The Power of No

First let me say that the young are not stupid. Certainly not in the way that some of our supposed grown-ups sound when the discussion turns to matters like global warming, gay marriage or the policies of Barack Obama. On the whole, they are far more broad-minded and savvy, but they are absolutists. However, by sitting out this year's midterms America's young have done something that when they look back from the wisdom-producing distance of ten or twenty years they will probably admit was pretty stupid. How stupid will depend on how we survive the next several years.

The Phantom Left

Chris Hedges, in excoriating Jon Stewart's "Rally for Sanity" pins the blame for our current political apathy and civic dysfunction on the vanquished Left:

"The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described as apathy."

I admire Chris Hedges but despite his persuasive points I mildly disagree. Jon Stewart's audience may be liberal but despite being cast as such by our corporate media, it is not the Left, it is the 'hip' bourgeoisie. The comics were there to plead, not for Malcolm X or Emma Goldman, but for the status quo, a status quo that the young who do fret about their future rightly suspect is less democratic than authoritarian and fascist. When the campaign that promised you "Change" sees your standard-bearers like Van Jones and Dawn Johnsen tossed from the bus, voting begins to feel like a farce.

And yet, if there is any political space where the system still allows movement it is on issues the liberal class as a whole holds dear: namely civil liberties and the environment. The issue that once inspired the evanescent American Left was not the quality of the air but the workers' standard of living. Tangible, material things that Leftists like Eugene Debs died fighting for:

“I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man."

Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet Communism Debs' altruism would likely earn snickers from the Stewart crowd. Poverty is no longer a scar on a country's civilization in a world surrendered to Monopoly Capitalism. Social Darwinism is the de facto order of the day. The consequence for our privileged young is a dispiriting paralysis: why sacrifice when everyone expects to have to cope on their own?

But in allowing the political void to be filled by the abandoned proletariat's unreasoned passions, when our hopelessly dysfunctional state confronts the crisis of its own neglect it will be the Becks and Limbaughs leading the way right off the cliff and into nihilism. As Chris Hedges knows very well, it has happened before-- "the masses realize very well that they cannot direct themselves."-- Moeller van den Bruck, author of Das Dritte Reich

The young can only hope that the clowns are right: that history can only repeat itself as farce.