By Claire Nightingale

Dearest Mama,

I am writing to you because I must get my thoughts out to you on paper. After our last phone call ended in tears on both sides, I decided that it is time to explain myself, and to explain my fears and concerns.

I think, for starters, that I must acknowledge how much you love me, and how much I love you, and how much you love your future grandbaby. I know that you have been waiting to be a grandmother – and honestly, you were the first person I called as soon as I saw that little pink plus sign on the test. You were the person I was most excited to tell.

I believe that the frustration that you have detected in our conversations results from my feeling that we are out-of-sync in what we see as problems in today’s society. No doubt that we agree on many things – the schooling system is completely corrupt and is more focused on indoctrinating than education; the overall mental and physical health of our population is declining; certain ethnic minorities seem to have free range to behave as they like, violently or otherwise…

So the problem arises out of a generational friction between you, a baby boomer, and me, a millennial. There are certain things that I believe that men and women of your generation are simply not capable of seeing. There’s a myriad of possible reasons for this – perhaps denial, or guilt, or mere solipsism. You, however, are not like most boomers – not only for your deeply reflective and kind nature, but because of your genuine curiosity and interest in getting to the bottom of things. So that is why I write to you now – because I know you will read what I have to say and will meditate on it.

The following are my concerns for my baby:

1. The breakdown of the family unit. The decline of Western families began in the 1950s, when single family box homes began popping up outside city limits. Neighborhoods were no longer communities of ethnic families, and homes became simply a place where you parked your car and received your mail. Do you remember describing Grandma’s Polish neighborhood? How no doors were kept locked and everyone collectively raised the children? Can you honestly name any communities in our country that operate in that fashion? The only ones that come to mind are recent immigrants – but even their strong ethnic and familial ties begin to weaken the longer they are here. That is because that is what our system here wants. Get both parents out of the household working long hours, which serves a dual purpose: to gin up more income to spend on useless cheap product, and to exhaust the parents until they give up and use the television as a babysitter without realizing what the child is watching, or send the child to public school where he will be pumped full of radical leftist ideas by mentally damaged young female teachers. The system wants us to outsource the family roles to schools and media – both of which are just extensions of the state apparatus.
   1. Of note: a friend of mine, who has now moved to India, wrote of American families: “Other than that, families don’t really do anything together, whereas here in India I work with my father in law on agricultural stuff every day. The family has basically disappeared in America due to having machines automate away all the real work within a household and by having financial inflation create the illusion that everyone should just get enough of their own money to pursue their own goals individually.”
   2. Daycare for the young, and nursing homes for the elderly. Dimitri Orlov once commented that the reason so many people toss the parents into abysmal nursing homes is because they were placed in day care as children, and are simply “returning the favor.” Familial roles should not be outsourced to apathetic strangers – and yet that is exactly the system we live in.

2. The Ponzi scheme that is our current economy. The financialization of the global economy has brought the world’s population into totally uncharted waters. The 2008 crash was a mere blip in comparison for what’s likely to come in the next 50 to 100 years, which is to say during my child’s lifetime. There is nothing tangible on which our current system is based, and resources are regarded as boundless and infinite. It is bound to end in (bloody) disaster when the tap finally runs dry.

3. The diet that is available. It takes great effort, especially while working 12 hour shifts 4 times a week, to plan healthy meals for a family. You were a phenomenal cook, and I have gladly inherited your love of standing behind the stove; but good ingredients are now harder and harder to find. Most food today is packed full of sugar, salt, and God knows what else. Trying to do research on the subject leads you down a rabbit hole of quackery, from mom blogs to fad-of-the-moment cookbooks. Junk science is hard to differentiate from the legitimate. I do not consider it a great leap of logic to link children’s behavior issues today and the poor diet they are fed.

4. The death of local culture. I’m sure that in your travels, you have noticed a spreading “sameness” across our country. In fact it is happening all over the Western world. Put someone in a blindfold, take them to the downtown region of any major city and then remove said blindfold, and the person will be unable to tell you what city – or maybe even what part of the country – he is in. The same chain restaurants. The same big box department stores. Even local accents are disappearing. I want my child to grow up and feel a sense of attachment to the land under his feet and to the people around him. Places and peoples should not be interchangeable. I want him to feel that he is a part of something bigger than himself – a people, a land, a culture. I want him to feel that he has more in common with his neighbor than sharing a favorite television show.

5. No relationship to nature. Children spend their days in front of screens. If they are left outside alone to play, parents risk getting reported to child protective services. They are deprived of fresh air, sunlight, and constructive healthy playtime.

