[00:00:00] This is the FCB Podcast Network. Just Listen to Yourself presents I'm Just Saying with Kira Davis.
[00:00:14] Remember that show The Wonder Years? The classic 90s drama was about a young Kevin Arnold coming to maturity in tumultuous 1960s America.
[00:00:25] He lived in the suburbs with his housewife mother, bully brother and hippie sister, and his cranky father, a war veteran, and an average middle-aged American with a love for beer and his favorite recliner, and a distinct disdain for the cultural revolution enveloping his country at that moment.
[00:00:44] Kevin, like almost everyone, was terrified of his father's stern demeanor and harsh judgment. Mr. Arnold hated the hippies, hated the protesters, and made no secret about how weak he felt his children's generation was.
[00:00:58] As a kid watching the show, I could never understand why Mr. Arnold was so mean, especially to his hippie daughter. All she wanted to do was spread peace and love. Good things!
[00:01:09] And all Mr. Arnold did was judge her for it, make snide remarks, and roll his eyes at her and her friends. He was just mean, and I didn't get it.
[00:01:18] I was just watching footage of Columbia University students making demands as they occupied a campus administration building in protest of the war in Israel.
[00:01:27] The Prohama students have vowed not to leave the building until the university officially denounces Israel and goes on record as supporting a ceasefire.
[00:01:36] But because we don't train our kids to think critically anymore, they didn't plan ahead for anything. Now they're hungry and leaving the building could result in arrest.
[00:01:45] So they're asking, no, demanding their oppressors in the university administration bring some food for their angry bellies.
[00:01:54] And now I get Mr. Arnold. He was looking at his peace and love daughter with the same kind of disgust I look at these soft, mushy, Gen Z brats cosplaying as protesters.
[00:02:05] He served his country in some of the most brutal conflicts of his age. He risked his life, suffered and came home to work peacefully but diligently at a mundane job to support his family.
[00:02:17] He made sacrifices in life to not only get what he wanted, but to get what other people wanted too.
[00:02:23] Watching those entitled, privileged middle and upper class children scream and cry as if they had nothing.
[00:02:30] Watching those entitled, privileged middle and upper class children take the comforts he provided, the tax dollars he worked for to trash the country he fought for.
[00:02:40] Well, it's enough to make one a gigantic cranky old man on a permanent basis. That's where I am right now.
[00:02:48] These privileged toddlers live the most luxurious lives in the world and are so spoiled they think it's their right to destroy the property and time of others
[00:02:57] because they're mad about something the United States has nothing to do with. And I've had enough.
[00:03:02] They are not passionate, they are not concerned, they are bored toddlers who aren't even at university to earn anything.
[00:03:11] So they really don't believe their time is valuable enough to do anything else.
[00:03:15] All they can do is cry about the way real grownups deal with the things real grownups have to deal with on a daily basis.
[00:03:24] My apologies to Mr. Arnold for ever thinking he was a cranky mean old man.
[00:03:30] He was just disgusted by a bunch of toddlers throwing tantrums while their parents sacrificed everything to keep them fed and free.
[00:03:39] These kids deserve my ire, just as those hippies on the wonder years deserve Mr. Arnold's.
[00:03:46] I'm Kira Davidson. I'm just saying.
[00:03:50] This has been a presentation of the FCB Podcast Network, where real talk lives.
[00:03:57] Visit us online at FCB Podcasts dot com.