The Last Generation of Americans: A Review of Mark Bauerlein’s “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up”
Mark Bauerlein. The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youths to Dangerous Adults. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway. 2022.
Deep within the “word hoard” of Baby Boomer insults, one of the most insulting appellations is the dreaded “Millennial.” Denoting, among other things, an inability to work and general laziness combined with a politically radical worldview, the term “Millennial” is often used dismissively to tag what could very well be the last generation of Americans before the newly emerging global society.
With works like Helen Andrews’ Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, Millennials, in recent years, have shot back on their parents and grandparents’ generations, taking note that it was their Baby Boomer (and, some even argue, Great Generation) forebearers that preached the doctrines of self-indulgence, consumerism, and entitlement, which the Millennials allegedly simply learned at the knees of their immediate forebearers.
Indeed, it has been argued that the Millennials themselves have been decades in the making as the West has slowly been de-Christianized, dumbed down, and ultimately spoiled rotten.
Nonetheless, there is something different about the late millennials or “digital natives” who came of age with the smart phone and have, in fact, only known life on the internet.
In The Dumbest Generation Grows Up, Emory University Emeritus English Professor Mark Bauerlein presents his second lament for a truly lost generation. While his first lament for the Millennials, the 2008 The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), warned out what was happening to America’s youth, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up bemoans what has happened to America’s youth.
Some of the material that Bauerlein presents may be familiar ground to readers. He argues that young people spend far more time-consuming digital media than they do reading, making them allegedly largely ignorant of both the world and themselves. He further provides ample quotes from progressive educators arguing that such ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing because students can now simply “look up” the material on Google.
Bauerlein further notes that the Millennials are heavily radicalized and in the processes of toppling much of Western culture. Bauerlein importantly argues, however, that this radical process of deconstruction is merely the logical conclusion of changes in education made from the 1960s to the 90s, which erased the core curriculum of many colleges and universities, allowing college students to “go their own way” though “general studies.”
Much of Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation is also a lament for the death of print. However, Bauerlein further makes the crucial observation that young people are have lost not only the aesthetic experience of not having read great books, they have been denied a sober “tragic” vision of life for which previous generations of young people were steeled by the wisdom of the past. As a part of his lament for the death of print, Bauerlein focuses on the contrast between the celebrity and fame that Mark Twain and Robert Frost drew in a united, United States, versus the 21st century ignorance of contemporary writers (even when these writers are radical millennials themselves).
Untutored by the experience of Western and the wider world civilization, Bauerlein further argues, that Millennials labor to build an undefined utopia in which everyone will be happy and no one will be offended. With reason, in Bauerlein’s view, in decline, contemporary youth reduce everything to maxims, which must be believed but not necessarily understood.
In order to create this Utopia, much of Western culture must be toppled (now that the Baby Boomers have deconstructed it) and the work and home space must be safe from “microaggressions.” He further argues that earlier forms of protest were largely done in the name of justice as opposed to a response to a perceived microaggression.
What makes Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation Grows Up different from earlier similar works is exploration of the contrast between contemporary Millennial radicals and earlier generations of Marxists. Noting that (evil) genius of earlier Marxist revolutions like Vladimir Lenin, Bauerlein argues that Millennial radicals allegedly operate more from emotion as well as a sense of personal affront as opposed to rational and organized revolution for a greater social good.
In perhaps Bauerlein’s most clever section of the book, our author relates the tale of Malcolm X, who went from being a criminal to one of the most recognized American black nationalists through reading everything from the King James Bible, to Milton’s Paradise Lost, to the dictionary. Although not agreeing with X’s worldview, Bauerlein importantly notes that, once again, the earlier generations of radicals defined themselves by their agency as well as their education.
For the first time in human history, the entire world is united in an increasingly homogenized monoculture (which is really an anti-culture), which is itself dominated by American pop culture, which is strong enough to increasingly marginalize most of the ancient cultures of the world. This American pop culture is not a true reflection of the spirit or heritage of the United States, but it is incredibly appealing.
The internet itself, instead of a vast reservoir of knowledge, is principally a place for “doom scrolling” through a host of videos.
This landscape has produced a generation that, in Bauerlein’s view, is incapable of dealing with reality, and, this situation, according to Bauerlein, can only be remedied by a return to tradition.
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