Disaffection

[liminereid]

Steerpikelet has a very interesting post on her blog Penny Red, discussing our generation and the crap press we get and why she thinks this is undeserved and how she sees our generation's political engagement and allegiances. In particular she refers to the 'Stop-the-War' generation. Personally I struggle with any discussion of 'a generation',

Comments

[me_ves_y_sufres]

I think the failure of public protest to put an end to the Iraq War was also a major defining political point in my life- just the sheer sense of powerlesness and despair. 2003 was weird, because it was the year I started to actually understand things about politics and pay attention: I was 15/16, but I was coming of age politically in this awful atmosphere of just "nothing we do makes a difference". I think 2003 was the low point- Bush and Blair still in power with no sign of them leaving office, massive global protests doing nothing. (I think it's interesting we're seeing renewed cultural interest in the Watergate hearings: I remember seeing an interview where Jon Stewart, of all people, said that it was his first clear formative political memory, and that had informed his sense of distrust and powerlessness and the need to examine authority. And, you know, the shit that got pulled with the Iraq war was way worse than Watergate. So it will be interesting to see what happens twenty, thirty years down the line, just in terms of cultural memory and ramifications.)

Anyway, I also agree with this post, is what I meant to say. Especially about that the majority of people are politically apathetic- yeah, I went to a state school filled with people that didn't care because they had absolutely no engagement with or sense of agency from politics, no education about political issues or institutions- just no education, basically, and no prospects in life. (And now half the boys are off in Iraq and Afghanistan and half the girls are married to them and pregnant, which is too fucking depressing for words.)

And I agree with the thing about change being slow and titanic- yeah, don't expect a revolution or anything, but you need to do the right thing anyway, because the alternative is just too horrific to contemplate.

[liminereid]

The watergate comparison is fascinating. I was actually in America during easter that year and there was just a blackout in the american media about protests in Britain. They were all being told we supported it completely. It made me fully appreciate how scarily powerful the media is, especially when it's in league with the government.
I think one of the things everyone post the sixties suffers from in some ways in a dearth of hope, because no revolutionary change came. I see it with my Dad and his friends, people convinced they'd have achieved revolution or death by the time they were thirty and it just didn't happen. I think I acquired their cynicism much sooner.

A lot of boys from my school went into the army too. It's terrifying and one of the worst things about going to Oxford is it so insulates you from this kind of difference within a generation. You can almost forget not everyone has it the way we do.

Your last sentence is absolutely it. The heartbreaking thing about adult politics (so to speak) is realising the big change isn't coming soon and still going and fighting for it whenever you can anyway.

[me_ves_y_sufres]

You can almost forget not everyone has it the way we do.

Yeah, occasionally at Oxford I compare "the lives of the people I went to school with" with "the lives of the people I went to university with" and just become so cripplingly angry I can barely speak. This also happens whenever I hear the words "class doesn't actually matter any more" and "well, it wasn't a very expensive private school".

(I don't want this conversation to degenerate into I AGREE WITH ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING HERE LET US COMPARE OUR ENORMOUS CHIPS but it sort of did.)

[liminereid]

Ahem I swear the chip overruled me.
Yeah that last one really really drives me mad. Class doesn't matter huh? Take a drive round my town and tell me that again.
And with that I'll wrestle the chip off to bed.