I recently had the professional opportunity in DC of attending an event that featured college students. I was asked to speak as the token conservative. The event was attended by mostly left wing Sanders supporters, mostly female. I was given a quiet, if polite, reception and after my brief foray into current events I entered into conversation with two of the students.

They were nice enough, no screaming meemie antics. But in listening to them I was surprised and indeed shocked to hear their view of the world and their own futures. Strangely, they were almost blissful in their self-proclaimed tragic fate.

Both thought pandemics would now be a regular feature of human existence. Both were, of course for their age and student status, fanatics on mask wearing, the climate, and vaccine mandates.

Neither thought they would live to 60 years of age and both intoned the old hippie cliché of “not wanting to bring children into this world.” The duo were enthusiastic Sanders supporters, one was a self-proclaimed Marxist. Both are from good families, though grew up in single parent households. They both embraced identity politics. One was not a fan of American founding documents or the Founders. Neither are fond of faith and are rather antagonistic towards Christianity.

The forum was held at an elite university and one of the two was a student there, the other a student from a good school in the region. So we are not talking about the ignorant. We are talking about the conditioned. Both, given what transpired in conversation, were not politically aware until college. Under the tutelage of left wing professors, both found their inner Che. At least one of them was woefully uninformed about subjects held forth on. Neither had a firm understanding of history. The bottom line: These two possible future American leaders live in fear, gut wrenching soul deadening masochistic fear of the world and their own futures.

They believe their generation is cursed by the actions of previous generations who all had it good. Thus they are doomed. Historical epochs like world wars, past plagues, and the Depression are beyond their ken, as is the world’s recovery from them. They are obsessed with their own supposed travails, as if the globe was always living in luxuriant excess before them and now all the pipers must be paid. It is kind of a generational narcissism made sad and gloomy by academics paid well to destroy the confidence of American children.

For a cowed defeated elite is much easier to control. When you think you never had a chance for the good life limitations courtesy of the state come as no surprise, as they seem the natural order of things. $5 per gallon gas? No problem, the boomers did it. High inflation? We can live with it, somehow corporations are at fault. International humiliation for America? Deserved, our fascistic national security establishment has spent over 200 years oppressing people so global defeat is their just reward. These are the views of the college age children of today, at least of many of them at our most prestigious schools. Some will grow out of them. Some won’t. God help us.