Originally posted by Saintaw
If you look at this BBS, I'd say yes, very much.
Of course they are! I was at the mall just a few hours ago. Nothing but teens with table cloths over their faces, holes cut out for the eyes, and mock-up dynamite clusters strapped to their chests. They were burning flags, chanting various slogans in near perfect synchronization and holding an effigy of somebody in a noose. I'd tell you what they were chanting, but I couldn't make it out over the clamour of pre-ban assault rifles being fired into the air en masse.
This BBS is no indication of anything going on in the minds and hearts of America's youth. If anything, the teens in this country are clueless and indifferent to what's happening in the Middle East. It touches them, at the most, for a few minutes per day, which is about 1/100 the time they spend zoning out on their various pop-culture icons and idols. So long as 50 Cent and Christina Aguilera keep putting out albums, so long as their little girlfriends and boyfriends keep returning their text-messeges, so long as their weed supply from Canada and Humbolt doesn't dry up, the bulk of our youth are perfectly happy in their isolated little world.
Before anyone decides to burn
me in effigy, I will radily acknowledge that while this may not go for everyone, it is certainly the norm.
On a personal note, I would like to say that even if they weren't indifferent, I seriously doubt they'd be as vehement as their ME counterparts. America's youth has the benefit of a decent quality of life, which eats into their potential hatred quite a bit. Back in 2001, not long after the attacks, I myself was relatively fresh out of my teenage years. I remember hanging out in a bar one night, in Hollywood, and getting wasted amidst a group of Arab-Americans in their early 20s. THere was no throwing of glasses or exchanges of epithets. The gist of our drunken conversation was, basically, 'why do we have to live with this?' Even if we'd inherited a reason to suspect from our parents, we'd never found our own reason to hate each other. We saw each other at that bar, spent time together, maybe even took the first steps to becoming friends, and yet the world didn't end. Why can't those in power, those in positions of authority think and act similarly? I remember, however hazily, leaving that night and thinking that perhaps the succeeding generations would be more like us, less like those preceeding. Now, years later, with my own opinions galvanized towards the negative, I'm wondering what those young Arabs are thinking at this very moment.
