I think that the real ‘conspiracy’ here is not by the military.
This focus on identity politics is not the powers that be priming people for another war, it is a capitulation by the youth to the powers that be.
In the pre corporate era people were fighting over real life issues. The 60s in America people (not just young people) were fighting the state to end apartheid, military adventurism, nuclear war, drug prohibition, homophobia and many more things.
A lot of these were victories for the people. Racism and homophobia are now illegal and socially unacceptable, restricted drugs are not as prohibited as they were, the military still has insane power, but they could not do a draft now like Vietnam etc
If you compare that with now, the real issues like the environment, corporate control of government, the wealth gap etc just seem so big and unsolvable that they don’t motivate young people. And the political class are so far removed and incompetent that it just feels futile protesting about the environment or Amazon, as if voting could change that. Generally the whole ‘End of History’ idea came true in a weird way. We all know that we are heading for disaster, but we find it impossible to imaging anyone doing anything about it.
Because young people are so alienated, they are not motivated by trying to change the US government, in the same way that they don’t feel motivated to change the Chinese government. What could they possibly hope to do?
So what they do think that they can change and are motivated by is this petty identity politics rubbish. They really can have an effect by calling someone racist or ….phobic, this does affect older people, especially boomers who don’t understand it, but they are generally proud of the 1960s which was for sure full of positive things.
It is also harking back to that time for young people. It looks so easy from 2021 to be on the right side of history in the 60s. There was official racism, sexism, homophobia, and just a general chauvinism that was out in the open and in the law and needed to be destroyed.
Now all of that stuff is illegal and you get these incredibly convoluted ‘if you find sex changes weird you are scum’ arguments. Or on the right, young people seem to be obsessed with cancel culture more than anything structural. It’s easy low hanging fruit, to protest against the environment or Amazon would have higher stakes because there is a chance of it becoming important and having real life stakes, all of this stuff like Blue hair and 3 genders is just something to laugh about when they are older.
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