We’ve been treated in recent days to the spectacle of schoolchildren marching in the streets to demand legislative restrictions on gun acquisition and ownership. This sort of thing is nothing new; I remember my own adolescence, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and the student protests of that era.
When you’re that age, it’s fun and exciting to do what we saw the kids doing this week: to play a little hooky, block some traffic, make some noise, taste the thrill of shared, unbridled emotion — and, most of all, to get a lot of attention while lecturing your elders about how the world could be easily and profitably improved, if only they could see past their fossilized habits of mind (or, failing that, be pushed out of the way).
Looking back on my own ardent youth — which by happenstance took place in a curious epoch, as whenever we are young, in which old folks were fools and children were wise — my nostalgic impulse is to say “more power to them”. In doing so, I’d be echoing the sentiments of a great many in the media and chattering classes who insist that these children should not only be listened to — which I’m happy to indulge for a minute or two if I must — but given the vote.
The nostalgic impulse, however, quickly passes. Reason and wisdom regain the helm. “More power to them”?? God help us all. These are teenagers, folks. Have you ever been, or had any intimate association with, a teenager? If so, you will agree that the amount of power they should have over public policy is, quite precisely, zero.
Every adult knows this, of course, which means that those calling for this ludicrous expansion of an already far-too-inclusive franchise do so for cynical and tactical reasons. Can you imagine that if these cherubs were marching for Israeli-style school security, or for sensible immigration restrictions, or for an end to the poisonous cult-Marx grievance-mongering that has ruined all of our institutions, that they’d be the media darlings they are today? Of course not. If high-school seniors were marching for the right to carry pistols in class to defend themselves, would the Governor of New York beclown himself, and soil an expensive suit, to egg them on? No. (Duh.)
Ah, but then I have to ask myself: how would I feel if they were demanding such things? Wouldn’t I see them as the great hope for the future? Wouldn’t I be thrilled that a new generation of American youth had finally wised up to the catastrophe that my own generation of lotus-eating Utopian Universalist cryptoreligious hippies had wrought upon their magnificent heritage and birthright?
Well, yes. You bet I would! I’d be climbing a lamp-post to cheer them on.
But give them the vote? Are you kidding? They’re children. Have we lost our minds?
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The adults voted, and we got porn star porker Trump and his family of grifters. Teenagers could scarcely do any worse.
Funny – half of us thought the grifters lost the election. (And I wouldn’t think the party of the Kennedys and the Clintons would really want to start a conversation about porkers.)
But either way you look at it, I know this:
When things are coming apart, and order yields to disorder; when tribes and factions pull society asunder; when the sacred becomes profane, and culture brings forth monsters —
The answer is not, “More Democracy!”
Heck, I am coming around to the view that the USA should never have given *females* the vote, much less the Under-21 crowd.
A big concern is how we can accept any future results from California and other alienophile states in national elections, knowing that they are going to deliberately conspire to allow the ineligible to vote in vast numbers.
Um, maybe not.
https://me.me/i/joseph-dobrian-d-wir-this-school-walkout-thing-is-giving-me-21018327
Well, if we did have a democracy — and America got who it wanted for president — then we would not be disgraced and shamed by an ignorant and mean-spirited buffoon who acts like a child, surrounds himself with crooks and cronies, lies copiously and shamelessly, uses the presidency for self-enrichment, runs a dysfunctional and chaotic administration, and whose unblemished record of failure is causing damage which is profound, long-lasting, and possibly irreversible. So there’s that.
Right: if we’d had raw democracy, as you seem to favor, then instead of an energetic president who has lowered taxes, rebooted the economy, who puts the interests of Americans over those of illegal aliens, stands in defense of the Bill of Rights, and — in sharp contrast to his predecessor — actually seems to love his country, we’d have had as president a lying, felonious, venal, incompetent, rape-enabling, black-hearted, disease-ridden, bitter, grasping alcoholic harpy who has never accomplished a single thing on her own merit, is at this point so wasted by her shabby life of booze, graft, and sin that she can’t even get down a flight of stairs, and who would, were it not for the corruption of her accomplices in high office, already be in prison.
I rest my case.
