Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumCorbyn and Sanders Show That Neoliberalism Has Failed to Privatize Hope
By Ronald Aronson TODAY 6:00 AM
Excerpts:
A new consensus has emerged among young people that is definitely social democraticas that term has traditionally been usedor democratic socialistas Bernie and Jeremy have described themselves. By whatever name, young people are insisting on social solutions to social problems. This consensus rejects the privatizing and individualizing trends that have prevailed since the late 1970s.
Remarkably, this generationraised, educated, and shaped to neatly fit what Zygmunt Bauman calls individualized societyis thinking, aspiring, and acting collectively. They are repudiating spurious but once-galvanizing Reaganite claims to limited government and personal responsibility, turning their backs on Margaret Thatchers goal of replacing the collectivist society with a personal society. In the latest election, the new social democrats/democratic socialists demonstrated that three decades of concerted effort have not changed the heart and soul of the nation in quite the way that Thatcher wished for.
They were brought up to be self-seeking entrepreneurs, not to feel responsible for each other. They were primed to accept that every last corner of the world, and their own lives, would be organized by the logic of the market. They were taught to see social contradictions as personal, not political problemsto live by Thatchers dictum that there are individual men and women and there are families
. There is no such thing as society. Yet, instead of becoming cynical free agents, young people are drawn to the sincerity of Corbyn and Sanders. Against the flashy marketing of their opponents, these men express the humility of old-fashioned values such as fairness and equality. As recent surveys show, young people raised to ensure capitalisms future have become deeply skeptical of it and many are instead drawn to something called socialism.
While many in the older generation have learned to shift for themselves and ignore their social side, the younger generation cannot. The unrestrained harshness of the bottom line helps explain this turn, because rising inequality and economic insecurity have become especially intolerable to young people facing their future. In addition, at least two kinds of generational awareness have heightened their sense of social belonging: threats to the environment and global interconnectedness.
The perils of climate change predispose anyone growing up today to see herself as belonging to the ever-more-besieged natural world: linked with, dependent on, and worried about natural processes and beings everywhere. They increasingly live on the planet Earth.
https://www.thenation.com/article/corbyn-and-sanders-show-that-neoliberalism-has-failed-to-privatize-hope/
disillusioned73
(2,872 posts)I gain hope from our youth.. which I am no longer a part of in body - in mind, I still feel like a kid @ times.. I hope I am able to instill in my son the values of social awareness..
"While many in the older generation have learned to shift for themselves and ignore their social side, the younger generation cannot. The unrestrained harshness of the bottom line helps explain this turn, because rising inequality and economic insecurity have become especially intolerable to young people facing their future."
Donkees
(31,085 posts)Published on Mar 14, 2015
This live version of "Forever Young" is taken from The Last Waltz which was held on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976.
disillusioned73
(2,872 posts)gonna have to add that to my playlist..