Sometimes I feel guilty about the crushing debt our generation is passing on to the next. Then I read news items like this;
Police said the gang members are part of a group of more than 1,000 youths who have used social media sites like Facebook to plan unruly gatherings on the beach on three of the past four nights.
Whatever!
They ruin the quality of life of everybody around them but if a cop so much as pushes them they scream blue murder.
A nightstick injury and a couple nights behind bars would be a real game changer for these folk.
Your post hinges on the assumption these gang thugs are ever going to do meaningful work that can be taxed to support the crushing debt.
Kids these days! I remember when we were kids and all we had was the drippings from the corn silo and a date with the goat. Kids get everything handed to them these days. Dang brats. Don’t get me started!
(I want to fit in here.)
File this under ‘get off my lawn!’. Hide the decline.
High-powered waterhoses?
Just a thought.
Lloyd, is “Fister” your name or is it a hobby? Just curious.
I remember when we were kids and all we had was the drippings from the corn silo and a date with the goat.
Lloyd Fister.
Ahhhh, I’m sure you do:)
Wow. This is what they are talking about when they say “we can’t let this technology fall into the wrong hands”. It has and maybe we need to now have internet licenses. You’ll have to pass a short test in order to get one. Drudge had about 9 stories of this sort from all over the country on the weekend.
All kidding aside, the next generation is my kids, who have jobs and kids. They don’t hang out in gangs, never did. My children and grandchildren are facing crushing debt and I blame the former liberal federal guvmints for our current mess.
Lloyd
What exactly are you trying to “fit” into and where is here?
This is not a generational issue; it’s a foreign culture invasion. We ain’t winning.
The left believes that this is healthy natural fun by kids, watch and see them scream when it spreads into their backyards and they themselves have nowhere else to run.
Why not go to the upcoming annual Juneteenth Celebrations this year and celebrate youth and diversity?
http://www.google.ca/search?q=Junetenth+riots&hl=en&rlz=1T4ACGW_enCA359CA359&biw=1238&bih=784&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=L53lTb3gF-bTiAKwnazgCQ&ved=0CE8QqwQ
In the old days this was called a “mob”. In the old days you could get 200 people to mob-up just by yelling “Hey rube!” In Egypt these days they just yell “Jew!”
In Baaaahston you gotta have a cell phone and a facebook account to raise a mob. Which leaves a -trail-. Which lasts for -years-. So anytime they feel bored, or motivated, or in fear of their frickin’ jobs, Boston PD can look these guys up one at a time, match them with all the hours of video that you know they have, and bust ’em.
Or let them burn the place down, AND arrest anyone who tries to stop them. That’s how its currently done.
Black Mamba
I wondered the same thang.
Actually, it makes it easier to weed out the turds. This happened in many places in the US (according to Drudge – as someone mentioned above). Check out the pics and see who’s involved. No big surprise…
We were all much tougher than these kids, just like our parents were tougher than us; “walked to school, 5 miles, uphill both ways”.
Where’s the empathy for the kids? I certainly wouldn’t go back (except maybe for a visit).
Meh, it’s Boston. Used to have Jets and Sharks type groups, now have Facebook fights. The tech changes but not much else.
The left consistently trys their hardest to “get the vote out” from this demographic in an attempt to stop conservatives from winning elections.
Fortunately, this representation of youth could care less of anything but their own good time and will likely never vote for anything. They do, however, hope that others will continue to vote for welfare cheques and anything “free” so that they will continue to receive said cheques from the overtaxed hard working people that they so despise.
Any bets that these “young people” are not conservatives?
Pack animals. In a group, they’re just so tough.
To be fair, it’s not only the youth whose sense of entitlement has increased over the last 50 years IMHO. History tells us that each generation thinks the next is worse and in many categories I tend to agree, in others not so much.
Archeological digs from Pompey show a hyper-sexualized society. Sodom and Gomorrah’s perversion has been said to have permeated down to young children. Children today are being sexualized younger and continually bombarded with sexual messages that I find hard to believe the ancient world could have topped.
And then there are these oft repeated examples from history, yet these descriptions of abysses these youth had fallen into seem rather shallow by today’s standards:
The story goes that the Greek philosopher Plato studied under Socrates. Plato complained about the youth of the day, also. “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?” I think this is a direct quote, but can’t find the reference at the moment.
Here’s another one: “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint” Hesiod, 8th century BC).
Or this one: “The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for girls, they are forward, immodest and unwomanly in speech, behaviour and dress.”
Finally, there’s this one: “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.” There is a debate as to where this one originates. The Mayer of Amsterdam attributed it to Socrates, but as far as I know, the authorship has not been firmly established.
These references are often used to show what alarmists adults are today and that their nostalgia prevents them from recognizing nothing has changed significantly. I beg to differ.
The singular difference Lori, is that the “youth” of today are often in their 20’s, and still living at home, etc… whereas most of the preceding generations got this crap out of their systems as teenagers.
Kate me thinks you will get a good laugh from this video for sure:
http://www.theonion.com/video/cases-of-shaken-manchild-syndrome-on-the-rise,19783/
My main point is that behavior is largely measured by degrees. It use to be that showing ones ankles was immodest. It irks me when sociologists and the like say that nothing has really changed with our youth. Where it was once rude not to rise when an adult entered the room, it’s now not uncommon for adults to be greeted with a string of 4 letter obscenities.
