Chronically online and unable to forge meaningful relationships, romantic or otherwise, it’s no wonder Gen Z is the most mentally ill generation to date.

It’s ironic that such disturbing rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety are coming from the generation superfixed on “self-care” and “self-confidence.” Perhaps, however, Gen-Z’s self-love mantra is the reason they are spiraling into loneliness and depression. //

Participants are making themselves look foolish and the people around them feel uncomfortable for views, likes, and shares on TikTok. The only “cause” the tube girl trend promotes is self-obsession. TikTokers are engaging in it “for the gram” or for “clout.” In other words, they are sacrificing their dignity in the physical world for validation in the digital world. //

The tube girl trend is one of the most stereotypical Gen Z phenomena to come out of TikTok. It is the epitome of toxic self-obsession. It symbolizes a generation deprived of human connection and unable to see anything greater than themselves.

How psychological dysfunction has been embedded in our institutions.

CHRISTOPHER F. RUFO
SEP 20, 2023

You’re not imagining that the world has gone mad.

Healthy debate has been replaced by activist hysterics. Speech is declared violence, while violence is excused as speech. Masculinity is condemned as regressive, while men in skirts and heels are celebrated in the public square.

It’s easy to laugh at these outbursts as the ravings of a small but vocal minority, but the compromised health of our body politic is not a trivial concern. A strange, new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated our most prestigious institutions, our corporate bureaucracies, and the highest offices in the land.

In short, we’re sick. Our society is out of balance. We’ve been consumed by a cluster of disorder that appeals to our worst instincts and deranges our most important social functions.

We need to recover our sanity. But to do so, we must first know exactly what we’re dealing with: the emergence of a Cluster B Society.

This video is sponsored by Manhattan Institute.

How psychological dysfunction has been embedded in our institutions.

CHRISTOPHER F. RUFO
SEP 20, 2023

What's the story, Wishbone?

There are many theories as to what's going on, but the answer is probably more simple than we think.

Our culture has been turned upside down and we're currently facing a crisis of displacement and misplacement. Men have been ejected out of their role in society as women have been forced into it. //

Men have been taken away from their place as breadwinners and women have been pushed away from their natural role as caretakers, or worse, kept there while being forced to also be breadwinners. What's more, both sexes have been pushed away from each other, leaving an instinctual urge unfulfilled, increasing feelings of depression and anxiety that only grow the more people age.

In our pursuit of "success," we've lost sight of what success is.

Jesus once asked, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" It's a question worth pondering. We keep looking to succeed in a society that defines success with money, big houses, trophy wives or husbands, fame, influence, a corner office on an upper floor, and other Earthly pursuits, but while these things are nice, what's the point of them if they make you unhappy.

Wealth doesn't complete you. It greases wheels, but it doesn't bring happiness. //

Perhaps real happiness isn't in what today's society calls "success" but what God and our very nature have urged us to do.

Return to valuing the nuclear family, masculinity should be embraced and respected, men should be returned to their place as head of the household and encouraged to embrace hard work and ladder climbing, while women should be encouraged to embrace their caregiving and nurturing nature, not reject it in the name of competing with men.

Perhaps there we'll find actual success, also known as contentment and happiness.

Moviegoers might have been driven to Barbie by nostalgia, or controversy, or simply to participate in the cultural zeitgeist. And I certainly don’t think every Christian must see the film. I respect those, like my mom, who’ve chosen not to contribute their time and money to this pink summer blockbuster. But since seeing the film, I’ve had several good (and difficult) talks with both my mom and my daughter about its themes. I suspect that’s true for millions of people trying to navigate the tensions in our world between feminism and patriarchy, between men and women.

I hope Christians who do see the movie will engage these conversations. Our culture is struggling with questions about power, gender, purpose, and death. Barbie raises these questions brilliantly, but believers can point to the One who ultimately answers them: the Triune God who created all humans with purpose and for partnership. Only Jesus Christ, as creator and incarnate redeemer, can tell each of us who we really are, what we are for, and that we are profoundly loved.

