Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 4, Week 29 (279 total reports)
10.09.2025-16.09.2025
REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr. Jerry Goebel
The shooting of Charlie Kirk this week has become a rallying flag for this Administration and the Republicans. What it should remind us of is the incompetency of this government to pass any meaningful gun laws.
Visual Stories!
Congress, once again, following both a political assassination and a school shooting last week, refuses to offer anything meaningful to respond to this violent national crisis. Once again, we are called to believe that “Thoughts and Prayers” are a meaningful response. With newly appointed right-wing theologian Lauren Boebert explaining to us further that “Silent Prayers get silent results.”
Top Links of the Week
16.09.2025
This Is the Greatest Threat to Our Human Future
Michael Mann and Peter Hote have co-authored a very important book for our age, and I hope it becomes a conversational piece among your peers. The book, “Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World,” discusses the danger posed primarily by an “anti-science” culture propagated by powerful forces driving our politics today. It is important for all of us to dig deeper and ask, “who benefits from being against science?” If we do so, we will see some very powerful economic forces with a great deal of political clout who want to deny not only climate change but also changes to pharmaceuticals and medical treatment. Indeed, most autocratic governments reap benefits from “dummying down” their followers. Resist the autocratic threat; read and learn.
15.09.2025
Something Is Very Wrong Online
This article looks at underlying causes for the recruitment of solo shooters that has been occurring across the U.S. It seems rational to assume that Congress under this administration and the Republicans aren’t going to offer anything more significant than their “Thoughts and Prayers,” although Lauren Boebert has castigated Congress for informing them that “Silent prayers get silent results.” How she became the theological expert on communicating with the Divine is anyone’s guess. Fortunately, this article digs a little deeper into something substantial: the pervasive use of online media to recruit and radicalize individuals into shooters. That, combined with the availability of guns in the U.S., makes for a dangerous combination as is witnessed daily in our schools and increasingly in our tense political environment. It certainly does not help that some of the loudest voices for violence come from the top of the Republican leadership, indeed, from the President himself. Read this article if you’re interested in the process of how some people take the step from angry and at home to angry and in the public with a deadly weapon.
12.09.2025
10 Political Violence Experts on What Comes Next for America
The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy, but it’s also indicative of a pending crisis. I see twin issues as causes: Leadership and Laziness. Leadership that benefits from using violence to support their agenda and laziness on the part of followers all too willing to accept the divisive rhetoric, which, according to professor and author Barbara Walters, is being pushed through “a radicalization pipeline supported by a handful of American tech companies.” This article provides insights much deeper than one can find on social media or the pervasive opinion platforms that we once called “news.” Do what you can to ask for a deeper understanding of the issues that led to this tragedy. Do what you can to push your representatives to condemn violence as an acceptable means for supporting your political agenda. Professor and researcher Sean Westwood wants us to become aware of what he calls, “a phantom enemy,” the belief that the desire to use violence is widespread among “political opponents (whatever side you are on), and the reality that only two percent of Americans believe that political murder is acceptable.”
11.09.2025
Trump’s Formula to Conquer the Economy, and Everything Else
Prior to discussing this important article, I want to examine the shootings in the United States yesterday. I say shootings because I know the media is focused on a singular shooting, that of MAGA-favorite Charlie Kirk, but there was also another school shooting yesterday at a high school in Denver, and it seems unfair to cover one gun death without covering the victims in other deaths. All of this, while the political leaders of the United States still offer no viable response to gun deaths within its borders. Sadly, the right (and President 47) are already using Kirk’s death as a rallying point. This president desperately needs a distraction from his many woes, but especially from the release of the Epstein birthday book yesterday. This shooting will become a rallying cry (in fact, already has) to bring those straying from the MAGA message back into the fold. This article examines the formula this administration has used and will continue to use—precisely because it is working. As pointed out in this article, it is important to keep in mind the bookends of all of this president’s actions: “Creating pain and demanding tribute,” incumbent upon demanding tribute is its negative opposite, demanding retribution. Tribute and retribution; in this administration, they are two sides of the same bruised hand. This is the heart of this hollow-chested man. Most of us can’t understand that, because we want to attribute values to people, that is very dangerous with this man. There are no values there, just narcissistic self-centeredness. You can’t reason with someone who has no values; and he is the champion of people who want a world without empathy (a world void of “WOKEness”). A world with the bywords: I, Me, Mine…
10.09.2025
You Really Need to See Epstein’s Birthday Book for Yourself
For Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, his co-conspirator and girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, decided to put together a book filled with tributes from the Pedo-Master’s friends and financiers. Yesterday, this book was released by Congress after being subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. As The Atlantic staff writer, Charlie Warzel, points out, a drawing of a young female’s body and a bawdy poem with a signature that resembles Trump’s famous scrawl is featured prominently in the book, ending with the phrase: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” Of course, the liar-in-chief is denying any link to this drawing, but Trump’s signature is unique and nearly impossible to miss. Trump’s predator protection squad is hard at work trying to spin what is obviously condemning evidence linking the Predator-in-Chief to Epstein. Protector-in-Chief, Mike Johnson, has been so busy telling lies about this that he can’t keep up with his own fabrications. First, he said that Trump was embedded by the F.B.I. to bring down Epstein; later, he denied that story when he realized that this would make Trump a material witness. Purchasing and raping underage teenage girls and losing the House at mid-term elections occupy Trump’s mind 24/7. It is significantly aging him. It sickens him to realize that this will probably be the final straw that brings him down and determines his legacy. Even mega MAGA supporters like Marjorie Taylor Greene are turning against Trump over this debacle. She posted the page in question from Epstein’s book outside her office along with other examples of Trump’s infamous signatures. If you are against the raping of children and the practices of pedophiles, if you want a sampling of the truth in this affair to become public knowledge, then please read this article and pass it on.
