Politics & Culture

Zero-sum politics

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Radio commentary earlier this week from Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, struck a nerve. Gingrich posited the thesis that the soul of global democracy is locked in a long-running struggle between those who value process — even if it should result in a suboptimal result — versus those who favor certain outcomes even if the pursuit of those aims conflicts with standard democratic process.

I must admit to nodding in agreement with Gingrich’s claim. Take, for example, the U.S. response to the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Clinton administration’s position was to treat the 1993 bombing as a law-enforcement problem, complete with indictments and due process of law, despite the stakes raised by the terrorists. The Bush administration’s position was to treat the 2001 attack as an act of war, complete with military deployment and congressional resolutions authorizing the use of force abroad — evidentiary standards be damned.

And the process-versus-outcome dichotomy is apparent from the criticisms of the war on terror. The process fetishists are apoplectic over the Guantanamo detainees, over the apparent lack of WMD discovered in Iraq, over the alleged unilateralism of the U.S. effort to remove Saddam Hussein, over the ways that women aren’t given a stronger voice in the new government in Afghanistan. Even the thought of a female soldier putting underwear on the head of a prisoner is enough to engender a political crisis of the first rank. The outcomes advocates, for their part, are angry that America isn’t building a wall along the Rio Grande, that the U.S. Marine Corps hasn’t leveled Tehran, that the Palestinians haven’t been bulldozed into submission. They’re even cranky that President Bush is engaging diplomatically with North Korea instead of sending in the cavalry.

What to make of all of this?

I suspect Gingrich makes a wise point with his observation. But it’s also generally true that there are two kinds of people in the world — those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. However useful of a paradigm the process-versus-outcome argument may be, it’s only one possible way among many (and limited by virtue of its binary construction) to view the Western response to Islamofascism.

Democracy functions best when it is muscular in its own defense and generous in the protections afforded by its laws.

Surely, we can have a political system that doesn’t view justice and security as a zero-sum game?

Personal, Philosophy, Politics & Culture

Yet more errata

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Time for another update. Woo hoo!

1. I passed the National Healthcare Quality Board’s certification exam on Friday — thus, I am now a “certified professional in healthcare quality,” with the ability to add CPHQ after my name in professional correspondence.

2. Had dinner last week with my mother, grandmother and aunt. Quite pleasant. Granny seems to be settling in well to her new condo.

3. A friend put me into an interesting ethical dilemma last week. She and I had lunch one day, and she casually mentioned what should have been a highly confidential HR matter at work — a matter that could potentially impact me and my boss and my entire division. What to do? I didn’t solicit the information, but once in my possession, I incurred a duty to act on it so as to avoid a potential problem down the road. I occasionally hear things that I shouldn’t know, and I just file them away without further relaying. But this was different. Ultimately, I mentioned it to my boss (who was quite correctly horrified that I knew); she is better positioned than I to minimize the potential of a future problem. That said, I absolutely hated to tell her. Workplace gossip has its place, and sometimes sharing certain types of information can serve a useful social purpose. But some things should never be the subject of gossip.

3. It feels like Washington is slowly merging with Hollywood. Showboating, superficiality and irrationality are the rule of the day, and even traditional sources of wisdom (e.g., National Review) are becoming predictable in tone as well as substance. The increasing polarization of the ideological spectrum is making the political space more shrill and less interesting. While the egos fight, the mild voices of reason (no matter their place on the axes) are being shouted out. What a shame; some of today’s political controversies are not insignificant.