The Angel Studios thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, continues to draw crowds at the theater. The film was made on a relatively low budget of $14.5 million when the industry spent $60-$100 million on movies in a comparable genre. Sound of Freedom, an apolitical film opposing something civilization should be against, that is, the sexual trafficking of children, has turned out to be a Rorschach test for where people, particularly the media, actually stand on the subject. //

If we look at France on the eve of the Revolution, we have a good explanation for the reception of Sound of Freedom.

Marquis de Sade did not exist in a vacuum. If you think of his more lurid writings as a DIY manual for deviant sexual practices, I think you are missing the point. He chronicled in literary form a debauched world nearly schizophrenic in its contradictions. //

This parallel society was possible because the upper crust was immensely rich, untouchable by the law, and bored because their roles in governing and war-making had been farmed out to social inferiors. With nearly unlimited power and wealth at their disposal but with nothing useful to do, the elites searched for ways to amuse themselves. But they weren’t in search of just any amusement. They wanted amusements that the commoners couldn’t enjoy. In the case of de Sade, this was a kind of sexual acting-out that might have resulted in a commoner getting a one-way trip to the Mediterranean galleys or a tumbril ride to the guillotine.

Power, as they say, corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The corruption that comes with absolute power is not confined to the public acts of government; it become a part of man’s nature.

The lifestyle lived by the elite could have been what Charles Baudelaire described as “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” The desert is the monotony and boredom of everyday life, while the oasis is that rare moment of excitement or pleasure. But the excitement and pleasure quickly become boring, and that leads to the search for new stimulation.

I would argue that while the visible excesses of the ancien régime were held in check by public morality, we have advanced beyond that stage. We are at the stage that Friedrich Nietzsche called the “transvaluation of values” and “the will to power.” Christian morality is dead as a restrictive force. Freed of that restriction, you can pursue whatever pleases you. There’s a catch, though. When commoners are engaged in activities that would have drawn stiff prison sentences only a decade ago, you have to find something else to scratch that itch. Enter child sex trafficking.

Child sex trafficking is despised in most of the civilized world, so our elites tart it up with private islands and resorts only reachable by private jets. The clothing, food, and setting give the tawdry purpose a patina of elegance.

From the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga, we know there is a market for child sex trafficking. I think Epstein is only the tip of the iceberg. If commoners can take a trip to Thailand or Cambodia, then there are more Lolita Expresses and “recruiters” like Ghislaine Maxwell catering to the needs of the superwealthy and the politically powerful. //

I think when you view the attacks on Sound of Freedom as a reaction to the lower social orders stigmatizing something the elites believe to be perfectly fine, much of the media reporting starts to make sense. After all, who are these unwashed cretins to tell the Masters of the Universe what is right and wrong. Once you stir into that the non-trivial number of people in the media who use child pornography and who think “intergenerational love” is natural, it is easy to see the trashing of a film as being less an exercise in journalism than an attack on what is perceived as an outmoded sexual ethic.

What we should learn from this movie and the reaction to it is that child sex trafficking is a big deal. It is bigger than Chester the Molester in the pedo-van or the little Honduran boy being rented online. It is an activity favored by the upper crust of Western society, such as one might find on the passenger list of the Lolita Express. The QAnon focus is a smokescreen. It is a way of discrediting the film without defending child sex trafficking and pedophilia. By extension, that discredits any investigation into child sex trafficking. Most of America has never heard of QAnon, and the fact that so many media outlets grabbed the same angle shows there was some coordination on the theme. While law enforcement is not looking at this entertainment for the superwealthy right now, with enough of a public outcry, they might. That would be bad for a lot of very wealthy men.

etba_ss JSobieski
3 months ago
That is the key. Be prepared, but do not let anxiety and worry rule your life. Do what you are supposed to do and let God handle the rest.

