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Rob Brown's avatar

Kids these days wanted censorship last time I saw a poll. So let's not pretend that the youngest generation right now has things figured out. Far too many of them don't, and lots of them are too young to even remember the Bush years. If they did remember the Bush years, they would understand why a crackdown on "domestic violent extremists" is a bad thing. But they don't.

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Fran's avatar

The picture posted here is offensive. The older generations are blinded by the enlightenment of the upcoming generation, while they are seen as fragile old souls who remain in darkness, clinging to their unenlightened beliefs. Generalizations like this are nothing but prejudicial and unenlightened.

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Rob Brown's avatar

I'm not offended personally, but that might be because I don't look like that guy...yet...

I know there's more than one regular commenter here who qualify for senior discounts. I'm not referring to any trolls. I confess to being a bit surprised at first, but if I know that then Caitlin should too.

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Fran's avatar

She wasn't only referencing those in there 70's or 80's and I'm not there yet either, but the picture presented was a caricature of previous generations, parents, grandparents who cannot perceive how far their children have moved beyond them in spirit and mind, and feel they must be reined in. It's a gross generalization without much validity. If you read it again they are all knowing, and good and have transcended their past. Too often she implements a poetic license and creates a world that is black and white which never conveys the truth.

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jerrydavidson's avatar

Rob: What poll?

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Rob Brown's avatar

You can see it in another reply to you.

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TierDoc's avatar

We must know different kids. The ones all around me do and think exactly what corporate tells them to. Right down to repeating whatever talking points that have been planted into MSM, allowing themselves to be repeatedly injected with gene therapy, hating their natural bodies so much that some have them altered permanently, and having to take drugs some prescribed, some not, to keep their climate and other anxieties at a bearable level.

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nedweenie's avatar

No kidding. And if you challenge their virtual realities, they pitch tantrums and threaten you.

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kristofarian's avatar

Carefully Taught

they've been.

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TierDoc's avatar

😖

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kristofarian's avatar

kids these days see corporations

running ruffshod over the Citizenry

a biosphere in mid-meltdown & a 'future'

no brighter than the darkest side of the Moon

.

with corporate control

over most if not All as-

pects of their Lives.

.

why on Earth

would there

Not be tons

of Despair?

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GreaterIsrahell's avatar

"Kids nowadays!"

- Socrates -

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Beej's avatar

Exactly, Platon and Aristotle also had a few words to say on the issue! Oh to be the young part of young and rebellious again, sigh …

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Brian Roberts's avatar

You are en fuego 🔥. Fuego de La corazon.

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Patty's avatar

It's because of these kids I have a strong hope for the change needed in our world.

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Fran's avatar

Why Patty? What do you see that I don't? I teach, and have taught for a long time. The generalizations spewed here are just that.

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Carol Dansereau's avatar

"How can we teach them to hate their bodies?" I know! Let's tell them some people are born in the wrong body, and then let's put a woman who's sliced off her breasts on the cover of Time magazine. Let's clap loudly when an autistic or depressed or traumatized child chemically blocks their body's maturation, and moves on to further chemical and surgical harm thereafter.

"How can we teach them to kill for our country...when they're so kind...and so nice to freaks," etc. I know! Let's train them to identify as EVIL anyone who understands binary sex and defends women's rights and gay rights. Let's applaud as they push, spit on, and shriek at these evil people, and as they force them out of parks, jobs, organizations, etc.

"How can we teach them to fight like a man, or submit like a woman when they claim to be neither?" I know. Let's reify the most vile sexist stereotypes possible via Gender Identity Ideology and then pretend we're doing the opposite. Let's teach girls to submit to having naked men in their locker room, to men stealing their spots and titles, to having no-places-away-from-male-gaze.....let's push a Cult that forces women to submit submit submit. And attacks them if they don't. Let's ignore women raped in prisons by men who claim to be women.

