
I honestly can't wait for 60 years in the future when all of these rotten old boomers are finally dead and we can attempt to clean up their mess.
i think i get where you're coming from, but the system is the enemy, not an entire generation of people! not fighting u, just i see this energy a lot and it makes me sad lol, this video puts together a lot of why it does for me
Man, I feel this really informs my writing, and I didn't really know about it.
I knew everything was getting worse everywhere, but I didn't think it as specifically against the young. But his makes a lot sense in a lot of ways.
I think now that's another reason why I like a bunch teenage characters in my book.
On top of the infinite possibilities and not having past. Just old fashion wish fulfillment nostalgia for a past I was promised, but never had.
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Damn.
"There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." - Margaret Thatcher
I see this every day at work when my coworker who is a trans teen has come to see their job as one of their only safe places to be themselves (which sucks considering there is one manager who routinely fumbles Pronouns, I can't prove he's doing it on purpose but it sure does happen a lot) this appears to me to be taken advantage of by upper management who gives this child double shifts and a large amount of hours even though they are obviously working themselves sick. It is , incredibly evil. We have demanded that the youth work so much the only community they see outside of school is at work. So if school is hostile, they must work themselves to the bone to feel safe.
I know that feeling all too well. That said, when I look in to history Reagan was the culmination of a counter-revolutionary push that happened throughout the 1970s. The Palmer Memo, the rise of neoliberalism, the Volcker shock, the rise of the religious right and the culture war paradigm (see also Anita Bryant); this was all building toward Reagan.
On top of that the Dems shifted right with neoliberalism (and not for nothing, but Carter was a shitty president) and the inflation crisis happened as a result of collective action on the part of the capitalist class, which a naive public blamed on the government rather then the system.
Regan is just a major stepping stone in a decade of counter revolutionary prepwork.
I work in education and lately I've noticed a lot of efforts to prevent children from socializing at school, too. Times when kids could chat when I was in school, like lunch or in the hallway, now often have enforced silence - especially at schools with a higher population of kids of color, poor kids, and/or disabled kids. It's rare to see such draconian policies at wealthy schools. The ridiculous bathroom policies are often shocking to behold, and kids have less time to chat during class, too - sometimes, when they finish their work and I allow them to have free time at a reasonable volume, another teacher or member of admin will come in, see the kids having their free time, complain that free time is not allowed at their school, even though there's no work left, and insist the kids be made to sit silently! It's very concerning to me.
Fuck, we feel that so hard.
There is this distinct fear of children as an independent group. They aren't supposed to talk or think or socialize, that scares parents. In US culture, children are considered the property of their parents, and anything that causes them to diffuse from their parents ideals, tastes, and even general identity is seen as "corrupting" or "spoiling" said property.
On top of that, there has been a quality shift from a discipline based society to an achievement based society which has formed a generation gap. This was done by and for the egos of the boomers while simultaneously being used to further scapegoat their kids (see also the hit pieces against "participation trophies," when it's obvious those were more meant for the ego of the parents then the kids, who IOE can see right through them).
This idea that children must be subject to conditions of harsh discipline once stereotyped to slaves in ancient societies (often shown as a way of contrasting how far things have come), is absolutely vile, and is justified by the parents as a "return to tradition," which they were sold as a silver bullet for societal systemic problems.
Honestly, while that is a big part of it, I think it goes beyond the parents. If it were only about the parents' interests, we would be seeing the same thing in wealthy schools to an even greater degree - because those parents have the most influence. Instead, it's the children of marginalized parents who are most heavily disciplined and restricted at school, even when their parents are against it.
In my state it's definitely because the politicians are scared of a new generation growing up with the strength to stand against them, and they'll bulldoze both the kids and their parents to prevent it. The war on queer kids has been what's gotten the most press lately, and although it's certainly a big problem, the truth is that it's Black kids who face the worst of the state's suppression. Most of the schools here are essentially segregated so it's very easy for the government to target them. I've seen school rules such as a ban on wearing or displaying anything that could be interpreted as a memorial which are blatantly meant to target the Black Lives Matter movement and stop Black students from mourning murdered members of their community or calling for justice - and these absurd rules ONLY exist at schools that are 90+% Black. I have been to schools all over the city and never seen similar rules in place at any integrated or majority White schools. The majority Black schools also have very little funding and are full of incompetent instruction - sometimes the fault of poor teachers, sometimes the fault of blatantly harmful requirements imposed on otherwise fine teachers by admin, the school board, or the state. I've seen a lot of middle schoolers who were flat out never taught to read. "The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America" is a really eye-opening book about this problem, it was published nearly 20 years ago now but the problems it outlines are the same ones I see at work every day today. These kids haven't just been abandoned by their government, there's an active effort to harm them enough that they will be too broken to stand up against racism and other injustices when they grow up. Luckily, the kids today are very determined and can see what is being done to them and who is responsible even at their young age, so I think that they will still have the courage to fight it - but they shouldn't have to. This should never have been allowed to happen to them in the first place.
mayb this was just like, abuse, but I already felt like society didn't allow me to exist on my own, as a kid. I couldn't do anything other than sit alone and watch tv or play a game without supervision. I certainly couldn't go out, even to the local park. And that was 20 years ago.
At the risk of asking a question with an obvious answer: what do we do?
"They want children to be completely dependent on their family for everything..."
Spot-freakin'-on. I could add more, but yeah, big true on that quote