INFANTILIZATION OF AMERICA

It is becoming difficult to recognize our own Country. It is almost impossible to know whether parents are raising children or children are raising parents. Greta Thunberg is an excellent example of this infantilization. Imagine having a teenager with little-to-no real world experience lecturing adults around the world about a coming apocalypse that she is certain will come shortly because of the agitprop to which she has been exposed.

John Adams wrote, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Unfortunately, young people are not being educated and taught how to think. Rather, they are being propagandized. As commentator Don Lemon advised, we should not perform our own research. We should simply rely on the information spoon-fed via various “Progressive” media outlets. 

I am sharing the following, not to tug on emotional strings - although it is emotional - but to share one view that appears to be common among Americans today. 

“On the occasion of his 100th birthday, United States Marine Corps and World War 2 veteran Carl Dekel reflected on his long life and the blessings he’s enjoyed in an interview with Tampa’s Fox 13. The Silver Star recipient recalled the Battle of Guadalcanal and his gratitude that the Lord brought him home and says that he would do it again if he had to — and if he were the right age.

“‘Most important thing in my life was serving my country. I don’t think I could take away from that…It was an honor for me to serve my country and if I had to do it again and I was the same age. I would do it. I guarantee you.

“‘You just remember everything’s beautiful and live every day to the fullest. Just enjoy everything you possibly can. And here I sit at 100. They tell me I’m 100. I don’t believe it sometimes. Because I don’t need to worry about age. I’m not going to, I just keep on keeping on.”

“He spoke about how beautiful life is and the world is then broke down crying, saying, ‘This is not the country we fought for.’

“‘People don’t realize what they have … Nowadays I am so upset because the things we did, and the things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all gone down the drain. Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. We haven’t got the country we had when I was raised, not at all.’” (https://redstate.com/levon/2022/07/02/wwii-veteran-breaks-down-in-tears-the-things-we-fought-for-the-boys-that-died-for-it-its-all-gone-down-the-drain-n587731)

We are living in an era in which it is increasingly difficult to recruit individuals to serve in the Armed Forces. Various reasons are cited, but certainly many neither respect our institutions nor have the courage to either risk their lives or interrupt their current routine in service to America.

Although there are many reasons to love America, there can be no doubt that it is increasingly difficult to readily identify those reasons for young people who never learn what there is to admire.

Can we blame Greta for her alarmism? She truly believes, I suspect, what she proclaims and has never been exposed to contrary notions. In today’s society, if the information does not fit a prescribed narrative, it is dismissed as a lie without exploration or shouted down via the “heckler’s veto.”

Can we blame young people for not wanting to serve in our Armed Forces? Throughout their “educational” experience, they have heard nothing but how racist, bigoted, tyrannical, and monstrous Americans are. At home and abroad our citizens proclaim their embarrassment for being American.  

One of President Obama’s first acts as POTUS was to commence his “Apology Tour.” This act was undertaken by the first Black American President. FLOTUS told the world that she was proud to be an American “for the first time” when Barack was elected President. These actions portend a corrosive view toward America. Of course, if you aren’t Black you are excluded from any consideration. After all, how could you possibly know anything about the Nation in which you have resided throughout your entire life if you can’t look at it through the prism of Blackness?

According to a Fox News poll released June 30, 2022, only 39 percent of respondents claimed they were “proud of the country today.” This was a decline of 12 points from June 2017, the last time the question was asked. Furthermore, this was a decline of 30 points since June 2011.

Perhaps, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s “spiritual advisor,” was correct, “The chickens are coming home to roost.” Can we, with straight-faces, really argue surprise? To whom are young people to turn? Upon what are young people to rely?

They are being told that God does not exist, they are evolved from inorganic matter, and, per Dawkins, they are merely dancing to their DNA. What possible reason do they have to be proud of the Nation against which they are being radicalized?

Where are the parents? Historically, great emphasis was placed on the family-unit. Today, the family has been supplanted by materialistic pursuits. Children are being taken out of the home at younger and younger ages for prolonged intervals to serve needs that are antithetical to family cohesiveness.

Yes, we are reminded that life is simply more expensive, requiring two-parent incomes just to make ends meet. But is this the primary reason?

Fewer children are living in two-parent homes. Many couples no longer even commit to marriage, further devaluing family stability. Of course, academics will assert contrary positions ad infinitum. As Orwell said, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."

It is true that, in our youth, we often think that we have all relevant knowledge. In “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams,” Adams states, “The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know.…”

Is the world running out of adults? If so, it will likely take a cataclysmic event to transmute our society into a manifest adulthood. In the absence of radical changes in the trajectory of America there is no rational basis to assume such a change will occur.

UCLA Professor Joseph Manson, 62-year-old Anthropology professor at UCLA since 1992 (received tenure in 2000) surrendered tenure in 2022, explaining that “the woke takeover” of higher education has made freedom of expression on campus virtually impossible. He analogized his need to surrender tenure thusly, “But when the leopard comes for your colleague, what I have witnessed is that something like 99% of people find a way to wiggle out of this obvious next step. They tell themselves the person getting their face eaten deserved it. Or that the leopard was just particularly hungry that day.”

In 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NLT), we find the following: “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” Sadly, the perpetuation of infantilization, precludes putting away childish things.

Parents have abrogated their responsibility in raising their children. Children are seldom disciplined in meaningful ways. Childlike behavior is tolerated and, in lieu of discipline, mind altering medications are often employed. So-called adults refuse to celebrate the birth of America because a Supreme Court decision was inconsistent with their ideology.

What could possibly go wrong? We are told there are no absolutes in this “post modern” era. Children inform parents of their “own” realities and insist on compliance with demands that these realities be respected, embraced, and recognized as being acceptable. It is becoming a disturbing trend to learn of parents being criminally prosecuted for attempting to instill appropriate behavior.

Alexander Pope wrote, “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien as to be hated needs but to be seen; yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” We’ve endured infantile behavior being extended into a putative adulthood. We originally pitied and attempted to ameliorate infantile behavior. Today, sadly, we have come to embrace what heretofore would have been impermissible.

At the age of eighteen years, Bertrand Russell in his, “Why I Am Not A Christian,” based his conclusions on John Stuart Mill’s pronouncement that if God exists, He must have a cause. This arises out of a juvenile misunderstanding of the Law of Causality which asserts that every effect must have a cause, not that everything must have a cause. Although the premise does not prove God’s existence, it certainly proves that the existence of an “uncaused cause” does not violate the Law of a Causality. 

If we neither recognize nor address the infantilization of America, our future is bleak. May God awaken us and give us the wisdom to change this Nation from “woke” to awake!