Caitlin, you are so so so uninformed about the Gender Identity Cult and the horrific damage it's doing to individual kids, to entire generations, to organizing for real change, to free speech, etc. You entirely miss that it is the product of Big Tech + Big Money + Big Pharma and it appropriates all the best instincts, twists them, undermines them, and puts them in the service of destruction. It is destroying kids, making them fragile and hateful, enlisting them in anti-free-speech escapades, enlisting them in treating others really really really badly. You also wrongly imply that those of us deeply concerned about the Gender Cult and its impact on kids and the future come from a place of conservatism. You are missing the fact that vast numbers of us are lefties, we fight war, sexism, ecological destruction, capitalism, etc. That's WHY we're so concerned about what's being done to kids, and what they're saying and doing as a result.

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Paula's avatar

Carol, you've said much of what I've been dying to write to Caitlin for the longest time. As a Lesbian/Women's Lib activist since the early 70s, I'm appalled by the LGBTQI+XYZ movement that all but eliminates Lesbians, not to mention "cis" women. Dear Caitlin, as an honest, decent human being, wishes not to be intolerant of people different from herself, although she'll never truly understand what they're about. I, too, as a white USAmerican, am highly tuned into POC rights, grievances & legitimate demands for reparations, for example, although I know I'll never experience the Black experience. Reading the Black press allows me to see that there is no "bloc" that deserves my unconditional support (Black imperialist Congressional warmongers are no better than white ones).

Caitlin must learn to see that the separate elements L, G, B, T, etc., each have their own agendas & interests, & that Lesbian feminists are not & cannot be part of this "community" which, at best, ignores us & at worst, seeks to eliminate us. There will be no real, female women left once the man-made women become dominant. A 1976 article in the British feminist rag Spare Rib, by a an MTF trans, outright stated these ersatz types are superior to "genetic women" (whom he derogatorily called "Jennies") & meant to replace them (us). LGBTQI+XYZ has invisibilized women/Lesbians & Caitlin needs to learn where to separate the interests here. Her highly laudable desire for impartiality seems to lead her to feel her status as a straight, "cis" female needs to be counterbalanced towards gay, trans, male… The male-dominated LGBTQI+XYZ hype is taking us directly back to the Patriarchy the women's movement from the 60s began trying to shake off/destroy.

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Rob Brown's avatar

I stopped reading for a second when you said you wanted to write to her for a long time about this, because as far as I know she hasn't talked a whole lot about these issues.

Have I missed an article about it? Multiple articles? If so, I'd be interested in links if it's no trouble.

I admit I have a difficult time imagining how biological women can be "replaced" when they're going to continue to be born and grow up. Outside of pogroms I'm not sure how that could happen, and I'd be shocked if there were pogroms...but nothing's impossible, just really improbable at most. I used to think it was really improbable that Australia would throw people in camps for not getting jabbed with a drug advertised as a vaccine but that didn't even stop transmission of Covid, and yet it did.

As for your other concerns, I don't consider any of them impossible OR improbable. I believe they're valid.

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Bruce Lesnick's avatar

Excellent.

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Rob Brown's avatar

I get where you're coming from even if my opinion differs in places, e.g. if an adult female (I know they don't identify that way but it's just easier to write) has her breasts removed and transitions to male then, well, that's up to her.

But what absolutely isn't up to her or anyone else is to demand others inconvenience themselves or even tolerate things that terrify them (sometimes justifiably terrify them) because "WE are the only victims here and OUR wishes should be given top priority!"

GTFO with that bullshit, you entitled asshats.

Playing Devil's advocate for a minute, here's what trans people have told me about bathrooms, which is that if they're presenting as female in public, they're going to be really conspicuous if they go into a men's restroom. At best, this will result in some funny looks in their direction but nothing more. But it can also result in them being harassed or assaulted.