It is a bit off topic, but as Americans, we are so conditioned to avoid hardship and persecution that we think when our society turns against Christians (which is happening now) that the world is over. It might be. I don't dig too far into to trying to figure out when the world will end, as we are told that no one knows. We should be prepared for it at any time and prepared also for it to not happen in our lifetimes. The Apostles thought it would happen in their lifetimes. If they were that wrong about that and about how little of Jesus' teachings they got until after his death and resurrection, I hate to think of how much I miss and how much I have wrong.

At the very least, we are headed to a society where there is a real cost of being a Christian. For 250 years, we've had a country that accepted Christianity as the norm and at least pretended to have Christian morals as its underpinning. We are entering a time when that is not just no longer the case, but where society is in open and vocal rebellion against Christianity and against God. Short of a national revival, the question is not if, but when, this happens. We will see the wheat separated from the chaff when it is no longer easy or convenient to be a cultural christian.

The fact that this fast-food favorite is now chasing the approval of the DEI crowd is just the fruit of their recent capitulation. The only surprise is that so many Christians have either ignored Chick-fil-A’s activism or lived in denial that it ever happened. Maybe they didn’t want to believe that the place where they felt at home, the place turned to for comfort in the cultural storm, betrayed them. It’s certainly a lot easier than the alternative, which is accepting and grieving the fact that this company — a brave holdout for so many years — has run away from the people and principles that made them who they are.

Now, with the chain going full-woke, even hiring a vice president of DEI to prove its allegiance to the Left, conservatives are finally forced to face facts. Chick-fil-A hasn’t been true to its values for years. And to many, including this writer, their sins are even more unforgiveable than other brands on the consumer chopping block — because unlike Anthropologie, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Hershey, Jack Daniels, Kohl’s, Lego, Levi Strauss, Maybelline, Nike, North Face, Sports Illustrated, Starbucks, and Target, Chick-fil-A continues to exploit — and profit from — its Christian reputation.

A Christian reputation that, under grandson Andrew Cathy’s leadership, looks an awful lot like surrender.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, another group of young leftists was allowed to commit heinous crimes that went largely, if not entirely, unpunished. Communist revolutionaries known as the Red Guards were allowed to torture and murder “class enemies” of their movement since it aided the revolution.

It is clear that in America, left-wing arsonists, vandals, and murderers are part of a similar protected class. Like China’s Red Guards, America’s Blue Guards evade prosecution because they are politically useful, hence why many believe we are living under a two-tier justice system. //

The similarities between China’s Red Guards and America’s Blue Guards go deeper than simply corrupt justice systems. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the communist decimated Chinese history and heritage, burning ancient scrolls and books, looting temples, and defacing relics. Likewise, in 2020, Marxist rioters looted and vandalized churches and burned and toppled American monuments and memorials. //

The American Blue Guard took aim at Junipero Serra not because he was a symbol of racism but because he is a symbol of American values and history. The Red Guard claimed they were dismantling classism, and the Blue Guard claims they are fighting racism, but the real enemy in both cultural revolutions is national heritage.

Last night’s Met Gala was infinitely more gut-wrenching.

This annual gathering in New York, where the world’s most privileged, pampered prima donnas indulge in an orgy of unctuous ostentatious extravagance, has grown increasingly nauseating in recent years as the rest of the planet fights killer viruses, war, and the worst cost-of-living crisis in memory. //

But they excelled themselves with the 2023 theme: “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” And a dress code “in honor of Karl.”

Karl Lagerfeld was… to put it mildly… what all these woke warriors would categorize as ‘problematic’.

In fact, he was one of the most ‘problematic’ people in fashion history; damned by his own words as a racist, sexist, fattist, homophobic, abuse-tolerating, feminist-hating embodiment of everything this A-list crowd professes to most loathe. //

Famously, cockroaches can live for a week without their heads.

Their bodies still function without brains.

It was the perfect guest.

Truth remains true no matter the length of time that has transpired since it was initially spoken. There is no expiration date for it. What is true today was also true yesterday and will still be true tomorrow.