4. A while ago, I stopped my participation in all of the political simulations in which I had played (some, for years). I broke trend a few weeks ago to assist in the development of a simulation called the “Commonwealth of Antibia” — a constitutional monarchy based on a completely made-up nation-state, with its own history, laws, and culture. My role was to serve as the first High Lord Treasurer and Antibian Economic Director, building the game’s economy. I have since resigned from Antibia because of irreconcilable differences with one of the founders, but the experience has prompted some reflection:
– The desire for control is often rooted in the very best of intentions. However, no person can control everything, and the less willing people are to give up control for the sake of the greater good, the more likely it is that the greater good will suffer. Sometimes, there must be an environment where no one has control, in order to maximize the odds that the free marketplace of ideas will promote the wisest course of action or development — think, for example, of a river. You can dam it to control it, or you can let it run its course and accommodate whatever waterways should result. Western Michigan University’s first president, Dwight Waldo, understood this. After the first buildings were erected, he decided to wait to lay the sidewalks — he wanted to see where students and faculty actually walked, and then he paved those trails. He did NOT pave what he wanted and expect that people would follow those paths.
– Authority without responsibility is meaningless. Those tasked with action must have the ability to complete that action on their own initiative, without being micromanaged by those who are not part of the process. While it’s certainly possible for authority to be centralized in a small, highly functioning group, authority cannot be so decentralized such that the process itself confers authoritative legitimacy. PEOPLE, and not processes, hold authority.
– Proceduralism is not a guarantee of fairness. Just because a system has a series of checks and balances doesn’t mean that the right outcome will be inevitable, or even better than the alternative. A system that depends on consensus can be better than a system that relies on individual power — or not. It all comes down to who sits in the majority. And if the majority is a cohesive group that does not welcome outside input, then no amount of procedural recourse will be enough to ensure an outcome that wasn’t preordained by that majority.
– Competition is healthy. Stifling the competitive urge in order to foster a spirit of cooperation will remove a critical aspect of community that provides the more cooperatively minded with a foil and a dynamic that keeps the community moving.
– Complexity can lead to richness, but it can also lead to disorientation. In general, a system should tolerate only as much complexity as is needed to promote a goal; there is decreasing marginal utility to complexity that can be counterproductive if unchecked by common sense.
– Limiting access to power means that there is less of an incentive for competitive-minded people to participate in a system.

I wish Antibia well, whatever should happen.

Personal, Politics & Culture

Inward focus

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I get a bit cranky when driving in certain parts of the greater Grand Rapids area. A road upon which I frequently travel has several places where it widens from two lanes to five or six, and then back to two. This is fine, except for the idiots who pull into the outside lanes and try to speed ahead of the sane drivers. I don’t let them merge; in fact, sometimes I’ll floor it just so they can’t get past me. Petty? Perhaps. I’m probably not teaching them anything, yet it is satisfying.

But self-centeredness is not limited to public thoroughfares.

Some interesting dynamics have been playing out among some friends and family. Nothing specific worth mentioning in a public entry, but I’ve noticed that one theme seems to pervade a lot of the interpersonal challenges recently swirling around me lately — that people get so focused on their own needs and wants that they don’t recognize how much they’re imposing on others. It’s as if they cannot — or will not — look beyond their own preferences and sensibilities to understand that their behaviors are causing problems for others.

A healthy sense of self will, of course, entail some degree of protection for personal proclivities. And no person can be perfectly empathetic all of the time. Nevertheless, it is both astonishing and frustrating that so many otherwise intelligent people seem incapable of stepping outside of their own worldview.

Politics & Culture

Activism

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I try to keep my e-mail as spam-free as possible by generally declining to sign up for on-line petitions, and other such rubbish. At some point, however, I must have agreed to something or other, because for the last few years, I’ve been the recipient of occasional e-mail action alerts from the American Family Association.

AFA, and groups like it, are entitled to generate as much support for their advocacy programs as they can muster. By nature, I am strongly disinclined toward activism in any stripe — I’m just as aghast at the tactics and deceptive, shrill vitriol of those whose positions I favor as those whose positions I oppose — preferring instead to change what I can and stop worrying about the rest. But I don’t mind people trying to drum up support (or opposition) to various questions regarding the sociopolitical order. The free marketplace of ideas is one of mankind’s highest achievements, after all.

That said, it’s interesting to see the outrage that comes through in some of the AFA missives. Today’s message recommended a boycott of Ford Motor Company for its advertisements in the pro-gay magazine Out. AFA suggests that the collection of beliefs and practices that they lump under the rubric “pro-gay lifestyle” are, by definition, opposed to the interests of America and are poisonous to the health of America’s families. Whether AFA’s criticism has merit is beyond the scope of this rumination; what is significant is that the central question of contention — the way homosexuality and homosexuals integrate into the body politic — is substituted with an asserted answer that cuts off rational debate.

I don’t read that particular magazine, nor do I drive a Ford product. So I really don’t have a dog in that fight. Yet ….

The singular weakness of democracy as a system of government is that political power can be wielded by those whose opinions are poorly informed by fact or reasoned debate, and from which, there can be no further appeal from the rule of the mob. Don’t like the result of a democratic process? Tough.

I am not so naive that I believe there was a golden age of democracy, when politicians were of pure heart and the people were genuinely interested in effecting the sagest policies. But politics informed by rational, honest, respectful debate has a much better track record of leading to prudent outcomes than, say, leaving the matter to whichever faction of the people can shout with the loudest voice.

