Last week, when I wrote about the upcoming June elections for European Parliament and the growing unease going on full panic in Brussels with regard to projections that “radical right parties” could be the big winners, I suggested the only way to avoid this was to tone down the climate apocalypse rhetoric. I was wrong. I was very wrong.
Part of me agrees but another says what I wrote towards the end. Just because all the non-left people don't shout on social media doesn't mean they don't exist. The actual problem with these people is they don't vote -- while the indoctrinated lot does vote, in great numbers. That's how the current crop stays in power.
A great article, 16 driven by 95% hormones and 5% beer, my beer % would have been a little bigger but well within the range! eugyppius made a similar argument recently about being careful who you enfranchise with the vote. Germany enfranchised immigrants, let's be honorable and invite all our new friends into the party, you know who to vote for, wink wink. And then, low and behold, not only are they conservative and vote such (extreme right wing but not qualifying as white supremacists) they are also founding a local German branch of the AKP, the Turkish party led by Erdogan. (extreme right wing not qualifying as white supremacist party). Now there is lament on the left as they wonder "Why have you abandoned me?" To back up your point on where will young people vote with some Canadian statistics, the conservative leader (extreme right wing white supremacist who is a Trump puppet) now leads in all voting groups by over 10% from 18 to over 65 with the exception of women over the age of 50. The reason has been his unrelenting onslaught on social media explaining why the desperate economic problems exist in our country. Something the young people understand all too well as they face unaffordable housing, a crumbled health care system, high taxes, degrees which leave them unemployable and a rapid hollowing out of our industrial and resource production base through careless government policies. More of the youth see that than less. Maybe going down to 16 isn't such a bad idea after all.
Yes! I read eugyppius's analysis of the immigrant situation. I found it kind of ironic after back in the 90s the West so eagerly pushed us to allow a genuinely Turkish party to run for parliament. Human rights, they said. Can't discriminate against people, they said. So what if you were their colony for 500 years, they said. Well, it all worked so well that now the country is essentially run by that very same party with a few puppet friends and they're eagerly rewriting history because, well, that's a good starting point for total indoctrination.
Good to hear there is an "extreme right wing white supremacist who is a Trump puppet" in Canada! Not surprised at all he's so popular. From what I have been reading about Canada the Trudeau gang managed to turn paradise into hell in just a few short years. Best of luck at the next elections to the extreme right white supremacist.
In Finland there are so-called "youth elections" done at the same time with "official" elections, and as far as I can see, climate alarmists wouldn't like the results at all. Can't tell how representative such elections are, but it's another piece of evidence that makes me think that kids are mostly fine till they enter the office workforce, and that's where they convert to the office religion.
This is great to hear -- some evidence in support of my pure speculation. But yes, kids are mostly fine. Entering the workforce is one fact and the other, these days, is university, from what I hear, at least in the UK and the U.S. Apparently, universities' main job is no longer to educate but to indoctrinate.
Interestingly, our Finnish universities do not seem to succumb to this disease yet (both my sons are currently studying and all is good, even f. ex. in medical/pharma/biology fields everything is rather no-nonsense).
For the office part, another possibly interesting observation is that I suspect that this "religious conversion" is quite often self-inflicted, driven by lack of experience (obvious when a young person enters the office work force, but especially after the first promotion to a managerial position - "now I must start looking professional" -> must start speaking that weird "managerial language" and believe in what I think all "professionals" must believe). That conversion is sometimes very funny to see.
This is really good to hear. Finland is famous for the quality of education and what you say gives me hope that there is still some good sense left in (parts of) Europe. Our education is okay for now, too, at least at grade-school level but that's because we're slow to adopt Western values. :D I do hope it's the same at universities, at least in the sciences.
The self-inflicted "conversion" is indeed a very interesting observation and I agree it's a case of wanting to look/sound and eventually think professional. I have a fond memory of a 30-something neighbour (in the city) who said in all seriousness we must "address the problem" of falling pieces of facade on our building and then "attack it". :D I would bet money he votes progressive.
