RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/while-the-culture-war-rages-americas?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

When I was in my teens and 20s, I used to chuckle at the older guys who complained about the state of the country and America’s young people. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that each generation worries about societal changes and those coming behind them. Despite a few bumps in the road, America keeps rolling and the kids turn out just fine. The old worries eventually become fodder for good conversations between generations. I’m mindful of this pattern as I get older. But now, like the old guys I laughed at when I was young, I find myself looking around at the state of our young people and seeing some disturbing trends.

I wanted to be sure these trends are real and that I wasn’t being a worrywort, so I checked the data. Unfortunately, my intuitions were correct. America’s young people are floundering. The cumulative effect of the data I present below is a bigger threat to America’s future than any of the culture war issues pundits and politicians argue about. People who care about America should care about the state of its children and young people. It’s the right thing to do. It’s also in everyone’s best interest, because too few of our children are becoming the productive adults we need to sustain our economy and institutions. Fewer still are capable of becoming leaders of those institutions.

I’m worried. Others should be worried, too, when 14% of America’s high school girls say they’ve been forced to have sex. They should be worried when 14% of America’s teachers say they’ve been victims of physical violence from students. They should be worried when high percentages of America’s young people say they’re having mental health issues, 18% of high school students have created a suicide plan, 10% of them have attempted suicide, and 3% of them required medical treatment as a result. And let’s not forget about those whose suicide attempts were successful. Suicide was the third leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 in 2020 according to the CDC’s WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) database.

A review of multiple data sources suggests that alarming percentages of America’s children and young people are struggling. Too many of them are

Born to economically disadvantaged single mothers
Living in single-parent households
Overweight or obese
Suffering from mental health issues
Victims and perpetrators of violence
Struggling academically
Unable to transition into stable, self-supporting adulthood.

Here’s a high-level summary of each of the topics mentioned above.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/10_paradigm_shifts_that_shatter_establishment_illusions.html

Sometimes it feels as if we are drowning in a torrent of bad news.  I would suggest, however, that the worse people feel, the more they are waking up to the serious contests of our time.  If you are unhappy with the political, economic, and social powers manipulating the world today, the critical first step in fighting those forces is changing the way people think about them.  By that measure, people today are changing their minds about the culture and institutions around them faster than ever.  Consider some of these fundamental shifts in thinking:

(1) Good vs. evil

Not long ago, it was common for conservatives to see the Marxist left as foolishly mistaken — a collection of young and inexperienced troublemakers who would eventually “snap out” of their common delusions once forced to confront reality.

Now people understand that the left’s real mission is to reject reality.  Castrating boys so that they can pretend to be girls is not “healthy.”  Perpetuating racism as social policy is not “justice.”  Imposing a “woke” State religion over personal conscience is not “moral.”  Aiding and abetting child sex–trafficking and drug-smuggling at our borders is not “compassionate.”  Stealing property is not “equitable.”  Just as with Leninism and Maoism before, today’s leftism is evil.

(2) Parties vs. uniparty

There has been a seismic shift in the way Republican voters see political parties.  After Obama forced government-controlled health care on America, the Tea Party movement began a desperate fight against socialism’s advances.  From the energy of that movement, Republicans eventually took back the House and Senate.  Despite those triumphs, Paul Ryan rubber-stamped Obama’s budgets, while refusing to build Trump’s border wall.  McConnell’s Senate Republicans, who had run on repealing Obamacare, cemented socialized medicine with McCain’s decisive betrayal.

Grassroots voters finally rejected Establishment Republicans and catapulted outsider Donald Trump into office.  In response, Republicans quietly assisted Democrats in their attempt to remove Trump through the Russia hoax.  In the space of a decade, most Republican officeholders were outed as RINOs, before voters properly concluded that they were actually part of a single D.C. Uniparty all along.  

(3) Science vs. political manipulation

The only good thing to come out of the government’s COVID lockdowns, forced medical experimentation, and masking theater was its inadvertent creation of a Eureka! moment for tens of millions of Americans who realized that “science” has become irredeemably politicized.  When health authorities opted for experimental injections over known medical treatments, they sacrificed lives to push an agenda.  When hospitals separated families and forced vulnerable patients onto ventilators, they acted inhumanely.  When politicians and corporations censored public dissent, destroyed livelihoods, hobbled childhood development, and terrified the public with known lies, they not only proved that objective science is dead, but also committed crimes against humanity.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/marktapscott/2023/07/15/the-amazing-accomplishments-of-adam-andrzeweski-and-open-the-books-n1710885

When Congress approved and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, it became the law of the land that the public business of the United States is the business of the American public.

Just because the FOIA had become the law, however, little immediately changed in the dominant culture of secrecy, self-serving, and cover-up that always and everywhere pervades bureaucracies, but especially the sprawling bureaucracy of the federal executive branch.

That suffocating and constantly expansive culture would only change when millions of individual citizens and activists (plus journalists devoted to “the public’s right to know”) made continuing use of the FOIA and insisted that the law be respected and followed, even if doing so required persistence and insistence to the point of hiring lawyers and heading into court.

When the authoritative history of the succeeding 56 years is written, one individual and the non-profit group he founded will stand out — Adam Andrzejewski and Open the Books. The reason why is captured in the OTB purpose, “Every Dime. Online. In Real Time,” and its standing invitation to “Join the Transparency Revolution.”

There are legions of advocacy and activism groups in America that raise hundreds of billions of dollars each year based on claims of working to make government better. But not one of them can match the monumental accomplishment of Andrzejewski and OTB.

Here’s why: transparency is the absolute prerequisite to accountability in government. That’s the ideal underlying the FOIA and the essential condition for the survival of a republican democracy. And knowing how the government is spending the tax dollars of its citizens is the necessary first step to achieving genuine and enduring accountability. That is where Andrzejewski and OTB excel as no other individual or group in America.

Here is how they explain it:

“At OpenTheBooks.com, we work hard to capture and post all disclosed spending at every level of government – federal, state, and local. In 2022, we filed 50,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and captured 25 million public employee pension and salary records.

“We also broke open the California state checkbook for the first time in American history. We are rapidly growing our data in all 50 states down to the municipal level. We won’t stop until we capture every dime taxed and spent by our government.”

Think about that: every dime, online, in real time. You want to know how much your federal government spends each year on legal fees? Go to OTB. You want to know how much your state government spends each year on computers and office furniture? Go to OTB. You want to know how much your municipal government is paying each its employees and retirees? Go to OTB.