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Links 10/01: New Fiscal Year, Korean Relations, Iraq Contractors, Clinton’s “Inevitability”, Postmodern “rebellion” |
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It’s the new fiscal year, so let’s see how governments are handling their finances:
- The Senate passed a bloated defense bill, including 128 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Way to go, Senate.
- The Michigan legislature passed a budget this morning, shutting down the State government for only four hours and avoiding mass chaos. Way to go, Michigan! (minus subsequent taxes hikes and getting into a budget crisis in the first place)
- In surplus-y news, Fair Haven, a small town in Vermont, came up with a million dollar surplus. Residents are rather pissed, though.
North and South Korean leaders are meeting in the North Korean capital for a historic summit. Let’s see what comes out of this soon.
Blackwater USA is being investigated over the shooting incident of last week. Findings have shown that the contractor has been in nearly 200 shooting incidents since 2005.
In less widespread news, the Rasmussen Reports have a piece on the so-called “inevitability” of Clinton’s getting the democratic nomination, despite what Republicans have come to think.
And to conclude, Mike Connery over at Future Majority has a drooling encomium of a piece by Yale student Nicholas Handler entitled The Post-Everything Generation. The gist of this thing is that college kids nowadays aren’t like the “radicals” of the 60’s. They are the generation of the postmodern, the “open book” that rejects the “dogmatism” of modernism and the expected revolution that never came for their parents. Our activism is supposed to be one of the “rapidly developing ability to communicate ideas and frustration in chatrooms instead of on the streets, and channel them into nationwide projects striving earnestly for moderate and peaceful change…”
I think Handler’s fool of shit. Our generation has only inherited the theory of the 60’s, the same postmodern tripe that didn’t call for changes at the point of production and real changes regarding oppression, be racial, gender, or on any other front. No, the 60’s and us as its ideological inheritors have only been concerned with changing the “spectacle” of society, rejecting the “mainstream” culture and adopting our own to “subvert” it, as if some subjective rearrangement of the semiotic chairs could seriously “affect change” on the sinking ship of oppressive institutions. I recommend a perusal of Heath & Potter’s The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t Be Jammed. While I don’t agree with all their points, it raises a lot of good questions about the effectiveness of what Connery calls the “New College Experience” and its predecessors.
Thoughts?
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. This post-generation, so called, is nothing to be glorified. Our era’s youth have been quite skillfully indoctrinated into an egocentric, capitalistic, and spiritually devoid economy of the glory of ‘me.’
The consumer netizens of the 21st century reject any scenario that includes the potential for personal loss or sacrifice, preferring instead the comfort of virtual-outrage and the simulated, telecommuted protest. It’s sickening, really. And it doesn’t end well.
Mark my words: This “earnest” goal of “moderate” change shall be its keeper’s coffin.
I think you’re right here. Basically, I see our generation in some sort of transition. The 60s where about one thing, and I do think you could argue they were at least marginally effective. You’re right in your criticisms about not attacking structural change, but the hippies did do something. However, as was predictable, most were co-opted back into society.
Our generation does believe in the power of the internet and other communication tools to get things done, but we haven’t nearly realized their full potential yet. It is rare that a movement on the internet affects the larger world. It does happen, and it will probably happen with more frequency in the future, but we’re not there yet. Transition.