Do Youth Count on the Left?

In their reckless fecklessness, a revelation is born, or, rather, a truth is resurrected: society doesn't consider Youth to be particularly experiencing unusual pain and agony--the kind that requires all-hands-on-deck action. State-Of-Emergency. Michael Savage was speaking for a lot of people when he ordered Fathers to thunder down on autistic kids: "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."[9] Principal Steve Perry, of Capital Prep Elementary in Connecticut, echoes similar themes to his low-income students: "You want to sit? You want to cry? Then, when you're done crying, guess what's going to happen? Nothing."[10]

Society isn't too impressed with whiners. Whiners are downers, and they drive the emotional level of a hype-driven society below the acceptable bar. [11] In this sense, Youth are the second-greatest whiners--bested only by children. They complain constantly of loans, livable incomes and dignifying jobs (or the lack thereof), predatory credit card companies, and the many other matters society has trained its ear to pay as little attention as possible to.

In the short time since I was graciously provided a copy of Youth in a Suspect Society last September, it has passed through more than 4 hands--all undergraduate college students. Today, my once-brand new cover is beaten-up far worse than a second-hand copy. All have reported emotional attachment to the issues raised and the manner (i.e. empathetic advocacy) in which they were raised, even if, before reading, the students were oblivious (as I was) to reality. Some have used it for term papers, and others have indicated interest in pursuing further research on the concept of a youth-destroying society. It's clear youth across the country are yearning desperately for texts of the kind that addresses directly the apathetic world in which they live, and the means necessary to overcome it. For a generation deemed by most anti-intellectual, it's rare to see such interest in a book otherwise thought of as "scholarly." But it's understandable.

The greatest problem Youth give to the world is of a paradoxical nature: they desire independence, yet are aware of their impotence; they ask for privacy, but do whatever it takes (partying, clubbing, etc.) to eliminate any signs of loneliness; they wear masks in daytime, but come out naked--often literally--at night. And society has no answers for complex personalities; thus it prescribes dispensable medication and other such behavior-altering devices to make them more manageable.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words ring deeper these days: "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"; "there comes a time when silence is betrayal."

Many fail to grasp how neutrality is complicity in drag. Doing nothing is not--and has never been (even for the Swiss)--the essence of inaction. Doing nothing is not doing something--something potentially critical. And the something today is speaking and acting out courageously to put a stop to the misery of young people.

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