Despite this obvious fact, many in our society have begun to reject anything that predates our times. We view ourselves as better and more intelligent than every generation that came before us. There is an inherent danger in presupposing our “modern” values to be superior in every way to those held by previous generations.

C.S. Lewis calls this “chronological snobbery,” which he defines as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”

His words still ring true today, though I hasten to add that those who subscribe to this philosophy would no doubt discount his words on the same grounds — they were, after all, penned in the mid-20th century. Antiquated indeed.

Most recently, I have seen this in action through the attempted rewriting of children’s classics like “The Secret Garden” to be less “problematic.” And don’t forget the great cancellation era of 2020 in which classic novels such as “Gone With the Wind” found themselves on the chopping block.

Removing classic literature from shelves only serves to harm us as a society. Readers can engage with such material and determine for themselves what is true and worth emulating and what is not. And, quite frankly, how demeaning is it to presume we are incapable of a feat that is hardly an exercise in cognitive gymnastics? No one in his right mind reading “Gone with the Wind” thinks that the way slaves are treated or discussed within the pages of the novel or in the film is acceptable. It makes you uncomfortable — and it should.

Growth stems from discomfort. If such books and ideas are removed from public consumption and discourse, then personal growth will stagnate, and we will have no concept of the thoughts and values of another era.

I have lectured state legislators and many others, and argued here, how the goal of the current ‘progressive’ movement, particularly the CRT and related racialized movements, is to deconstruct the country. To tear it apart.

It’s why I’ve argued “The fight over Critical Race Theory in education is a fight in many ways for our national survival”.

It’s not about a particular policy, it’s about tearing down:

“There is a thin line in society, between food and anarchy, freedom and repression, liberty and tyranny, safety and street violence. It’s thinner than we want to admit, and it’s being pushed to its limits on purpose by ideologies that want to deconstruct our society. Tearing down society is a dangerous game.”

The topic came up in my hour-long Tucker Carlson Today interview:

Tucker: Chaos is an opportunity.

WAJ: Chaos is an opportunity. And also I think it’s a societal dead end. It is teaching people to hate their country because their loyalty is not to their country. It’s to their group identity. It’s to their tribe. It’s turning us back into a tribal society where your group identity is your allegiance….

Pitting races against each other, pitting ethnic groups against each other, is a way to tear down the structures of society. And that’s really the end goal. What happens after that? I don’t think they’ve thought through. Because if they were to succeed in their goal of tearing down the police, tearing down the court system, tearing down all these systems that keep us a relatively civil society, it could be very ugly. It’s Yugoslavia. //

Sean Davis @seanmdav
·
Tucker’s entire speech was spectacular and very emotionally moving. The battle we are fighting now is not left vs. right or Democrat vs. Republican. The battle is evil vs. good, darkness vs. light.
Heritage Foundation @Heritage
“When people, [including] the federal government, decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, what you’re watching is not a political movement, it’s evil.” - @TuckerCarlson #Heritage50

Sending the message to women that they have to strip down to be empowered, just like telling women they have to get abortions to be successful, is the opposite of empowering. The former teaches that a woman’s worth is tied to her body; the latter teaches women to hate the beautiful functions their bodies are designed to do.

Maybe the reason the “naked” dress seems so tired and boring is that our culture is turning sex into something tired and boring. Our casual irreverence for sex devalues it, leaving little boys to think that the consumption of pornography is a normal and healthy behavior and leaving little girls to think they can solve the challenges of puberty by simply becoming boys. It’s no coincidence that, in a culture where sexual gratification is more accessible than ever, young people are having less of it.

As with a naked culture — Burke might say our “decent drapery of life” has been “rudely torn off” — so with “naked” dresses. In a society that hides nothing, exposing everything isn’t interesting.

The mindset Keller has expressed — that most political positions aren’t absolute spiritual battlegrounds — was accurate in yesterday’s sanctuaries (and for most of Keller’s career, considering he planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989). It reflects what Renn calls the “neutral world” in what he’s dubbed the “three worlds of evangelism.” Following the pre-1990s “positive world,” in which most of Western culture looked favorably at Christianity and its values, the “neutral world” reigned until roughly a decade ago, when Western society’s attitude toward Christianity soured into a “negative world.”

