but also moral relativism and big government to befriend for profit.

            There is a problem with this game.  No utopia works.  Utopias may beguile some, but reality always bites.  If I had a million dollars for every time socialism worked, I’d still be dead broke.  That, according to the Father of Modern Psychology, John Locke (Two Treatises on Government, 1677), is because every person is motivated by concerns for self, not the Grand Soviet 5-year Plan or any other govt scheme. There are a some crooked middle class businessmen, the successful ones create a product the public wants to buy. Many are even part-motivated by a mission for God.  This presents a mountainous problem for central planners.  Farmers, dreamers, the churches follow another voice. When elites erupt into visceral hatred, watch out! “You will buy an electric vehicle, no? What do you mean there is no place to recharge it and you worry about cost and range? We will restrict fuel so that you will be forced to buy an EV.  You will be forced to get vaccinated and wear a mask.  You must talk in a woke manner or be penalized.  You must not question what your children are taught in school.”

            Elites don’t plan perfectly. Suppress fossil fuels? 90% of manufactured goods depend on fossil fuels at this time.  Paint, make-up plastics, synthetic fabrics, chemical feedstocks, smelting and coke—all come from fossil fuels.  Quarantining the healthy public rather than the sick has never stopped contagion.  Light-weight masks and vaccines are not 100% effective and cause other problems sometimes. Educating without parental support is foolhardy.  Tax more and people tend to do tax avoidance that leads to less revenue collection. Restrict lives and people will act in secret. Statism never works positively.

            The notion that each person should be able to live as they see fit (Liberty), is destroyed under statism.  Take away the most deeply held convictions of people by trying to suppress their religion won’t work either. The Soviet experiment lasted 3 generations and when the iron curtain fell, the West discovered to its amazement that 1/3 of Russians were secret Christians. (They forgot to suppress the elderly grandmothers who shared their faith with children)

            I sense that the midterms are going to go badly for the progressives.  Polls don’t show it but I think all the threats have shut people’s mouths.  But they are sharpening their pencils to vote. Maybe I’m wrong.  We’ll see.

How genocide happens

 

THE 2020 RIOTS, CONGRESSIONAL POWER PLAYS, RULE By EXECUTIVE ORDERS POINT TO PARTISANSHIP. Is that a problem? While I don’t accuse any of genocidal behavior, we need to understand the Holocaust and how it happened.  In March 1942 80% of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive.  By Feb. 1943, only 20%.  That year of mass murder didn’t occur in concentration camps but were performed by very ordinary men, mainly in the forests of eastern Europe. Poland was the nexus. In the aftermath of the war, numerous psychological studies by criminologists were done to try to understand this.  There is a type of “authoritarian personality” which is anti-democratic, obsessed with authority, has aggressiveness towards out-groups, lacks introspection, tends towards stereotyping, and preoccupied with sex and power and toughness.  These are cruel people who were typically the Nazis who first volunteered, but not the vast majority of common Germans who killed the Jews in ‘42.  Just a few SS men were among them.  Other studies suggested that some of the killers were “sleepers” to violence, say, someone who does not question authority, but this has been mostly disproven.  The people who did the genocide were those not desirable for Germany’s army.  They avoided the draft, were too old or very young, middle class people with jobs as salesmen, dentists, factory workers, etc. who did not want to be part of the army. But the Nazis and Himmler who ran both the SS and police created them.  When the war got into full swiing, it became apparent that the military needed as many men as it could get.  Police forces were raided for soldiers and then for police that would occupy the conquered territories. Most had almost no training.  It was these Order Police that massacred most of the Jews. At first they were sent to hunt down Bolsheviks for extermination and implicated Jews, Gypsies, and others as bad, rebellious people in conquered lands. The SS officers played on the patriotism of these clueless men but often told them they would not have to do any of the executions if they were weak.  Most of them agreed, however, not that they were interested in career advancements or appeal to superiors.  True, some Poles also helped the Nazis.  Most of the Jews lived in among small villages and identification was difficult. Nazi soldiers were subject to a lot of propaganda.  3 threats they deemed: Christianity which was spread by Jew Paul; liberalism which admired the uprising of racially inferior (French Revolution); and Bolshevism, advanced by Jew Karl Marx.  Jews were a racial mixture, it was asserted(untrue) who had sold out Germany in WW I.  And Nazisim was obsessed with racial purity.  But many of the Order Police were Christians and didn’t believe much of the propaganda. Moreover, the early Nazi pamphlets didn’tcall for genocide, just removal of Jews from Europe.

            What caused genocide? First, a demonization campaign. Then Jews were removed from Germany to Poland and Latvia (Latvians especially disliked Jews) Distance makes dislike and lack of sympathy.  There were stories of the Order Police running into someone they knew from Germany and being totally sickened.  But mostly the Germans didn’t know who they were killing.  Secondly, SS and some other diehard anti-semites did a lot of the initial trigger pulling, while Jew hunts and guarding was done by the Order Police. When a few try to guard a lot of others, it breeds discontent and threats from the captives, and this leads to desperation and lack of empathy of the guards.  As time went on, more and more of the Order Police were willing to join in the killing.  Obligation to the battalion and a desire to look good in front of comrades seems to have been a large issue. But after the war, they said they were just following orders, a convenient excuse, not born out by cross-interviewing.

            So what?  Well, imagine if some group started labeling en mass an out-group “white supremacists” or some name that is uncompromisable—demonization and dehumanization. Thus hatred is condoned  If the  out-group doesn’t believe in Critical Race Theory or some other doctrine they are shunned and persecuted. Partisanship allows no dialog between sides. The majority grabs power at all levels and Congress rams legislation through. The demonized groups are herded into states of their color. Desire for place in the Party or solidarity with comrades makes some ordinary people commit atrocities. We've seen this in Rwanda, Soviet Russia, China, Middle East and a host of other places.

            If the reader wishes to investigate further, Christopher Browning, historian at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington wrote a thoroughly researched book on the subject complete with interviews of former unprosecuted Order Police Battalion 101 members and Poles to witness the same events.