The more I hear about contentious issues in politics, and the more involved I seem to be on campus, the more apathetic students become. This comes as a shock to me, but the analogies I try to draw between now and the 60's is quite far-fetched. Sure, if a draft were implemented, I'm sure I would get thousands to sign up for the College Dems the next day. But what I think we have a major issue with is the cultural aspect.
Think about it: In the war in Kosovo, we bombed the media outlets into submission. I don't know about you all, but if Al-Qaeda bombed primetime TV here in the states, there would be an all out melee in our country. The other thing I find funny is how people are more concerned about Brad and Jen's breakup and watching the OC than they are about the war in Iraq or Social Security privatization.
This is why my generation is at such a disadvantage. We don't have our generation's demagoge-like figures speaking out about the status quo, if anything, they encourage it. With the exception of the now more notorious 'beverly hills liberals' we see athletes like Curt Shilling and Tom Brady campaigning for President Bush. My question is, where is our Muhammed Ali? Where is our beloved social hero who devotes his/her prime career years to a bigger social cause. Ali spent time in jail and time out of the ring, his potential peak of his career, to speak out against the war in Vietnam and discrimination in the U.S. He spent ungodly amounts of money getting his case to the Supreme Court to allow normal middle-class white kids to oppose the draft and have the option to refuse to fight in Vietnam. This led musicians like Dylan and the Beatles to speak out. They sang songs about revolution and such, and didn't sell them to Multi-national corporations for commercials to make big bucks. As McCartney once said: we never sold our protest songs for commercials because we wanted revolution to stand for revolution not for a credit card.
The exception here, and where I think there's a start to something bigger, is the 'ONE' campaign. This is where the likes of Brad Pitt, Jaime Foxx and George Clooney have gotten together to formulate a discourse about global poverty. This issue, which should be my generation's focus to become a major valence issue, has not otherwise gotten much attention. Whereas in the 60's, war protests and the environment actually became news and forced lawmakers at the time to pass laws to mitigate the dissent, we now are too apathetic or busy to stand up for anything. What happened? It starts with the youth. I hate to say it but until there's another attack, bigger and better than 9/11, we won't see a quantitative resurrection of civil participation like we saw in the 60's.
So for all you icons of my generation, if you're out there, please do something good for humanity and give back to the community which has made you a star so we can get someone, something to rally behind...because now is the time, we need to build on our momentum and start a new path for generations to come and it starts now, not in 2008
**Just an aside...Sunday night PBS aired a documentary about pop music and social change, with Chuck D of Public Enemy narrating. This highlights wonderfully my argument, that is, the documentary stopped in the late 80's because bands stopped doing large scale benefit and awareness concerts (with this year's Live 8 concert as an exception, however, Live 8 first began in the 70's). Afterwards, I flipped to FOX news and their top story was the Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson breakup...
