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Paige's avatar

I think one very important component has been left out in building a stronger foundation for our children. It might be too late to claim this resource already, but it should be given a try. Here we throw out our elders knowledge a resource which is very valuable. By doing this over decades we have created a bigger problem for our children. What’s getting passed down from generation to generation?! Sorry I’m going to answer my own question here. Nothing gets passed down and this has created a huge deficit for our children and society today. Everything I’ve learned from my grandparents (I was one of the lucky children to have learned from them myself) was passed down to my parents and then it’s passed down over and over again. Without learning from the generations before us we have been conditioned to just follow our leaders without question. This was planned by our government and the wealthy elite. We let this happen and now what do we have brainwashed children that can’t think for themselves. Inequality between rich and everyone else who isn’t rich. We inherited nothing but racism, division, and poverty after decades of not using our valuable resources which are the older generations wisdom. The family unit was grandparents living in the home with their children. Which then the next generation of parents had their children living with the entire family unit. By losing that family unit and sending grandparents off where they are not seen or heard from again and them being treated like a burden to the family stuck away in a nursing home is where we went wrong.

Yes I’m an old fart now, but I’m a free thinker which is dangerous to the government and their whims. They can’t control me and I see right through their BS. If you want to make a difference for children today start learning and listening to us old farts.

When we were children we asked questions. Why is this or that happening and I got real answers to what might have seemed dumb, but I kept asking questions and getting more answers from my grandparents. That knowledge was priceless. Take time out for your children and don’t leave it to social media to teach them. All that has done is dumb them down. Not to mention leaving them open to being harmed by predators. If you’re working everyday and need someone to watch your children start using your parents to watch them and teach them about how the world works.

This is just one of many things that will help your children become better adults who think for themselves and not just follow blindly thru life.

Thank you for writing this article and hoping that it makes a difference for our children and their children.

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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

Thank you for sharing such a deeply thoughtful and important perspective. You've hit on something absolutely critical that wasn't explicitly covered in the piece: the systemic undermining of intergenerational wisdom and the breakdown of the extended family unit as another front in this war.

You're absolutely right. The exclusion of elders' knowledge and presence is a massive resource depletion. For decades, the "passing down" of practical skills, historical context, critical thinking, and resilient values was a core function of family and community. Losing that connection does create a profound deficit, leaving younger generations more isolated and reliant on often-toxic external systems (like social media or state narratives) for their understanding of the world.

This absolutely serves the interests of "The Rust" 🦠. Atomized families, disconnected from their own history and elders' wisdom, are far easier to manipulate and control. Conditioning people to follow leaders blindly (as you said) is a hallmark of Layer 3: Learned Helplessness ⛓️, and severing ties to alternative sources of knowledge makes that conditioning much easier.

Your point about grandparents being seen as burdens rather than vital resources is heartbreakingly true and reflects the broader societal shift towards prioritizing economic "efficiency" over human connection and wisdom – a core tenet of Managed Decline.

Rebuilding those intergenerational bonds, ensuring children learn from "us old farts" (your words, but profoundly true!), and valuing that priceless knowledge is a powerful act of resistance. It's about rebuilding the foundational units of a resilient society – exactly the kind of work needed to fight back.

Thank you again for adding this crucial dimension to the conversation. It’s an essential piece of the puzzle.

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Joonbug's avatar

And just think if the exchange went both ways, like it used to? Kids teaching Grands to be more tech savvy - Grands teaching kids how to be self sufficient off the grid?

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Paige's avatar

That’s a very good point too!

It makes me think about when the institutions on anything says you have to be five and up to play this game or to put it together. Only to find out that only a child that’s five can even put it together.. lol

We have lost touch and we do need our children’s help too.

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Anita's avatar

🤣very true

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Deborah Hart's avatar

Our children are the future.

There are no other choices but to take our Democracy back.

These thieves don’t know what to do with Freedoms and democracy. They are to busy destroying America to notice the importance of what a gift the Founders gave the United States !

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Paige's avatar

Absolutely agree with you Deborah.

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Paige's avatar

I’d like to say one more point that has been forgotten already in just 25 years. No one even remembers that (well I wasn’t an old fart at that time) we had to bring in the very generation who built computers. The Y2K problem that couldn’t be fixed by the youth of our country. It was that quick that we had lost the value of our prior generations. That’s a huge decline to where our children are now. If it weren’t for those old farts we and the use of their knowledge where would be today. It amazes me while I’m writing this to think about how fast we have been dumbed down even more in just two and half decades. Sorry to repeat myself I’m just in shock how fast it’s happened.

Thank you so very much for sharing your work and knowledge about all the other ways that our children and society has been dumbed down.

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Anita's avatar

Being a grandparent is one of my greatest joys. Having spent time with all my grandchildren from infancy to young adulthood gave me the opportunity to share all of my life experiences and “wisdom”. There is nothing that surpasses the cohesiveness of a loving family.

