Violence against conservatives is the hot new thing, even towards little children. A recent Twix ad dropped just in time for Halloween and it has nothing to do with candy. The ad shows a young nanny in gothic attire taking a boy in a princess dress to the park. Another boy tells him he’s weird and shouldn’t wear a dress, so the nanny squints her black eyes at him and calls down wind from the heavens to blow away the kid. They leave happily, and the princess boy asks if the other boy will ever return. The nanny shrugs and says, “probably.”
The party of love and tolerance is now the party of … witchcraft against children who disagree with you?
Here’s another example of liberal love, caught on camera: a man rolled down his window and screamed and cursed at another driver all the way down the street, then approached and threatened to beat him senseless because of the Trump flag on his truck. Because Trump’s mean words are much worse than assault and battery, right? We’ve all seen the stories. We can condemn this behavior, but we also need to understand it.
It's especially confounding to me since Millennials were known as the generation of apathy. If kept entertained, we were content to tune out the rest of the world, not caring about anything larger or deeper than our instant gratification. “Whatever,” and “you do you,” were the slogans by which we were known. Yet seemingly overnight, younger generations have transformed into the most hateful, verbally abusive people in America, all in the name of combating hate. How did this happen?
Perhaps the indifferent, shallow attitude was not the underlying commonality of our generation, but rather a symptom. What lies beneath? Millennials grew up during an unprecedented expansion of information availability. This dump of content defined our childhoods, and likewise, our mental development. What did we absorb? Vapid pop music, sitcoms, materialistic reality tv shows. What we consumed was empty, and so our words and actions matched. Now we devour hate, and so we produce hate. We’re like a mulcher revved up on the high speeds of Adderall, sucking in whatever enters us without analyzing it, and spitting out wood chips of the same color. As the biblical saying goes, “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
The technology argument can be highly overused. Some older generations don’t refine their opinion past “technology ruined the youth!” But I don’t think the biggest problem is the quantity or even quality of information, but with our processing ability. Younger generations did not learn logic, emotional regulation, or wisdom in time to parse the flood of ideas. It’s not that our generation changed overnight - the narrative changed around us and we swallowed it whole.
Pair high rates of mental health problems with the rapidly vacillating emotions in TV, music, news, and a hundred other stimuli, and you have the perfect recipe for an unstable population that will latch onto any sign of stability. If this means following along with the crowd, so be it. One day tolerance was cool, the norm, and a necessary mainstay. The next day outrage was in. Click here to install the upgrade and continue syncing.
What’s the solution? Society has caught up faster than we have, finally learning healthy boundaries. But what of the guinea pigs - is my generation a lost cause? Many think so. We’re a popular scapegoat. We certainly act ridiculous enough to fit the bill. But as millennials enter parenthood and middle age, we’ve finally done the hard work of maturing and catching up with the technology that developed faster than our brains and spirits. Many people my own age seem less externally focused, and have turned to inwardly reflect upon their relationships and place in the world. These are the healthier ones. Those who can’t walk through a park without serving up abuse are the ones still caught in a riptide with no rudder. Worst of all, they don’t even know it.
Or perhaps they do, and the threats of violence are a case of “you doth protest too much.” They catch a glimpse of how unbalanced their opinions are, but that makes them angrier. The undeveloped truths screaming at them from inside their minds are more threatening than our differences, but we are the easier target. Better to shove us overboard and drown to the sound of self love blasting through our earbuds, than to wake up in a storm and have to do the grueling work of rowing to shore. But I refuse to be swallowed by ignorance, pc software, and hate.
And I still think the youth of our nation is worth rescuing from the storm. We must do this for our nation to have a beautiful future.
Caylah Coffeen is a Millennial in Huntsville, AL who knows how to think and speaks up for the sake of truth and a future as bright as the stars. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com
