Do Recessions Sap Our Desire For Revolution

[Dreadnaught]

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but in a very long and rambling piece in New York Magazine about unemployed 20-somethings, I found this interesting:

What’s not clear is exactly what that might look like. It’s not that this is a generation that doesn’t want to improve the world—been to a college activity fair lately?—but ours is a fractured involvement. The Cold War sort of settled which was the superior economic and political system, leaving youthful calls for revolution to be shouted in the context of gay rights and women’s rights and pro-Palestinian-hummus-in-the-campus-cafeteria demonstrations, which are really about improvements to the status quo, not a wholesale overthrow. In the sixties, that generation’s protesters wanted a blank slate, economic and political chaos out of which they could build something new. We’ve got that chaos, and all we want is a way to get back to the structured prosperity that preceded their marching. It’s hard to build a potent counterculture when some of the people it’s meant to appeal to are just hoping for the chance to put on a tie and report to their cubes.

http://nymag.com/news/features/my-generation-2011-10/

I'm not sure I like the whole piece, but does this resonate with anyone?

[CitizenCain]

You act like this is new or unusual or a result of the recession. Why?

(And it's not like people are all pumped up about change when things are going well, either.)

Meh, bread and circuses. As true today as it was two millenia ago. You want real change, you gotta burn down the wheat fields or bomb the circuses, instead of expecting optimistic thoughts and rhetoric to get the job done.

[GGT]

I'm not sure I like the whole piece, but does this resonate with anyone?

I didn't read the piece, but of course this resonates for me! I was one of those kids in the sixties trained to hide under our school desks as "preparation" for nuclear war. Russia was our evil commie enemy, but Bay of Pigs wasn't for little kids. When JFK was assassinated, followed by Martin Luther King and Teddy Kennedy, my little kid world changed immensely. Thankfully, we didn't have instant news like we do now. I'm not sure many of us could have coped with that in-your-face-instant-video visual. Meanwhile, TV's biggest hits were post-Korean sit-coms (like MASH) and Viet Nam was a horrible (and humiliating) War.

It's not just bread and circuses as Cain suggests. The Great Recession is different from previous ones, because of our global coupling. I've said it before, but there is a modern shift/transition happening. We've been involved in active War for over a decade now. But to many it still seems "over there" or not part of American Life. No War Tax, no draft. Using drones and CIA or Navy Seals to assassinate....the new embodiment of War?

Sorry if I'm rambling now. Key words from that post jumped out---"fractured", "superior", "revolution", "status quo", "chaos", "prosperity", "build". Those are the words of Transition and paradigm shifts. The only people ignoring or underestimating the power of a new type of Revolution are those afraid of change, stuck in their own small worlds, or taught to think in binary black-and-white terms using old and outdated theories.

Imagine how screwed early America would have been, if we'd operated on stale templates and baggage brought from Europe, instead of embracing a new ideology and Revolution. We'd probably have Queen Elizabeth's image on our currency, and sing God Bless the Queen while raising a flag with the Union Jack mixed in with our stripes and stars, or something strange like that.

[wiggin]

I think you mean Bobby Kennedy. Teddy died recently of natural causes.

[Nessus]

I think you mean Bobby Kennedy. Teddy died recently of natural causes.

Or did he? I'm afraid that, in order to test your purity and alibi, we're going to need to have Herman Cain yell "nein nein nein" straight at you for nine consecutive hours.

[GGT]

I think you mean Bobby Kennedy. Teddy died recently of natural causes.

Correction noted, thanks. Teddy Kennedy drowned a young woman in a Chappaquiddick car wreck, while he was most likely driving under the influence of whiskey or scotch, and got off scott-free.

[wiggin]

I think you mean scot free, based on the old form of taxation called scot. Scott is a kind of tissues.

[Nessus]

Is a "great scott" a huge issue of tissue, then?

[wiggin]

Nah, Scott is a name (which is where the tissue brand gets it); there was a general Scott in the Civil War that the phrase is based on (probably).

[GGT]

At least I didn't say scotch-free. Cut me a break. jeeze

[CitizenCain]

It's not just bread and circuses as Cain suggests. The Great Recession is different from previous ones, because of our global coupling.

The earlier "Great Depression" being an entirely American phenomenon, of course.

I think you mean Bobby Kennedy. Teddy died recently of natural causes.

Natural, my ass. I think it's pretty clear to every rational person out there what happened to Ted Kennedy - liberal rhetoric causes brain tumors.

[Hazir]

Revolution has never been dependent on engagement of the youth, it's always been riding on middle class anger at reigning conditions. As such I consider the present society certainly not sapped from revolutionary potential.