Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Toxic Brew

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by

James A. Bacon
in

by Chris Saxman

Okay. Buckle up. I am sharing with you several graphics that should lead, hopefully, to some serious discussions about the toxic blend of violence in movies, marijuana, smart phones and social media use in our youth — especially young men. First this article from the WSJ on how the use of widely available pornography can impact the development of teenage brains. Maybe rewire neural pathways? Yikes.

Look at the time lines of these (smart phone use, violence in movies, marijuana use – focus on the year 2010) and now add in the intensity/addiction of social media use.

From Fast Company article: 
PG-13 Movies Contain More Gun Violence Than R-Rated Movies.


That is a toxic mess for young developing brains. Small wonder why so many mass shootings are by either young white suburban males or young black urban males. If the male brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25, it is incumbent upon policy makers, parents, and community/business leaders to address REALITY.

It will be awkward at first to wade into that cesspool, but problems do NOT SOLVE THEMSELVES. Taboos ain’t taboos anymore when they are THIS common.

This column has been republished with permission from The Intersection.

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34 responses to “Toxic Brew”

  1. James Kiser Avatar
    James Kiser

    Don’t forget the increased use of psychotropic drugs on young men in society. The warnings for these drugs a include mania, suicide, and violent behavior. All most all of the mass killers have been on them. How many kids under the age of 21 are on them now?

  2. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    This is an old story. It has been going on for some time now. I have been out of the high school classroom for 2 years. The last 10 years in the school you could observe the gradual creep of the toxic brew Mr. Saxman writes about.

    The solution? Well for me it means unplugging from the chaos of modern American mainstream culture. I have found less is more.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      BR don’t count…

  3. Matt Adams Avatar
    Matt Adams

    The more frightening item on graph 3 is the amount of time spent on TikTok. It’s spyware, the NSA doesn’t have anything on the Chinese Government when it comes to surveillance.

    1. Lefty665 Avatar
      Lefty665

      I would not bet on that.

      1. Matt Adams Avatar
        Matt Adams

        That’s not to discount the NSA’s overzealous and illegal collection of public data. That’s just saying that between the OPM hacks and TikTok it’s likely China has all the information on every individual in the US, they don’t have to operate under the auspicious of being legal.

        1. Lefty665 Avatar
          Lefty665

          I hear you on China, and there is no overestimating our inclination to be chumps. However, they are very bright boys and girls at Ft. Meade. After 911 they were given a mission and the resources to accomplish it. The turning inward on America of their tools threw “legal” out the window.

          Snowden showed us the amazing scope of their exploits. They went after everything worldwide, and got it. Still do. It has been an awesome technical tour de force, and scary, the stuff of dictatorship as some of their old hands described it.

        2. Lefty665 Avatar
          Lefty665

          I hear you on China, and there is no overestimating our inclination to be chumps. However, they are very bright boys and girls at Ft. Meade. After 911 they were given a mission and the resources to accomplish it. Turning their tools inward on America threw “legal” out the window.

          Snowden showed us the amazing scope of their exploits. They went after everything worldwide, and got it. Still do. It has been an awesome technical tour de force, and scary, the stuff of dictatorship as some of their old hands described it.

          1. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            That he did and unfortunately he skipped town to an equally vicious entity who probably acquired the tools he showed the world.

          2. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            Nah, Snowden was in the international terminal at the airport in Moscow transiting Russia on his way to Ecuador when our genius Sec State (Kerry) pulled his passport and stranded him there.

            There are no indications that Snowden passed anything along to the Russians. He was a whistleblower not a spy.

            What he blew the whistle on was NSA’s massive domestic surveillance as they vacuumed up all the world’s communications and data. That was in absolute violation of their charter and done on directives from Duhbya/Cheney. Hayden should still be in the slammer for facilitating that.

          3. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            Oh I wasn’t insisting he was a spy, I just don’t trust the Russians to not bend someone’s arms to get what they’d like. Hopefully he was smart enough to not have it on himself.

            I’d tend to think that it was more Cheney (the career bureaucrat) vs Bush. I agree Hayden should be in orange for certain.

          4. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            Yeah, the Russians are not particularly nice or delicate guys. Snowden has said he was traveling clean, and he is clearly a very bright boy.

            That is demeaning to bureaucrats, career malignancy is more like it.

            Insult to injury is that he got a 4th star.

