Where has this attitude come from?

[tjwash]

A discussion in the lounge got me to thinking about this. Where is all this hatred that we see from teens to twenty somethings coming from? School shootings, drive by shootings, hate crimes like young white kids dragging black kids for miles behind their pickup trucks.

My theory, is ever since the eighties, we have been conditioned by seeing our government pull this "might is right", "you mess with the bull you get the horn" CRAP. Reagan pulled it and got praised and fawned over by the media. Bush1 pulled it and got praised and fawned over by the media. Clinton never sent a soldier out who didn't home, and is still to this day respected by leaders around the world, as at least TRYING to use diplomacy first and foremost, yet according to a majority of the US media, he is the most vile evil person who ever walked the face of the earth. Shrub is the embodiment of this attitude. A swaggering, loud mouthed, braggart, who shoots first and asks questions later, doesn't give one little horses ASS about all the flag draped coffins returning from the ME (what the hell, they are not any of HIS relatives or friends) and, the press fawns all over him. So maybe it is not surprising that you see younger kids acting like they do. We TELL them it's GOOD to be that way.

Your thoughts?

[NMDemDist2]

1. video games? you shoot enough people in fantasy, the reality is no

longer scary?

[teryang]

2. Propaganda is visceral in nature

Action relies on prejudice and stereotyping, so there is no need for critical process of thought. Critical thought reminds one of their own inadequancies and shortcomings rather than those of someone else. This is why the rise of a dictatorship is typically a mass movement, banal and appealing to the meanest instincts.

The mass involved adopts obscurantist pronouncements readily because they are unable to distinguish between the baser impulses of humanity and critical thought. Passion is confused with conviction.

[cookiebear]

3. combination of things

1. winning at all costs is what matters; "the one who dies with the most toys wins" effect;
2. television as babysitter;
3. total devaluation of education and *thought* in America - Americans pride themselves on not being intellectuals;
4. gross individualism (no one can tell ME what to do! attitude);
5. a kind of national sociopathy: no impulse control, coupled with instant gratification and gross feelings of entitlement; people think they just deserve things and work counts for nothing.

[shraby]

5. I notice an uptick of hate crimes

when Reagan was in office. I think it was an attitude he had toward the homeless, the colored, the unions, etc. Unspoken maybe but it exuded from him and people picked up on it.

[LunaC]

6. Nice Synopsis!

Welcome to DU!!!

[cookiebear]

9. thanks, LunaC!

:wavingwildly: :D

[Nay]

10. Excellent, cookiebear, and to see a good elaboration on your

points 2 - 5, read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. Written years ago, it lays out the effects of TV on everyone, and your points all are mentioned, plus others. Mander realizes we will never get rid of TV, but he did want to warn people what to expect out of our society when we are saturated with TV. So far, he's been 100% right.

[peacetalksforall]

4. You are probably right. Do you remember Bush or his Poppy ever

holding peace talks? Our kids don't have peace and diplomacy models that can win over swagger when there is a tendency to swagger naturally as a child. And we know Jr is definitely a child.

Peace and diplomacy have been practiced by Clinton and Carter, but the media model is to make fun of them and downplay that role at all costs. If Carter (or even Jesse Jackson) went anywhwere, they laughed at them. And we know what they liked about Clinton over his peace intentions. They even ridiculed the occasion where he had Arafat and Barak shaking hands.

The media is the worst at creating aspiring role models for our kids.

And they're dumping drugs so that they can imprison certain youth at a profit to privateers.

[WilliamPitt]

7. Ceaseless, soul-sucking commercialism

and rampant materialism. Everything is a commercial, everything is a copy of a copy of something that used to be real. In such an environment, people become deranged, and no generation in history has been more exposed to it than the teens and twenty-somethings today.

I was walking down the street yesterday. It had been raining and the clouds were beginning to part to reveal beautiful blue sky and sunshine over the roofs of the brownstones. I overheard a young girl say, upon looking at this vista, "Wow, it's like a movie."

I wanted to throw myself into traffic.

[Nay]

12. Yep, I've heard that type of comment before too, and it makes

me want to slit my wrists.

In my other post above, I suggest that cookiebear (and everyone who's interested) should read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" to get the full feel for what we have become and how we got here. It's a long essay that's about 20 years old, but Jerry Mander was right on the money. He could see it coming and was not happy with the results he expected to see from TV saturation.

Even the success of F 9/11 is a two-edged sword, in my opinion, because it means that only movies or TV reaches the mass of people anymore. Otherwise, all of the stuff in F 9/11 would be known to more people already. This is so dangerous that it is nation-threatening, life-threatening, and culture-destroying.

[Delano]

8. I think it's more about...

Kids growing up alone. Coming home to empty houses as their self-absorbed parents either slave away for the sake of getting a bigger house or more stuff, or if they are a bit higher up the ladder, run around playing tennis, getting plastic surgery, hitting the spas in St. Moritz. Their trusty companion, the TV shows nothing but imagery of people behaving in the same way, or worse, behaving like the thugs in rap videos or the idiots of "Jackass"

With examples like this, it's no wonder more and more young people are picking the only wholesome group they see in their immediate vicinity - the fundie right.

Hell, if my only choices for social groups were gangsta thugs, Jackass sickos and fundie nutjobs, I guess I'd have to pick the fundies. I still fancy myself a human being and value things like civility, manners. treating others with respect, etc, and at least the fundies sort of do that.

The hostility and rudeness we see is kids emulating the Jackass and gangsta genres - pure and simple. Those who say the media has no influence are full of it. Even if only one kid in a teen peer group has been watching, if he's a "cool kid" and he acts out in a similar fashion, all his pals will copy him...

[maggrwaggr]

11. and now we have a VP saying "fuck yourself" to a colleague

and saying it made him "feel better".

Yup, it's the little-dicked, big-pickup-truck mentality