Q for Queasy
Thomas Friedman mused in his Generation Q about the "quiet generation" -- today's college students who though they do good, do not participate in protest against injustice. I mention it because I like the concluding lines.
He surmises that email and computer commerce have curtailed the impulse to execute a live gathering. Young people today do virtual confabs. He suggested Social Security, the deficit and the environment as salient issues they might get concerned about.
He concludes by noting the statue of James Meredith, the first black admitted to Ole Miss in 1962, he'd seen on a recent tour of three Southern schools. "The Meredith bronze is posed as if he is striding toward a tall limestone archway, re-enacting his fateful step onto the then-segregated campus — defying a violent, angry mob and protected by the National Guard.
"Above the archway, carved into the stone, is the word 'Courage.' That is what real activism looks like. There is no substitute. "
Small number to execute such venal bravery, but can you guess what political party they hailed from?
--Lisa
posted by rangeragainstwar at 9:28 PM
8 Comments:
it was war profiteering which prompted winfield scott (old fuss 'n' feathers) to create the army's quartermaster corps at the same time the navy was creating its supply corps. they were mightily sick and tired of having civilians with government contracts supplying food that was crawling or otherwise unusable, tired of getting medicines that made soldiers sicker and powder which fizzled instead of exploding. they decided that uniformed soldiers were the ones who should do the purchasing, transportation and cooking of that food. they decided that the pharmacists and doctors should also wear the uniform and be subject to the accountability of the chain of command. now? thanks to the holy bush worship of privatisation we have these same old abuses coming for the same old reason. bog simple greed. halliburton and kbr which have taken over the servicing of the mess halls have figured out that if they serve jailhouse food the soldiers will instead feed themselves at the pizza huts and burger kings which sprout up even in forward bases. . .
And we’ll just keep piling it on them.
This is the reason I do not like this person. (we'll) I don't remember voting for the present Thugs and wanting to go to war. It looks like another Freidman Moment is about to happen. This is all I heard at a dinner party the other night, it's the Baby Boomers fault, at lest the Qs learned one thing from King G blame others if you can't figure out how to solve the problem.
jo6pac
MB,
Excellent point--thanks for bringing up Winfield Scott. Everything old is new again, eh?
jo6pac,
About five years I stopped really liking Friedman, and certainly after the FUs kicked in. I just liked his concluding lines here.
Our society is not big on personal responsibility, baby boomers on down. Eric Hoffer spoke of "momism" in Generation of Vipers, as I recall. Perhaps that noted the beginning of the blame game (?)
Eric Hoffer is a name I haven't thought of in a long time and who ever one should read.
jo6pac
jo6pac,
Glad you agree. The thinking of perceptive generalists is important. Today we tend to legitimate only the specialist, or the talking head who speaks the appropriate rhetoric to our own agenda.
Hi
The only ones allowed to have time to talk are as Hoffer put it The True Believers and as we know you can't have a conversation with them.
jo6pac
jo6pac,
Right. I see an encroaching tribalism, right here in River City. Americans do not conduct civil dialog among themselves; only within tight communities of same-thinkers, and then you have mutual monolog vs. true dialog.
I do not know why civil discourse has become so quaint a notion. Greed? Harried lifestyles? Fear, stoked by religious and political institutions?
I know that if we lose the ability to listen and speak across borders, we are devolving toward a more primitive state.
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