The Young and the Clueless

Talk about daytime dramas! Whether it was Socrates or George Bernard Shaw who first said "Youth is wasted on the young", we're getting the best reminder of it since the anti-war protests of the late '60's, during my [ahem] youth. Whether it's the "Occupy" movement, Ron Paul's campaign, college tuition protests, protests over elimination of "file sharing" on the internet, or the silly idea that man has any appreciable effect on "global warming" (now "climate change" cuz the purveyors of this hoax figured out that "warming" wasn't necessarily happening, but gotta maintain the facade that evil man is causing it, whatever "it" is), the commonality is that adherents to each tend to be young.

I'm sure the frustration of the older generation watching the younger one go thru the learning curve has been around since the first cave kid decided to kill a mastadon with his bare hands and ran afoul of reality. At my now-advanced age of 64, it seems clear that the views of the young are formed absent sufficient life experience. Among all the "apps" these days, isn't there a "Life Experience" app? Does the technology not exist to install a bar code reader on the forehead of every newborn and simply scan in benefits of generations of forebearers?

If you watched the latest Republican debate on Fox (can we stop with the debates already?), I'm sure you had the same experience I did when the analysts were tracking the reaction of various demographic groups, one of which arrived via "Twitter" (the best illustration of technology run amok, in my humble opinion). Clearly, to any rational observer, Ron Paul easily came across as the worst of the candidates, even beating out Perry for that honor. He practically melted down trying to explain his Chamberlainesque Golden Rule of foreign policy (if we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us and not cut off our heads). His ideas, while some are attractive in the most cursory sense, are painfully naive. So the analysts are marvelling over the fact that, while everyone else kind of put Paul at the bottom, those replying on "Twitter" consistently rated him at the top. I wonder how many TV's had shoe damage. Clearly those using "Twitter" tend to be young and shazzam! so do Ron Paul's supporters. I mean, who else could get behind policies that have not worked in the 230-odd years of this country's existence?