43rd Street Zoo: 2010

Youth Beyond the Politics of Hope

Tuesday 13 October 2009

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Feature

As the counterrevolution that has gripped the United States since the late 1980s appears to be somewhat modified in the emerging presidency of Barack Obama, the dark times that befell us under the second Bush administration have far from disappeared. The assault that the second Bush administration waged on practically every vestige of the public good - from the Constitution to the environment to public education - appears to have lessened its grip as the Obama regime inches towards its first year in power. Yet, the range, degree and severity of the problems the Obama team have inherited from the Bush administration seem almost too daunting to address successfully: a war raging in two countries, a legacy of torture and secret prisons, a dismantling of the regulatory apparatus, a poisonous inequality that allocates resources to the rich and misery to the poor, an imperial presidency that shredded the balance of power, a looming ecological apocalypse, a ruined reputation abroad and a financial crisis that is almost unprecedented in American history - policies and conditions that have brought great suffering to millions of Americans and many millions more throughout the world. But the crisis that is most often forgotten or repressed in the daily headlines of gloom is the war that is being waged at home, primarily against young people, who have historically been linked to the promise of a better life, one that they would both inherit and reproduce for future generations. In a radical free-market culture, when hope is precarious and bound to commodities and a corrupt financial system, young people are no longer at risk: They are the risk; young people are no longer troubled; they are trouble.

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