{"id":89327,"date":"2025-03-04T06:36:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89327"},"modified":"2025-03-04T06:48:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:48:26","slug":"take-a-w-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89327","title":{"rendered":"Take A “W”, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve told the story – Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech affected me as a teenager, immensely<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 It didn’t “make me a conservative” all by itself – but it did start me wondering.\u00a0\u00a0 The straitened, blighted perversion of the American Dream that Carter seemed to be inflicting on my generation grated on me -and helped start the boulder rolling downhill that led by my voting for Ronald Reagan in 1984.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rumors are leaking out into the broader culture – younger Americans, the long-awaiting “Gen Z”, are very different than the millennials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More sincere. Less cynical.\u00a0 Less likely to see “Daria” as a role model.<\/p>\n

More faithful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe. Just maybe<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

From 2007 to 2019, the number of people who say they identify as \u201cChristian\u201d decreased from 78% to 63%. It has fluctuated between 64% and 62% since then. Pew explains that \u201cfor the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My theory: the version of life, the universe and everything that Big Left has been pushing for the past couple generations – materialist, temporal, shallow as a coat of makeup – leaves a vacuum in the human soul – and maybe, just maybe, the younger generation is rebelling against that soullessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

True?\u00a0 Wishful thinking?\u00a0 Maybe a little of both.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An opening of truth to be pushed wider?\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve told the story – Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech affected me as a teenager, immensely.\u00a0\u00a0 It didn’t “make me a conservative” all by itself – but it did start me wondering.\u00a0\u00a0 The straitened, blighted perversion of the American Dream that Carter seemed to be inflicting on my generation grated on me -and helped start the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89327"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89338,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89327\/revisions\/89338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}