8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

[MrScorpio]

July 31, 2011 |

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

http://www.alternet.org/vision/151850/8_reasons_young_americans_don%27t_fight_back%3A_how_the_us_crushed_youth_resistance?page=1

[Lindsay]

1. Thanks for posting this.

It's so important, and reminds us of the enormity of what we're up against.

[xmas74]

2. k&r

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. k&r

[KurtNYC]

4. why would the government leglize pot when TV does such a great job of pacification?

The MSM hammers away on some lie or semantic change and then they take polls about facts, not opinions. Poll question: Is Social Security broke? Is Global Warming real? etc.

I swear they take the polls just to see if they need to adjust the doses of BS they are delivering.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Connecting via Facebook, email, and cell phones instead of meeting people in person has also added

to it.

[Desertrose]

6. We didn't get here overnite....they planned well. K&R nt

[booley]

7. I keep wondering if it's possible to create alternate institutions

We get trapped because we need the very institutions that are keeping us down.

It's like an abusive relationship.

Sorry, it's not "like", it is.