Devil's advocate mode disengaged. Okay, given that, one would think that if there were a restroom which they could go into without worrying about scaring women or being scared by men, that they would be for that, right? Say, if there were a unisex room along with the other two?

I don't know how the majority of trans people feel about that and I'm sure that opinion on that idea is split one way or another among them. But the specific nutjob who tweeted the following will settle for nothing less than total capitulation to what she wants:

https://twitter.com/notCursedE/status/1339615453178703878

I saw her tweet something else on this subject years ago that was in the same vein, but I couldn't find it. It was saying, and I have to paraphrase this because I haven't got it in front of me, "Oh, you want 'separate but equal' huh? No, absolutely fucking not, you're all BIGOTS for even suggesting this and I refuse to compromise with BIGOTS!"

All right. In another reply here I said that certain trans "activists" (in quotes because they don't deserve to be called activists) create the impression that all trans people are rage-filled and unreasonable. I've just shown you one such person. I'm positive you've seen others, or seen their posts.

I miss the days when Caitlin seemed to have zero shitty takes on things.

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Zoe's avatar

I read "kids these days" as the more innocent pure no bs version of ourselves regardless of age. Most younger people I know are just as confused entangled and deluded as the rest of us. We all need to contribute the wisdom of our respective perspectives to experience a sane and wholesome world work.

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Rob Brown's avatar

I really hope that Caitlin wasn't looking at what college students were doing when she wrote this and thinking "Yeah, them being ultra-woke and believing strongly in deplatforming people who are not ultra-woke is a sign that this generation is better than mine or the ones that came before!"

No, it's just their own brand of intolerance, and it's getting a hell of a lot harder for its proponents to defend by arguing "Hey, we're not intolerant of anything *except* intolerance! Like Karl Popper said to be! Here's the cartoon about the Paradox Of Tolerance if you haven't seen it yet, and if you don't agree with it then you're a fascist who needs to have your teeth knocked out!"

The reason it's harder to argue is that at this point "intolerance" has come to include "people who think trans women might just have an edge over women who aren't trans in sports". They also say that free speech absolutists are intolerant.

Hell, are there even people in their teens or twenties today who think that there shouldn't be any First Amendment? I believe there are. I live in a country that has no such freedom of speech protections and which does have hate speech laws, and that made it a hell of a lot easier for that POS Trudeau to crush the trucker protest. If "kids today" believe that's preferable to freedom of speech, then fuck YEAH I'm gonna wonder what the hell is wrong with them.

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Fran's avatar

You are very informative in your commentary and God knows it is needed to counter the sweeping, uninformed prejudicial rhetoric in this article.

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Rob Brown's avatar

Well, thank you. I try and lord knows I often fail.

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Fran's avatar

No, very well said.

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jerrydavidson's avatar

Rob: I know it, too.

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Zoe's avatar

*We all need to contribute the wisdom of our respective perspectives to experience a sane and wholesome world.

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GadflyBytes's avatar

Calling out warmongers, while pandering to woke ideology? Young girls and their slander led to the murder of people in Salem as witches. Did the young girls come up with the concept of witches and evil? No, it was forced upon them by a wickedly puritanical church and community, which filled their heads with nightmares of evil and the devil. But children, though seeking to be idealistic, often confuse fantasy with reality. Where did much of the ideology that biological sex is a fiction originate? Was it with kids, who are eschewing gender roles? Or, was it from adults, who are utilizing it to enforce gender roles more stringently, especially on gay kids? Eschewing a gender role does not require denying one’s physical sex. Why is the concept that it is being pursued? Why are children being taught that violence against women is ok, if those women protest the sanctity of their spaces?

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Rob Brown's avatar

I'd say that it's not only violence against women that's unacceptable, but that's certainly among the unacceptable things.

I'm also frustrated by how this Substack can be so good at arguing against war and yet still show signs of being part of the woke crowd. Like whatever that line about gender was.

