Useless Idiots

No one is going broke speaking ill of Gen Z. The cohort born after 1997 has already garnered a reputation for being useless on the job and politically retarded. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein wrote in the Wall Street Journal that they were a generation of useful idiots. Dare we mention that neither author is a MAGA Republican. Penn, for example, used to work for Bill Clinton.

Penn and Stein are dismayed to see so many young people supporting Hamas over Israel.

Put all this together, and it's little wonder that about half of 18- to 24-year-olds tell pollsters they support Hamas over Israel. By and large these young adults aren't hard-core ideologues; they're merely ignorant. About half of young Hamas supporters say they don't want to wipe out Israel and prefer a two-state solution. Call them the Useful Idiot generation, mouthing slogans and causes they don't understand and from which they would recoil if they did.

Dare we say that this is charitable. Penn and Stein believe that we should forgive these useful idiots because they do not know what they are doing. They are supporting a free Palestine without noting that Jordan is a Palestinian state, except that it is a monarchy, not a liberal democracy. They militate for queers in Palestine without understanding that under Sharia Law gays are executed because their sexuality is a capital crime. 

Supporting Hamas means supporting massacres of the innocent, gang rapes of women, murder of children, even babies. Do today’s useful idiots know this? Of course not, they are too stupid to bother with reality. 

Speaking of stupid, one of America’s two major political parties nominated an idiot for the role of president of the United States. Of course, she was not even remotely qualified to do the job. But, the bien pensant elites of this nation rallied to support her.

As they did for the moron that Joe Biden placed on the Supreme Court.

Historically, the term “useful idiot” was coined by Lenin to describe Westerners who were unwitting allies of the Communist movement. And yet, all things considered, the Revolution that the radical left promised was tried in the twentieth century… and failed miserably. 

All things considered yesterday’s useful idiots are today’s useless idiots. After all, how stupid do you need to be to understand that Communism failed?

Take the case of Zohran Mamdani, candidate for mayor of New York City. Young people thrill to his program of reconstituted Communism. Tyler Cowen addresses the Mamdani platform and shows that the least reflection could easily led intelligent people to reject it as patent and rank absurdity:

I understand why such proposals might thrill some New Yorkers—especially struggling young people. But as an economist I know there is long-standing research showing, for example, that rent freezes lead to apartment shortages and also to quality collapses and deteriorating neighborhoods. Ultimately, it hurts the working class. I also know that the government does not have the flexibility or the profit incentives to do a good job running our grocery stores. They probably would lose money trying, forcing taxpayers to make up the difference. And even the Soviet Union did not wish to experiment with completely free bus rides. Usually service quality is higher when the users have to pay something, thereby boosting the incentives to take their desires seriously.

Writing on the Free Press Tyler Cowen points out the rank stupidity of one Hasan Piker, a newfound hero to the radical left:

… dismantling the guardrails of civilized conversation, has now become normal behavior among many socialist influencers. One of the most prominent is Hasan Piker. To choose just one of countless examples, the Twitch star spoke about an American war hero in this way: “What the fuck is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like, literally lose his eye because some mujahideen, a brave fucking soldier, fucked his eye hole with their dick?” He suggested that the brave soldier “deserved” his fate. And he stated, on several occasions, that America deserved 9/11.

Finally, Cowen makes an intriguing and salient point. How much of the generalized hatred of the country derives from what he calls bad events. When you lose wars people are less likely to feel patriotic:

Perhaps bad events are to blame for the initial uptick in negative feelings. In 2001, hijackers flew planes into the Twin Towers—a previously unimaginable event for most Americans. The United States was taken down a peg. The second Iraq War then failed. The Great Recession came in 2008, followed by a slow labor market bounce-back. Covid and its aftermath were the next nightmare. Should it be such a huge surprise if the negative feelings have dug in and stuck?