Talkin' 'bout re-e-volution
I think Megan's missing my point here. I do not believe that "problems" in this country and the world today-- Iraq, the greater Middle East, climate change, AIDS, malaria, over population--are any worse or more numerous or more entrenched than the "problems" the country and the world faced 40, or 80, or 230 years ago, or if such a comparison is even empirically sound. My point is also not that any of these problems are inherently insoluble. Quite the opposite. I think we're definitionally better-suited to solve large-scale problems in the current era than we were in past, less advanced times.
My point is that the conventional means by which people without power may have once been able to instigate change have been paralyzed. It's not that the youth have grown sclerotic, it's that the dreaded "system" has done a good job of marginalizing us. And that until we find new means by which to affect great change, we will feel like we've lost.
I also think that as a conservative--and therefore as part of the "system"--Megan didn't include a link to my earlier post as part of a devious plan to drown out my voice. Hey! McArdle! I will not be silenced!
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Her shrill and incoherent misrepresentations will never silence the voice of truth!
Megan is not -- repeat, NOT -- a conservative. She is a libertarian.
Also, she's about nine feet tall, and would use her size 19EEE feet to stomp you to death if you called her a conservative.
My feet are a dainty 9.5 regular, thank you very much. Sorry . . . though I always did think you were the missing link, ha ha . . . am fixing now.
My point, though, is that I don't think the avenues of change have been shut down. It's just that in reading history, we naturally only notice the wins, not the abominably long time it often took to get there. It took decades to get women the vote, frex.
I *do* think that protest has become less effective, but that's largely because protest only was effective when the protesters dressed and acted like solidly middle class members of the larger society. The shiite protesters I watched at the Saudi embassy the other day understood that--*they* were all in suits. But most protests today involve a substantial number of protesters whose idea of dressing for the protest involves shining their Che tattoos. The message this sends is: this is an issue that fringe nut jobs care about. The boomers got away with it because they were the biggest generation in American history. No one else can or has, and indeed, the boomers didn't: most of the things they demonstrated for, outside of college campuses, never came to pass.
[biting tongue, but acting on a principled refusal to comment on anything McArdle says no matter what provocation - acknowledging her is just troll feeding.]
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