It's a poem so I don't know whether to take everything at face value or not, but I took it to mean that trans people are somehow more enlightened. They aren't. There is absolutely no basis for believing any such thing.

Here's what often happens with trans people. Being trans sucks (if you are indeed trans and not misdiagnosed), and it would suck even if there weren't frothing-at-the-mouth trans "activists" who tarnish the image of trans people by flipping their shit over Dave Chappelle and wishing for him to get assaulted, or by doxxing people deemed transphobic, or by joining Chase Strangio of the once-principled and once-non-partisan ACLU in demanding censorship, as detailed here:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-speech

People like those make reasonable trans people (they exist, I've talked to some of them) look bad.

But in any case, because it's tough being trans, I'd say trans people are on average having more unpleasant days than cis people.

If my theory's correct, it logically follows that trans people spend a lot of time upset and frustrated. And as someone who isn't exactly great at keeping his emotions under control, I know from personal experience that emotional people often make bad decisions. Also, that after they've calmed down enough to realize that they could have handled things much better, they're hesitant to admit wrongdoing because they're still angry at the person they argued with, or perhaps even physically fought.

People who suffer deserve our pity and, if it doesn't hurt anyone else to help them, they deserve our help. But it's a mistake to believe that they have their heads screwed on straighter than people who haven't suffered as badly.

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jamenta's avatar

We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teacher, leave the kids alone

Hey! Teacher, leave us kids alone

All in all you're just another brick in the wall

All in all you're just another brick in the wall

Wrong! Do it again

Wrong! Do it again

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

You! Yes, you behind the bike shed

Stand still, laddie

You! Yes, you behind the bike shed

Stand still, laddie

~Pink Floyd

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Andrea Cherez's avatar

Every generation is a small step towards our evolving into more compassionate humans.

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Fran's avatar

Andrea, look at the 21st century and think of the many million Muslim lives lost, their countries destroyed, and all based on lies, each and everyone of them. Now there exists the possibility of a nuclear war, so do you think time always means growth, for a person, for a country? Now a quote from this article "And how can we teach them to kill for our country when they're so gentle and sensitive and care about other people's feelings?" I guess she forgot who fought and killed in those wars, and that the antiwar movement died. Sometimes things move backwards, and sometimes good things that were part of the past disappear.

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Andrea Cherez's avatar

I was thinking more of our planet as a whole. Absolutely there are still places on Earth filled with horror. But overall our species has been getting more peaceful.

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Fran's avatar

Andrea I can understand your need to see it that way. Do you live in the US? If you do you may know there has been 20 years of lying ourselves into one war after another in the Middle East, a neocon agenda that we have adopted. Millions have died, been displaced, their countries destroyed. Starving children in Yemen, a genocide created by Saudi Arabia seven years ago and we feed them weapons so they can continue their onslaught, and the century may not even see it's completion with our desire to use Ukraine and it's people as fodder to bring down Putin. There is nothing but silence among America's people, young and old.

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Andrea Cherez's avatar

Fran, it’s not my perspective. What I stated is a fact. I’m familiar with all the death and destruction you listed and as I said previously I’m not denying any of it.

Check this out - https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

There’s a graph showing wars between major powers from 1500 through 2015. Almost all of them were battling in the beginning, but now it’s close to zero. Does that mean there are no brutal atrocities going on in different parts of the world? No. But as bad as it still is, the world OVERALL is getting less violent. You won’t be able to tell by looking out the window; it takes a search on google to get the actual numbers. Of course, it’s totally one’s choice on whether to only focus on the bad.

