There are many ways to take away a young person's freedom. If he is poor you can send him to a war where the enemy uses improvised explosive devices or human shields, or where we clear the vegetation with napalm, and then if he isn't killed watch him try to get over PTSD his whole life and never really make it home. Or you can criminalize whatever he uses to make poverty bearable, and then make the color of his skin or the neighborhood he's in probable cause so you can arrest him and lock him up someplace where he will learn the true meaning of violence and hopelessness. If he is middle class (if there's such a thing in this country today,) it is really easy. Just convince him to borrow astronomical sums of money to "buy" a house that is just a little too expensive for him to afford and then watch him beat himself up with feelings of inadequacy while he runs at full speed on a hamster wheel to try and pay for the house he can't afford, until his kids need thousands of dollars for college, when he can re-mortgage the house when it was finally almost paid off and start the cycle over again in his fifties. If he is rich, send him to a "prestigious" college for an MBA and teach him how to get richer gambling with other peoples' money but make the rules of the gambling game such that it is impossible to ever succeed with integrity. Then watch him become a living ghost with no soul because you've taken his soul. We've become very good, as a "culture," at taking away young peoples' freedom and never giving them a chance to get it back.

Thursday, January 19th 2012