You think maybe we could stop blaming the youth for everything that’s wrong with the world?

Here’s a better question…why?

Why do we blame everything on the youth? Why is it always the first response? It’s like a gut reaction that plagues all of us over…let’s say, 35 years old.

You see a young girl online trying to make sense of her college degrees that suddenly after she’s graduated, aren’t marketable. She tries applying for jobs, using the degrees as a calling card, only to see every door closed in her face. She gets on the internet, seeking an answer, trying to make sense of all the career pushback.

And instead of grace or understanding, she is relentlessly mocked.

“Can you believe this kid? She really thought she could make a career out of that?”

YES! YES! She did. Why?

Because someone told her she could, and then…someone convinced her to PAY someone else, someone OLDER, an INSANE amount of money to teach her all the stuff she was TOLD she NEEDED.

And then four or five years later, when she gets the degree and goes out trying to do the thing she wanted to do in the first place…

SHE IS MOCKED…

Think about that. She is mocked for getting a degree while the ones who SOLD HER the Degree are overlooked. The ones responsible for teaching her AND GETTING PAID for it are never questioned, never even asked…

“Why’d you teach this young (18-24) girl a useless skill?”

Why is that?

And it’s not just college.

If a chain restaurant shuts down,

or the stock market takes a hit,

or a brewery drops in sales,

or a furniture store goes out of business, the first reaction is always:

“Those damn kids…”

You turn on the news, and a childless female anchor says,

“Kids today are lazy, they don’t want to work.”

She brings on a guest, a feminist grifter with a history of calling men trash to say,

“Young men are weak, and the reason the national birth rate is declining.”

You know the type, right? Super aggressive, scoffs at men for all of her personal issues, yet can’t figure out why she’s almost 40 and still lonely.

You change the channel. A smug political pundit mocks the youth over student debt forgiveness, claiming hard work paid his tuition, but he never actually goes into detail. His opponent asks if tuition in his day cost a quarter million like today. The pundit clutches his pearls and gaslights the world, as reddit trolls in real time discover most of his income from the previous year was funded by a forgiven PPP loan.

You go on social media. An entitled Boomer chides Millennials for refusing to pay $1.3 million to live in a house that cost him nine dollars and a box of sardines in 1982. He later admits his children stopped talking to him in 2008, thinking it’ll bring in sympathy bids, but the comments tell a different story.

You doom-scroll a bit, then see a panel of ‘baby-faced’ dating gurus mock a flock of horribly misled women trying to navigate a dark world without the guidance of a competent father. One girl points out an obvious hypocrisy and the man with the mic squeals “Christ is King, bro,” then postures as an arbiter of morality while praising well-dressed men who lead even worse lives, calling it “based.”

You think, “That’s odd. They mock degenerate female behavior but idolize men who lack spiritual discipline. They can’t control their own dark indulgences yet mock the female youth for providing that exact service.” It really makes you wonder if these ‘orthodox kings’ are modern-day pharisees or just insecure gay guys seeking fame.

Now, I know some of you are probably thinking…it’s simple, it’s a Boomer thing.

It’s not just Boomers. I’m almost 40. Trust me, I’d love to blame it on the Boomers, but I can’t, because we all do it. Every family has an elder who insists nobody had it harder. Every family has one Gen-Xer who acts as if the Millennials weren’t raised at the same time, by the same people. “We didn’t have phones to play with, not like you, we were the last generation to live in a world before the internet. We were locked out of the house until sundown and if we were thirsty, we drank from the hose, what did you do, Millennial?”

“The exact same thing, Mark, we grew up in the same neighborhood.”

Gen X, I’ve noticed, has this thing where they need to constantly express and clarify their generational independence, as if we’ve forgotten that they’re the forgotten generation, no, we know, you were ignored, and we feel for you. You saw Boomer behavior first, and you adapted. Much respect, but…you must know constantly reminding us how much you don’t care about stuff…by telling us that you don’t care about stuff…doesn’t make much sense.

And here’s the thing, I’m not spotless.

I’ve mocked the youth for…everything. For…jaywalking while smelling their phones, for abbreviating words that don’t need to be abbreviated, for doing stupid shit in public then saying “it’s a prank, bro” when no one laughs, uh, for shoving tiny microphones in the faces of the working class, saying “yo, can I ask you a question?” and filming the reaction as if that makes them an artist.

No, that’s freelance journalism, you’re just reporting on things no one cares about.

It’s new age Candid Camera, it’s nothing new…The point is…I do it, too.

I’m not better than you, I’m just self-aware.

It’s just a constant mockery of the youth. And yet nobody ever asks… why?

Why do we always blame those who are new to the game rather than those who’ve been there the longest?

It’s like recruiting a 4-year-old to play quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams and then blaming the toddler for watching the ball fly over his head.

It’s a ridiculous analogy, I know, but it fits.  

Better yet, let’s get biblical.

Matthew 7: 16. “You will know them by their fruits.”

Mocking the youth is like planting a tomato seed with rancid fertilizer, then blaming the fruit for being rotten. It’s like ordering a well-done steak at a restaurant, sending it back because it’s rare and blaming the twenty-year-old busboy because he has a nose ring. It’s like…hiring a delivery driver to bring you food during an ice storm, neglecting to tell him the roads are closed, then accusing the kid of stealing your food because he’s not there yet.