We can only speak of what we find. Several years ago believing what you’ve said Irina, “what I hear, at least in the UK and the U.S. Apparently, universities' main job is no longer to educate but to indoctrinate.” My grandson in his 4th and last year at (UK) University studying Modern Military History and Languages, and knowing that he had liking for Owen Jones who leans towards Marxism. I asked him outright, he knowing my views on indoctrination, did he think he’d been indoctrinated. He said on first private meeting with his lecturer, he asked him what his political learnings were, his lecturer was taken aback, and told him, John at this university ‘you’ll be taught how think not what to think’🤔
I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to hear this! I'm sure it's not the case everywhere and that's reason to have hope. That said, indoctrination is not something you can consciously feel is being done to you, not at university age, anyway, unless you're really, really precocious, and that's a minority.
Being the father of a 17 year-old boy currently, I'm fairly well-versed in the teen mindset of both my son and his peer group. While most of them are fairly well grounded, they still lack the experience necessary to make critical decisions like how to run the country.
The US floats the idea of dropping our voting age to 16 from time to time, but it's never really gained much traction.
And my son and most of his friends are surprisingly conservative organically, and they tell me that they are in large part because they're already tired of all the GOV meddling in their young lives.
The US left has also banked on importing as much of Central America as possible, as they see them as future democrat voters, but they forget that the vast majority of them are devout Catholics, and fairly conservative as well.
Let's hope all these power-grabs backfire in 2024, and "The Far Right™" prevails!
Organically -- thank you for this very important word. This is how things should happen, including political view development. Now that you mention it, I think it makes sense for Gen Z to be conservative in the American sense of anti-big government. Their generation is reaping what big government sowed for their parents and now them. It's not a nice crop.
Excellent point on the immigrant voters. The planners really don't think, do they?
In my formative teenage years I missed out on age related events. The secondary school attended, started its first 6th form in 1962. I started 6th form at 15, but within a couple of months I’d secured a 5 year bonded electrical apprenticeship (my father paying the bond) with a local authority at age 15, the next year they’d only be recruiting 16 year olds . My apprenticeship based on successfully attaining minimum City & Guild ONC level wouldn’t finish until I was 21 years of age, so effectively I’d have served 6 years. The bonded apprenticeship was governed by electrical trades union. When reaching 19 was classed as a journeyman electrician, and by then trade union agreed, dependant upon appropriate academic level reached, that time served could be reduced to 4 years, so 20 years of age to fully qualify, in that respect I qualified but I’d still served 5 years, others following only having to do 4 years, with bound apprenticeship being dropped. Currently apprenticeships are 2 to 3 years but that’s another story. When I started my apprenticeship at 15 the death penalty existed in UK, it wasn’t withdrawn until 1969. Also prior to 1969 voting age stood at 21, then dropped to 18, I was then 22. My children could vote at 18 but first voted in their 20’s (their choice) My grandchildren children 8 of them, the eldest 31 years of age, out of the 8 all eligible to vote, only 3 have, first voting in their 20’s.
So I’m not confident there would be a rush of 16 or 13 year olds to vote, or at least in any substantial numbers🤔
This tells me that with the progressives' hopes for a lot of young voters we are once again seeing the amplification effect of social media. Just because a group is loud, doesn't mean it's large. Good point!
I see lines of tractors and flames kilometers long and high in Europes’ near future. In places like France, Germany, even all the way up at EU headquarters.
Irina, this column brought out my younger self - the one who immediately took the opposite of whatever position my parents held at the time. So in the spirit of tongue in cheek, if I were a 16 year old excited about the chance to "be heard at the ballot box", I'd ask why this idea is so outrageous when we allow 80+ people who don't even seem to know where they are at any given time to vote, hold office, and serve as figureheads for whoever it is that's writing their press conferences. If governments turn a blind eye to child slavery and sex traffic, at least the children who are apparently old enough to be used by them should have their say somehow.
The classic contrarian teen -- I love that archetype! Good point about clearly senile octogenarians in office. I have no counter point to it because there isn't one. Perhaps a fair solution to the situation would be an age cap on political participation, on the same grounds as the minimum voting age that is now 18 in most of Europe.
