Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

Pinocchio has been re-elected. He is on his way, finally, to becoming a real president. Now all he needs to do is lose the strings. The time has come, my liberal friends, not to complain about the election results (legitimate or not, he used our democratic system exactly as it is set up to work), but instead to start making some progressive changes in our game plan. See, whether the Republicans realize it or not, a social revolution is still on the way, and this time it will succeed. The difference now is that we will do something they never even considered doing: We are going to learn from history.

In the 1960s, there were campuswide protests across the country in an effort to change both the government’s agenda and the educational "conspiracy" of which the students felt they were victims. The government agenda they opposed was one of aggressive military endeavors and legislation that attempted to crush diversity (eerily similar to the current administration’s agenda, which I will outline for you later). The educational conspiracy that they were so opposed to had to do with the universities’ curricula. To them, it seemed as though the institutions were discouraging creativity/independent thought and attempting a nationwide robotification of the minds of the student body. This would, they claimed, train them to act as "bricks in the wall" of the corporate hierarchy, and make them easy to exploit so the CEOs could stuff their own wallets. So who were these students? Were they drugged out, paranoid, mindless slackers? Drugged out? Maybe. But mindless? Not even close. The students who led the protests (at schools such as Berkeley, Michigan, Cornell and NYU) were among the brightest members of their respective classes. These kids were well-read, thoughtful and decisive. They didn’t scream indiscernible moans but instead wrote articulate and insightful documents, such as the Port Huron Statement of 1962 in which members of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) advocated what they referred to as "participatory democracy."

So the question is: If the cream of the crop of the country’s best schools were liberal and made such a powerful statement, then why is the country still so conservative, with such a skewed moral system, and what can the new generation of students do about it? Before I answer that, I will quickly explain what I mean by skewed.

 

Ifall men deserve equal inalienable rights, then why are gays being stripped of theirs? Yes, I understand that marriage isn’t a constitutional right, but seriously, what do you win if you succeed in banning it? None of your Christian marriages are affected either way, and life is slightly worse for an entire demographic of citizens. I really can’t understand you bigoted fools. Next, it’s really easy to say that your tax cut saved Americans billions of dollars. What’s not so easy is explaining to the middle and lower economic brackets why they paid the same damn amount of money the years before and after the tax cut. Why is it economically beneficial to large corporations to pollute and outsource? Why is global warming less of a concern than what you can and can’t say on TV? Why are you so afraid of human nudity and language that you make a conscious effort to censor them, while war and violence are considered patriotic? Why don’t you give peace a chance? Why is marijuana illegal when tobacco kills tens of thousands times as many people per year? Why are campaigns no longer about how great a candidate is, but instead about how sketchy an opponent is? This one’s for both parties; you do realize that this approach leaves Americans nervous about their officials no matter who wins, right?

So why did those students of the ’60s fall short if their message was right? Don’t get me wrong, because of their efforts, women, gays and minorities have made huge equality gains, and the environment is a vital part of any candidate’s platform, so they definitely made some worthwhile progress. Once again, though, the country is still right-leaning. Well, they fell short, because they focused too much on appealing to the policymakers and didn’t give enough credit to a long-term solution. Think about it, from the perspective of the adults of the time, you’ve got a bunch of seemingly ignorant kids chanting that everything you have ever worked for and believed in is wrong, providing no alternative to speak of. How would you react if you were presented with that? True, visionaries like Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman had a better solution than simply "peace," but the giant crowds didn’t come off as having one. No, the old white men whose entire fortunes and security could be derived from the "terrors" of capitalism were not going to listen, but the students persisted. They amassed and chanted and did drugs and sang to those same old white men for a decade, and when it didn’t go anywhere, they turned millitant, killed their credibility, and eventually gave up their optimism, many turning into those same old rich, white men that they had hated so viciously. If you can’t change your environment, adapt to it. That’s why they fell short.