The Outstater
We’re All Greta Thunberg Now
SOME OF US no longer pay attention to opinion surveys. We assume, politics and media being what they are, that the public is too ill-informed to have anything useful to say. One recent poll, though, begs analysis. It finds that a good majority of young Americans are not proud to be Americans.
Now, it is wise to approach such a thought assuming the most charitable interpretation. I’ll do my best.
A Gallup Poll this month finds that 42 percent of those born after 1976 are not proud to be an American. That compares with 84 percent of those born before 1946 proud to be Americans.
Yes, that is troubling but perhaps the young people are merely expressing the contrarianism of youth. Maybe they are just saying, as the callow among us will do, that when they are running the country things will be better — so, no, they are not proud of being Americans at the moment but plan to be soon when their ideas and policies take hold.
Or perhaps they were paying attention even in puberty to the insanity and corruption of the Obama-Biden years. Or perhaps the bombast of the Trump style is just too much for them. All of that is reasonable enough. Maybe, though, there is an externality.
Could a rogue education system be at fault? Perhaps our young have been carefully taught that America is overrated, that our constitutional republic is a fraud, that direct democracy or even communism have not been given a fair shake. (This may explain the stark difference in political positions between “educated” voters and those of us who spent our day staring out the classroom window.)
That seems to me the most accurate albeit dismaying take on the Gallup results. Recent generations, for instance, cannot correctly place fascism on the political spectrum, Indeed, they think socialism and communism, distinctions without a difference, are viable alternatives with binary results, one good and one only insufficiently tested. They have little practical understanding from whence their liberty and prosperity came or the role played by constitutional guarantees, most critically private property.
And most corrosive, they have accepted whole the abomination that “civil rights” has become, allowing discrimination against white males while assuming everyone else is blameless regardless of motivation, life choices or behavior. That last also requires them to ignore the wildly varied outcomes of world cultures and to only call out the flaws, real and imagined, of Christianity and Western Civilization.
Finally, since we seem to be on a downward trajectory here, we must note that an incomplete education may have led this generation into a dark corner, somewhere called “communal narcissism,” a term introduced recently by Jochen Gebauer in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Gebauer describes a generation of self-proclaimed do-gooders who cloak themselves in virtue while craving fame and attention. They wear compassion like a crown, seeking applause through affirmations of selflessness. Think of millions and millions of Greta Thunbergs.
Here is a summation in this month’s Aporia Magazine:
“Communal narcissism exists on a spectrum. At its mild end, individuals earnestly advocate for social justice, finding quiet satisfaction and camaraderie in their omni-cause of supporting the intersecting grievances of ‘marginalized’ groups. When less benign, individuals become dogmatic and antagonistic, as when ‘The View’ hosts engage in anti-Trump vitriol, prioritizing moral posturing over dialogue. At its most severe, individuals try to justify violence, such as BLM riots, assaults on Trump supporters, or the firebombing of Tesla vehicles. Perhaps most chilling is a selective compassion that shows a disconnect between their benevolent self-image and a deeper ideological purity that is silent even in the face of murder.”
Teachers in the so-called social sciences would do well to give cause why they should not be hung by their heels from lamp posts.— tcl
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