{"id":161252,"date":"2025-12-10T15:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T23:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161252"},"modified":"2025-12-11T11:00:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T19:00:57","slug":"progressives-brainless-disdain-for-young-people-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161252","title":{"rendered":"Progressives\u2019 brainless disdain for young people, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Progressives\u2019 brainless disdain for young people, Part II<\/h1>\n

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| December 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

They’re at it again. Consider this my self-therapy.<\/h5>\n

A day after posting my\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0about progressives\u2019 post-election return to trashing the young people who most vigorously support progressive causes, I made the mistake of listening to\u00a0Bitchuation Room\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Francesca Fiorentini (age 42) and Majority Report\u2019s Emma Vigeland (age 31) prove once again, with the latter\u2019s nasty quips, why I ended my subscription to Majority Report a year ago.<\/p>\n

Sabotaging their progressive takes, Vigeland\u2019s and other leftist podcasters\u2019 rants against young people are as crazed and bigoted as any MAGA ranting against transgenders, inner-citians, and dark-skinned immigrants.<\/p>\n

(Vigeland is just one mooer in the herd, as I\u2019ve pointed out. Breaking Points\u2019 sorta-conservative Emily Jankowski demeans the young as suffering \u201cundeveloped brains;\u201d sorta-conservative cohost Saager Enjeti berates them as criminals and online degenerates; definitely-leftist cohosts Ryan Grim and Ball dismiss the young as social-media-duped groypers; Kyle Kulinski\u00a0constantly<\/em>\u00a0sneers the young are \u201cblack-pill\u201d 4chan morons; Hysteria\u2019s Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco demean young adults\u2019 \u201cundeveloped frontal lobes\u201d and \u201cnot-good ideas;\u201d Bitchuation Room\u2019s\u00a0Francesca Fiorentin<\/a>i berates the young as social-media brain-rotted Nihilistic Violent Extremists; on and on.)<\/p>\n

Vigeland\u2019s two dumbest comments this week (after she and Fiorentini admitted young people are the vanguard of liberal-left causes like Palestinian rights) were to insist that young people have \u201cundeveloped brains,\u201d and that older progressives such as herself enjoy the privilege to graciously expect \u201cyoung people,\u201d namely \u201cyoung men,\u201d to \u201capologize\u201d for supporting Trump.<\/p>\n

Let me repost \u2013 again, wearily \u2013 the networks\u2019 definitive 2024 election exit poll of 23,000 voters the Vigelands and other progressive podcasters of the world should damn well know about or have the decency to shut up if they don\u2019t:<\/p>\n

Table 1. Who voted for Trump in 2024?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n\"\"<\/picture>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Source:\u00a0CNN (2025).<\/a><\/h5>\n

The claim that \u201cyoung men\u201d are Nazi\/MAGA\/rightists whose repenters need \u201cforgiving\u201d by progressives (who Vigeland gave attention to after complaining that \u201cyoung men\u201d get too much media attention) is conceited, anti-youth hate speech.<\/p>\n

Now, it is true that men ages 18-29 did vote for Trump by a whopping 1 point (more recent polls and elections show young men moving rapidly to the left), while Vigeland\u2019s female age eschewed Trump by 15 points. However, young Whites voted against Trump more than older Whites, including Vigeland\u2019s own 30-44 age group.<\/p>\n

But if Trump-voting is the sin requiring penance, look at the ages\/sexes from which Vigeland should be demanding apologies: all Whites over age 30; men age 45-64 (the age of Vigeland\u2019s co-host, Sam Seder), men age 65+, men age 30-44, Latino men age 45-64, women age 45-64, and\u00a0only then<\/em>, men age 18-29\u2026 along with 41% of her own cohort.<\/p>\n

But liberal\/left commentators do not collectively vilify older ages and their \u201cdeteriorated brains\u201d for right-wing proclivities. By Vigeland\u2019s logic, every cohort, including her own, requires forgiveness by women ages 18-29, the most anti-Trump age demographic.<\/p>\n

NO! The problem is NOT \u201cundeveloped brains\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leftist FDR said young people\u2019s ideals were the key to improving the world. Conservative Churchill said the young have hearts but not brains. By today\u2019s liberal\/left \u201cdevelopment\u201d dogma, the young have no heart and no brains, yet vigorously support leftist causes.<\/p>\n

