If you’re looking for an example of libertarian Boomer posting, it doesn’t get much better than this. Not only is it is very representative, but that really is about as profound as their thinking goes. So, of course, I pretty much agree with AltRight’s recent vlog discussing the deficiencies of the boomer-created political paradigm.
Their political battles were, and are, different than ours. I get it. But at the same time, Sommers's cringy tweet is getting at something real, something that should worry us in the Alt Right: the unprecedented timidity of generation z (today’s teens and very young adults). Obviously, being alt right is just about the riskiest political position out there, and today’s youth are the most risk averse generation on record.
I know Sommers names millennials here, but she appears to be talking about generation z. (She is a boomer, after all.) In fairness, the boundary between millennials and gen. z has not been quite set yet. Who are today (generally) considered young millennials do perhaps fit better with gen. z, and maybe the two groups will ultimately be categorized together, under one name or the other. Or maybe older millennials will be bumped-back into generation x—Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, is considered a baby boomer under the most common definition of today.
Whatever we call them, the defining feature of today’s high school and college students, other than their (undoubtedly-related) addiction to social media, is their lack of rebelliousness. Risky/anti-social behavior among teens—fighting, smoking, drinking, partying, having sex etc.—has declined precipitously over the last few years. It is true that most of these things have been in decline ever since Sommers’s salad days, but until recently the declines were gradual, following the usual rule of social trends. Now, they have fallen off-a-cliff.
On the face of it, far fewer smoking 12 year-olds and pregnant 15-year-olds in so short a time would appear to be positive developments, but in context, I think these are manifestations of a larger sickness in our hyper-bourgeois society. We are told that kids today are more lonely and depressed, and I’m sure that’s true, but it’s more than that. The youth simply have less of a taste for danger today, and the only benefit they (and we as a society) are getting from it is that they are in less physical danger. For these ‘lovers of life’ the guiding purpose at back of their chosen life path is no more than the desire to remain breathing for as long as possible. And these are kids we’re talking about, not frail pensioners! You’re supposed to feel bullet-proof when you’re a teenager (I know, bad timing). Generation z were impressionable young kids when the 2008 financial crisis hit, and perhaps they will be forever scarred by it, just as those who grew up during the Great Depression.
Time was, that the meek and/or shy kid who wasn’t getting into mischief at school or partying every weekend was likely to be far more studious and intellectually accomplished. Now I guess he just plays video games and reads comic books because with this drastic decline in ricky behavior there has been no great improvement in academic acuity. For all races but Asians (and even this is only among those who take the SAT), standardized test scores have been flat for decades (speaking of Asians, what we’re getting is a kind of Asianization without the upside of greater studiousness). Intellectual skills comparisons between age groups reveal similar stagnation. Academic competitiveness among the upper of the upper-middle class may be greater than ever, but the energy of the vast middle class of parents goes into things like making sure their kids wear helmets when doing something literally as easy as riding a bike—a skill most children master around the same time they learn how to tie their shoes. And so instead of greater academic dedication we’re getting, as Sommers says, increasingly clownish moral panics.
Many others have already noted the incredible degree to which the furthest reaches of the metoo movement infantilizes women. The logic at work there is that if a man makes a woman feel uncomfortable, he has violated her. And as it would be sexist to expect a woman to explicitly assert herself, it is up to the man to know whether or not she is comfortable. I think though that this attitude of a kind of entitled fragility goes deeper than sexual relations and increasingly applies to social relations in general. The concepts of microaggressions and safe spaces broadly suggest a trend in that direction. In our society of isolated and fragile individuals, I half-think that a generation from now the great civil rights issue will be the elimination of ‘social harassment.’ Perhaps the major newspapers and magazines of the day will publish think-pieces on the evils of bosses ‘forcing’ smalltalk on their subordinates. We’ll read harrowing accounts of employees who suffer from social anxiety being cornered by their bosses at the water cooler and asked if they saw the game last night.
Naturally, the Left is eager to help along this will to docility, and to manipulate it to their interests. As I write, the Left is busy attempting to convince us that we must forfeit our ancient right to bear arms and that Russian social media trolls are an existential threat to the republic. For us in the Alt Right though, cynical pandering toward the last man is not a viable option. However far we go in that direction, the Left will always be able to outdo us. There is some empirical evidence suggesting that gen z whites might be relatively more sympathetic to our cause, but we need to convince them that there can be more to life than keeping a full belly. And striving for those things is worth the risks.
