Popular thinking about why so many young, disaffected youths are attracted to ISIS is that there are no other counter-culture movements. That makes sense to me. We have built a generation of young republicans who look up to people like Mark Rubio or some other well-put-together production model. Hipster culture is not a counter-culture. It is a culture-within-a-culture. They like their pleasures, they are just a bit snottier than the typical republican's. It's either craft beer or Pabst. Soccer rather than football. Still, it is part of the consumer culture.
So if you are a kid dissatisfied by what you find around you, what do you do? You are so pissed off you just want to blow things up. You don't have much worldly experience or education. Maybe you are already stuck in some dead-end labor job. All of life is making you miserable. Where is the literature of revolution, of personal evolution, of spiritual uprising?
Computer games. Fantasy characters, fantasy worlds. Violence and transcendence. If only it were real.
I don't think I would want to be young in America today. Don't get me wrong. I would want to be young again. But I don't think I'd pick right now if I could choose an era.
Money and unregulated decadence for the few. We didn't do such a good job. Russia? China? India? Nope. Who is? These are some serious bad times, I guess, and the coming elections look just like more of the same. If a kid asked you what s/he should want, what would you tell him/her? Fewer people? A cleaner environment? Fewer companies like Monsanto? That's not going to happen. In truth, I wouldn't know what to say. Be a champion athlete? An entertainer? A personality of some sort? Jesus H. Christ.
Who will stop the Koch Brothers and their ilk? Extreme money only responds to one thing. They won't negotiate until they must. Money and Violence. I guess it has been the history of the world.
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