We must really remember that for every person who took out stupid, sub-prime mortgages and lost their blue-collar jobs, there is a crafty banker with a Harvard MBA (a qualification which is basically a leveraged bet on someone becoming a finance director of a large corporation) rubbing his hands with glee as he creates his latest weapon of mass confusion, a derivative based on a forward contract based on an option through an Special Investment Vehicle based in the Cayman Islands or some other tax haven. Sorry, I got carried away with that bit...
Come to think of it, where do the British fit in this imaginary battle between America and Europe? I suggest that the British are indeed stuck in the middle - they want to really have the best of both worlds.
Brits clearly love the US, just ask the Beckham's. Everything is bigger, brighter, and better. But there is every now and again a little stab in the back, although it was more frequent during the Bush Administration. Those 'Yanks' must be pretty stupid to put up with him, some (Slate, 2005) of us argued in Britain. It was a bit awkward when Obama was elected; the French were celebrating the election of an American President - how often has that happened in history? But nevertheless, there exists still an underlying reserve in the British national psychology which contrasts sharply with the brash confidence of America and its young history, where anything is possible - "yes we can!". Hope is clearly not a reliable political currency in British politics, however, where 'austerity cuts' are big, bad, and almost unfathomably depressing; that is just how 'scare-mongering'/good political governance in Britain works these days it seems. Indeed America is a young, and thus naive country - a nation that is powerful but disliked by perhaps the majority of other nations in the world.
This unease about America however illustrates a wider contradictory approach to issues of youth and generational conflict. Yes, the Brits both love and hate youth. Men want to be 'lads' but must still appear respectable under their cheeky facade. Women want to look young but work 12 hours a day to climb the career ladder before contemplating children at a suitable biological age. The vibrance and innocence of youth is replicated at abhorrent School Discos, while 'hoodies' are criticized for being menacing figures of society. Similarly, the Brits love to criticize America's treatment of youth (hyper-sexualized adolescence, the MTV generation which values idiocy above intelligence), but speaks up for their own youth as the 'jilted generation'.
The argument goes that baby-boomers have lived beyond their means, and left the youth of today with no opportunities. They seem to surface over the wider problems in the changing perceptions of youth - are our parents solely responsible for digging the ever-deepening hole of decay and decline that today's youth has slipped into? Has it been forgotten what affect a daily dose of South Park, Grand Theft Auto, torrents, pornography, unemployment benefits, and recreational drugs have done to some parts of the British youth?
Of course in reality it's not as simple as how I've polarised these ideas. But let us ask ourselves this question: Is the generation game skewed by American influence and power?
See relevant links:
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik's "Jilted Generation: How Britain has bankrupted its Youth"
From the publishers Random House: Charles Pierce's "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free"
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