Too many commentators have wasted too many words lamenting the sorry state of civil society across the Western world, for me to bother hitching a ride on that bandwagon. Yet the solution offered by many — stronger activism, “more” democracy — is hardly a viable response to cultural and intellectual malaise.

Today’s activism, regardless of its origin on the ideological spectrum, is too comfortable with assertion and fallacious argumentation to provide an effective input to the political decision-making process. In the 2004 election cycle, for example, the half-truths and insinuations of groups as diverse as “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and MoveOn.org twisted the public discourse over which candidate would lead the federal executive with the greatest diligence and prudence. We had lots of debate, but the national conversation was led by activists who had no interest in the debate itself but in achieving a foregone conclusion. Lost in the middle were those who wanted better information to form their own conclusions.

The more cynical-minded might question whether advocacy-driven public debate is (a) an inevitable consequence of free speech, or (b) an inevitable consequence of having a critical mass of citizens tune out of the political process. And perhaps the cynics may have a point.

But all I can state for certain is this: When groups like AFA and others ad nauseum deluge the public square with assertions that cut off debate and then expect me to agree with their conclusions, a critical ingredient of informed, democratic decision-making has been removed from the mix.

I might be old fashioned, but I can’t say I’m too happy about that.

Politics & Culture, Writing, Editing & Journalism

Punditry, and other crimes against reason

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For the sake of argument, let us concede that the first and most sacred duty of the press is to inform the public. Reasonable people might then suggest that the information presented by the mainstream media ought to be as objective as possible, relaying facts and leaving commentary to editorial writers and to the people themselves. But then, it doesn’t appear that the reasonable people are in charge of America’s newsrooms.

I’ve lost count of the number of loaded, negative adjectives describing the Bush administration in stories that putatively are intended to relay facts about the nomination of Gen. Hayden to serve as the new CIA chief.

Those who have spent time in a newsroom are hip to the technique of “angling” a story — that is, to find some aspect to a story and to emphasize that aspect during the writing. Finding an angle can bring context and meaning to personal-profile and human-interest stories, but in the setting of straight news reporting, the less steep the angle, the better.

Yet political pieces datelined from the District of Columbia seem to share a uniform angle — that the GOP is in trouble, that the Bush administration is in chaos, that the economy sucks, that Iraq is a quagmire from which there is no escape.

Perhaps these things are true; perhaps not. Regardless, news coverage of the federal government should not be written as if these things are conventional wisdom beyond all doubt. To do so is to display the very sort of bias that makes readers question the veracity and the fairness of the press.

It doesn’t require a genius IQ to understand that recent shifts in technology and ideology are leading to systemic changes in the way America’s fourth branch of government responds to the world around it. Blogging and conservative talk radio have altered the dynamic of the people’s relationship to the press. That the press seems incapable, in a broad sense, of adapting to the changes to its environment does not mean that the “mainstream media” is destined to collapse. In time, that-which-is will supplant that-which-is-desired as the central motif of news reporting. And that will be a good day, when it finally dawns.

But for now, the shrillness of the thinly veiled commentary in D.C. news stories suggests that agenda-driven news reporting is still very much the rule of the day in our nation’s newsrooms. This is problematic in that much of what gets reported will therefore be greeted with skepticism by people who are sensitive to press bias.

It seems, to this former newspaper editor, that the desire to effect outcomes desired by the class of people who gravitate toward journalism as a profession, is proving too tempting for too many. I can sympathize with this, as I’ve been in that boat. When I was a columnist, and when I became an opinion editor, I had my own agenda that I allowed to influence what I wrote and what I allowed to appear on my pages. It wasn’t until I became an editor-in-chief, and had to deal with well-intentioned by nevertheless slanted reporting by my staff writers, that I became sensitive to the need to maintain the reputation of the franchise through well-reasoned and balanced commentary and through news stories that not only avoided inappropriate angles on a per-story basis, but also through news stories that collectively demonstrated a high degree of objectivity. It wasn’t enough to strip editorial comments from news stories; I started tracking the subject-matter of the news pages over time to determine whether we had a content bias.

In fact, we did — we fell victim to “press release syndrome,” which in its most acute phases reduces the news department to covering those things which are fed to them by publicists savvy in the art of media relations. Consequently, we did a lot of pro-gay, pro-environment stories and barely covered things like the state budget, religion, or law enforcement. And trying to get the news department to look beyond the staff’s collective political sense was very difficult.