Alright, I think I’ve made my point…now where did this “youth-blaming” come from?

It’s as old as time, however, for me, I vividly recall most of it stemming from Daytime Television in the 90s. Elder Millennials, who spent a good chunk of their youth hanging out at Grandma’s house, will know exactly what I mean.

Talk shows with titles like…

“My son hates me,”

OR

“My teenage daughter has herpes,”

OR

“I’m the perfect mother, but my son is a delinquent who wants to join a gang.”

Classic 90s gaslighting entertainment. *chef’s kiss*

And how did they start? How did they always start?

A mother, clutching her pearls, claims her kid has spiraled out of control, but cannot figure out why. It just kinda happened, right? But then, a few questions later…the truth slips out: Five kids, three different dads, the youngest one’s paternity still unknown. Drugs in the past, pills in the present. Front door acts like a swing door in an olde-time western saloon. No structure, no consistency, no protection.

And then the audience claps for her…as if she’s blameless in the situation.

“She’s so brave,” Or “Yes, queen,” Or “Sure, she sells weed on the back porch and gives attention to men with cash, but she can’t be accountable for that. No, obviously, her child, at some point, made a deal with the devil that she had nothing to do with.”

Then the kid walks out, and immediately—the crowd boos.

Remember that…a good chunk of 90s daytime TV was Greek-tragedy Soap Operas, royal families who couldn’t stop backstabbing and bedhopping and…booing at neglected children. As if the kid chose that life. No, they were led astray, forced to adapt, and mocked relentlessly while the ones who failed them, were given the benefit of the doubt.

But every now and then, the script gets shattered. You probably seen it. A clip of a little boy comes face-to-face with a male drill instructor. The audience was like “Get him, make him cry.”

The man gets in the kid’s face and says: “You want me to be your daddy, boy?”

And the boy says: “Yes.”

The room chokes on its tongue, and the drill instructor stumbles. “You do?”

And then the kid tells him, almost crying. “I don’t have a daddy.”

Now ask yourself: Who failed that child?

Babylon will say…

“…it’s the child. They’re a burden, remember. We’ve been saying that since the Garden. Trust me, that kid knew what he’s doing. It has nothing to do with how he was raised or the lack of guidance he’s got. No. There’s obviously something wrong in him.”

“Why?”

“Some kids are born bad…I mean, have you seen The Omen?”

“That’s fiction.”

“Think of it like Germ theory. If a fish is sick in a fishbowl, Terrain guys will be like ‘clean the tank.’ No, no, that’s ridiculous. If the fish is sick, there’s something wrong with the fish. And while we are at it, accuse it of being evil and put it on hormone blockers.”

Let’s jump back to the Book of Matthew.

“Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.”  (Matthew 7: 17-20)

Let me ask again: Why do we always blame the youth?

Think about that.

An eighteen-year-old is too young to buy beer but old enough to take on an insane amount of debt to be taught by arrogant academics who…FUN FACT…would skip their own classes and still got paid. But for some reason, the older folks were like “Let’s trust these kids with at least a quarter million in student debt, even though historically speaking this kind of behavior has crippled nations. Oh wait, the banks don’t trust them because they’re too young and financially unreliable yet? Where do I co-sign?”

But then the kid asks, “What if I don’t want to go to college? What if I take a year off, figure out what I want to do before I make any big life decisions?”

“Are you kidding? You’re 18 years old. If you don’t go to college, your life will amount to nothing. Plus, if you don’t go, Daphne at the end of the lane, with the fireplace and the inground pool, will think I’m a failure.” 

You see it, yet?

We blame young men for staying home, playing video games, not taking risks. When most of the risks end in debt, loneliness, or ridicule from the very people who guided them that way. We got corporations going under, accusing the youth of being too frugal, but can’t see the problem with exploiting unpaid interns.

We mock women for being promiscuous who grew up being taught their value was visual, then we shame them for monetizing the very thing they were trained to exploit.

Why do we do it? Why do we blame the youth for our failures?

…because it’s easy. It’s easier to blame them than to admit “you know what? I was wrong. I was trying to appeal to the mainstream because I was terrified of being seen as an outcast.” It’s always easier to point the finger rather than take responsibility.

Let’s bring it back.

A good tree bears good fruit, while the bad tree must be cut down and thrown into the fire. Not the fruit. The tree.

So maybe we stop screaming at the rotten apples in the lawn, myself included, and take a chainsaw to some dead wood. Because this generation is not lazy or entitled.

They’re exhausted, overwhelmed and waking up in broken apartments, paying rent to people who don’t love them, and working for people who’d fire them now if they could. They’re fighting wars they didn’t cause, and they’re exploring terrains they weren’t prepared for, and they’re doing it all without a map, without a manual, without direction to the sound of…

“What’s wrong with you? When I was your age, I owned a house, a boat, I was on my third wife because your stepmom had caught me cheating, and even with the alimony payments I was able to take a cruise every fall…You’re so far behind, geez, you really need to man up.”

And then we wonder why therapy and drug use is on the rise.

That’s not on them. That’s on us. Mostly the Boomers, but…also on us.

So, the next time you feel tempted to mock the youth for being lost at sea, ask yourself who gave them access to the boat. Who gave them the keys?

…And why?