Rapper Tom MacDonald takes down this generation in an epic rant. Every generation feels the next is weak, and soft, and stupid and lazy, but is it different this time? And what responsibility does the older generation bear for creating this one? When we had the chance, what did we do to steer them right?
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28 replies on “World War Z: Rapper Takes Down This Generation in Epic Rant, but Whose Fault Is It?”
If you guys start having elbow sex – well that is likely where I draw the line.
And for goodness sake, don’t take a jump to the (political) left. 😉
Good show, guys. I actually remember most of the 1980s and we enjoyed those films and music because we saw it as funny and laughed about it. Really glad I lived in those times, in spite of a very bad case of PTSD and enjoying beer maybe too much.
Over the long haul, generations ARE deteriorating. Man started in the Garden, literally communing with God, and ends literally waging war against God (Rev 19:19). The sine wave’s slope descends, with each successive crest and trough lower than its predecessor. Cultural entropy was hard-wired into us by the Fall
There are TWO potential explanations for complaints against younger generations transcending the millennia. 1. Mere parochialism by older generations, and 2. Younger generations really are deteriorating. Your worldview governs your choice. Using the lens of this fallen world yields the former. The lens of God’s Word yields the latter.
God’s principles work because they’re His, not because of who’s using them. The Left is a continuum of evil, while the Right is fundamentally divided between those who apply His principles out of devotion and those who apply them out of practicality.
Politics is merely applied theology. The politics and theology of the Left and the “devotional” Right are self-consistent. The politics and theology of the “practicality” Right are not self-consistent. In eternity, it will be such a shame for the “practicality” Right to burn right along with the Left. 🙁
David, I think you have scored a major league home run here. I could not agree more with your points. Good theology as well as cultural wisdom on display in my humble opinion.
While there are lost people who pragmatically use the Biblical worldview, the really tragic part is there are plenty of Christians who use the world’s worldview. That’s we have so many compromise beliefs like old-Earth creation, theistic evolution, and replacement theology.
I’m a Boomer, my Dad fought in Korea and was technically a product of The Silent Generation (born 1928 – 1945). I agree with the assessment of The Greatest Generation (born 1901 – 1927). My Grandparents were of that generation and my personal hero is my maternal Grandfather. I always had respect for those people and wanted to emulate them in every way that counts.
I hated their music and they hated mine. My Grandparents listened to mostly polka and Big Band music. I was forced to sit through many an episode of Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights during the frequent weekend visits to my Grandparents home …
When I was in school bell bottoms were the rage and my Dad would just look at me in bell bottom jeans and a peasant shirt and shake his head. I thought I looked really ‘cool’ but Dad wouldn’t let me wear that kind of thing to school. In fact, I was never allowed to wear jeans to school. Knit slacks, loafers or (highly polished Tony Lama, Justin, Dan Post etc. dress boots) and a button down shirt were the uniform of the day as far as Dad was concerned.
I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that there were cultural clashes between us Boomers and The Silent/Greatest Generation too.
The fads like bell bottoms came and went, the music I preferred has stood the test of time and at the end of the day I still respect and admire my Parents’ and Grandparents’ generation.
I don’t think that’s the case with Generation Z. It’s not like our Boomer generation didn’t accomplish anything significant. WE and our parents gave the world nuclear power, civil equality and an end to institutional racism, cheap networked computers, helped put Americans on the moon and won The Cold War to name but a few major accomplishments. I think this current generational clash is more due to a lack of gratitude and scope than anything as shallow as musical preferences and fashion.
I can’t help but think that some of this is our fault to some degree. We Boomers as a generation failed to instill appropriate appreciation for the miracles of modern life in our kids and grandkids and some of us let our progeny take these amazing things for granted.
Generation Z seems to take too much as something they’re entitled to and neglect the fact that we gave them an astonishing world like no other in human history.
As for myself, I personally fought in The Cold War and you’re welcome, you ungrateful little bastards. 🙂
Not to mention:
A nationwide electrical grid that supplies cheap, clean energy. (Yes, it is clean, compared to what is being spewed in China and India. Want cleaner build Nuclear plants)
A nationwide system of roads that allows easy interstate travel
Easy access to automobiles so that you don’t have to live your life within 20 miles of where you are born
Indoor plumbing and wastewater treatment that has eliminated a plethora of diseases that many countries still suffer.
Planes that efficiently transport people and goods at nearly 600 miles and hour.
And courtesy of that trip to the moon: Velcro!