The problem was that they didn’t believe their beliefs were open to question. Of course we should protect the environment, they’d say. Of course we should support the rights of gays and lesbians to get married to the people they love. Theirs was the default, normative position, and to deviate from it was the real act of politics. Conforming to it was just common sense. And hence, their default position was never really understood to be a political position, and hence they truly believed they were being fair and objective.

So also with most of the inhabitants of America’s newsrooms, I suspect. It takes a certain type of person to be an effective journalist, and conservatives don’t often fit that bill.

But the preferences of the press and the preferences of the people are no longer in sync, and the profusion of alternative media sources is undermining the credibility of the mainstream press.

Will the trend reverse itself? Probably, in time. But until then, we are at great risk that truly significant stories will be over- or under-valued, depending on the reader’s political proclivities, simply because of the source of the information. It’s hard, for example, to expect many conservatives to get upset by a press-driven Bush scandal story after Rather’s memo fiasco and the relentless and fruitless attempt by many commentators to tar Bush with a very broad brush. But if a real scandal should come along, will the fact that the mainstream press will trumpet it mean that the president’s supporters will therefore minimize it?

Press bias has consequences. We may soon be moving into a political climate wherein real matters of substance are obscured because of politicized reporting, and that does not bode well for that first and sacred duty of the press to present the facts as they are and not as reporters and editors may wish them to be.

Philosophy, Politics & Culture

Declining intellectual rigor in the social sciences

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The conservative press has been targeting academia with greater diligence in recent years. Part of this is, I think, the “low-hanging fruit” phenomenon — it’s easy to attack the defenseless. Another part is the perception of some that America’s classrooms are becoming places where correct thinking is more important than thinking correctly.

For my part, I’m happy to occasionally dabble in bromides against the academic Left, but I’ve never believed in a vast conspiracy. I have occasionally been worried about professors being too lenient toward their students, but I never really feared that our academic disciplines are sliding into intellectual incoherence.

Until recently, that is.

I’ve written earlier about articles in “Quality Progress” and the “American Political Science Quarterly.” But the trend continues — another recent publication of the American Political Science Association featured an “analysis” of the voting patterns of the Catholic cardinals who selected Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to be Pope Benedict XVI.

Without question, an analysis of the politics and procedures surrounding the election of a Supreme Pontiff would be a welcome opportunity for discussion and debate. But the attempt at analysis published in the APSA journal was laughable.

My issue wasn’t with the theories presented by the two professors who wrote the article. I have a BA in political science, not a doctorate, and I will not presume to elevate mere disagreement on my part to the level of an indictment of their competence.

No, what was troubling was the assumptions to which the authors quite freely admitted. They clearly predicated their analysis on the belief that regional blocs among the cardinals would be a major factor in the decision-making process; the theory rested on an assumption that the cardinals in each bloc wanted to see one of their own elevated to the Throne of St. Peter — which might be an interesting approach, had the authors bothered to learn anything about Cardinal Ratzinger’s tenure as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

It is a methodological error of the first rank to assume whatever you wish in order to make your analysis work, even if you have to assume facts that are (a) not in evidence or (b) are too inconvenient to research before publishing. The authors made so many assumptions about Church politics that even an amateur Vatican watcher must cringe to see it. Analogously, the work of these professors would be no different from the work of Chinese political scientists analyzing FDR’s four presidential wins without knowing anything about the Great Depression or the Progressive movement. When you supply hypothesis and assume it to be a fact, any theory that would result is simply meaningless. Hell, if I can assume what I wish, then with little effort I can construct a theory of physics that will permit the transmutation of lead into gold with nothing more than a toothpick and a piece of cork. But such assumptions don’t necessarily compel reality to fall into strict conformance.

So, OK. APSA has once again published something that someone with even a limited degree of specialization in the field of study (i.e., the Vatican) could spot as flawed. Does this mean anything?

I think it does. I think there is something significant that ought to be said about junior academics operating on a “publish or perish” tenure track, or senior academics jockeying for greater prestige. And that something is: Quantity is not quality, and any theory is not as good as the right theory.

Political scientists (and philosophers, for that matter) do not serve their disciplines well when they toss out theories uninformed by facts not directly related to the theory. In the case of the Vatican analysis, it makes a very big difference, when accounting for the balloting results for Ratzinger, that in the 1980s the Iron Cardinal had almost by himself destroyed the philosophical bedrock upon which stood so-called liberation theology. It makes a difference that the other leading contenders for the papacy shared liturgical beliefs that stood at odds with many African bishops.

