All that media babble, the college idiocy, that politically-correct absurdity … all of that nauseating dysfunction … it’s on us. Condoned by our silence and financed by our sacrifices

And now … now it’s hard to imagine a cure.

It started not-so-long ago in an epidemic of self-esteem. Followed by a torrent of calligraphied certificates for simply standing around. Spit out in such a frenzy that folks ran out of refrigerator space.

Then we stopped keeping score … and soon every kid got a trophy … even the last place kids … who all knew they were losers, but made to feel perfectly special about it. Tailpipes were never so full of smoke.

We outlawed letter grades and substituted stupid-speak that said nothing offensive and revealed nothing. So blunt-speak became archaic and reality more elusive.

And all along the way, the schools pounded parents into puzzling parenting.

A swat on the bottom became child-abuse, water pistols a cause for suspension … and a ticket to the shrink. The line between boys and girls got real fuzzy-blurry. Playground games like tag were declared too touchy … and the monkey bars too masculine. Dodge-ball gone! And Boy Scouts had to accept girls … and so now girls have boys in their locker-rooms. Fair’s fair. Or is it?

And no one saw this coming? C’mon.

Then helicopter moms swooped in and groomed every speed-bump into a landing-strip of foam … choking off maturity by hand-feeding life to kids who grew into faux-adults who couldn’t deal with a contrary opinion, a rough word, or an election in which they didn’t even vote.

Few escaped the madness. And as the kids got older, it got worse.

Every dating misstep became a felony. Affirmative action for minorities gave way to white people with bad privileges. Segregation somehow became cool again. Changing your sex became a fashionable neurosis.

College kids could major in anything their hearts desired … and then rage about the lack of jobs because they had an expensive degree in Musical Anesthesiology, Applied Vegan Hydroponics, or Feminology and the Male Myth.

Middle class Americans … that’s some of you! … paid a politically-correct extortion tax disguised as college tuition so your kids could have a brighter future … if they could escape the clutches of warped, out-of-control Sixties’ retreads … and their faculty disciples … who think colleges are finishing schools for the next generation of tie-dyed bullshit artists who know nothing and never shut up.

Everything is upside down.

A whole generation …or more! … insists that life has never been this unfair. Not ever.

And they claim unalienable rights to free tuition and jobs that pay well … but don’t take up too much time. There’s apparently a fundamental right to free medical insurance, extended vacations, comfortable living situations, and a worry-free world. I didn’t know that.

They insist that America should open its borders and play James Taylor songs for those misunderstood medievalists who lop off heads and execute babies.

They believe America’s the root of all evil … the planetary criminals whose greed grew deserts, melted glaciers, and almost killed off Charlie Tuna.

America’s bad … and that’s that!

And so … there they are. On full display. Crying in safe spaces and skipping mid-terms. Calling for a do-over election. Blaming the Russians or Wikipedia or fake news.

This mess is on us. We let this crap go on for too long. Now we’re knee-deep in it.

There’s a lesson to be learned. Learn it.

Denis Ian