@Kate: the article specifically says the crowd was almost all 14-19 year olds.
Well if Socrates was corrupting the youth, who can we give the hemlock to these days? We’re gonna need a bunch of it.
Here is the perfect solution: Send in the Guard – they capture the yooots – enroll them in the armed forces for a couple of year – problem solved.
“As a supporter of GWBush’s ‘kill now pay later’ wars, it’s unlikely you ever gave a good g*ddamn about any crushing debt you were passing on to anyone.”
Do you mean the 2 wars that bama said that he’d withdraw from or the new one in Libya that he involved the US in…moron.
Not Patricia>
“As a supporter of GWBush’s ‘kill now pay later’ wars”
Why are the Obamba kill now pay later extended wars better? I ask because you didn’t mention them, and think maybe I missed something.
I think the actual chronographically age is not relevant here – these are “disenfranchised youth”.
Age is subjective amongst other malleable Liberal truths.
Now there’s the subconscious riddle your mind had trouble bringing to the surface, yet still cannot bear to think aloud.
Its funny that Lefties call deposing the tyrant Saddam Hussein “kill now pay later”, but Barry sending the SEALs after one old man gets a “meh”. Then there’s the present campaign against Libya, also all Barry, also gets a “meh”.
It should be pointed out to the troll that Libya isn’t even being fought with borrowed money. They just -printed- the money for that one. Its called debasing the currency, long time favorite of socialists trying to get out from under the failures of their insane policies.
You’ve given up your youth to socialist indoctrination and have no one to blame by itself.
When I am making modest attempts to point out that you folks have no understanding of socialist ideas you foam at the mouth cursing me.
You can’t have it both ways.
Yea, kids never had big beach parties until this spoiled generation came along. Back in the day, all kids spent most of their days studying Latin and calculus. The rest of the time, they were either in silent prayer at the church or volunteering to help the needy. When they were ready, they dropped out of high school, learned a good trade and were productive citizens. In fact, I look back at films of youth from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and see nothing but angelic little faces, altruistic folk who would always pay their debts fully and on time and leave nothing to their children and grandchildren except fond memories.
That’s right, Lloyd.
Current generations are selfish, vulgar and thoughtless. It has nothing to do with going to the beach or having fun. It has to do with rudeness, violence, lack of responsibility and failure to think of others.
Youth gatherings gone bad aside, I am getting the sense that ultimate goal in reporting these types of stories is to garner support for putting limits on the internet, particularly social media.
What was blamed for the recent revolts against the governments in Libya, Egypt, and Syria? Social media and the internet. I am afraid that our current internet freedoms are going to be severely restricted in the very near future. The laws to do so at least in the US, not sure about Canada, have were in place even before any government revolts.
China set the example with Cisco and Microsoft more than willing to aid and abet China’s tyranny against its own citizens-Cisco is alleged to have turned over for names of persons who accessed certain sites. Cisco nor Microsoft seem to care that these people were tortured and some died. Apple is no better. The Apple employees in China were jumping to their deaths – Apple actually had to install nets around the building and more recently 3 people died in a blast at an Ipad plant in Foxconn. Yahoo, google, you tube etc are buying each other up and are sure to follow suit. One already needs to have a google account to comment on you tube. The net/web is closing in on us.
Many folks have noted that these types of inter-generational issues have been going on since time immemorial, i.e. Plato. Rather than viewing them through a linear concept of time, try a circular or cyclical one such as discussed in “The Fourth Turning” by William Strauss and Neil Howe. In doing so you could say that each generation is correct in its assessment of the next, until after the fourth turning, when it supposedly returns to the way it was or at least moves somewhat in that direction. The fact that these cycles repeat 1-4 throughout history (except after the U.S. Civil War) seems to adequately explain Plato and even our own recent generations’ view of each succeeding generation.
Moderately connected discussion: Knowing that we’ve been through several of these 4th Turnings and the trials and tribulations that come with them is also somewhat comforting. The U.S. Revolutionary War, U.S. Civil War, and WWII being the results of three separate 4th Turnings. The bottom line is that the research presented in this book indicates we are with in only a few years of some sort of catalyst that will likely kick off a war on the scale listed above. The catalyst and subsequent war has the potential to transform today’s 18-24 year-olds into the next “Greatest Generation,” if we survive. It will be our job, the 13th Generation, aka Gen X, to ensure our survival by effectively leading those kids in and through that war. And the cycle will repeat again in approximately 80 years.
Second moderately connected comment: In light of the Cloward-Piven strategy being to encourage/use the dependent class’ rioting on a massive scale to force change, could these have been test runs for riots on the scale recently seen in the Middle East? I can easily think of three things one would want to test: the ability to organize/influence a sizable crowd with social networking; police response timing, capability, and capacity; and finally the public response to both the “mob” and the police response. One may even want to run multiple tests in different geographic regions to test for regional attitudes toward the mob or ability to influence the press and how that press influence impacts public perception of the event and the police response.