So yea, we done did good!
you 3 guys, DS, ACTS(tm), and RS(alterego) are some of my favorite responders and being in my 70’s, I believe we are peers in age at least. You all have made excellent observations and as always, I really appreciate your service to our nation. Blessings to you all.
Your story sounds a lot like mine, Lawerence Welk on TV, bell bottoms, and a mutual hatred of each other’s music. My dad was in the Air Force right after the war in Korea, he worked on the planes after they dropped Hydrogen and conventional nuclear bombs in the early 50’s testing.
Our relationship was rocky at best, and abusive(verbally) at it’s worst, but I did learn one thing from him. If you’re going to do something, do it right the first time.
He instilled a strong work ethic, he was a workaholic, and being his only son, I was volunteered to work many weekends doing construction projects to make extra money growing up. I learned how to do build fences, patios, sprinkler systems(galvanized pipe), roofing, concrete block walls and patio slabs, interior and exterior painting, even wall papering.
I worked for 35+ years to support my family, including jobs on the side to earn extra money just like he did. I never collected a single day of unemployment, and worked until I had to retire in 2015 and go on permanent disability.
Both of our kids are married and have families of their own, while my sisters kids have lived at home into their mid 20’s and are both having to live with a roommate to afford their own place.
I don’t know what or why our kids are different from my niece and nephews, but something is different now. Kids(adults now) are glued to their phones, play video games, watch anime’, but can’t look you in the eye and have a conversation.
I’m grateful for the things my dad taught me how to do, I was able to do a lot around the house myself without having to pay someone, but there is a difference between our generations, it just seems like the gap gets bigger every time.
“As for myself, I personally fought in The Cold War and you’re welcome, you ungrateful little bastards.” – That right there is gold. 🙂
Yes, it is our fault. Those kids weren’t born into this world thinking that way, we were wealthy enough to give them everything and we reacted to the strictness and “squareness” of our parents by promising ourselves we wouldn’t be as strict or square with ours, and it turns out there is a reason for strictness, and that generally adhering to the accumulated wisdom of the ages makes us appear “square”.
Since we basically gave them everything they wanted when they wanted it and they had to work for little to nothing, they grew up with the impression that the world “owes” them whatever they want, whenever they want it.
We taught them not to be racist, but not what it is, basically, that makes racism wrong*. We patted them on the heads and gave them gold stars when they said the right thing. And in our eagerness not to be “square”, we eschewed and even often condemned organized religion as backward – completely ignoring the lesson of Chesterton’s fence.
This is why they go about spewing platitudes for meaning in their lives. This is why they think college should be free. This is why they think every little immediate offense is “hate” — long-term social impacts are not even an afterthought. Now is all that matters. “You hurt xher feelings! You must bow to the God of Woke and grovel!” Never mind the long term damage that does to him/her … or even to you and … the structure of society which gives us a consistent story to fit into.
Yes. It’s no wonder they’re screwed up.
How do we fix it?
*I like to ask people “why is racism wrong?”. It’s not a challenge to the fact, it’s a test. *I* know why it’s wrong, and I can express it in one very short, succinct sentence. What I want to know is if THEY can articulate why? Or if it’s just reflexive (which is better than thinking it’s ok, but not ideal) or if they have to couch the whole thing in 39 pages of CRT rhetoric that’s been injected into their heads … and I’m not sure that’s not at least as bad as thinking it’s ok in the long run, because it only amounts to racism in reverse.
If you’re looking for my answer to the above question re: why is racism wrong, it is simply this:
“It is unfair to the individual.”
That’s it. Doesn’t need anything else. Anything else we have to say about it still boils down to that.
Phil – this is boiling something down to the basic core tenet:
Absolutely brilliant and I am hereby notifying you that I am stealing this and will use it frequently.
Good!
Thanks for this introduction for probably most of your viewers to Tom MacDonald. Hey Zo, how did you not know about Tom MacDonald’s rap videos?!? I’m a 60 yr-old that discovered him during the 2020 Covid madness. He’s been doing anti-establishment, pro-freedom songs on YouTube for over four years. They’re rough around the edges with F-bombs and middle fingers, but I wish all kids from 14 to 30 would watch them. Start by watching his “They’re trying to kill me” where he sings about the critics of his wake up call to people. The one I think I first saw though was “Stupid People” which has over 30 million views. Like with Tulsi Gabbert, we need to trust but verify his messages though before getting too excited. “Sheeple” is his latest of just three days ago It’s pretty spot-on.