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Yolanda D.'s avatar

Ethan, you brought up one of the most critical topics in our children’s lives.. 🙏

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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

This series stemmed from my desire to discuss citizens united lol. First I need to setup the donor interests

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Bob  Helmick's avatar

Any suggestions?

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Howard James Stewart's avatar

Yes! The intentional Deep-state agenda includes dissolving the traditional nuclear family of middle class working Americans. Single family mothers have proliferated for decades, across the U.S. Parents are too financially stretched out in order to spend quality time with their kids. Family elders, have been shipped off to low-standard nursing homes, due to a combo of financial & shifting cultural laziness reasons. Pissed-off latch key kids, have proliferated across ghettoized urban cities. Over diversification, as well as intentional segregation of ethnicities has resulted in various communities. Many illegal immigrants have no desire to assimilate with traditional U.S. cultures or to even abide by this country’s laws or social norms. This lack of social cohesion, lack of equal opportunities for education & jobs among the socioeconomically lower classes, has been well-orchestrated by the oligarchical super-wealthy Ruling Elite. The Silent War has been waged secretly against an unsuspecting U.S. citizenry, since the late 1940s or early ‘50s, as revealed by whistleblower & author, Milton William Cooper, in his 1991 self-published book, “ Behold a Pale Horse”. Read this 750 + page nonfiction book to get a detailed picture of the Bush-Cheney dynasty NWO Globalist agenda, that still is being carried out today! The agenda is for centralized, institutionalized government education for public school children, who are removed from parental guardianship. Religious affiliations are to be replaced by a strict allegiance to the State, similar to that of what was expected of Hitler youth.

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Anita's avatar

Absolutely correct 👍🏻

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chris terrill's avatar

And don’t forget religious indoctrination. The order to post the 10 commandments in every schoolroom is part of the far right Christian Nationalist attempt to shackle free thought. In fact this form of religious inculcation is thinly veiled child abuse and taking the US back into the crazed intolerance of the medieval dark ages. Children are the future and must not be intellectually and spiritually shackled in this way. At least here in Europe, notwithstanding a lurch to the far right in places (no better than a lurch to the far left), we are enjoying a new golden age of secularism and the liberating enlightenment that comes with it. But whether one chooses a faith based or a non faith based cosmology it has to be through freedom of choice and thought- not shameless brainwashing of youngsters before they have attained the ability to think critically.

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Anita's avatar

I still like the Ten Commandments as to giving a child guidance but not indoctrination.

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chris terrill's avatar

Sorry - but what guidance is that? Don’t worship false idols, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain and don’t work on the Sabbath. All the others come naturally to all of us who simply want to be treated as we would treat anyone else. It’s not good enough to point to the commandments as if they are in any way special. They are not and certainly should not be posted up publicly in any religiously diverse community. It’s called brainwashing. Much better to practice a morality for its own sake rather than out of fear of a vengeful god or because of some sort of perceived reward in an imagined heaven. Goodness comes from within and it’s common to all of us.

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includeMeOut's avatar

“Engineered Inequality: Relying on local property taxes creates massive spending gaps (richest districts spend nearly 10x poorest). The Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision (1973) effectively legalized separate and unequal schools at the federal level…”

This preserves the class based unequal access to public education, a flawed model if the intent is to achieve equality but it is not.

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vansdan's avatar

The lead part has huge implications. Exposing minorities to lead will make them more unpredictable, volatile, and violent, which serves their ultimate goal of dividing us even further. This is MKULTRA levels of pure fucking evil.

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Patrick Burns's avatar

In fiscal year 2022, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) spent approximately $15,274 per student on instructional costs and $24,132 on total operational costs. Other reports indicate the average taxpayer spending per student for CPS is around $19,908

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Kathy Hammes's avatar

Hi Ethan, may I respectfully request that you no longer send me messages or notifications directly. There are just too many of them and I appreciate your dedication to Substack? Thank you.

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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

I apologize for that! I wish Substack made it more obvious what is happening.

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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

So that is a notification system within group chats. To stop the notifications, look for the bell icon at the top of each group chat and make sure notifications are turned off.

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Beth Carter's avatar

Remember that these charter schools can have a heavy religious tone to the organization. That in and of itself should waterproof the school from public funding, but with the Theonomic Reconstructionists in charge separation of church and state are a thing of the past.

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Karen E Lewis's avatar

They have been engineering an uneducated population for years, dumbing down the curriculum. Uneducated people are easier to herd than clever. Well educated, thinking people. Thus we have Trump who is a conman and liar through and through. And a sick and sicko one at that. He was dancing, off the red carpet in Indonesia, clearly inappropriate.

