My son turns 23 next week. He was born seven months before 9/11, which means his life has traced some of the most chaotic years of American history.

From terrorism to war to a global financial collapse; from the rise of American illiberalism to the election of the first kleptomaniacal president to the first global pandemic in a hundred years; from a Big Lie about a stolen election to what was either a violent insurrection or a “normal tourist visit”—he’s already seen it all.

Moreover, he enters the workforce at a time when AI threatens to upend entire industries, which could refashion the economy in a way unseen since the Industrial Revolution. Then again, the climate crisis may make the coming economic upheaval moot.

In other words, everything is bad. Yet when I ask him if he’s happy, he says yes. Which raises the obvious question—what’s wrong with him?

We have always discussed politics around the dining room table, and while he certainly relishes neither the restoration of the God Emperor Trump nor the continued residency of the artist formerly known as Biden, he also refuses to accept my conclusion that he is doomed—DOOMED, I say!

I find it befuddling that both he and his 20-year-old sister are doing as well as they........

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