VLVL2 (3): The Snitch System (part 1)

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of pynchonoid
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 11:08 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: VLVL2 (3): The Snitch System (part 1)
> 
> One side effect of the war on Iraq is to radicalize
> young people again. Almost every kid at my son's high
> school walked out to join the protests in downtown San
> Francisco the day the war started, and they take it as
> a given that the government is lying to them about the
> war. I recently had a chance to hear from a bunch of
> teenagers from all over Northern California and
> Nevada, including small towns and rural areas, enough
> to know that it's not just the private school SF &
> Berkeley kids who feel this way. It's a promising
> sign, imo.
> 

"Right young things"
Jul 24th 2003 
>From The Economist

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%29HH%28P17%20%21%20%
21%2E%0A  (subscription)

...

George Bush's presidency is producing a tremor similar to the Reagan
youthquake of the 1980s. The College Republicans have tripled their
membership in the past three years, increasing their chapters from 409 to
1,148 and recruiting 22,000 new members in 2002 alone. They now have more
than 100,000 members, many in the most unlikely places. At the University of
California at Berkeley, there are now 500 Young Republicans and a
conservative newspaper, the California Patriot. At a recent convention of
Californian Young Republicans in Berkeley (entitled "behind enemy lines"),
several hundred enthusiasts marked the 34th anniversary of the People's Park
riots by descending on the park to mount a noisy display of patriotism
(awakening the local homeless from their mid-day naps in the process). They
waved flags, chanted "USA" and sang the "Star-Spangled Banner". "Like the
marines rolled into Baghdad a few weeks ago to liberate the city, we rolled
into Berkeley ready for a fight," as one put it.

All this coincides with a general rightward shift in young people's views.
Bob Dole lost the 18-29-year-old vote by 19 percentage points; Mr Bush lost
by two points. Students have been sceptical about bossy governments for
years. Now they are increasingly sceptical about the "Ab Fab" values of the
1960s generation-particularly in regard to casual sex and abortion-and
increasingly enthusiastic about America's use of military might. A poll by
Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April found that
three-quarters of students trusted the armed forces "to do the right thing"
either all or most of the time. In 1975 the figure was about 20%. Another
poll, by the University of California at Los Angeles, found that 45% of
freshmen supported an increase in military spending, more than double the
figure in 1992.

...

The Harvard Institute of Politics found two-thirds of students supporting
the war in Iraq. Pro-war groups sprouted in such liberal campuses as
Brandeis, Yale and Columbia. At Amherst College many students were noisily
furious when 40 teachers paraded into the dining hall with anti-war slogans.

...