I mean, at least on the surface, things seemed pretty optimistic in the late 1980s through the 1990s, from what I remember. It wasn’t a utopia, but it’s easy to see how there would be less pressure for young people to be involved in politics.
The Cold War ended and the USSR peacefully dissolved, democracy was ascendant, the Good Friday Agreement ended The Troubles, East and West Germany reunified, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone were established, the International Space Station opened an era of international cooperation in peaceful space exploration, life expectancy was up, disposable income was up, new and amazing technologies were developed at record pace, substantially improved treatments for fatal conditions like HIV and cancer were entering the market, we’d nearly cracked the human genome, we’d made great progress in eradicating infectious diseases, people around the world were being lifted out of poverty, crime was down, the Western economy was strong. The world seemed less divided and closer together than ever.
Today, tensions between superpowers are up. Russia and North Korea have renewed the threat of nuclear armed conflict. The UK exited the EU. There’s an obesity crisis. Many of our amazing technologies have turned out to be terribly unhealthy and destabilising. Authoritarianism is on the rise, along with domestic and sectarian terrorism. The Western economy was shattered in 2008 and now there’s a global pandemic. Immigrants fleeing instability in other countries have led to political upheaval and conflict. The US became an unreliable ally. And, above all, the existential threat of climate change looms over their entire future.
Maybe people just got bored? Maybe they don't like peace after all?
> Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.
> Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner.
The Cold War ended and the USSR peacefully dissolved, democracy was ascendant, the Good Friday Agreement ended The Troubles, East and West Germany reunified, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone were established, the International Space Station opened an era of international cooperation in peaceful space exploration, life expectancy was up, disposable income was up, new and amazing technologies were developed at record pace, substantially improved treatments for fatal conditions like HIV and cancer were entering the market, we’d nearly cracked the human genome, we’d made great progress in eradicating infectious diseases, people around the world were being lifted out of poverty, crime was down, the Western economy was strong. The world seemed less divided and closer together than ever.
Today, tensions between superpowers are up. Russia and North Korea have renewed the threat of nuclear armed conflict. The UK exited the EU. There’s an obesity crisis. Many of our amazing technologies have turned out to be terribly unhealthy and destabilising. Authoritarianism is on the rise, along with domestic and sectarian terrorism. The Western economy was shattered in 2008 and now there’s a global pandemic. Immigrants fleeing instability in other countries have led to political upheaval and conflict. The US became an unreliable ally. And, above all, the existential threat of climate change looms over their entire future.