This is a commentary by Bill Mahr in the Lost Angeles Times.
Yes, teenagers *are* actually stupid. The question to ask is, why are Yankee American teenagers so stupid? Aside from their peers there are, I would say, three main sources of education for them: television, their sick-ass parents and the public education system. It looks like a slam dunk; all three are failing miserably.
Television creates and serves the free (to ruin society) market and the bottom line is only good for those at the front of the line. (I think I just made that up.) Sick-ass parents are themselves products of the pathetic American public eduction system and thus never learned how to think properly. The public education system itself is failing because there is no strong central authority setting *helpful* standards and most importantly it is being starved to death more and more every year.
Once stupid American teenagers are free from their parents and the public education system they are commuting longer to work longer hours with less leisure time. At that point there is little if any incentive or opportunity to think about anything important or learn anything new; the race is on. Race to have kids, race to get promoted, race to buy a house that is too expensive, race to pay off the car that is too expensive, etc.
They still watch television, though, which serves as their brain. It is the only thing apparently cogitating at that point and it never stops talking. It gives them its new ideas and images and forms their opinion for them. Somehow they decide which channels to watch and those channels tell them how life is outside their office and their house.
So, stop fantasizing that we all exercize the free will we’ve supposedly been granted and that stupid American teenagers are like that because they are the beginning and end of their experience and opinions. Society creates the children and government it deserves. Society doesn’t begin with corporations or government, it begins with normal people doing normal things. When the people fail its institutions fail, and children are an institution. In a way, America is as stupid as its teenagers. Oh, shit.
Leave a Reply