Thread by @_centrists_

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein In Oregon, you have adult members of Antifa directing traffic and chasing down and threatening elderly people who ignore them. If you want to brag about the civility of your people, the rest of us are going to laugh our asse.s of at you, Ehren.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein "To be clear...are you making the case that a civilized 16 year old doesn't understand that racist language is wrong?"

To be clear ... I'm saying that 16 year olds frequently act on impulse and do things that they know are wrong when they think about them a few hours later.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Mr. Ebbage, don't pretend that you don't know that, or that you believe otherwise. High school kids frequently act without thinking about what they're doing. We've all seen that happen, over and over.

We saw ourselves do that, over and over, as high school kids. And you know it.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein No matter which generation you belong to (its hard to tell from the cr.appy photo on your no-effort website), there's an abundance of video evidence of members of your generation (as teens) doing things that they'd like to forget ever happened, right now.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Are you a mature millennial? Wondering where gen Z went wrong? Did you forget those days when, as freshly minted adults, you were showing up at parties wearing diapers and sucking on binkies dripping with "E" (ecstasy)?

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Do you remember hearing about designers drugs and thinking "get to be a guinea pig in an uncontrolled medical experiment carried out by dodgy, medically unqualified criminals without any health care professionals on hand? Sounds like a good idea to me!"

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Do you remember then getting your friends involved in this, and some of them dying? No? You don't remember any of your peers doing anything like that?

Well, your elders do, and some of them are medical personnel, which is how I got to hear about that.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein While I'd really rather not see one of my younger relatives use racial epithets, because those are rude and pointlessly hurtful, given a choice between seeing them do that, and seeing them hand a lethal substance to somebody, I'd choose the epithets in a heartbeat.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Any sane, decent person would, because endangering somebody's life for the quick thrills of a recreational substance is a lot worse than using a few bad words.

But when was the last time any of us heard of a millennial being kept out of college because he went to a rave?

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Would that be "never"?

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein It's a grainy photo and you look like H.ell, Ehren, so maybe you're in gen X. Many fine people are. I'd better say that now, or my parents will get annoyed. But let's be real.

Remember what young Americans were saying during the Iranian hostage crisis? No, well History does.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein How does what Mr. Kashuv said, as a joke (apparently while his friends were egging him on) compare to the act of chanting "Nuke Iran," calling for a genocidal thermonuclear attack?

Unless you're really, really Islamophobic, you're going to have to admit that's a whole lot worse.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Total number of gen X-ers I've heard of being kept out of college because they said regrettable about Middle Eastern people as teens: none. Not one.

As for the sainted baby boomers, just google the word "hippy."

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Maybe pick up a few classics like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. It's entertaining reading.

So, where where where where where is this blessed generation that is in any position to pass judgement on gen Z? In a retirement home, if it exists, at all.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Which it probably doesn't, judging from the subjects I've seen grandparents and great-grandparents shying away from in a hurry.

No, teens have always been impulsive and regrettable, and we were all teens, once, so get over yourself, Mr. Ebbage.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein The only thing novel about teenage foolishness is the completely irresponsible draconian response to it, on the part of full grown adults who ought to know better.

A society that eats its own young is a society without a future.

@ehrenebbage @EricRWeinstein Please unroll @threadreaderapp