The Dumbest Generation Grows Up

Mark Bauerlein is one of the people who made a great deal of money writing books complaining about Millennials. Now he is back to complain even more. In this first book, “The Dumbest Generation” he maintained that Millennials didn’t know anything because they did not engage with the texts of democracy or with the material in any meaningful way, thanks to the internet. His thesis is that thanks to easy information retrieval: no one knows anything. In this latest book, he maintains that the problem has gotten even worse, and the reason we are having a civic crisis right now is because Millennials, now in their 40s and beginning to take political power, haven’t engaged with the intellectual material that has made our society possible.

I have to say that while I resent people who constantly complain about my generation, he isn’t wrong. One of my complaints about the Occupy movement was the lack of intellectual knowledge by anyone involved in that protest. I did my best to write and talk about things that would help give a framework for action moving forward, but there was little interest. I often feel like I’m the last person who knows anything without having to look it up. In this short video from CSPAN, we hear about his central thesis and why he thinks we are in crisis.