It's no accident, and still going on that the people in the Government have Replaced the father as the family 'provider' and even pushed him out for the 'check' to be issued, then drugs come into the picture and mama either gets a job or a habit and doesn't watch little Dish'won who is off at school being primed with all sorts of SJW stuff before coming home to a neighborhood of missing fathers. Those boys, needing guidance and a sense of family, get it where they can, along with a feeling of power and belonging in a local street gang, which needs funding somehow, and leads down the wrong road, maybe even dealing the very reason mama isn't there. The Social Workers might swoop on that and grandma take mama's place, but with the grandmas getting younger, by virtue of shorter generations and spiraling out of wedlock births, the bar keeps sinking until the situation becomes more feral. Those who try to keep a traditional family will move out if they can, or stay if they can't and suffer abuse for it.
The underlying mentalities are reinforced by television, not decried by it, and that media-established 'normal' is pushed across cultural lines, with effects seen no longer in just the one community, but increasingly in other cultural demographics as well.
It is a subtle but insidious destruction of western civilization beginning at its core unit, the family, and it is intentional. People without traditions, without a sense of self and moral character, without the guidance of something bigger than they are, are easily manipulated and controlled. Make them ignorant of history and they can be told anything and believe it.
As for freedom? They don't even have a clue.
That's exactly it. You know at the time, those men I looked up to were hard, hard men. Their approval was all I needed, but that was about the hardest thing to gain. I could not say I was a man without that approval, and in the end, that was what I craved. That legitimacy. Making my bones.
Their approval was very hard won. On everything. And compliments were few and far between. On everything. But one thing is sure - If they did compliment me, they dang well meant it, and every one I received was a treasure and a wonderment. Every one of those are still held fast in my heart.
Being an hard ass myself these days, I understand what they put me through, and why they did it. And I should thank God Almighty for every one of those impossible bastards, foremost of all of them, my father. I literally owe him everything I am. God bless that man. I miss him every day.
Brings to mind a study they made over in Africa... Elephants were getting scarce somewhere, so they shipped in some young bulls and cows(?) to build a new population. Well them young bulls proceeded to become a terror, running rampant in the land, to the point of endangerment of nearly everything that moves... How do you think they fixed it?
An old bull. The lot of em could have kicked him out, but they didn't. They fell in line. The rampages stopped dead.
There is something to be learned in that.
Good post.