Complacency in an Indifferent Nation
As an entrance essay to Swarthmore College, my brother, who completed it in 1992 for entrance a year later, wrote about his experiences in Chile during a riot. Set in the mid-1980s, the spark that started the fire was that a concert, one that featured the sounds of the country’s most famous musicians and musical instruments, was cancelled. Authorities proclaimed that the concert was “too communist”, and could not be performed to the public. The Chilean masses in Santiago would not accept such constraint. Riot police began beating those who would raise their hands, and some of those who would not, and “camels” or water spraying trucks began opening up on those screaming for the freedom to play music. The wet bodies hurled into the walls, and the clubs made the pavement red.
Events like these do not happen regularly in the States in the present day, and there are many reasons for this. Some think there is a loss of collaboration and attention that from our country’s youth, and a lack of will to make a difference. Most believe that there is nothing that motivates the masses enough to put forth the effort. College professors and students alike point to the 70s, when large activist organizations were connected and formed to make the civil rights movement a reality and help bring an end to the Vietnam War. Professors, like Ronald Cox, a political science professor at Florida International University, believe that the main difference between two of the more controversial issues of each time, the Vietnam War and Iraq War, is the draft that made it mandatory to report to the armed services.
“The draft brought the war right into young lives, and created a situation where one could die for what one didn’t believe in, that’s powerful motivation,” he says. But now, people seem content with letting those who sign up voluntarily die in a war that according to polls most people disagree with.
The New Republic, a magazine chockablock with political criticism, and is credited with being the only magazine on Air Force One, constantly runs articles claiming that the Bush administration has created a “forgotten war”, one where as the casualties mount, the people care less. I understand this feeling, because I read the headlines daily, and they are always there, a soldier dying here, or a helicopter exploding there, and I pass over it shamelessly and double-click to see if I won my fantasy football league.
It’s not that I don’t care. Because I do. It’s that I honestly don’t care enough. And that’s probably saying a lot more than the average student or citizen.
To say that it’s a phenomenon present in this country only could be close to the truth. Organizing, demonstrating, and being socially aware are actions dominating the daily lives of the youth in foreign countries. For example, earlier this year, again in Chile, secondary-school children boycotted class all over the country demanding that the economic windfall generated by soaring copper prices be spent on improving a deplorable and disintegrating education infrastructure. That kind of organization is unheard of in the high schools of the U.S. In France, teenagers took to the streets to try to put an end to a newly incorporated law saying that it was okay for employers to fire their younger employees for absolutely no reason. In Iraq and in Lebanon, Muslim youth are literally fighting invasion and occupation by taking up arms with their brethren.
So that’s probably it then, the real reason we do not rise up is the fact that we have it the best. One of the richest nations in the world, and certainly the most powerful, we flaunt our military for the world to see, and we slant the trading laws to favor us at the expense of the less developed countries. We impose sanctions on countries for generating weaponry that we already have, and we force countries to cooperate with us. Even with a president that cannot speak coherently and the world loves to ridicule, we’re still untouchable. I guess the real question is, when we’re dominating both hemispheres, albeit unfairly and with an iron fist, how is the resistance going to come from within? Liberalistic thought has no place for morality. It only has space for self, self possession, and individualism.
Another reason for panic is the fact that nobody in our age group knows any of this. Social awareness seems to have hit an all time low. Newspapers do not get read by our age group, and those who say they read it online have to battle social networks like myspace, not to mention the regular bully of print, TV, to get to the news. We don’t know about NAFTA, about CIA interventions, the huge subsidy that the government gave to private oil companies after they achieved record profits, or about the fact that it’s not logical to have nukes and tell others not to create them. We actually believe that the U.S. is driven by the greater good, and the spread of democracy is the reason why we’re in Iraq. The propaganda machine does not just dominate, it’s not challenged. The world fears us, and for good reason. Because the only thing that can stop us at the moment is ourselves. And we really just don’t care; we have more important things to worry about.So my brother got into Swarthmore among other things by writing about an experience that is foreign in this country, and that not many in our age group can relate to. And in the end, really who can blame us for not having that experience? We’re happy, we’re fat, we’re ignorant, we’re irresponsible, we’re distant, and we only care about ourselves. The world should fear that, and they do.