Two Facts

1. David Brooks is still inexplicably being paid to write nonsensical and incomprehensible garbage columns for the New York Times.

2. This column smells like barf.

I will give Brooks credit for one thing: It is indubitably impressive that he manages to fit no fewer than 10,000 stupid ideas into 800 words.

Among those many stupid ideas, perhaps the stupidest is the one with which he begins his Ode to Kids These Days:

Over the past few weeks, America's colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

Maybe it's just because most of the people I happen to know don't have PhDs in undiluted privilege like Professor Brooks, and maybe it's because people with marginalized identities and bodies tend to spend lots of their adult lives struggling to attain (and maintain) a sense of self-worth in a world that continually communicates to them that they are less than, and maybe it's because reaching some peace within oneself, despite the cultural narratives encouraging discontent, is so hard-won that its value is priceless, but I just don't know a whole lot of folks, even "sensible" ones, ahem, who would trade away their current lives for another chance at being 22 again.