Um, well, ... you see ...

 

First I read this: "Dear Generation Z, Where Are You?" by Michael Albert of "Z" fame.  In this essay he asks why they aren't out protesting:

Great. But Gen Z, you are 70 million strong. 70 million. Where are you? First one, then another.

I tell myself you are preparing yourselves. You are meeting to get your arguments in order.  You will soon burst amorously onto the activist scene. Trump to savages education. Trump exiles students. Did Trump’s troops grab you? Grab a classmate? Grab someone across town? Trump commands whole universities to bend a thousand knees and some rush to do so. Are you at one of those? Are you applying to attend? Are you at work wondering who gets fired next? You must be minutes away from boiling over, mustn’t you?

As students still in high school or college or as young employees I tell myself you are meeting in corridors, dining halls, and even bus stations. I tell myself you are talking, talking, planning, planning. The lid will soon blow off. But will it? Where are you?

NYC, SF, DC, and countless towns from sea to muddy sea display white-haired demonstrators galore. Oldsters march forth on wobbly knees. They carry signs. They know their song well. Their homes are starting to reverberate with committed conversation like colleges ought to. Wonderful. But dear Gen Z, you are 70 million strong. 70 million. Your knees don’t wobble. What is in your minds? What is your song? Where are you? 

There's two reasons for the absence of young people.  The first is that a multi-decade campaign conducted by skilled professionals who refine their techniques constantly, have brainwashed the population into individualism, apathy, cowardice and hedonism.  The second reason is because milling about in large groups "demanding" things from oligarchs, and threatening them with NOTHING if those "demands" are not met, is a complete and utter waste of time.  As are bullshit threats of "general strikes" and "revolutions."

Then, a day or two later (which is today) I read this: "When Politics Leaves Reality Behind".

Sacramento (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The traditional left–right political spectrum no longer captures the forces driving division in America today. That model works when we’re dealing with competing ideologies and when ideological disagreement is the primary driver of division in society. But today, we face something more destabilizing: a profound rupture in shared reality.

Large segments of the population have become so deeply immersed in extreme ideologies that their perception of reality has been reshaped to align with those beliefs. This is not merely a clash of ideas—it’s a clash of worlds. We are not debating different policy views within a common factual framework; we are facing competing realities, where one side’s convictions are increasingly untethered from empirical evidence. This isn’t just polarization—it’s a fragmentation of the truth itself. In this environment, facts are malleable, and conspiracies flourish.

...

But when political identity is rooted in an alternate reality, even a legitimate electoral loss is interpreted as evidence of conspiracy. In such a worldview, opponents are not seen as competitors in a democratic process, but as enemies within posing existential threats who must be defeated and eliminated.  ... Defeat is never accepted—only explained away by invoking a rigged system or a corrupt establishment.

...

And navigating this crisis requires more than policy debate or electoral strategy to outvote the extremes. It demands a reckoning with the very nature of truth, legitimacy, and the psychological grip of conspiratorial thinking. It requires rebuilding a shared reality, restoring trust in institutions, and addressing the emotional and psychological forces that make conspiracy theories so appealing. 

But what is this reality-based alternative?  The Democratic Party USA and its idiotic "Russiagate" narrative to explain Hillary Clinton's self-inflicted election loss?  The party that recently tried to tell us that Joe Biden wasn't senile and that Kamala Harris wasn't a shit-head?  "Restoring trust in institutions"?? Like what?  The CIA?  The FBI?  The corporate media?  All the institutions that have constantly lied to us about everything and that are (to a great degree) dedicated to exploiting us and confusing us?

My response to both of these essays is that we need a serious strategy with realisitic tactics for a genuine revolutionary transformation of our society.