I scan a lot of articles every day in search of material for this blog, so I simply don’t have time to read most of them thoroughly even if I feature them in a news column; even if they’re interesting I generally read most of them in a somewhat cursory fashion, stopping to read more thoroughly whenever I hit a point that seems important. And if a piece is longer than 1000 words or so, I’ll generally start skipping at about that point to see if there’s anything of note further down. So when I find myself reading an article in its entirety, that is noteworthy in itself, as in the case of this post:
The parents of the 1980s and 1990s were Baby Boomers…until recently…the most panicky and gullible generation in American History…They grew up sheltered, coddled, [and] emotionally stultified…by PTSD-ridden survivors of World War 2 in atomized nuclear families…without nearby relatives…disconnected from the filial and familial bonds that had historically characterized social institutions…under the most suffocating and paranoid propaganda campaign ever undertaken in the West up to that point…Is it any wonder that this generation fell for every conspiracy theory that could be cooked up to fleece them? Is it any wonder that, once they had children they got paranoid? Or that, as parents, they freaked out about the same sex/drugs/rock’n’roll culture that they enjoyed and championed in their youth? Or that they believed that the risk for child-abduction in the 80s was both new and ubiquitous? Or that they believed that there was a Satanist behind every bush and that one in four young girls are being raped in occult rituals so that their babies might be sacrificed at a Black Mass?…Gen X and the Millennials grew up watching this insanity, and the State power that followed it. When a child claims (or is claimed by others) to be abused, the State comes in and runs through a bureaucratic checklist, frequently resulting in long-term fracturing of families, sending children into a…system where they are more likely to be abused than if they stayed with relatives or friends, all while the State was willing and able to violate every point of law and civil liberties at the merest rumor of abuse, domestic violence, drug use, or sexual or religious deviance…They had to submit to more onerous interference in their personal lives…and/or submitting to the most invasive surveillance state in world history…People in such a situation don’t have many children, and tend to be too fearful as parents to let their children actually grow up…
That’s a good taste of it, but I think you’ll find the whole piece worth your time.
