Who’s the most invisible and unheard person alive in the western world right now?
Teenage boy growing up without a father, not knowing what it means to be a man, barely tolerated by his teachers, ignored by the girls, dismissed by his church. ...
Hipster priests don’t pay him any attention — well, not unless — never mind.
He doesn’t deface great art and make a nuisance of himself. Possibly he doesn’t have enough ambition for that. Or maybe he’s just not insane. ...
He’s not a moral ideal, far from it. But exactly nothing in his instruction, whether academic or moral, inspires his perfectly ordinary and ... masculine nature.
He doesn’t complain about that, not because he’s meek, but because he is so far from having any masculine virtues to imitate, he doesn’t even suspect that there are any. He is therefore likely to be vaguely feminist, if he’s an agreeable fellow; though he does understand that he’s already much stronger than his mother is — a somewhat off-putting and uncomfortable experience that, barring disability or the near approach of the man’s death, a teenage girl never has with her father.
He’s probably hooked on porn, not that anybody cares, because the people who do get all the attention for their favorite forms of sexual immorality and insanity use porn all the time, too; and do plenty of things that aren’t to be put before the eyes of visitors to Potemkin Village.
He may be sullen, because sullenness is all around him, and because he ought to be spending another twenty hours a week outdoors at play or at work, but he has a natural sense that it’s a little puny to say that you’re hurting unless there’s a knife in your belly. Besides, if he does complain about having no father to guide him, that would make his mother unhappy, and he wants to spare her feelings. As for the missing man himself, — who knows? He has no hope from that quarter.
The girls, by the way, are hurting badly too, but those among them who would love to fall in love and get married after the ordinary and immemorial way of nature also have no advocates.
Kid’s been beaten and robbed and left for dead, while everybody passes him on the way to the political demonstration, the brothel, or the bathhouse.
— Anthony Esolen
Reading Time: 6 minutes 40 seconds
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Today is Thursday, March 21st, the 81st day of 2024. There are 285 days left in the year. It is Education Freedom Day, National Healthy Fats Day, National Flower Day, National Common Courtesy Day, National Fragrance Day, National Countdown Day, National French Bread Day, National Crunchy Taco Day, National Teenager Day, International Day of Forests, World Poetry Day, and World Puppetry Day.
On This Day
In 1788, a fire destroyed much of New Orleans.
In 1871, journalist Henry Morton Stanley began his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.
In 1918, the first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, began.
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