Times are tough folks. Everywhere you look houses are being foreclosed, people are outta work and a sense of general hopelessness about the future seems to consume some people. Not since the Great Depression have things been this bad (or so the news says), only this time, there will be no WW2 to help pull us out of it. Young people and old people are competing for the same menial jobs, and minimum wage seems to be the norm for more jobs than it should. The cost of living is many times what lots of us are getting paid, causing a whole generation of kids to not be able to take the steps necessary to be real adults. Is it just me, or does hope for the future seem to be a very depressing joke? How can we get out of this mess if we are led by politicians whose only concerns are getting reelected, bickering endlessly with each other and lining their own pockets? Is there hope for the future, or does the American Dream now mean that you get to work like a slave your whole life only to look up one day and see that your life has passed you by and you still have nothing to show for it?
The so-called "Generation X" will probably be the first generation in a very, very long time to have a lower standard of living than their parents.
A counter-revolutionary movement has been in place for at least 30 years. You know a tree by its fruit, and the fruits of this counter-revolution are plain: increased poverty around the world, lower standards of living, a deeply polarized world (and becoming more polarized).
WWII wasn't about getting the engines of economic recovery going, it was about a
world project. It was about building a world along a Third Way - away from the totalitarian visions of both the Right and Left.
What is missing right now is that world project. But it is, and has been, staring us in the face for 30 years: global heating and the catastrophe of neoliberalism. To confront this world project - in every way worthy and in every way part of the highest ideals of the human condition - requires a new economy, a new culture, in short a new way of living. It might mean less time on the X-box, but it will build better men and women - healthier, happier, and more effective in their daily lives (vice having a single aptitude).
At the end of the day, you get the politics you deserve. We deserve the politics you describe. Change the culture, and you will change politics.
Unfortunately, the movement will not come from us. It will be upon the rest of the world - perhaps now in Egypt, or perhaps the ongoing revolution in Latin America - to light the way forward.