In a neutral world where the most controversial political topics were tax cuts or foreign policy, the apartisan approach Keller has espoused was likely wise for the average Christian. However, American politics in the past decade has ceased to be chiefly about policies like taxes or welfare spending or even immigration — issues on which Christians can make good-faith arguments for a variety of political stances.

Fighting a Culture War in a Hostile World

Now, in Renn’s “negative world,” the political left has become the party of celebrating abortion on demand until birth; of chopping off the breasts and genitals of confused, manipulated children and ripping them from their objecting parents’ custody; of inflaming hatred based solely on the color of a person’s skin; of obliterating the nuclear family; and of inundating schoolchildren with pornographic books and the performances of cross-dressing male strippers. America’s leftist factions have used the highest office of law enforcement to terrorize a pro-life pastor, shuttered church gatherings, and continue to demand that Christians proclaiming simple truths like God’s design for marriage be excommunicated from their jobs and public discourse.

America is neck-deep in a culture war, and some of the most prolific instigators of it are in our highest political offices. Keller’s right that no political party is perfect and that Christians should not make an idol of a party or of politics in general. But unless we go the way of the early 20th-century fundamentalists, we’re going to have to meet the cultural onslaught — and some of the biggest arenas of the cultural fight have been made political. I’m sure Keller would agree that it shouldn’t be a partisan position to protect kindergarteners from being coached into sexual confusion by their teachers, but alas, that is where the political left has chosen to draw its battle lines.

With the announcement of the Keller Center, there’s hope Keller and The Gospel Coalition are catching up to what time it is. Keller’s narration in the announcement video mirrors the language of Renn’s “three worlds” almost verbatim:

We now live in a post-Christendom culture. For at least a thousand years, Western culture has been what you might call Christendom culture. Even if most people were not devout Christians, there was a positive understanding of Christianity in the culture. … The culture instilled in people a certain amount of background beliefs that the Bible assumes. … [But] now, you’re in, how do you win people to Christ in a post-Christendom era? And the church does not have any idea how to do it. //

Keller criticized evangelicals who are “turning to a political project of regaining power in order to expel secular people from places of cultural influence.” While Christians should not seek out power for power’s sake, we should defend the vulnerable from the harmful lies and agendas of those in positions of cultural authority.

Jesus rejected the zealotry of those who expected him to overthrow the Roman empire, but He also denounced the faux moralism of the Pharisees, the prominent cultural leaders of the society in which he lived. That faux moralism has a parallel in today’s false gospels that actively promote sin in the name of “inclusivity” or “a woman’s right to choose” — and one of the chief avenues perpetuating those false gospels is political.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created by Hokusai in 1831, is one of the world's most famous paintings.

But why are there more than 100 different versions of it in galleries all around the world?

Because it isn't actually a painting...

The Great Wave off Kanagawa comes from a series called Thirty Six View of Mount Fuji, created in 1831 by the master Katsushika Hokusai.

It is but one of thousands of beautiful different designs produced by the prolific Hokusai.

Here are four more from that 1831 series.

The Great Wave is a woodblock print in the Japanese ukiyo-e style.

The artist would create an ink drawing on paper, to be pasted onto a wooden block as a guide for the engraver. This engraving was then used to print multiple, coloured copies of the original design.

Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks. //

We found that men with a brother who was a monk were wealthier, owning more yaks. But there was little or no benefit for sisters of monks. That’s likely because brothers are in competition over parental resources, land, and livestock. As monks cannot own property, by sending one of their sons to the monastery, parents put an end to this fraternal conflict. Firstborn sons generally inherit the parental household, whereas monks are usually second or later-born sons. //

Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks.

As a former homeschooled student and now a homeschool dad, I know first-hand the importance of sound education and the delicate balance of approaching difficult topics with my children.

