Are we ready to join our youth “to embrace a new vision and a new direction” for our nation and the world?
By Chris Hedges
Source: truthdig
The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.
“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”
This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers…
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Although I’m no optimist about the state of the USA, I find much that is hyperbolic in the reblogged essay. The brush used to paint this picture should not be entirely black or white. My biggest worry, for what it is worth, is that the discontented, including many of the young, are not well educated in terms of what a democratic republic is and must be. They would do well to read Tocqueville, as would their elders, to focus their discontent in the most meaningful way; and, to understand, that automation must be factored into our economic problems and simply raising tariffs will result in significant push back from other countries. If there were simple solutions available, we’d already be using some of them.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Dr. Stein. It’s up to older and more educated members of our society to guide our youth in their push forward for a better future. I agree: there are no simple solutions available.
I don’t see any evidence that youth should defer to the guidance of older people re their push for a viable future for all. I fact, quite the contrary.
In terms specifically of Brazil, I also don’t agree that educated people have shown themselves to be the experts. Just one huge example of this is the struggle of numerous Indigenous Peoples to defend themselves, land, rivers and ecosystems from the ravages of exploitative foreign extractive industries.
I don’t educated Brazilians as the experts here – clearly, the Indians are the experts.
Just my two cents. Thanks for the post, Rosaliene!
Claire, thanks for your defense of the youth and indigenous peoples fighting for change. Based on the comments Sha’Tara has made about the young people in her area, it’s clear that our viewpoints are influenced by the world we live in. My experience of poverty in Brazil continues to haunt me.
Thanks, my friend.
If I sense that they are truly serious about change; that is, deep, meaningful change, I’ll definitely join them and support them. I would want to see some serious evidence of their commitment, and certainly a commitment to “others” and not just the selfish self-interest I’ve seen up to now.
Sha’Tara, the testing grounds are upon us. You won’t have long to wait and see.
Ok… you’re on! 🙂 Based on the reactions to the impeachment of Brazil’s premier, I won’t hold my breath meanwhile.
Sha’Tara, as you once stated in one of your very insightful posts, “we are our children’s future.” They need our support, now. They cannot fight this on their own. As Dr. Stein noted, they lack the knowledge of how our political system works.
All revolutions must begin with the willing sacrifice of the young, otherwise it doesn’t work. It’s the young who must organize, build and defend the barricades. And it’s the young who have to be willing to DIE for their own cause. Only then can the old timers enter the fray to support, help, advise, and perhaps as did Jean Valjean, save a life or two. I won’t move until “they” leave the comforts of home, school and street camaraderie, lovers, hot-rods and drugs to demonstrate how serious they really are. Being our children’s future isn’t molly coddling them, it’s pushing them into the line of fire so they get a taste of THE REAL WORLD. I can’t remember what I wrote about being our children’s future but I’m sure it wasn’t about fighting a revolution FOR THEM. Frankly, at this stage, they don’t deserve my support. I was on the front lines of environmental and political change-making for 30 years, give or take, and where were the young then? Shining by their absence. I don’t trust them. When I was young, we were at the forefront of the struggle for change. It didn’t change anything but at least we did try. Let’s see them try now. Maybe with more of the obvious at stake, they’ll clue in that you either fight or wear the slave collar. All I see around me are people thrilled to wear their designer slave collars, making sure you see them, hear them and smell them. There’s so much talk on social media about people showing up to protest this or that. But these “shows” are not popular at all; they are composed of tiny minorities and the elites know this. They’re not fooled, and they’re not worried in the least. A few candles in the wind don’t equal a conflagration. I’ll join a conflagration.
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Thanks for sharing, Cyril. Always appreciated 🙂
Sha’Tara –
Hot rods? Seriously?
Your frame of reference is entirely upper- middle class (or at least middle) and doesn’t remotely reflect the experience of the majority of working-class and poor American youth. Nor even the middle class – in fact, you seem to be responding to a media image of youth, which leads me to question your direct experience of young people.
Many of them are not “taking to the streets” – because they are already LIVING in the streets.
As for a generation that abdicated its social responsibilities, none disappeared faster than the Baby Boomers. Just when they were most needed, beginning in the 1980s, they took off and made money, still in their early to mid 30’s. I call them “The Tenured Generation”.
Well, perhaps because Chilliwack, B.C., Canada (and surrounding towns grown from Vancouver’s urban sprawl) are still relatively economically viable. But oh yes, the youth here drive themselves to school in their own vehicles; they have money, however they get it, either from part time min. wage jobs (McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King and a host of other places that use their labour, from dealing drugs or from their parents) but yes, they drive their boom box cars, pick-ups and hot rods, and if they don’t have licenses yet, they drive off-road unlicensed vehicles down the streets and through parks oblivious to any policing – which is practically non-existent in any case. They don’t live on the streets, not “our” kids. Also when I was working briefly in Fort Worth, Texas about ten years ago, I saw the very same thing there as is evident here. So my observation is correct, unless things in general have really, really, gone to seed wherever you are observing. I’m sure there are sectors that are far below the poverty line in many major cities, even in Canada. There’s now a visibly growing homelessness traceable to two factors: speculation in housing with most of the money coming from China and India, thus dispossessing “Canadians” by putting house and condo prices out of reach of low wage earners, but the main root of the problem is drugs and alcohol.
I work with people who work with the homeless and even if you help them “dry up” and into apartments they can afford with welfare or disability pensions it doesn’t last. Soon, they’re evicted for drug dealing, using, thrashing apartments and harassing other tenants and they’re back on the streets. Obviously this isn’t talking about school age youth unless the drug users are parents, but in that case the younger children are taken from them and placed in foster care. But you don’t see “kids” as in, say, below 18 years of age begging, or sleeping, on the streets – or very rarely. I run a small, mostly non-profit business myself, and when I need help, I can’t get anyone reliable, or willing to do even minimal labour. The attitude is, “I’ll take the money, just don’t expect me to work for it. And I’ll show up for work when I feel like it.”
Economic hardship here is not primarily caused by a failing economic system – though I can see it going there fast – but for the time being it’s caused by personal irresponsibility and that ubiquitous sense of entitlement (which you call “tenured”) There is plenty of work available and if minimum wage, no benefit, permanent part-time isn’t good enough there is nothing stopping the “exploited workers” from putting unions back in the workforce and taking back the power they so easily gave away. What’s lacking is gumption, courage, determination and a sense of unity instead of the backstabbing, snitching and ass-kissing I’ve experienced as shop steward over many years working in a unionized multi-national job. People are their own worse enemies, not the System. The System just takes advantage of self-imposed ignorance and stupidity.
There’s no such thing as a boom box anymore. Nobody’s driven a hot rod for at least 40 years.
In almost every single American city, a LARGE population of twenty-somethings live on the streets – in the sense that their neighborhoods are an almost literal extension of their extremely overcrowded family apartments..
No, there are no jobs. Yes, they want to work. Every poor neighborhood has developed a supplemental economy, some activities legal, some not, some borderline – but all hard work. People work!
I don’t believe that things are as rosy as you depict for the young people you describe. And I don’t blame homeless people for refusing to work for you, while also shouldering the additional burden of your incredible disrespect.
You are on the wrong side of history.
Truth Out.
When the facts don’t fit the conviction, deny the facts.
Yes, that’s exactly what you did. Crabby old lady.
Ladies, perhaps I should mention that Sha’Tara lives in Canada where many Americans promise to flee if Trump wins the presidency.