Discordant Symphony

FRIDAY MUSICAL INTERLUDE

By mid-1996, the two Wall Street Steves were getting along well enough that this Steve had the confidence to buy a newly constructed house down the block from our original. (A whopping $465,000 and about $8,000 in property taxes. Remember that.) Our daughter was born on St. Patrick’s Day 1997, a mere six and a half years after the youngest of her three brothers. That fall it was decided each Steve should take one week trading a book in London, filling in until a new trader could be hired. One of us was excited to explore another country and make markets in a foreign product, and one of us was not.

He went first, had a great time, made money with the book, and built strong relationships playing darts at the local pubs. He prepped me as best he could but warned me about the “heightened temperature” in London due to the resumption of IRA terrorist bombings in the UK.

Great.

I was a nervous and reluctant traveler. Steve and the rest of the gang were surprisingly kind and upbeat on my departure day. Sometime after five I was told my car was downstairs. I grabbed my bags and got some last-minute pointers, including the reminder to be careful to not provoke the British army guys at the airports or around London.

Haha.

Traveling business class was a new experience. I got to hang out in the lounge and had priority boarding. There were indeed armed military at the JFK gate, and they were checking carry-on bags. As I moved nervously forward, I realized I was wearing my Irish cap. I took it off and unzipped my bag to stuff it in there. My eyes bugged out as I stared at a sheet of paper with “Get England Out of Ireland!” written in red marker. I grabbed it, crumpled it as I raced to a trash can, and came back to the checkpoint visibly flustered. I had to answer a few questions, my bag was emptied entirely, but I was ushered on.

Funny guy, that Steve.

It was on this Virgin Atlantic flight that I was introduced to some cool music. On their playlist of about 20 songs, which I played multiple times, were Radiohead, Massive Attack, and a song by The Verve called “Bittersweet Symphony”. The song has been on my mind recently as I contemplated the affordability crisis and millennial men.

‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
You’re a slave to money then you die
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down…

Our three sons are white millennials, and they are fortunate and blessed to be husbands, fathers, and providers. They are the exceptions. As they have come of age and worked to build lives and families, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Corporate America shunned their kind with this generation’s discriminatory signs: “White Males Need Not Apply.” Millennials have historically low marriage, parenting, and homeowner rates. (Their now-30-year-old childhood home costs nearly $2,000,000 and about $40,000 a year in property taxes.) Millennials were supposed to be heirs to the American Dream, but it has been stripped of all meaning and value except material success, and that dream now seems unattainable by all but a few. The symphony of life strikes discordant notes without Jesus leading the orchestra.

No change, I can’t change…
But I’m here in my mold…
But I’m a million different people
From one day to the next
I can’t change my mold
No, no, no, no, no

Roughly a third of millennial men were raised in father-deprived homes. Instability has been their norm. This made them susceptible to male substitutes, whether it was gangs, ISIS, the Four Horsemen of Atheism, or Jordan Peterson. They were educated in a highly feminized culture, their maleness treated as flawed femaleness which needed to be medicated, and it manifested in female domination of college and work as well. They are torn every which way as they try to walk the line established by these colleges, corporations, condescending Boomers, and third-wave feminists, which put them in conflict with their own instincts and sense of purpose. Some have been drawn to depraved expressions of masculinity. Others identify as victims with “righteous” anger instead of Godly men with a mission. Confusion is their epitaph.

Well I never pray
But tonight I’m on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there’s nobody singing to me now

Millennial men are making choices. Many are returning to lives of faith. Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Charlie Kirk connected with these men, many of whom were prepared by Jordan Peterson. This group seeks lives of purpose marked by sacrifice and compassion, building lives with like-minded brothers. They came of age with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They have come to see the emptiness and decay of the promises of Sauron and have seen the fate of Orcs and men enslaved by the machine of progress. They want to ride with the Men of Rohan!

‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
Try to find some money then you die
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down…

Pope Benedict XVI said, “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Millennial men were raised, like their predecessors, to believe if you study hard and work hard, the good life was inevitable. They were told this by adults who put on their bike helmets and knee pads for them, gave them Adderall, and pedaled with them to the soccer field on Sunday morning for a participation trophy. They were not being prepared for the seismic shift that was taking place. They would learn, as we all have, that Western Civilization based on unbridled individual and economic freedom without Christianity as the source code, was in fact not a civilization at all. It’s a dystopian nightmare.

Sometimes, we must get uncomfortable to get comfortable.

No change, I can’t change…
But I’m here in my mold…
I can’t change my mold
No, no, no, no, no…

Change is the only option.

When I was the 37-year-old father of four with a stay-at-home wife and a nice house, I was the norm in my town, not the exception. There was no reason to believe that things would change (I was the exception on that.) My generation raised those millennials. Our biggest mistake was to let sports and “material achievement” replace eternal life as the object of our efforts while we cleared the road of all adversity. The millennials who are clawing back are the ones who are putting God back at the center.

Millennial men may need to look back to my grandparents’ example. They saw no future for their progeny in their home country, so they came to America. Poverty in Hell’s Kitchen was how they began, in the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Their sacrifice and foresight have paid off for generations. If you are in the Northeast or other expensive, Godless regions, consider life in places like Tennessee, Indiana, Kansas, Florida, or anywhere that has community, affordability, and God. Your unborn grandkids will be grateful.

If you stay, you must fight the forces that want to consume another generation of cogs and slaves. (AI will only make it worse).

I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down…
Have you’ve ever been down?

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

“Forth and fear no darkness!!” (Hat tip DKK, a millennial)