[Blarg]

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Okay, fashion is always stupid, new communication technologies are always the end of civility, new music is always artless trash. We all agree on that. What about the stuff that's specific to this particular (my) generation?

Here's one thing that I've noticed in myself: I did most of my growing up in the 90's, which was basically a golden age technologically, economically, etc. It's very hard now for me to recognize that anything is wrong - and even harder to recognize that somebody should do something about it - with regards to the big picture, politics or whatever. I loved Bill Clinton back then (though now I've been infected with 2p2's ACism), and that affects me today, when I know I should hate a lot of the things the government does, but it's hard to muster up the energy to care, because it's not natural to me.

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Letting yourself be swayed by particular clever or charismatic characters is a classic youth vulnerability. It can be hard to realize and thoroughly integrate that many charming people who seem in a number of ways worthy of admiration can in fact be a-holes and blockheads on any number of levels. We want our heroes and we want them whole! And we'd like to be similarly uniformly good or smart or accomplished ourselves. Unfortunately, the less scrutiny given most of the people we admire, the better, and you have to learn to pick and choose what is really admirable from the smelly gunk that even the most persuasive wallow in just like the more recognizably ordinary do. Just as we ourselves often benefit from being seen with rose-colored glasses, and certainly will as we age and accumulate mistakes and things that can't be taken back.

I hope something like 2+2 isn't sufficient to substantially reform one's politics. Because for all it's other virtues, it's still kind of a go-to place for douchebags and snarky over-privileged guys with little life experience.