Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
If you think this world is "hyper-politicized" take another look at tapes of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. When was the last time a student was shot by the National Guard on a college campus (as at Kent State)? Assassinations of the most prominent black leader (King) and a prominent political challenger for the Presidency (Bobby Kennedy)?
I just shake my head at those who think politics today is angry and "polarized". Many times in American history things were a lot worse, from the very beginning (the American Revolution was not universally popular with the colonists) forward.
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Right but actual activist protesters have always made up a pretty small segment of the voting population. Even if their actions are extremely loud and bring lots of attention, I'm not sure that's a measure for how exposed the average person is to politics on a daily basis.
I'd wager the average high school kid who didn't read the newspaper in the morning, maybe heard a bit of the 6 o'clock news during dinner, and caught most of his political discourse from in-person conversations was far less exposed than one today. Anyone interested in politics has an unlimited amount of content at their fingertips, and even those uninterested are bombarded on basically all forms of social media or traditional news.
And what about the last part of that post? This generation never had to go through a draft so their complaints against things like affordable housing, stagnant wages, and growing income equality are invalid? Not sure what the message is there? We've moved beyond involuntarily sending young men off to war so no need to push for any more social progress? WW2 was pretty bad... but you know they never had to live as a serf in feudal Europe so nothing really to complain about.