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Fran's avatar

I wasn't thinking of the planet as a whole, since Caitlan was referencing our enlightened US children who have come to see the light, leaving behind parents and grandparents confused and worried about them, and their many flaws, but unbeknownst to them these young people have come to see the light and have moved beyond the darkness their parents reside in. Good grief! Getting to your chart those high death toll periods to a great extent reflect the deaths in WWII, and in Vietnam. The CIA since it's inception after WWII has overthrown whole governments and is responsible for the deaths of some 6 million people world wide. You know Ollie North, Reagan, and their supply of weapons to the Contras, to overthrow the Sandinista's in Nicaragua, and that kind of thing? That kind of interference went on a whole lot, then we can't ignore there role in Indonesia in 1965, and their complicity in the deaths of over a million Indonesians. Not to mention the millions killed in Vietnam, and Johnson's lie of the Bay of Tonkin. The US is the world’s number one terrorist and violator of human rights. Those wars in the middle east, were preplanned, back in the late 90's, The Project for a New American Century. We want world dominion. Scary. Who knows what will happen in Russia, a nuclear war, a real possibility. No, things are not getting better Andrea, but I wish they were.

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Andrea Cherez's avatar

You have to scroll down a few headings to this one: The Past Was Not Peaceful, then it’s the first chart that follows. That pertains to my posts which are about the big picture. Or you may just focus on our current mess and declare the sky to be falling. Wish you the best!

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Melissa T's avatar

Yea and they aren’t scared of their parents like I was!

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John T's avatar

BRILLIANT!!!!!!! You're always brilliant, but this one struck a chord. And I'm 59.5 by the way. We need to get the old folks out of the and let the kids save us. We royally f--ked up paradise.

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Fran's avatar

You convey the message of this article very well, but unfortunately it's an ignorant, and ugly message which you understand quite well.

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Fran's avatar

You're kidding, I hope. When did blatant generalizations like this come to be admired?

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Rob Brown's avatar

That logic doesn't fly. It's like saying that the Squad are better than Nancy Pelosi, or that Hakeem Jeffries is, simply because they're younger. Well, we know that all of them are swamp creatures just like Pelosi was. You are looking at what the "kids" do when they have control, and you shouldn't be encouraged.

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jerrydavidson's avatar

Rob: They (the "Squad" and others like them) have been corrupted by the very system that they originally sought to change. They saw the writing on the wall after feebly protesting billions of dollars to fight a war in Ukraine against Russia - they folded.

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Rob Brown's avatar

I'd say it was even earlier than that, assuming they went to Washington intending to do what they said while campaigning. Definitely sometime prior to #ForceTheVote, and I would guess sometime before they posed for a Rolling Stone cover photo alongside Pelosi. That photo, unfortunately, was taken not very long after they were sworn in.

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Fran's avatar

This is truly a piece that assaults older generations and negates their attributes, their contributions, while extolling the virtues of the young that we "old folk" simply are too insensitive to understand. I found it more then offensive with this sweeping generalization that has no merit.

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kristofarian's avatar

the Capitalists're

gonna need Fresh New lies

if they're to reach today's youth

.

count on the Propagandists

to co-opt what may be our

Only way Outta this Mess

.

if only the Evidence

of their Crimes

weren't so GD

Ubiquitious.

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Kevin's avatar

I need a VR playstation. All kids are great. Even the purple headed ones. All get confusing messages and act on them when parents aren't doing a good job.

Most aren't stupid enough to get their sex changed. Almost all.

It is the same in the 70s or 60s. The gear is just different. War is the same. It screws everyone up. Kills a lot of people. But some will go and some won't.

Kids are different in only that the issues appear different. The trouble is there are more fucked up adults.

We just gotta love them when they are stupid or smart. And forgive them all.

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jerrydavidson's avatar

Rob: Thanks. I had never heard that song. But it seems to me the Offspring is saying the kids are not alright because they are screwed (did they connect the dots all the way to "the system"?, but at least they know the kids are screwed). The Who and Pattie Smith are saying the same thing, "the kids are screwed", but they are also saying the kids know that and are rejecting it and fighting back, unlike their parents who took the bit into their mouths and blindly followed orders. Offspring's noise does not appeal to me, so maybe I missed something significant in their lyrics. Be sure to let me know.

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