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FriendlyAgentOfChange's avatar

I am not saying anything that most people wouldn’t understand, but I feel the need to mention it: the people of Gaza and the West Bank are dealt with differently and Israel offers different seductions to the factions who represent resistance and those who deal with the devil trying the approach of appeasement, each struggling for power withheld by Israel who is skilled at terrorism and building the division that creates the conflict that allowed them to continuously seize more land. Even knowing the Palestinians internalized the conflict being left struggling against one another, we have to not blame the victims of colonialism, terrorism, apartheid, starvation, and genocide occurring over decades with UN/US support as co-colonizers. Caught in a rock formation, facing starvation a human will cut his own arm off, Israel and the European empire are that rock formation.

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Patrick Burns's avatar

Sorry but you’re full of shit.

Spending on public schools continues to increase with abysmal results. Throwing good money at bad.

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FriendlyAgentOfChange's avatar

Human domestication has moved from feudalism to its evolved form of oligarchy in the period of industrialized corporations supported by the public wealth seized and privatized during the monarchies making power dependent upon wealth inequality, and the best insurance of wealth inequality in a class caste system of aristocratic dynasties that are the new oligarchy that is the educated class who sees to the destruction of the education system, which marginalizes populations while having a false appearance of being a meritocracy. Student loans are a means to develop innovation while attacking transgenerational wealth by creating debt the forces the sale of ideas to the people who possess transgenerational wealth. It is social engineering built around human domestication. The meritocracy is leveraged with education, and is a fraudulent concept under oligarchy.

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Howard James Stewart's avatar

Is it true that Opus Dei became known as Echelon, as head of the Vatican, that can be considered to be a conspiratorial ally of the Deep-state govt.?

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Bob  Helmick's avatar

Not OK.

So you are an anarchist. The only problem is that anarchy does not work well, except maybe with relatively small groups who, because they are able if they are truly dedicated, to either practice pure democracy (one person = one vote on all substantive decisions) or to voluntarily accept some other means of maintaining the wellbeing of the group (such as revolving leadership, etc.)

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Beth Carter's avatar

Dear Sir: Many, many, many people are completely unaware of the underpinning by which our democracy has been slowly defunded, mismanaged, and set for demolition. The following is a link to a YouTube page from the journalistic site The Lever. It is specifically linked to a piece of history which put a lawyer defending the tobacco giant Philip Morris into the Supreme Court. I thought this might help clarify the start of a deeper understanding. Ethan's not an anarchist. His heart is gi-normous, and anarchy is often populated by those who are malcontents only. That's not what is happening here in the Common Sense Rebel channel. I know that's a very easy definition to reach for, and it keeps you feeling comfortable again, but these are uncomfortable times. We here didn't chose this. We would be far happier without all this mess and chaos, as it sounds like you are. Please kindly take a moment to listen to The Lever's report on The Powell Memo. Thanks very much.

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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

Lol

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Beth Carter's avatar

https://youtu.be/5Fo6rQQYATQ?si=dCQXPu08IPrEJ3eN The Lever podcast/"The Powell Memo"

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Oct 22
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Ethan Faulkner's avatar

Dirk, your touching faith in the benevolent bureaucracy is noted, though tragically misplaced. Reciting a list of government agencies from a bygone era does nothing to address the present reality of systemic capture you so conveniently ignore.

​Your inability to conceive that powerful institutions might intentionally engineer harmful outcomes ("They're not that good, not even close") isn't a refutation; it's a confession of naivete, bordering on willful blindness. History groans under the weight of meticulously planned state and corporate "horrors."

​Worse still is your retreat into the comforting, braindead confines of partisan blame. Pinning the systemic rot solely on Trump and "legislative Republicans" while ignoring the decades of bipartisan complicity that built this cage? That isn't analysis; it's precisely the Layer 2 🎮 Great Distraction the actual architects of this mess rely on to keep people like you chasing ghosts.

​Your proposed "solutions"—impeachment, waiting for the other team's policies to inflict enough pain—are pathetic. It's rearranging deck chairs on a ship both parties helped sink. The "chickens coming home to roost" aren't just for one party; they're coming for the entire rotten system you seem determined to defend.

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OK's avatar

You are absolutely brilliant. Using your superb analytical skills, basic knowledge and common sense has enabled you to make a quick, but precise dissection of the hugely misguided comment written by Dirk Faegre. I only hope he doesn't faint from the shock of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.

Thank you for your work.

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vansdan's avatar

you're ignoring deep human history. this prison we live in comes from the romans and catholics, and its been festering for over a millenia now. we are the new romans, except worse, and it must be completely severed at the root. there is no salvation for the status quo

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OK's avatar

Almost all politicians are parasites and "SREWBALLS". The do not produce a damned thing.

Left vs right is a binary paradigm which comes right out of the HEGELIAN DIALECTIC book.

Government exists only to extort and enforce payments of taxes from the productive working population.

Government = SLAVERY

Abolish all governments.

Immorality fueled by greed will destroy this planet.

We live under a PLANETARY MILITARY OCCUPATION

The EARTH is a CAPTURED PRIZE

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