First things first, families need to be grounded in what the Declaration of Independence calls the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, meaning God’s law is true, supreme, and immutable. In today’s society, children are taught that it is acceptable, and often encouraged, to redefine nature’s law. //

The rising generation has access to more information than ever before, which is why it is crucial that you are laying foundational truths at an early age with your children. Don’t be afraid to have difficult conversations with your kids.

The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade is a perfect example of ensuring your children are rooted in the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. Our children need to know that the fetus is a stage in human development, much like we have identified being a toddler or a teenager as a stage in human development. The Law of Nature’s God states that every person may lawfully enjoy those rights which God has given. Key words being every person.

Life begins at conception, and the unborn are still lawfully entitled to the right to life. //

These truths ultimately overcome the false ideals the left is attempting to spread. The ultimate takeaway for your children is that just as physical laws are unchanging, so too are natural laws. Not preparing our children adequately can lead to significant problems for the next and rising generations.

Work brings purpose. Without purpose we are doomed to turn inward, and that’s always a losing proposition, because the human spirit is sick and sinful. Without an outward goal, we are doomed to feast on our own, rotting flesh, and it makes us sick to the soul.

We’re sick with secularism. Yes, work brings us purpose, but purpose is bestowed by a Creator. Statistically speaking, most people in the world believe in a Creator, whether that’s the Christian God, or multiple gods or any other iteration of religion. Westerners are the outliers when it comes to faith, and it shows. Among Christians, there is a popular saying.

Every person is born with a God-shaped hole in their heart.

We are born with a space that needs to be filled. It’s not that controversial of a statement. “What’s the meaning of life?” is a very familiar question. That’s because we are all familiar with the drive to find meaning. It’s innate. Space abhors a vacuum, and if we don’t fill that space with outward motivations – God, family, country, etc. – then something has to fill it. Looking at the above chart, it seems that space has been filled with misery and meds. The further our nation drifts from the concept of being blessed by a Creator, the worse our sickness becomes. We have no outward drive and we are trapped in our own minds. I can’t count the number of friends I have with a debilitating fear of being alone. For them, being alone means being alone with their thoughts and they cannot handle it. When you feel connected to the concept of creation and Creator, it’s much easier to be alone, because you can lean on the concept that you aren’t truly by yourself. You can root yourself in prayer, and in the thoughts of God, rather than your own, chaotic thinking.

We are sick with brokenness. Our families are broken. Our notions of nuclear family have been destroyed by government intervention, cultural Marxism and our continuing drift away from corporate religion. We are raising generations of children without fathers, and the results have been tragic.

What moved the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc was the firm resolve and spirit that liberty and virtue, freedom and duty, God and justice, were bound together and it is only in this unity that true freedom and progress be enjoyed. The relativism preached today is contrary to the American Founding and the American resolve and spirit that confronted the great darkness of Nazism and totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century.

Looking back at the great American tradition of freedom, we find the necessity of virtue and belief in the justice of God as the common pillars upon which freedom stands. Today’s license of choice exiles virtue and God from freedom. This is intentional. The enemies of freedom and progress who seek to enact centralizing decrees over all need the elimination of virtue and God from the hearts of the people in order for their totalitarian impulses to be realized.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
Who do you trust less? Real question.
Politicians 75.7%
Billionaires 24.3%
3,399,953 votes
·
Final results
7:54 PM · May 26, 2022

Elon Musk @elonmusk
Replying to @elonmusk
.@aoc I dare you to run the same poll with your followers
8:01 PM · May 26, 2022

David Weissman @davidmweissman
Let's prove how phony the right’s ridiculous polls are by doing one of our own. Who do you trust more @elonmusk @AOC
Elon Musk 81.2%
AOC 18.8%
375,365 votes
·
Final results
6:28 PM · May 27, 2022

David Weissman @davidmweissman
Replying to @davidmweissman
Not sure how this poll flipped but I won’t delete it and will take the L.
11:19 PM · May 27, 2022