Why do so many progressives flock to the \u201cbrain development\u201d argument (a throwback to 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century biodeterminism) when youth rights and socioeconomic arguments are vastly more liberal and fact-based?Do progressives listen to their own podcasts? Are they saying progressives have \u201cless developed brains\u201d and are unable to understand consequences? Are they saying progressive ideas are \u201cnot good\u201d?<\/p>\n

The \u201cbrain development\u201d myth (originally concocted 30 years ago to win lighter sentences for a handful of juvenile murderers) was refuted in the 2010s by the\u00a0demise of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging<\/a>\u00a0(fMRI) brain-scanning on which the 1990s-era \u201cscience\u201d was based, and the massive improvements in Gen Z behaviors\u00a0demolishing the myth of the \u201crisk taking\u201d adolescent<\/a>. Unfortunately, it still hangs on among interests like the\u00a0Sentencing Project<\/a>\u00a0that should know better.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is no \u201cdeveloped brain;\u201d the\u00a0brain changes throughout life<\/a>. Biodeterminists could blame podcasters\u2019 anti-youth bigotries on their over-30-age\u00a0loss of memory and learning genes<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0decline in cognitive capacity<\/a>. But that would be unfair.<\/p>\n

Now, the big question prompting current idiocies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are Jeffrey Epstein and ilk evil, depraved exploiters? YES.<\/p>\n

Not because the brains of the teenaged females he recruited lacked the \u201cdevelopmental\u201d capacity of his mature, 50-aged male brain to make reasoned decisions \u2013 that\u2019s as ludicrous as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Rather, Epstein\u2019s criminality derives from gross power imbalance. Society arbitrarily awards his aging-male status vast resources, rights, and power that are denied to young people. Epstein\u2019s recruiters made the imbalance even more exploitable by targeting impoverished, abused girls with few options rather than, say, trolling middle schools in toney Palm Beach (median income, $175,000). I once taught at an upscale alternative high school. The students there would never be sex-trafficked; they enjoyed far better choices.<\/p>\n

A real progressive argument for youth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brain development is not the problem, as the vast differences in risk by teens of differing poverty levels and family abuses show.<\/p>\n

The real reason American society has no right to punish teens like adults for similar actions is because American society accords teens vastly fewer legal rights, control over their environments, economic wealth, and independence than adults \u2013 a crucial, ignored point Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy made in his famous\u00a0Roper v Simmons<\/a><\/em>\u00a0opinion restricting the juvenile death penalty.<\/p>\n

The best analyses show there is no \u201cdevelopmental\u201d hierarchy, at least not between ages 12 and 70 or so. Adolescents have\u00a0more flexible brain physiology<\/a>\u00a0with more open synapses affording broader ranges of thinking, while over-25 grownups have more efficient, \u201cpruned\u201d neural pathways promoting specialization. These types of thinking \u2013 general tendencies, not hard wirings \u2013 ideally work together to fashion societies able to meet changing conditions with innovation and focus.<\/p>\n

Traditional wisdom and experience were vital to survival in tribal cultures. Now, expanded thinking is crucial to survival across global, long-term dimensions. Diverse ways of thinking are needed \u2013 the experiences of immigrants adapting to new cultures, of young people more adept with emerging technologies and ways of living together, and older people who bridge past and present. To call one kind of thinking \u201cinferior\u201d or \u201cundeveloped\u201d (as right-wing biodeterminists and too many progressives do) sabotages the diverse perspectives globalizing future-facing societies demand.<\/p>\n

Human societies have been proving for millennia that they will not protect young people against predation, other than by ineffective supervision regimes restricting mainly girls\u2019 lives. The confused, belated, repressed response to Epstein is only the latest example, and only among the rare cases that become known.<\/p>\n

The remedy is for young people, whose behaviors in Gen Z are now healthier than those of older ages, to assume the power and resources to protect themselves. That remedy is sabotaged by progressives\u2019 baseless insistence that young people have inferior \u201cundeveloped\u201d brains and bad thinking.<\/p>\n

Progressives\u2019 rising contempt toward young people is very disturbing. It shows that even among those professing respect for science and egalitarian values, the liberal-left simply indulges self-flattering myths to demean a young constituency whose support they depend on. That truly is bad thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Progressives\u2019 brainless disdain for young people, Part II Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| December 2025 They’re at it again. Consider this my self-therapy. A day after posting my\u00a0complaint\u00a0about progressives\u2019 post-election return to trashing the young people who most vigorously support progressive causes, I made the mistake of listening to\u00a0Bitchuation Room\u2019s\u00a0Francesca Fiorentini (age 42) and Majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161252"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161256,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161252\/revisions\/161256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}