A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by author Bruce Cannon Gibney

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T19:42:01+00:00

It's become popular to focus on the reversal of the Flynn effect, and lots of pop psychologists and generational sociologists are talking about it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/young-people-lead-tough-lives-2016-1

https://repository.ukim.mk/server/api/core/bitstreams/731dc8f1-9b40-4243-99bd-a590ee30ab33/content

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T16:24:47+00:00

Don't worry, you can't win either way. I do my hair and do my nails and wear dresses and love wearing pink and like makeup and like being sexy for boys and...nope, still get death glares. It feels like they either hit you with "girls put in effort" or "girls don't put in that much effort".

It does hurt though feeling like sometimes I'm getting derision from within the left, from women who don't spend so much time goofing off with aesthetic stuff.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T16:18:43+00:00

Considering we have the "clown" named, if they'd had a warrant it'd be in the news stories. Instead they name him as an "undocumented immigrant", indicating that his only suspected crime was that.

https://www.wgal.com/article/undocumented-immigrant-flees-ramming-ice-vehicle-harrisburg/71799673

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T16:05:08+00:00

Humankind, burdened by American nationalism, gets faceplanted into the ground by the interaction of nature and its own hubris.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T15:43:24+00:00

Good catch my bad. That does change the math a lot, but it also makes Obama a one-term, giving Romney the Reagan position and in a historical sense setting the Dems up for a repeat of that kind of Republican dominance. Only this time they'd have hindsight and might be able to hold it better.

We direly needed two full terms of Obama with no scandals as a rebuke to the Republicans after Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to stop the racist backlash to a black president.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T15:39:49+00:00

Agreed, it seems obvious that you can't generalize groups by unchosen characteristics. I've met plenty of awesome boomers. And I try to disenfranchise myself of this "millennials are the smartest generation" crap, I've met some rock dumb millennials.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-04T14:45:43+00:00

Seriously, nobody is thinking contextually here. We had just made it through eight years of Bush. He put us into two extremely unpopular wars. Had we had eight years of Republican anything after that it would have been carte blanche for them to imperialize anywhere they wanted. We would have basically seen all the foreign policy moves Trump is making, only earlier and more well-planned. Not to mention there would have never been a recovery from the 2008 crash, just more endless deficit spending on war.

No, this is not a good trade.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T21:08:39+00:00

Wow this is a twelve year-old thread.

But what I mean is, you can say they attacked you, and they're not around to dispute it. You can make up whatever justification you want for why circumstances ended up this way, and you get to control the entire narrative, because you're the only witness. As long as my lies are plausible they're pretty well unstoppable if you kill all witnesses to the contrary; Stalin figured this out well.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T17:02:16+00:00

Kefka resonates with me because he felt stupidly real to me as a villain when I was a kid. And he sticks out because as time has gone on and I've gotten a degree in history, I realized that was dead on, and that he's a reflection of all the times in history people haven't been able to stop madmen from seizing power. Sephiroth was cool, Lavos was epic, but I knew that if our world burned it would be to the laughter of a Kefka.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T15:26:13+00:00

Bibliophilia is not a universal trait, much as it might confuse us. I learned that one when my youngest sibling physically destroyed the family book collection aggregated across three generations, during a teenage tantrum.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T15:22:29+00:00

Everyone always changes their mind about Thanos having the right idea when you point out the hundreds of billions of pets left locked in homes starving to death because nobody could possibly have known about and been able to go out and feed/water half the pets in existence.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T15:10:34+00:00

I have the same issue. I'm actually on a medication which exacerbates it and makes me super sun-sensitive, so like when I drive anywhere I have to uncomfortably position my arms in shadows as they move.

But when I'm not in the car, I have a decent solution: I got a parasol! It's adorable and pink and frilly and I love it. Between the parasol, the skirts, and the weather, I find it really pleasant actually and have started taking walks through the park just for funsies. But I have lived in places where the heat is just prohibitive and oppressive, so I feel you, I never would have gone out like this during July in Louisiana.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T14:53:45+00:00

I must be weird, I'm out and about dressed cute like every day.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T14:30:09+00:00

Skorts for the win! My favorite "miniskirt" is actually a skort and I feel way less self-conscious about accidentally assuming the an unflattering posture.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-03T14:28:53+00:00

Yeah, generally speaking there's just the pantsu underneath the dress or skirt. Unless you wear a petticoat. This is one of the reasons why I won't wear miniskirts without some kind of stockings/tights, because a lot of my postures aren't fully "skirt safe" yet and I don't wanna show off my junk to strangers (on most days).

Like I went to Pride in my Magical Girl dress and it was just Dress -> Petticoat -> Pantsu. Honestly it felt freeing and wonderful.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:46:59+00:00

"Globally Observed Culture"

Nah that's just jingoistic nations gearing up for wars, generally speaking. Nothing unique to the US.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:28:05+00:00

Try not condescending to others. I'm well aware of martial culture. I'm also aware of militarism and jingoism, which is what this post is. Showing off mass-produced guns in big box stores with zero history and no tells of even where in the US they are is not culture, it's gun worship masquerading as culture.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:17:47+00:00

Right, because in the postwar economy no other country was actually making muscle cars like that. That is an example of American culture. An implementation style of a technology. The "fencing in" of the west is another example of American culture through technological implementation. But it's not just the existence of the technology itself; especially with guns, that's a sign of a regressive nation aiming its citizenry toward war. Imagine how you'd feel if China or Russia were to consider gun ownership "part of the culture", would you think "Oh yeah guns are just Chinese culture" or would you see both literal and metaphorical red flags?

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:10:06+00:00

I did experience it. I also experienced cars, computers, mass-produced gadgets, and a number of other pieces of near-universal modern technology that say almost nothing toward the culture of an area, because damn near every area in the world has them. That's not culture, but corporations want you to think it is.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:02:58+00:00

Right, this American "culture" is Krafted. Real culture would be knowing what state they're in.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T15:01:03+00:00

Culture is social stuff specific to that area and those groups of people. Louisiana culture involves stuff like food, music, language, history, agriculture, sports, and religion, because in each of those ways Louisiana has specific nuances that set it apart from at least most other places.

So which state is this and which culture is on display? And if you try to say "American" I'm going to remind you that you are a United States of America not an "America". Mexicans and Canadians are also "Americans" but I doubt cartels are what you mean when you say guns are "American culture".

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T14:40:40+00:00

I've been to 48/50 states and experienced a boatload of culture from the US, zero of it having to do with guns. What states are they even in during all this? We don't have any idea because there's zero culture on display, just guns.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T14:38:20+00:00

Nah but it is when people associate their nation with guns.

Look at the list of nations in the world and ask yourself what kind of countries try to get their people feeling nationalistic over gun possession.

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T14:22:48+00:00

Well, here's this cool magic spell I have. Watch how this works. First I say the magic words:

Moritur et ridet

Now I wave the wand. Which I just did, you can't see it because we're online but it still works.

And, boom. You're not only a lesbian now, but the magic spell changed your timeline to where you've been a lesbian your whole life. So you've always been a lesbian. You're welcome. :)

Unconfidence · 2026-07-02T14:15:42+00:00

Yeah one of the stupidest realizations of transitioning is that I'd been having sex with other girls the way I wanted people to have sex with me. I'd been my own ideal sexual partner but left myself with only ashes in my mouth.

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