the rest of us can only look on with envy...and shame.
Envy, maybe. Shame, not so much. People tend to mobilize when there is an issue of immediate self-interest at stake. These students are protesting dramatic cuts that may triple their university fees and the strong-arm tactics used by the police at their protests.
Middle-class American youth, as a group, have not been attacked in this way. Rather, they have been indoctrinated to the idea of going deeply into debt to go to school. They're still fucked, but not with any dramatic immediacy like the Brits are now.
This is not to say that Americans don't evince an indoctrinated stupor that seems to have no parallel in the Western world. Only that comparison to this particular situation in Britain doesn't reveal much about it.
At least on idea of tuition, miguel is sadly right. Each time it goes up here, it's met with grumbling and a resigned shrug. Perhaps when all this debt turns into jobs for no one (ain't there just yet) then maybe.
But, given that it's been incremental, like most insidious changes in America, I doubt it.
Eloquent and inspirational, even for this cynic. The most perspicacious student knows the importance of forging a sustainable sense of solidarity with the working class, even as he struggles to land a place which doesn't include the daily toil associated therewith.
Sadly - and most unfairly, I'm sure - I can't help but have this nagging notion of Tony Blair lurking in the background. So, on the other hand, maybe this kid should just drop out;-)
Ethan's working through his music collection in alphabetical order
The next five artists he'll be listening to:
The Clash The Clientele Jimmy Cliff Patsy Cline Clinic
(Project began May 29, 2010. Finished through the letter B on April 1, 2011 with 460 items catalogued on Rate Your Music.)
Ethan's reading
Samuel R. Delany Triton aka Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Thoughts that aren't getting whole posts
- I just caught my cat licking one of my dirty shirts. When he saw I was watching, he pretended he'd been cleaning himself all along. -ethan 9/23/11
- I didn't know The Pixies covered "I've Been Waiting for You"! So on Heathen, David Bowie covered The Pixies AND a song they covered? Weird. -ethan 9/21/11
- Dangerous Visions is so goddamn macho. And like half the writers are military or "intelligence" or government or advertising dudes. It largely bites. -ethan 9/10/11
- I wish people would figure out that "HD" is not even close to "like you're actually there"--it's completely different from how we really see things. If they figured that out, maybe it would occasionally be used interestingly. -ethan 9/9/11
- Robinson Crusoe on Mars has its major problems, but it looks like a series of living Nicholas Roerich paintings. -ethan 9/3/11
- I just plain don't like Brian Aldiss. -ethan 8/31/11
- Here, at least, it was a good hurricane. I'm embarrassed by how happy I was when the electricity came back on. -ethan 8/28/11
- Is it my imagination or is IOZ way more open about genuinely caring about things since his return? -ethan 8/26/11
- Does Firefox constantly tell British people that they're spelling labour and programme and theatre wrong? -ethan 8/25/11
- There is a huge (and hugely important) difference between knowing that events a, b, and c happened between years x and y, and understanding that they were happening at the same time. -ethan 8/24/11
- Among the many things bugging me about the crappy novel I'm reading is that it keeps referring to a woman whose "late teens" were "forty years ago" as a "little old lady." Come on now, she's 59 at the oldest. -ethan 8/22/11
- Spending a day in the woods is the best thing in the world. -ethan 8/21/11
- Maria Mies: "Powerless groups, particularly if they are totally integrated within a system of power and exploitation, find it difficult to define reality differently from the powerful." -ethan 8/20/11
- The funniest sentence in Frankenstein: "I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition." -ethan 8/18/11
- Chumbawamba: "Nothing ever burned down by itself/Every fire needs a little bit of help." -ethan 8/18/11
- We'll see if I use this. Idea stolen from Davidly. -ethan 8/18/11
6 comments:
Richard "lenin" Seymour has done some great reporting on this, e.g...
I think the youth militancy in the UK now is truly amazing--the rest of us can only look on with envy...and shame.
Our youth will get there. The British are just a little ahead of us, that's all. I can't imagine my grandkids putting up with a lot of injustice.
Peter, thanks for the link--I haven't been following it nearly as closely as I should have been.
Hattie, I hope you're right.
the rest of us can only look on with envy...and shame.
Envy, maybe. Shame, not so much. People tend to mobilize when there is an issue of immediate self-interest at stake. These students are protesting dramatic cuts that may triple their university fees and the strong-arm tactics used by the police at their protests.
Middle-class American youth, as a group, have not been attacked in this way. Rather, they have been indoctrinated to the idea of going deeply into debt to go to school. They're still fucked, but not with any dramatic immediacy like the Brits are now.
This is not to say that Americans don't evince an indoctrinated stupor that seems to have no parallel in the Western world. Only that comparison to this particular situation in Britain doesn't reveal much about it.
At least on idea of tuition, miguel is sadly right. Each time it goes up here, it's met with grumbling and a resigned shrug. Perhaps when all this debt turns into jobs for no one (ain't there just yet) then maybe.
But, given that it's been incremental, like most insidious changes in America, I doubt it.
Eloquent and inspirational, even for this cynic. The most perspicacious student knows the importance of forging a sustainable sense of solidarity with the working class, even as he struggles to land a place which doesn't include the daily toil associated therewith.
Sadly - and most unfairly, I'm sure - I can't help but have this nagging notion of Tony Blair lurking in the background. So, on the other hand, maybe this kid should just drop out;-)
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