peristaltor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peristaltor) wrote2011-09-19 05:34 pm
peristaltor) wrote2011-09-19 05:34 pm
Entry tags:
Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . .
It looks like AdBusters planned to protest Wall Street like an American Arab Spring, but no one really showed up.
I do agree about some of their anger. No, I do not support the so-called "free speech zones". As the article noted, "It is not free speech if you have to get permission to speak, plain and simple."
But I do have to question the validity of their entire enterprise. After all, yes, Wall St. did fuck things up on a grand scale, but exactly how many lost lives can be blamed on this enormous cock-up? Allow me to elucidate: I lost my bank, Washington Mutual, in the cluster-fuck; but did I suffer anything other than irritation? Not at all. Even though The Wife and I had quite a bit in that bank to lose, thanks to the FDIC we lost not a penny. Sorry, but the Wall St. shenanigans simply do not compare to the torture squads and corrupt police tactics in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum.
Reading a sidebar to that article, though, I stumbled upon this gem, a fact-free bloviation on why kids today aren't the rabble-rousers of yesterday. The title says it all: 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How The US Crushed Youth Resistance.
Don't get me completely wrong; the list is not all crap. I do believe that all the eight reasons listed have some degree of complicity in keeping people from massing in the streets. That first about debt is especially true. In his autobiography Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, Abby Hoffman noted that it was possible for a minimum-wage earner to support up to four people in the early sixties (if they didn't live too extravagantly). Try that today. Never mind student loans, just the Visa for the rent will have you groveling.
But to extend that list into a damning accusation illustrated by the image I ganked from the article? That equates a lack of mass action with dumb kids, and I must there draw a firm line. That's just not fair.
You see, I believe there is an aging faction of America who miss the rallies, the sit-ins, the action and vivacity of the 1960s and '70s. They still feel these actions led to the Civil Rights Act, to the end of military action in Vietnam, to environmental awareness and protection, in short to all the good stuff now being overturned by corporate greed. By extension, they feel the youth today are too dumb to enjoy, let alone recognize these benefits, and are squandering them by their inaction. Picture tie-dyed gran-folks rocking on the porch whittling bongs muttering "Kids today. . . ." under their breath.
What very, very few of them seem to realize is how rare and special the Baby Boom Generation was to history. When only a small fraction of millions, all in the same age range, decide to attend a big concert, you get Woodstock (and Altamont, which is a very different flavor of the same thing). When those millions see the horrors of Vietnam on the telly, they get active. Same with the horrors of civil rights protests and hoses and dogs turned on protesters. When that telly shows the burning river, that sliver of the population wonders what's in its tap water. Strange, then, that Number 7 on the author's list of whines is Television, isn't it?
There is a magic that happens when enough of a certain interest group gather together in relative solidarity, I can admit that. Being born at the tail end of the boom, all I got were the crumbs, my just-older peers talking about how great my teens would be when I got their age just as the activities of their teens were disappearing. Free love ain't so free when Time magazine covers the Scarlet H of herpes, is it? A few years later with the advent of AIDS, herpes seemed like a pass. Cue Falwell's Moral Majority, and goodbye party, hello 70s bitterness.
So let's add a number to that list of eight, one that matters. If we were being honest, it would be number 1, and I really should drop number 7 and add Lewis Powell's memorandum and its ongoing effects; but since this is a corrective amendment, it becomes ol' number 9: The Baby Boom is just about bust.
Sorry, aging hippies, there aren't enough young people to replicate your glory days. If there were, the population bomb would be far more dangerous than the ability for young people to gather in critical mass, so count your blessings rather than damn the dearth of the perpetually angry. The US didn't "crush youth resistance", it just stopped having so many damned youth all at once.
Back in July, Adbusters began promoting a move to occupy Wall Street in protest of the rampant corruption, market manipulation and out of control greed that is destroying our nation today.
Adbusters was hoping for a turnout of some 20,000 angry Americans who would occupy Wall Street for months.
Unfortunately, it appears that the number was less than 1/20th of their goal, or less than 1,000 activists, according to AFP.
I do agree about some of their anger. No, I do not support the so-called "free speech zones". As the article noted, "It is not free speech if you have to get permission to speak, plain and simple."
But I do have to question the validity of their entire enterprise. After all, yes, Wall St. did fuck things up on a grand scale, but exactly how many lost lives can be blamed on this enormous cock-up? Allow me to elucidate: I lost my bank, Washington Mutual, in the cluster-fuck; but did I suffer anything other than irritation? Not at all. Even though The Wife and I had quite a bit in that bank to lose, thanks to the FDIC we lost not a penny. Sorry, but the Wall St. shenanigans simply do not compare to the torture squads and corrupt police tactics in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum.
Reading a sidebar to that article, though, I stumbled upon this gem, a fact-free bloviation on why kids today aren't the rabble-rousers of yesterday. The title says it all: 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How The US Crushed Youth Resistance.
Don't get me completely wrong; the list is not all crap. I do believe that all the eight reasons listed have some degree of complicity in keeping people from massing in the streets. That first about debt is especially true. In his autobiography Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, Abby Hoffman noted that it was possible for a minimum-wage earner to support up to four people in the early sixties (if they didn't live too extravagantly). Try that today. Never mind student loans, just the Visa for the rent will have you groveling. But to extend that list into a damning accusation illustrated by the image I ganked from the article? That equates a lack of mass action with dumb kids, and I must there draw a firm line. That's just not fair.
You see, I believe there is an aging faction of America who miss the rallies, the sit-ins, the action and vivacity of the 1960s and '70s. They still feel these actions led to the Civil Rights Act, to the end of military action in Vietnam, to environmental awareness and protection, in short to all the good stuff now being overturned by corporate greed. By extension, they feel the youth today are too dumb to enjoy, let alone recognize these benefits, and are squandering them by their inaction. Picture tie-dyed gran-folks rocking on the porch whittling bongs muttering "Kids today. . . ." under their breath.
What very, very few of them seem to realize is how rare and special the Baby Boom Generation was to history. When only a small fraction of millions, all in the same age range, decide to attend a big concert, you get Woodstock (and Altamont, which is a very different flavor of the same thing). When those millions see the horrors of Vietnam on the telly, they get active. Same with the horrors of civil rights protests and hoses and dogs turned on protesters. When that telly shows the burning river, that sliver of the population wonders what's in its tap water. Strange, then, that Number 7 on the author's list of whines is Television, isn't it?
There is a magic that happens when enough of a certain interest group gather together in relative solidarity, I can admit that. Being born at the tail end of the boom, all I got were the crumbs, my just-older peers talking about how great my teens would be when I got their age just as the activities of their teens were disappearing. Free love ain't so free when Time magazine covers the Scarlet H of herpes, is it? A few years later with the advent of AIDS, herpes seemed like a pass. Cue Falwell's Moral Majority, and goodbye party, hello 70s bitterness.
So let's add a number to that list of eight, one that matters. If we were being honest, it would be number 1, and I really should drop number 7 and add Lewis Powell's memorandum and its ongoing effects; but since this is a corrective amendment, it becomes ol' number 9: The Baby Boom is just about bust.
Sorry, aging hippies, there aren't enough young people to replicate your glory days. If there were, the population bomb would be far more dangerous than the ability for young people to gather in critical mass, so count your blessings rather than damn the dearth of the perpetually angry. The US didn't "crush youth resistance", it just stopped having so many damned youth all at once.