Children today are also not taught the idea of limited resources. They think food, toys, and energy all magically appear. This is why I will never take my child into a Target, WalMart, or any other big box store. I will not have my child squealing and screaming for a product that he will toss aside after temporary gratification.

6. Sexual exploitation – This one will take a bit of explaining. For an initial clarification: I am not worried about my child being molested by a stranger or community member (meaning I do not believe that this is any more likely now than in other times). What I am referring to is mental exploitation. I know that every generation seems to bemoan the falling mores of the younger generation; but again, we are in uncharted waters:

• Never before has pornography been so widely available and easily accessible. And never before have so many bizarre forms and genres of pornography been available. A—- and I have spoken to each other a great deal on the deleterious impact of porn on the minds of young men and women (there’s a whole book on the subject called This is Your Brain On Porn). For research on this topic, I watched a lot of videos by a porn addiction recovery channel by a professional therapist and he said the stupidest reason why most of his clients resist giving up an addiction which is ruining their life is because they literally don’t know what they’ll do with all their free time once they quit. The irony is that what they’ll get back is just their entire life. He tells stories of clients in their 60s who feel their life is over and has been wasted and the sad truth is that they’re basically right. (This actually goes for all the comforts Westerners refuse to let go of – they are just keeping you from actually living.) I do not want this empty, vacuous life for my son or daughter.
• It turns out that early and frequent exposure to pornography leads to bizarre sexual fetishes; the continued use make the user seek out constant novelty- whatever it takes to get the dopamine thrill – which leads to creepier paraphilias like abuse, incest, transgender and, ultimately, pedophilia. It also causes sexual dysfunction in men, and hypersexualization of women.
• Normalization of pedophilia – everyone rolled their eyes when some of us worried that the rushed passing of LGBT legislation might lead to some undesirable consequences down the road. And yet here we are today – in a world where Ireland’s Children Minister, Roderic O’Gorman, is a homosexual with ties to groups that promote “understanding pedophilia,” and where California just passed a law that “exempts a person convicted of nonforcible sodomy with a minor, oral copulation with a minor, or sexual penetration with a minor, as specified, from having to automatically register as a sex offender.” I want to live in a world where pedophiles are drug out to the town square, kicking and screaming, and strung up to have their throats publicly slit. Any degree of tolerance is unacceptable.
• Nowadays, sexualizing children is seen as a niche industry on which there is ample opportunity to rake in capital. There are shows featuring children drag queens wherein they flaunt themselves half naked in front of grown adults who stuff dollar bills into their tiny little speedos. There are transgender teen shows wherein the 11 year old subject matter contemplates chopping off his penis before the world. You may think that I’m cherry picking here, but these are both major media sensations with large audiences. Any society that tolerates – or worse celebrates – this stuff is not one in which I want to raise my child.

7. The educational racket. Education of all levels – from kindergarten to graduate studies – is a complete scam. Not only are classrooms now hotbeds for political indoctrination, but you will be sunk into a lifetime of debt for the privilege of receiving such indoctrination! What’s also disturbing is that more and more states are cracking down on homeschooling – imposing stricter laws and the like. They’ve discovered that people dissatisfied with the system have a way out. I think coronavirus really drew back the mask on this one. Parents now realize that all that their children’s education has amounted to is basically a very expensive daycare, plus the extra dose of leftist indoctrination.

8. The increasing cost and decreasing quality of services. Look around at every institution, every branch of government. Roads, electricity companies, school boards, hospitals – all of them are crumbling under the weight of petty corruption, politics, and mismanagement. The medical industry is one of the best examples. It is also the industry I have the most experience with working as a nurse. Insurance that costs $500/month for a family with a $10,000 deductible. Utter madness! However there are some good signs on the horizon. B—- and I have opted out of traditional insurance, and have joined a “subscription service” with a group of very trustworthy doctors. Cash only. 100% transparent. They recommended a midwife to me, with whom I had my first appointment last week. She, like us, is very distrustful of the medical system, yet is not in the realm of full blown kookery. We plan on doing a home birth, for which I am very excited.

After reading all this – you may be thinking, why is my daughter bothering to have children at all? Especially if her outlook is so bleak and pessimistic?

Because I believe that even though we exist in a cold, empty universe, that universe is full of the most amazingly beautiful things – up in the heavens, and down here on Earth. Beautiful galaxies, beautiful paintings, beautiful relationships – all are worth fighting for. I can’t wait to bring my baby into this world and show him or her all the beautiful types of flowers and genres of music and types of dancing. In this way, I do believe in God, and I will raise my little one in His church of Beauty.

I love you more than anything.

Your daughter,

Claire