I need to clarify, kids who listen to rap!
Bill mentioned that the younger generations usually think they are better than the old fuddy-duddy older generations. One notable exception, however, is that we baby-boomers regard our parent’s generation (the WWII generation) as The Greatest Generation. I firmly believe they were the greatest.
The rapper’s message notwithstanding, I appreciate Bill’s observation to the guy’s credibility. The tattoos, piercings, and self-mutilation that the guy put himself through screams “I’M IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!” Sigh.
Don’t worry, though. The latest ACT-tested graduates of the class of 2022 are stellar. 42% of them failed to meet any of the four benchmarks – reading, science, math, and English – necessary to attend college level courses. And the only people taking the ACT are those who want to go to college. Imagine if they took all high school graduates into consideration.
Learning requires sustained focus and recent testing of college students revealed that most could only hold task for 65 seconds. Males in particular are just unable to sustain eye contact with actual humans for any length of time. Devices, and our reliance on them, are primarily at fault. Few people recreationally read, a huge influence on brain development.
We may overshoot the dystopian future from the movie “Idiocracy”.
Keith – this is a very important bit of context, thank you for including it.
If I go back 40 years, my recollection is that relatively few of the 300 juniors at my HS took the SAT or ACT. As you point out, only those who were even thinking of going to college. Do you happen to have any stats on the number of standardized tests compared to previous generations from the same source as the benchmark? I wonder if more kids are taking them because “everyone should go to college” has been drilled into them.
This may be when they figure out that they are not ready for college, time to find out who this Mike Rowe guy is.
Unfortunately I do not. I got the statistics off of an article hyped on the Daily Wire.
“Why Plummeting ACT Scores Are Just The Beginning Of What’s To Come” by Jeremy Adams
And the generation before yours went to the moon USING SLIDE RULES!!!! to compute.
No link for the Get Off My Lawn guy?
I think this has been coming a lot longer than the Obama Admin, and yes it has occurred to me that it’s not their fault they were raised that way — “we” were trying to get our kids to be nicer to weird people AT THE SAME TIME we were basically telling them that being weird is what made you special and the implication was … for many … that being weird is actually a goal in and of itself because it’ll make you MORE special.
Instead of “embrace your weirdness”, they were hearing “force your weirdness to new heights. Find weirdness for its own sake and push it to the limit”.
And now we have the fruits of that. Jordan Peterson often talks about the fact that other peoples’ feedback is what keeps us sane, and he makes a good argument to back it up.
So now we have people intentionally pushing themselves to be weird in a culture that is being programmed to believe that negative feedback is “hate”, and we combine that with a loss of a moral center with the rejection of God and you have people finding their “righteous” center in being as weird as possible and/or virtue signaling how much we should be forced by law not only to accept but to embrace said weirdness.
It’s not that I don’t think it’s ok to be a little weird – in fact, I think it’s normal to be a little weird. So normal, that if you weren’t, I’d think you were a little off.
All of which I encapsulated in my highly obscure song …. “Weird” 🙂
(33) Weird – YouTube
Great comment, great song.
a little weird works for me…
Well I think what “who cares what these celebrities think” really typically means “nobody should care what these celebrities think”.
I like the “get off my lawn” reaction. Same reaction I had.
Oh, the “you’ve got it better” thing … it’s good, up to a point. We’ve passed that point.
More than anything, I think the response to some celebrity spouting off about their <fill in the blank social construct> isn’t so much “who cares what these celebrities think?” — it’s more along the lines of “why does this celebrity think he’s got a bigger voice than anyone else?” The chutzpah and arrogance that goes with many of these “celebrities” spawns a visceral rejection — at least for me.
Allen – unfortunately many of the “celebrities” do have a larger (or at least louder voice) due to their “fame”. With social media followers who number in the 10s of millions for some, they do have a reach. Many of those they reach somehow believe that a celebutante must be knowledgable about any topic upon which they spew words. It is unearned respect as knowledgable.
But it allows those who are listening to have an opionion without actually doing any research. They can just say Kim Kardashian said, or Beyonce or whomever and they think that makes them knowledgable as well.
More conservative celebs do this less because they don’t spout off about things they don’t have knowledge. I heard an interview with Tim Allen quite awhile back where he basically said that while doing his shows he didn’t have time to research things in depth so he didn’t talk or post about them.
Now that he has more time, he talks about things he knows. His graduation speech at Hillsdale was pretty good.
Imagine if everyone would take that tactic.