post #16: How do we think of the children?

--> motivating the think of the children is the khadidja mbowe video on new young conservatives ; i wonder if there's a difference between [] and [] for think of the children (i had it last night, but now i forgot)       I've been mulling over what might be a dilemma recently. Historically, conservative groups often use a "think of the children" rhetoric for scapegoating a given topic (e.g., DND, gay people). In reaction to this, I stand in alignment with arguments that say we should be skeptical and resistive to arguments which fearmonger about the state of "today's youth." These narratives of generational corruption are necessarily conservative as they are anti-progress as they seek to reentrench the way children were imagined to be in the past. Sometimes the scapegoated topic is an identity or marginalized group, such as recent narratives around drag story time and children's media which has a secret gay agenda. Other times, the topic is a different type of technology (since, of course, such things as identity and media ecology are technologies in their own right), such as television, video games, or TikTok where the argument emphasizes the technological as the corrupting factor -- [insert 'X' thing] will rot your mind. Observing this, I hold strong that "think of the children" narratives are conservative and thus antithetical considerations in the battle for social progress (in legislation and/or art). That said, it can seem difficult to maintain this viewpoint when faced with certain conjoined narratives of the degeneration of the youth (test scores are lower post-COVID, etc.). To evidence this, I point to the popularity of "brain rot" as a logically sound concept.

      There are differences in the way children engage with the world today from how children did so 50 years ago, undoubtedly. Similarly, it's impossible that the children of today are in every regard more "progressive" than their ancestors when they were children. I feel like it's all but certain, for example, that there could be some aspect of health which is worse off now than in the past. Evidencing this with retrospective examples, I think it's fair to say that children who grew up in houses with lead paint would have had some number of worse health conditions than those who, three or four generations prior, did not grow up in houses with lead paint. That said, I don't feel comfortable ascribing, in the moment, a given popular technology as this era's lead paint. I think it's important to be warry of the lead paints of the world -- the ways in which the infrustructure around us threatens to harm us -- but that there are or have been lead paints does not mean that any given technology IS a lead paint. In fact, arguments which speculate about the harmful health effects that some popular technology produces are probably more often than not just that, speculative. Hypothetically, anything *could* be or become an anathema-- but that we can theorize that television could iradiate the mind does evidence anything with regard to saying that it *does.*

[^^ drawing inspired by videodrome (originally drafted for another essay) ^^]

     Coming from this framework, though, I'm at some kind of crossroads as to how to respond to certain politcal shifts in the past decade -- that is the "rise" (more likely, resurgence) of the alt-right, epitomized most recently via the reelection of Donald Trump. Popular narratives of today place the blame of this election on the youth of today. These arguments claim that the white youth of America, the likes of which would be wont to watch Joe Rogan or Talk Tuah or some such-- that these white, or anyhow conservative youth-- that their numbers are growing or have grown, and that they are the new majority and the people who will lead the dominant/hegemonic culture for the next little while. This type of narrative seems scary and depressing and in observing it, my instict is to jump to a "think of the children!" line of argument: "we need to do something about all these tiktok teens who are growing up thinking andrew tate is an okay role model and who reenshrine white supremacy as the hegemonic norm." Anecdotally, I observe youth I grew up around who are part of this demographic and I observe the media ecologies I grew up around which inculcated conservativism and reactionary rhetoric-- anecdotally, I observe this and think, "the kids of today are worse off and trending in a dangerous direction" (or something along these lines). But then I pull myself back as I realize this is still a think of the children argument, even if it seems to be supportive of my personal ideologies.

      How do we navigate this? I'm not entirely sure, but I wonder if Videodrome holds any answers. I wonder if the issue is not the media or anything like that such as the children or the youth or the whatever else, but that the problem is the threat of a poisonous ideology in and of itself. But how do we combat ideology? In what arenas? (insert joke about videodrome -- i.e., the video arena). I'm not sure right now.

      At the end of the day, think of the children rhetoric (and conservative rhetoric in general) is a rhetoric which places the self as inherently correct -- where deviation is injury. And I want to believe that I won't always be correct, or that I won't always be the authoritative voice on an issue. That is, I want to believe that there are other ways of being in and of seeing the world (even ones which may seem evil or abhorrent). I want to think of children but I want the children to be allowed to think for themselves too. But I don't know exactly how we get there (or hold ourselves there). I believe there are harmful things in the world and I don't know how to square my image of pro-israel propaganda as harmful with the desire to not say that this type of propaganda appearing on tiktok is the root of the issue. Maybe that's part of the reframing -- that we ought to focus on roots and not symptoms. I'm not entirely sure