So I read an article about a guy named Douglas McAuthor? McCain, an American Citizen who died in Syria fighting for ISIS. What really freaked me out is that this guy was only 4 years older than me and grew up in the same area I did, attended a public school very close by, and then turned into an Islamofascist. How does this happen? It got me thinking about our common upbringing. Of course, everything, in the end is an individual choice, nothing forced this guy to join ISIS. He is responsible for his own actions and it is good that he is dead. I remembered my very early schooling, all throughout University. There is a common theme. My generation was taught to feel guilty of everything, we were taught that America was bad, we were taught that white people have caused every sort of oppression simply by being white and somehow that guilt has been passed along throughout the generations so that a white baby born in the 1980's is somehow cursed by the sins of a bunch of people they are probably not even related to. I felt obliged to stand up for the 'oppressed' people, always giving 'them' the benefit of the doubt. We were taught that socialism was a good idea, it only ended up bad when rich people take advantage of it. I was not taught about the ugly side of the USSR, I was not taught about what socialism and communism actually DID to people, how it resulted in more deaths than any other plague in human history. We were not taught to stand for anything because we were taught to worry first about who it would offend. We were taught that patriotism should be scoffed at, that nothing is good or evil, everything is gray. We should try to understand and analyze and above all, come up with an excuse for everything. In one class, the class even came to the conclusion that the holocaust was not the Nazi's fault. They were just a product of their history and military structure(?) and that is too bad. We were always taught in college to analyze texts using "postmodernism theory" which I never really understood the point of. What the hell does Post-Modern mean, how is it possible to be "Post-Modern" if modern means now? Nobody was ever accountable. In the end, we were taught to stand for nothing, subsequently we have fallen for everything. The people in my generation have become zombies, looking for anything to fill their lack of ideals. We were not taught to think for ourselves, because we were taught that thinking for ourselves would only lead to the oppression of others. Eventually I had to go through a long process of deprogramming myself and I'm still working on it. If anyone here was born in the 80's my question to you is, did you experience the same thing? Or to anybody else, what the hell happened?

I'm sorry if I'm ranting but I tell people this all of the time, and usually the response is just sighs and blank stares.