||| ORCASIONAL MUSINGS BY STEVE HENIGSON |||
“A million kids want to clean up the Earth. A million parents want them to start with their rooms.” —anonymous internet sarcasm
I vividly remember when I was a ‘teen-ager. I was sure that I knew exactly what the whole world was doing wrong, and that I knew how to fix it. I had just learned about Marxian Socialism, and I was absolutely certain, as only a kid can be, that “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” was the complete antidote to grinding poverty, obscene wealth, class warfare, dirty politics, and Republican Presidents.
It took me years to finally understand the realities of economics. The first three jobs I held were pure nepotism, and one of them was even fun, so I learned absolutely nothing from any of them. Only when I was 19, and had to find employment on my own, did I discover that comfortable self-sufficiency would result solely from conscientious hard labor and thoughtful decision making. And Marxian Socialism? It didn’t last through that fourth job, in which some of us peons were union members, and some weren’t. In that case, union membership was a license to goof off, while the rest of us had to work hard or we’d be fired.
Economic philosophy, political activism, and revolutionary plotting have always been the realm of children with the leisure time to discuss these issues. Workers who have livings to earn don’t have time for that kind of thing. But when young people think that they’re striving toward real change, arguing endlessly about exactly how many Socialists can hold a demonstration on the head of a pin, mostly what they’re really doing is narcissistically calling attention to themselves.
Recently, the people in Washington State government who control such things were harangued by a high-school student about preventing children like herself from “vaping.” Her solution (which is now also our Governor’s) is to make it illegal to produce, stock, and sell flavored vapor-inhalation products, from anybody to anybody, in the entire state. Prohibition! Could this be a solution to the problem? Well, let’s see.
Let’s start by putting aside temporarily the fact that adults should be able to make their own decisions about what, and what not, to put into their own bodies. If I understand things correctly, it is already illegal for those under 21 years of age to buy, possess, or use vaping products. It is also illegal for businesses and individuals to sell, or even to give at no cost, vaping materials to minors. You might think that these provisions would suffice, to prevent high schoolers from vaping. But somehow, they’re getting hold of the stuff and they’re doing it.
Are adults making “straw purchases,” in order to provide favored minors with illegal goods? My guess is that this is probably the answer. But it begs a further question: Where are those vaping kids’ parents? Aren’t they aware that their children are ingesting nicotine? I have always thought that parents were supposed to be supervisors, setting limits and exerting social control. Are parents not doing their job? Does a little child have to lead them?
And is that metaphoric little child on the right track? Make a law and it’ll all be fixed? Really? Is someone who is already breaking one law going to be deterred by yet another? What’s to stop foolish adults from buying flavored vaping juices in Idaho, for instance, and bringing them to Washington’s ‘teen-agers? We don’t have customs inspection at the Idaho border. Well, not yet, anyway.
Kids are arrogant with their newly gained knowledge. They don’t yet know what they don’t know. In particular, they don’t yet understand that they lack the wisdom which comes only with experience. Like me with my Socialist, fix-everything dreams, they await the awakening which comes only from a dose of reality.
Steve, as of this moment the age for legally buying any form of nicotine is still 18. When I recall my own lack of adult decision making abilities at that age, coupled with peer pressure and the natural inclination to test the boundaries of mortality, few shenanigans surprise me.
Reformed socialist or not, I maintain a healthy fear of complacency and apathy. Many young people believe the American Dream is just that. It has been modeled for them; giving heart and soul to your job does not guarantee a livable wage or affordable housing.
I say hurray to anyone pushing back against government sanctioned and subsidized companies (parasitic drug dealers) that profit from other’s addictions and/or need to self medicate in order to cope with a seemingly uncompromising world.
As a parent I expected a room to be kept clean, as a child I suggested we keep my door shut if it offended my parent’s sensibilities.
My socialist tendencies have periodic revivals that wake me from my own apathy and remind me that it is always my responsibility to help clean up.
Don’t blame the kid for the current political system’s lack of checks and balances. As a former activist youth (and current activist adult), it sure seems to me like this particular teenager is using her passion to civically engage in a very appropriate manner. Teenagers are supposed to be passionate and foolhardy! Then the adults are supposed to provide a guiding influence — and balance the system. I don’t support the outcome of this teenager’s efforts, but I can applaud her for using the system we have created to make the change she wants to see in the world.
As a parent and a worker holding down a job and a political activist and local Democratic Party official and a householder with no one else doing my daily chores, I wonder at your assertion that political activism is the realm of children. I rather think that in a functional Democracy, political activism is the civic duty of EVERY adult and the price of the privilege of citizenship. We must each make time for it, which takes discipline, organization and persistence. Authoritarian governments don’t require much citizen input, often freeing up workers to work long hours for substandard wages so oligarchs can grow wealthy. I prefer to work long hours in service of democracy. The work hours and wages probably come to similar gross totals, but I prefer a greater degree of self-determination and the constant, fractious dialog about justice and a fair shake
Gotcha–since some kids vape, they’re all socialists, and shouldn’t be speaking out against global climate change.
If this is the “wisdom that comes with experience” they’d be wiser to ignore it, imho.
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” – Churchill
Marxism is the socio-economic equivalent of perpetual motion and fails for the same reason; friction between components. I.e., makers, weary of supporting takers, cease to work.
Marxist solution: to appreciate their privileged position, makers must endure privation in re-education camps before being expunged from the collective. Utopia Achieved – no more makers! The end justifies the means! Eternal Bliss!
Say What?
Karl Marx, much to the dismay of some followers,, was not a Marxist, nor a utopian. He simply recognized that in a world of, what, almost nine billion people (only a couple bil in his time) we had to hang together or we would hang separately. Ben Franklin)
For this reader of Marx his biggest insight was that as the industrial revolution depended upon black bodies, neo liberalism and its demented offspring, libertarianism”, depend upon a slavish dependence on fossil fuels. ‘Hello, Greta.
As David Harvey put it, “In a world of massive inequality built on forms of slavery, libertarianism is simply a massive indulgence.”
The kids are not yet burdened by the bad conscience that attends capitalist accumulation. I would pay attention to the fact that as sentient creatures we can choose how we live.
They won’t have to go as far as Idaho only as far as the closest reservation.