That title, boys and girls, is what we call a tautology. Basically, it is self evident and doesn’t progress an argument. You can safely forget ever hearing that definition unless you plan to do formal argumentation or are philosophy geek already commenting on how bad that definition of tautology is.

Yeppers, that title is a tautology. It’s of course a true statement. But unlike a formal argument, sometimes folks just need to hear the obvious spoken aloud.

I am in business. If you are in need of a snarky T shirt, check out Quill Shop on Quillsword.net. Next update will be in May.

Since many of you are finding out I even have a shop just now, we can safely assume I stink at marketing. But it’s much worse than that, sad to say. See, according to everything I’ve been learning, a business needs to know who its target audience is. Not in general terms like ‘people in the market for snarky t shirts’ but really specific like ’25 yr old college students who only wear snarky t shirts’.

Which seems to have nothing to do with politics, at least beyond the snarkiness, so who the heck is my audience? I’m supposed to care but I find that I care more about talking to people, especially young people, to demystify politics and make basic analysis much more approachable. Not because I enjoy a good discussion of political systems – which I very much do – but because I see so many in the comment sections of videos and social media confused, angry and scared but what seems to them to be a world gone mad.

We Americans call it Tuesday.

The last thirty years have been mild relative to the Cold War. Younger people are freaked out by the size of Russia’s nuclear arsenal; we Baby Boomers are still trying to figure out how it got so small. They aren’t stupid. Politics have just been intensely focused on a few real issues and a lot of made up ones as the West grappled with its significance absent a genuine threat. Young people have never seen anything like this before, including 9/11. We Boomers find it almost nostalgic in a bizarrely uncomfortable way.

Older people wonder why the heck politics is so nuts; younger people think its completely polarized. The difference in perspective is stark. But we older people have the advantage of having survived the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. Antifa looks dangerous unless you’ve lived through Watts.

That doesn’t mean that younger people are wrong to be concerned – they most certainly aren’t. The Me generation got way too relaxed if anything so it’s actually heartening to see the newer generations starting to engage in the public square.

But not when they are scared of their own shadows and convinced the world is doomed to Carbon Destruction or whatever we’re calling that climate nonsense this week. This part isn’t entirely their fault. We trusted our schools to teach the next generations. Why we did that having been in public schools is a complete mystery but we did and now we have a bunch of kids that think tolerance is a virtue so long as they tolerate the ‘right’ things and who are deluded enough to think they don’t look like morons when they include pronouns in their bios.

SIGH…

I’m a tired, cranky old lady. It would be so easy to just say ‘I’ve put in my years. I don’t need this mess.’ Easy, but wrong.

I may not need this mess, but those scared, angry young people do. Marketing says that you sell solutions to people who want them. I’m giving common sense, hope and my expertise for free to those who don’t know they need them.

But they do. I’ve seen too many terrified of nuclear war over Putin’s predictable saber rattling because they have no idea when to just be alert and when to actually be afraid. We did a sucky job teaching these last few generations. Man, we’re gonna get an earful from our parents when we see them in Heaven. First few days are going to be nothing but ‘told you so’.

So I stink at marketing. This does not bode well for T shirt sales. But there, old and snarky has the advantage over young and defeatist. I will just find another business and work at that. A failure or two will be disappointing but all the skills developed doing them go into the next. I know that you only truly fail when you quit and I’m way too old and cranky to quit.

But I can’t leave them where they are. So many are convinced that they are doomed and there is no truth and they have no power and the world is going to melt or something – they are genuinely convinced of pure nonsense. There’s a special section of H-E double hockey sticks for those who knowingly taught them to be dependent, defeatist and despondent.

Sure, the purple hair and rampant insanity are a bit much for a cranky old biddy but if no one tells them the truth, how will they learn? The world was never sane but it’s also not irrationally stupid. Bullies in politics are no different from their high school counterparts – they keep it up until they are forced to stop and they don’t want to get their tails kicked. Presidents and kings put pants on one leg at a time and wonder about hair loss, just like every other guy.

You don’t have to rule the world to change it. Jesus never held any office and no one changed the world more than He did. You also don’t have to be the Son of God to change things; He’d have stayed if that was what it took. Instead, He left us with everything we need to make our corner of Planet Earth better than how we found it.

As long as we don’t give in to hopelessness and defeatism, we all have the power to make a difference. The hard part is learning wisdom so that we use that power both effectively and righteously.

You’ll never do that by giving into defeatism. Someone has to tell them they aren’t alone, life isn’t meaningless and they can be a force for good if they start worrying more about being good than what pronouns they want in their bios.

Whether I sell snarky T shirts or not, whether or not they know they need to hear what I’m saying, whether or not I ever see the impact, this cranky old voice in the wilderness is gonna keep right on calling them the way I see them. See, I do believe in this crazy American Experiment but I believe even more in those Jesus loves. They shouldn’t be scared and they shouldn’t ever think they don’t matter.

Even if they don’t buy a T shirt.