Did you ever see the movie Rashomon?
That America now lives in two such completely opposite, and mutually antagonistic, realities is not an encouraging sign. Civil wars start this way.
None of that is actually true.
The “energetic president” has a five or six hour work day, golfs nearly every weekend, and had to use a golf cart to get his fat ass a few hundred meters up a hill while other world leaders walked.
The economy has not materially changed since Trump came to office, and it certainly hasn’t “rebooted.” 2017 GDP was 2.3%, less than 2014 (2.6%) or 2015 (2.9%); the Atlanta Fed yesterday forecast 1.9% GDP for first quarter 2018; fewer jobs were created in 2017 than any year since 2011; wage growth and productivity are flat; the dollar is down; and interest rates are rising. The Treasury is borrowing more money this quarter than any quarter since 2010. The deficit-to-GDP ratio has only exceeded 5% twice since WW2: the brutal recessions of 1980-82 and 2008-09. We’ll be there next year.
Every American president has put citizens above illegals, including the last one, who deported as many or more of then than any other US president.
A president who characterizes a free press as “scum” who are “enemies of the people,” threatens Jeff Bezos because he owns a newspaper which says mean things about him, and is blocking the Time Warner acquisition because he doesn’t like CNN is no friend of the Bill of Rights.
We will never know whether Hillary Clinton would have been a good president or a bad president. You cannot excuse the abysmal failure of the Trump administration by comparing it to the right wing caricature of Hillary Clinton, or by speculating on what she would have done if the people’s choice was in the Oval Office.
I have not seen Roshomon. Is it as good as Putney Swope?
We can bandy economic indicators all day long. Here’s your side’s own mouthpiece CNN, for example, telling a far different story.
To equate the attitude of the Trump and Obama administrations toward illegal aliens is breathtaking, even for you. If the Obama administration, for example, filed Federal lawsuits against sanctuary cities, I missed it somehow. As I recall, Mr. Obama was too busy with protecting them by executive orders that even he admitted he didn’t have the Constitutional authority to issue.
Nothing in the Bill of Rights prevents a free press from being “scum”, nor prevents the chief executive from saying so.
As you say, we will never know exactly what a Hillary Clinton administration would have inflicted upon a suffering nation, had she been elected (though it’s not hard to imagine). Hardly a day goes by that I don’t thank the wisdom of the Founders for that result. It gives me hope, however faint, that the Republic may endure just a little while longer.
“Rashomon”. Look it up.
Good news! We’ve learned of Trump’s fondness for having porn stars apply “discipline” to his buttocks with rolled up magazines. It was just announced that the callipygian Stormy Daniels, three time winner of the coveted Favorite Breasts Award, will appear on 60 Minutes soon. I haven’t waited for a Sunday this much since the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.
I’ll have to do research into her oeuvre to be a fully informed citizen.
Was Trump on all fours when he received his punishment for being a bad, bad boy? Did he say “thank you, ma’am, may I have another? Thank you, ma’am, may I have another?” A miserable and bitterly divided nation is eager to find out. Is this a great country, or what?
Has he raped or murdered anyone, Peter?
Time to stop now.
Trump has been accused of rape by an ex-wife, as well as an underage girl who withdrew her civil lawsuit after getting death threats, and he has been accused of sexual assault short of rape by nineteen other women. He also boasted of peeping on underage girls in their locker room and lusting after his daughter to Howard Stern (as well as telling Stormy: “you remind me of my daughter.” Ewww.)
Clinton was also accused of rape, by someone who recanted her accusation when placed under oath. Both of them are deplorable scoundrels, but only one of them was a popular and successful president who governed competently. Give me eight years of peace and prosperity, and I’ll balance that against personal moral failings.
Trump has not had anyone murdered, but neither have the Clintons. Your point is elusive.
I’ll stop now too. I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.
Between JFK, Teddy, LBJ and the Clintons, I should think you’d have enough womanizing, vulgarity, graft and worse that you’d not be throwing any stones. (As for rape, I thought it was your gal HRC who said that women “ought to be believed”. I believe Juanita Broaddrick.)
But anyway:
OK, we’ll try to deliver on that, if you people will let us.