My take on Bruce Levine’s 8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
After reading Levine’s article, I remembered having several conversations, in the early 90’s, with a friend, about the conditions required to subdue populations to enable corporate-elite control and abuse of the population. We agreed that for the most effective and lasting control there must be present the tools used to implement those conditions combined with the willing partnership of the people in their own submission, especially in advanced democracies like America, where the appearance of choice must remain unburdened, to the extent possible, by state sanctioned overt violence, if the democracy is to preserve a claim of legitimacy. We were young and kind of dumb, but interestingly, we touched on several of those that Bruce Levine includes in his article found at Alternet:
1. Student-Loan Debt.
2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance
3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy.
4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”
5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously
6. The Normalization of Surveillance.
7. Television.
8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism.
In our convos, we focused on ideas similar to Levine’s; #1, 3, 5, 7 & 8 — #4 didn’t exist yet and we discussed the possibility of #6, but primarily in minority and poor communities. My thoughts about items on Levine’s list:
#1, 3 & 4 (actually most of these) are clearer to understand when viewed through the lens of corporatization and privatization of the commons and easier to see in some states rather than others in the form of school-laboratories re-engineerd toward the creation of private profit. Yet, the responsibility for the conditions that lead to #3 & #4 never seem to be laid at the proper door and teachers remain the convenient pinata to beat on when our childrens isn’t learnin’.
From # 5:
“The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class.”
This is one red warning light signaling that the goal of education has changed, and very quickly, within one generation. If the goal was to educate civically minded critical thinkers, one would naturally assume we would have a certain number of successful critical thinkers. But, if the goal is to educate consumers with nationalistic tendencies agreeable to ‘disguised’ authorianism then you just might get the result the author is explaining.
#6:
“The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control.”
Levine touches surveilance, without getting into the deeper issues; uses and history of surveillance and the efficacy of the constant fear of attack, used to great effect by the previous Administration and now more acceptable by attrition than previously thought possible. It has become the new normal. For a recent example, check out H.R. 1981, the ISP spying bill, that should’ve been named H.R. 1984. See: http://www.nydailynews.com/tech_guide/2011/07/29/2011-07-29_house_panel_approves_isp_snooping_bill_hr_1981.html?r=news/politics
#7: Ahhh, the ‘boob tube’, the devil’s box, satan’s microphone, the brain drain of modern America.
“Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically.”
I would add to T.V., the internet, excellent for self-segregation in the stove-piping of information. As far as the effect of T.V. viewing on the brain, there is recent evidence that internet usage ‘rewires’ the brain as well. See: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-addictive-internet-use-restructure-brain
#8: I would have preferred Levine to explore this a bit more, as there is a fundamentalist strain in contemporary politics that feeds from and contributes to to the fundamentalist strains of religion and consumerism. I think he missed a chance to tie up # 8 with several of the other points he made, by neglecting to touch upon the change in the meaning and exercise of civic responsibility and participation. An example of this change was Presiden’t Bush’s post 9-11 exhortation to
“Get down to Disney World in Florida,” he said. “Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872229_1872230_1872236,00.html #ixzz1TnSSeDme
and with a recession on the horizon in 2007, he said:
This work begins with keeping our economy growing…And I encourage you all to go shopping more.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfs6wpjlu28
To me, these examples are indicative of a change in paradigm, in what it means to be American and a civicaly minded American. A common assurance given in exchange for our non-participation, along the lines of “Trust us, I’ve got this”, contributes to the authoritarianism, that I think increasingly marks modern day American life and which has been pretty successful in convincing the average person to just drop out of the public sphere. I think a book can be written on the various aspects, mental and practical, that have contributed to our collective disengagement with and from our civic duty.
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