In a dream world, I'd say all the adult "privileges" would begin at the same age - voting, drinking alcohol, getting married, going into the military. Here in the States it's still legal to marry in some place at 16. Seems like being deemed old enough to have children would be old enough for all the rest of it? Society continues to struggle with some of these cultural issues. At the other end we have age limits on some things too - so why not on others? Arguably looking at who we have in office these days you can't say that mental fitness is a prerequisite for being a politician so we can't use that on voters, but an upper limit on the damage that can be done by politicians serving well past whatever prime they had would be welcome.
All the adult privileges begin at 18 here. Don't know about the rest of Europe. Makes sense to me, as do age limits and indeed, there's a strong argument to be made in favour of extending these limits to politicians.
LOL! Good point but you can't trust the three-year-olds to mark the right party. Too young and unfocused to be successfully indoctrinated, which makes them risky voters. Unless, of course, they vote with an adult chaperon because of their age or something. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As we mature , we often learn there are some thing where we absolutely don't what the responsibility of making the final decision, things that can range from brain surgery, to auto mechanics or baking bread. That can also apply to voting.; do you want to add your ignorance to everyone else's?
Sometime, as Robert Heinlein said, "If you must vote and can't think of who to support, look for the most ignorant fellow you know, ask him and ... vote for the other guy."
Well said. Yet in reality, when a lot of people don't vote, we end up with parties unfit to govern anything in power because it was only the eager minority that didn't care about its ignorance that voted. I had previously developed a habit of voting for small parties with zero chance of getting into parliament just to make sure my uncast vote does not end up benefitting one of the big and ugly ones.
Mistakes are never easy to correct, and while you try to correct the mistake, unintended consequences arise, and no matter what you do to get back to where you were, at some point you have to have to live with it. I remember when the voting age changed from 21 to 18, my parents weren't happy about it, my brothers and I were all for it! Oh my has time changed, while I can write a book about voting rights and enacting laws without representation, believing a 16 year old is capable of voting means they know the difference between Right and Wrong, thus are NO Longer a Child; let that sink in.
Part of me agrees but another says what I wrote towards the end. Just because all the non-left people don't shout on social media doesn't mean they don't exist. The actual problem with these people is they don't vote -- while the indoctrinated lot does vote, in great numbers. That's how the current crop stays in power.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
scary.....very.....
A great article, 16 driven by 95% hormones and 5% beer, my beer % would have been a little bigger but well within the range! eugyppius made a similar argument recently about being careful who you enfranchise with the vote. Germany enfranchised immigrants, let's be honorable and invite all our new friends into the party, you know who to vote for, wink wink. And then, low and behold, not only are they conservative and vote such (extreme right wing but not qualifying as white supremacists) they are also founding a local German branch of the AKP, the Turkish party led by Erdogan. (extreme right wing not qualifying as white supremacist party). Now there is lament on the left as they wonder "Why have you abandoned me?" To back up your point on where will young people vote with some Canadian statistics, the conservative leader (extreme right wing white supremacist who is a Trump puppet) now leads in all voting groups by over 10% from 18 to over 65 with the exception of women over the age of 50. The reason has been his unrelenting onslaught on social media explaining why the desperate economic problems exist in our country. Something the young people understand all too well as they face unaffordable housing, a crumbled health care system, high taxes, degrees which leave them unemployable and a rapid hollowing out of our industrial and resource production base through careless government policies. More of the youth see that than less. Maybe going down to 16 isn't such a bad idea after all.
Yes! I read eugyppius's analysis of the immigrant situation. I found it kind of ironic after back in the 90s the West so eagerly pushed us to allow a genuinely Turkish party to run for parliament. Human rights, they said. Can't discriminate against people, they said. So what if you were their colony for 500 years, they said. Well, it all worked so well that now the country is essentially run by that very same party with a few puppet friends and they're eagerly rewriting history because, well, that's a good starting point for total indoctrination.
Good to hear there is an "extreme right wing white supremacist who is a Trump puppet" in Canada! Not surprised at all he's so popular. From what I have been reading about Canada the Trudeau gang managed to turn paradise into hell in just a few short years. Best of luck at the next elections to the extreme right white supremacist.
Absolute Bullseye! and why teens are prone to panic attacks, A
Enjoy 2 mins 48 secs…. https://youtu.be/dLuEY6jN6gY?si=Jqknp16c6EbsS-D8
In Finland there are so-called "youth elections" done at the same time with "official" elections, and as far as I can see, climate alarmists wouldn't like the results at all. Can't tell how representative such elections are, but it's another piece of evidence that makes me think that kids are mostly fine till they enter the office workforce, and that's where they convert to the office religion.
