More details are emerging about the deranged inner world of Robin Westman. He/she/whatever is the transgender gunman who shot up a Catholic church filled with kids last month, on the first day of classes at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.
It seems that Westman had a girlfriend named Abigail Bodick, who was a “furry”. For the uninitiated out there, a “furry” is a person who identifies as an animal, usually a dog or a cat.
Yes, this is completely insane. And this brand of insanity certainly didn’t flourish in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was a kid. This is a Gen Z thing.
But who is to blame for Gen Z? Certainly not the much-disdained Baby Boomers. The Gen Z birth years run from 1997 to 2012. A Baby Boomer born in 1947 turned 50 in 1997. That was a little old to be having kids.
No, the typical Gen Z young adult has Gen X parents. The Baby Boomers are not to blame for this mess.
I spotted this remark from the comments section of the New York Post:
“As a Gen X-er, I have to be honest: Many of us were bad parents. Feeling guilty for having both parents working unlike how we were raised, too many of us failed to discipline our children. We often even encouraged their quixotic leanings, telling them that anything is possible instead of raising them like we were raised with pragmatism and working papers at 16. I was fortunate but I know many a 30-year-old lost and embittered. Any society that has such a thing as a ‘furry’ has lost its way and will begin to crumble.”
I am 57 years old, born in 1968, which places me smack in the middle of Gen X. I’ve stayed in touch with many of my former classmates, people I’ve known since the early 1980s, or even the 1970s. I’ve gotten to know some of my former classmates’ children. At the very least, I’ve observed the results of their parenting decisions on social media.
In almost every case, the children of my former Gen X classmates are less than their parents were. Their children are less emotionally stable, less successful, and more likely to be obese.
And yes, a few of my friends’ kids have fallen into the pit of transgenderism as well.
Fortunately, none have become school shooters.
Why has this happened? The comment from the unidentified Pablo sums it up best.
Gen Xers (born 1965 to 1980) were raised by parents of the Silent Generation, and the first cohort of Baby Boomers. We were raised with, as noted above, pragmatism and working papers at 16.
It wasn’t one long grueling slog. I had a happy childhood. My parents gave me guitar lessons, swimming lessons, and they sent me to a Catholic school.
But there were also limits and expectations. I never wanted to dress like a girl or pretend to be a cat. (And I can only imagine the conniption fit my father would have had.) But like all kids, I sometimes pushed against the boundaries.
When necessary, my parents had no qualms about pushing right back. Sometimes that included a “spare the rod and spoil the child” approach. When I was a boy, I was sometimes spanked.
I know—horror of horrors.
But I never dressed like a girl or a cat, and I never shot up a school. Nor did any of my classmates, who had similar upbringings.
The proof is in the pudding. And if Gen Z is the pudding prepared by Gen X, then Gen X was referring to the wrong cookbook while they were raising Gen Z.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the news—just look at young adults nowadays.
-ET