The Kids Aren't Alright

Thomas Friedman today, in a New York Times column that's certainly making the rounds, talks about what he thinks is the tendency of kids today to be disengaged from politics.

Let me add a caveat in here at the beginning: I think Thomas Friedman is a complete and total idiot. From his being a huge Iraq War supporter to his unabashed adoration of globalization, he and I are almost never on the same page.

But that's not why I think he's an idiot. I think he's an idiot because he has this annoying tendency to use non-representative examples to support shallow, poorly-researched and often-wrong points. And I think he's a myopic narcissist. Worse than me, even.

Anyway. Back to the column at hand. Friedman is blathering today about what he calls Generation Q, the Quiet Generation. This is his label for today's students and youth, and he bequeathes it because he doesn't see students making their presence felt in the political realm. How has Tommy learned about this new generation? He's visited three colleges in the south. Wow. I'm impressed - it's almost like he's using an anecdote as the basis for a generalization about a whole generation. Sigh.

Friedman:

[C]ollege students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever.

OK. Let's get the terrorism thing out of the way as soon as possible. Many - and I suspect it's actually most - folks around college-age don't see terrorism as a big threat to our daily lives, or as a deterrent from doing what we think needs to be done or want to do. Certainly we didn't buy into the 9/11 hype near as much as Friedman did (it only changed everything because the 'adults' shit themselves with fear and/or joy and then went about changing everything), but he is apparently unable to realize that other folks might not hold the same view of the world he does. In other words, I don't see a fear of terrorism as a significantly motivating factor in the behavioral choices of the group Friedman is talking about. There's no evidence for it.

Friedman then goes on to show how amazed he is that us young people are not hopping mad about the state of the country:

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

This is an interesting point, and I think there is some truth to it. Stephen Colbert certainly touches on it in this clip, and I agree that online activism is not substitute for organizing in the real world... and yet, somehow, Tom Friedman has zero credibility to be telling me this. Maybe it's because of crap like this. Or maybe it's because Tom Friedman spent years arguing that the Iraq War was necessary and just before doing an about-face and never really admitting his own role in hyping the war. I know that hearing such garbage from the pundit class - of which he is practically a charter member - over and over and over without nary a representative from the anti-war coalition on my television and radio from 2002 to this day certainly helped me disengage from traditional politics; if my point of view is never represented, why should I try and engage with the organization or medium that can't ever seem to get it right?

This is Friedman's solution:

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Um, Tom? You might have done more to kill that possibility than almost any single other person on the face of the planet (with the possible exception of the other amateur sociologist on the NYT opinion page, David Brooks). And besides that, there's the whole systemic repression thing - you know, how capitalism teaches kids from a young age that standing up and throwing one's lot in on the side of justice is silly when you could just be shopping? You know, that same capitalism that you spend a large portion of your time promoting? Didn't think so.

Not only that, but Friedman? FUCK YOU for suggesting "that's what twentysomethings are for" - to light a fire under the rest of the country. Thanks for using a brush so broad that it manages to assign one role to an entire generation of highly diverse people. That's not insulting or anything, nor could it ever remove our agency. And you wonder why we're not engaged? Seriously?

So, then, why is it that so many young folks are avoiding mainstream politics and traditional approaches? Maybe we've realized they don't work when the only two major parties are beholden to corporations and not constituents - or maybe it's that avenues of meaningful expression, public spaces, autonomy, and political power have been systematically removed from the reach of adolescents and young adults (well, from everybody, actually, but especially from people under 25).

Incidentally, I just finished Donna Gaines' book Teenage Wasteland today, and while it was written in the early 1990s about the so-called burnouts and burnout culture, Gaines makes a similar point: that alternative cultures develop because people, especially youth, don't see a place for themselves in the mainstream. Said youth feel marginalized, ignored, and insulted by adults who expect them to be good workers but don't want to allow for their creative expression. Even though this book 15 years old, I think her central assertion is relevant today - the main difference being that the advent of the Internet is now providing the space for kids and adolescents to express themselves (with all the attendant consequences and limitations) as opposed to the parking lot of the local 7-11. In both cases, however, 'adults' (and I am indeed conflating parents and people in charge) serve to push folks to the margins in search of meaning and autonomy.

This column by Friedman displays a very shallow level of analysis, like pretty much all of the rest of his work. I wish someone on the Times editorial board would notice.



Other folks have opinions too...let's excerpt/steal some of them.

Brian Beutler weighs in on the column:

It's easy to pin the sedateness of American youth on the absence of a draft, but I really don't think that has a whole lot to do with it. It seems to me that in the past 40 years, the incentives young people had to protest have been all but erased. The consequences of an arrest are much larger, the value placed on scholastic and professional achievement much higher, and the costs of delay much greater now than they were in 1968. It's my view that this is all the fault--indeed the master plan!--of conservative people. I'm just not sure I can explain why, and if I could, I'd write a book about it.

Ezra Klein points the finger at the media:

The other reason kids don't protest anymore is that they don't think protesting works. And they don't think it works because when they hold massive protests, the media doesn't give their argument a fair hearing, but instead mocks and marginalizes them, and picks out the most extreme participants in order to discredit the whole. On all this, the kids are right. But even I never thought that folks like Tom Friedman -- who was complicit, if not causal, in the media atmosphere that ignored the Iraq War protests -- would then lambaste them for laziness, or cowardice.

From my friend C (in an email, so no link):

This time, he calls us too quiet for our own good. Well, perhaps if the corporate media machine that he sits at the controls of actually covered some of the heroic protests, acts, and optimistic endeavors that this generation is engaged in, we would have a voice and platform. So, Mr. Friedman, instead of wasting your column's space by chiding us for being too quiet, how about you get your researchers off their lazy asses and spend some time profiling people who are taking on the greediest generation. It looks like you just couldn't get the story together. How about people protesting the Jena 6, or the Middlebury students organizing Step it UP! with Bill McKibben. Fuck you.