This is great to hear -- some evidence in support of my pure speculation. But yes, kids are mostly fine. Entering the workforce is one fact and the other, these days, is university, from what I hear, at least in the UK and the U.S. Apparently, universities' main job is no longer to educate but to indoctrinate.
Interestingly, our Finnish universities do not seem to succumb to this disease yet (both my sons are currently studying and all is good, even f. ex. in medical/pharma/biology fields everything is rather no-nonsense).
For the office part, another possibly interesting observation is that I suspect that this "religious conversion" is quite often self-inflicted, driven by lack of experience (obvious when a young person enters the office work force, but especially after the first promotion to a managerial position - "now I must start looking professional" -> must start speaking that weird "managerial language" and believe in what I think all "professionals" must believe). That conversion is sometimes very funny to see.
This is really good to hear. Finland is famous for the quality of education and what you say gives me hope that there is still some good sense left in (parts of) Europe. Our education is okay for now, too, at least at grade-school level but that's because we're slow to adopt Western values. :D I do hope it's the same at universities, at least in the sciences.
The self-inflicted "conversion" is indeed a very interesting observation and I agree it's a case of wanting to look/sound and eventually think professional. I have a fond memory of a 30-something neighbour (in the city) who said in all seriousness we must "address the problem" of falling pieces of facade on our building and then "attack it". :D I would bet money he votes progressive.
We can only speak of what we find. Several years ago believing what you’ve said Irina, “what I hear, at least in the UK and the U.S. Apparently, universities' main job is no longer to educate but to indoctrinate.” My grandson in his 4th and last year at (UK) University studying Modern Military History and Languages, and knowing that he had liking for Owen Jones who leans towards Marxism. I asked him outright, he knowing my views on indoctrination, did he think he’d been indoctrinated. He said on first private meeting with his lecturer, he asked him what his political learnings were, his lecturer was taken aback, and told him, John at this university ‘you’ll be taught how think not what to think’🤔
I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to hear this! I'm sure it's not the case everywhere and that's reason to have hope. That said, indoctrination is not something you can consciously feel is being done to you, not at university age, anyway, unless you're really, really precocious, and that's a minority.
Being the father of a 17 year-old boy currently, I'm fairly well-versed in the teen mindset of both my son and his peer group. While most of them are fairly well grounded, they still lack the experience necessary to make critical decisions like how to run the country.
The US floats the idea of dropping our voting age to 16 from time to time, but it's never really gained much traction.
And my son and most of his friends are surprisingly conservative organically, and they tell me that they are in large part because they're already tired of all the GOV meddling in their young lives.
The US left has also banked on importing as much of Central America as possible, as they see them as future democrat voters, but they forget that the vast majority of them are devout Catholics, and fairly conservative as well.
Let's hope all these power-grabs backfire in 2024, and "The Far Right™" prevails!
Organically -- thank you for this very important word. This is how things should happen, including political view development. Now that you mention it, I think it makes sense for Gen Z to be conservative in the American sense of anti-big government. Their generation is reaping what big government sowed for their parents and now them. It's not a nice crop.
Excellent point on the immigrant voters. The planners really don't think, do they?
I'm actually kind of amazed by how anti-GOV in-your-face they are, but I think it's just fatigue. They just want to live their lives!
And no, Central Planning always fails, because the planners themselves are so very far removed from reality.
May they all fail ingloriously be the end of 2024...
Fatigue can be quite positive, I've found, productive, even.