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    As a percentage of population, we are still outdone by Canada, Australia, France, Spain, France, Sweden, Nor”may” AND Finland online.

    You clearly don’t watch foreign language films on Netflix.

    And the difference is (drumroll, cymbal crash) guns.

  5. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    The elephant in the room…
    https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/ActingOnData/2021/firearm_Page_1.png
    And the guerrilla, er, gorilla, in the room…
    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/2851/production/_124912301_optimised_guns_per_country-nc.png

    1. Rosie Avatar
      Rosie

      They don’t have cellphones in other countries, dontcha know.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        nor internet or social media… or drugs…

        but they got some hard-right types over there also – making similar idiotic statements….

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Yeah, long wires. 😉

        None are so blind…

  6. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    is this something that is also occurring in other countries? Are all the developed countries experiencing this “social breakdown”?

    How come we don’t hear about “dismantling Germany” or “dismantling Sweden”?

    1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead

      See Berlin Wall.

  7. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Bacon’s Rebellion has been reporting on incidents and tracking metrics of the social breakdown that is tearing our society apart. (We’ve even introduced a new story tag: “social breakdown.”) As Saxman’s charts indicate, there are many potential causal factors. These go beyond Republicans and Democrats. We’re talking about trends that transcend politics.

    I do think some policies and ideologies are more demonstrably destructive of the social fabric than others, but that’s not why I republished Saxman’s piece. As with treating addiction, the first step is to recognize you have a problem, and the second step is to identify what the problem is. We all know we have a problem, but we don’t understand what’s causing it. Saxman here is groping for underlying causes.

    The best book I’ve read on the subject is “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Besides the addiction to social media that Saxman references here, the authors also examine child-rearing trends, over-protective parents, and the rise of the snowflake phenomenon (although they don’t call it that).

    1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead

      Thomas Sowell’s book “Dismantling America” touches on this topic. Dated now, book came out in 2010. His observations have come true as far as I can tell.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        It’s easy to make a prediction…
        “There will be a school shooting before December,”
        It’s tougher to determine the cause…
        “It is the result of increased Unicorn Memes.”

        1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
          James Wyatt Whitehead

          Cool…
          The Nationals will win the World Series this year.

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            That’s not a prediction, that’s “not a prayer”.

          2. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            “Take my hand we’ll make I swear…” The world needs more Bon Jovi.

          3. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Don’t know it. Do know “Take my hand. I’m a stranger in Paradise…” Borodin, lyrics by some Hollywood studio guy, no doubt.

  8. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    As a percentage of population, we are still outdone by Canada, Australia, France, Spain, France, Sweden, Nor”may” AND Finland online.

    You clearly don’t watch foreign language films on Netflix.

    And the difference is (drumroll, cymbal crash) guns.

    https://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm

  9. walter smith Avatar
    walter smith

    And de-criminalizing pot for racial equity virtue signaling purposes is not a help. Alex Berenson or Christopher Rufo (can’t remember which one) has written extensively about how marijuana negatively affects brain development up to age 25…

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      A lot of research shows that alcohol consumption affects brain development as much as, if not more than, use of marijuana. Binge drinking by teenagers is especially problematic. That could explain some things about the raft of UVa alumni on this blog who graduated during the heyday of Easters weekends. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/201012/alcohol-vs-marijuana-in-the-brain

      1. walter smith Avatar
        walter smith

        Oooookaaaayyy…
        Then I guess the alcoholics in training were at least not potheads. And the pot was weaker. So what if the kids today are binge drinking and smoking much stronger dope?
        And yes, the culture was too much drinking, but it seems most of the people grew out of it and became responsible citizens.

        1. Lefty665 Avatar
          Lefty665

          That was the idea with putting colleges in out of the way places like C’ville wasn’t it? Get the sons of the gentry off so they could blow off all those wild behaviors, grow up and return to civilization as responsible citizens.

          1. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            Maybe! Had not heard that theory…kinda like Amish wilding…

    2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      A lot of research shows that alcohol consumption affects brain development as much as, if not more than, use of marijuana. Binge drinking by teenagers is especially problematic. That could explain some things about the raft of UVa alumni on this blog who graduated during the heyday of Easters weekends. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/201012/alcohol-vs-marijuana-in-the-brain

  10. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I have long felt that the level and prevalence of gratuitous gun violence in popular movies must have the effect of desensitizing those who watch these movies a lot.

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