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

[steerpikelet]

Thank you for this. How strange that it was your birthday! ...may I quote from this at some point and, more importantly, would you be prepared to re-post some of it in comments at liberalconspiracy.org, when the post goes up there after 5pm today?

'a widening rich and poor gap which explains why we are such a bad generation to generalise about. ' - yes, this is a very important point, and one which I should have addressed. Thanks.

[liminereid]

I'm glad you liked it. You are welcome to quote, you can even link. I left it unlocked. Wht would you like me to say in the comments/ what do you want to quote?

[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

[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

[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.

[dreamstothesky]

Don't dispair - it does make a difference. It's just a small one, and sometimes very hard to see but when a lot of people get upset about something and go marching, politicans notice. I would bet good money that somewhere deep in whitehall someone was weighing up the pros and cons; how much to commit and what have you - and public opinion is no small part of that. Necessarily, it isn't the whole part of course of policy decisions, but no government wants a population that hates them.

At least, I think we have to believe that. If we don't, it is time to start stockpiling ammunition in preperation for a revolution :)

[r_e_mercia]

Come and work for the EU!

[liminereid]

Does an MA in Medieval Literature qualify you for that? Cos if so I'm so there :)

[r_e_mercia]

Um, it probably wouldn't hurt, tbh! If you've an interest in EC affairs too, and are willing to show aptitude then you could probably do an internship somewhere...and then who knows :-) Start changing the world right away!