In my formative teenage years I missed out on age related events. The secondary school attended, started its first 6th form in 1962. I started 6th form at 15, but within a couple of months I’d secured a 5 year bonded electrical apprenticeship (my father paying the bond) with a local authority at age 15, the next year they’d only be recruiting 16 year olds . My apprenticeship based on successfully attaining minimum City & Guild ONC level wouldn’t finish until I was 21 years of age, so effectively I’d have served 6 years. The bonded apprenticeship was governed by electrical trades union. When reaching 19 was classed as a journeyman electrician, and by then trade union agreed, dependant upon appropriate academic level reached, that time served could be reduced to 4 years, so 20 years of age to fully qualify, in that respect I qualified but I’d still served 5 years, others following only having to do 4 years, with bound apprenticeship being dropped. Currently apprenticeships are 2 to 3 years but that’s another story. When I started my apprenticeship at 15 the death penalty existed in UK, it wasn’t withdrawn until 1969. Also prior to 1969 voting age stood at 21, then dropped to 18, I was then 22. My children could vote at 18 but first voted in their 20’s (their choice) My grandchildren children 8 of them, the eldest 31 years of age, out of the 8 all eligible to vote, only 3 have, first voting in their 20’s.
So I’m not confident there would be a rush of 16 or 13 year olds to vote, or at least in any substantial numbers🤔
This tells me that with the progressives' hopes for a lot of young voters we are once again seeing the amplification effect of social media. Just because a group is loud, doesn't mean it's large. Good point!
I see lines of tractors and flames kilometers long and high in Europes’ near future. In places like France, Germany, even all the way up at EU headquarters.
Oh wait…
🔥
Irina, this column brought out my younger self - the one who immediately took the opposite of whatever position my parents held at the time. So in the spirit of tongue in cheek, if I were a 16 year old excited about the chance to "be heard at the ballot box", I'd ask why this idea is so outrageous when we allow 80+ people who don't even seem to know where they are at any given time to vote, hold office, and serve as figureheads for whoever it is that's writing their press conferences. If governments turn a blind eye to child slavery and sex traffic, at least the children who are apparently old enough to be used by them should have their say somehow.
The classic contrarian teen -- I love that archetype! Good point about clearly senile octogenarians in office. I have no counter point to it because there isn't one. Perhaps a fair solution to the situation would be an age cap on political participation, on the same grounds as the minimum voting age that is now 18 in most of Europe.
In a dream world, I'd say all the adult "privileges" would begin at the same age - voting, drinking alcohol, getting married, going into the military. Here in the States it's still legal to marry in some place at 16. Seems like being deemed old enough to have children would be old enough for all the rest of it? Society continues to struggle with some of these cultural issues. At the other end we have age limits on some things too - so why not on others? Arguably looking at who we have in office these days you can't say that mental fitness is a prerequisite for being a politician so we can't use that on voters, but an upper limit on the damage that can be done by politicians serving well past whatever prime they had would be welcome.
All the adult privileges begin at 18 here. Don't know about the rest of Europe. Makes sense to me, as do age limits and indeed, there's a strong argument to be made in favour of extending these limits to politicians.
I believe that children are the future—not the present. Europe is screwed.
Why stop at 13? Lower the voting age to 3! If the kid can hold a crayon, the kid can mark a ballot. Because get the youth involved and all that.
LOL! Good point but you can't trust the three-year-olds to mark the right party. Too young and unfocused to be successfully indoctrinated, which makes them risky voters. Unless, of course, they vote with an adult chaperon because of their age or something. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As we mature , we often learn there are some thing where we absolutely don't what the responsibility of making the final decision, things that can range from brain surgery, to auto mechanics or baking bread. That can also apply to voting.; do you want to add your ignorance to everyone else's?
Sometime, as Robert Heinlein said, "If you must vote and can't think of who to support, look for the most ignorant fellow you know, ask him and ... vote for the other guy."
Well said. Yet in reality, when a lot of people don't vote, we end up with parties unfit to govern anything in power because it was only the eager minority that didn't care about its ignorance that voted. I had previously developed a habit of voting for small parties with zero chance of getting into parliament just to make sure my uncast vote does not end up benefitting one of the big and ugly ones.
Mistakes are never easy to correct, and while you try to correct the mistake, unintended consequences arise, and no matter what you do to get back to where you were, at some point you have to have to live with it. I remember when the voting age changed from 21 to 18, my parents weren't happy about it, my brothers and I were all for it! Oh my has time changed, while I can write a book about voting rights and enacting laws without representation, believing a 16 year old is capable of voting means they know the difference between Right and Wrong, thus are NO Longer a Child; let that sink in.
Yes! This is a very slippery slope, what with all those conspiracy theories about child abuse rings among those in political power and whatnot.