by Bill | Mar 3, 2016 | Uncategorized
Perhaps the most astonishing demographic to emerge from the New Hampshire primary is that young people voted in large numbers and that on the Democratic side 85% of those thirty or under voted for Bernie Sanders. But this should be no surprise. For too long, politics has been an old person’s game, shuffling tokens between parties in order to protect vested interests and to enhance the economic well being of both the over- 40 and the geriatric class.Why play in a game you can’t control that seems to have no immediate effect on you? But then, after the Bush years and the calamitous economic collapse, the effects of politics became more immediate – no good-paying jobs except for elite graduates, crushing student loan debts, forced living with mom and dad, the first tangible flutters of climate change and the hypocrisy and dissembling that sucked meaning and idealism from institutions everywhere. Fear kept the young (and old) awake at night crowding out time for dreams of a better future. The Hunger Games should have been the first warning: the immense popularity of a series predicated on the manipulation of young people by a distant and plutocratic “capitol” into “contests” that rewarded only the winner and destroyed everyone else. Now we have Bernie and the prospect of generational division and war against the “capitol”; it shouldn’t have come to this. There should have a breakwater, an early warning system, a canary in the cage. Let me propose one for the future. I will betray my roots in the geriatric class by harking back to the 1970s. The Arms Control and...