The social sciences are turning into silos, generating theories and texts that make sense from within (provided you don’t ask too many questions about the theories), but which tend to be increasingly uninformed by facts from without. The inevitable conclusion is an growing inability to differentiate between wheat and chaff — and given the climate of academic politics, this may well mean that nonsense will be given carte blanche on our nation’s campuses. To the detriment of future students.

The problem on our college campuses isn’t that the faculty is overwhelmingly Leftist. The problem is that the intellectual rigor of the disciplines — especially in the social sciences — has “gone wobbly,” and there has not yet been a correction. As long as the liberal arts continue to operate on assumption and posturing, students and faculty alike will continue to play the game by the rules in effect at the roll of the dice. We should not be surprised by an all-encompassing relativism that motivates the academic Left, since relativism is the one virtue that protects the status quo from the sorely needed correction. Quite the vicious circle, eh?

Alas, too many opportunists on the Right (save, perhaps, the sainted Harvey Mansfield of Harvard) don’t see the forest for the trees. The would-be slayers of Campus Liberals are focusing on the effects of intellectual decline, and not the causes, so their efforts are unlikely to amount to much.

Long story short … I guess I’m going to read a lot of things in social-science journals that will make me want to cry.

Better buy stock in Kleenex.

Politics & Culture

Lost, Season One

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My dear friend Tony lent me the six-DVD set of the entire first season of ABC’s hit drama, “Lost.” I had heard good things about the show, although I had never seen an episode.

So, I watched the entire set of 24 episodes over two days (yes, at 42 minutes each, that totals roughly 17 hours of television). Jason’s expert opinion: It was well worth the recliner time, and I can’t wait to purchase season two when it’s released.

Some of the hype was just that — hype. There were quite a few enjoyable aspects to the writing, although there were also a few continuity errors that proved mildly distracting (such as the inexplicable lack of evidence of any scarring from the emergency sutures Kate sewed into Jack’s back in the very first episode). But all things being equal, this is probably some of the best prime-time drama to hit the small screen in a while. Let us hope the writers resist the temptation to take an interesting series and turn it into cheese.

Politics & Culture

On the hobgoblin that is “personal preference”

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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Emerson

It is part of human nature to want to understand the world. We scan our surroundings for patterns, and when a pattern is detected, it is placed into a greater pattern — a conceptual schema — that allows us to derive meaning about our environment. This schema, in turn, empowers us to manipulate that part of the universe that falls within our reach.

This process includes, necessarily, a search for consistency. We need some things to be fixed parts of our lives, and of our worldview, in order to have a solid ground upon which we might build the framework of our understanding.

But the search for consistency can lead to an overwhelmingly strong desire for the comfort of predictability, which subsequently can effect a lifestyle narrowly focused on the preservation of personal preferences.

Most of us know people who are imprisoned in this sterile world. They tend to eat the same things, wear the same types of clothes, engage in the same hobbies, follow the same routines, talk about the same narrow range of subjects. They don’t like change, and they don’t like having their preferences foiled. Sometimes, they use their preferences as a weapon — knowingly or unknowingly — in a way that can impose on those around them who are less aggressive in protecting or asserting their own preferences. Often, these preferences are a pretext for, and justification of, a lazy lifestyle, when the subject is unwilling to own up to his laziness. In many cases, their preferences are so deeply and unreflectively assumed that they are blind to the irritation generated in those too civil to confront the occasionally negative aspects of such a preference-driven lifestyle.

I’m growing increasingly weary with this personality type. I know a few people who behave like this. They may have goals and aspirations, but they are, on balance, unwilling to do what is necessary to achieve them — because they are so strongly disinclined from stepping out of their self-defined prison. So they rationalize their present situation in such a way that militates against a change of strategy that would upset their psychological comfort.

I’m the first to admit that there are things I prefer. But, I’ll always try something new or think about things in a new way. Too many won’t do that. And that’s a shame, because even though a bit of consistency is a good thing, too much consistency locks us into the white-bread world of our own devising, from which there is no escape … only the emptiness that comes from existential boredom.

Politics & Culture

On the hobgoblin that is "personal preference"

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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Emerson

It is part of human nature to want to understand the world. We scan our surroundings for patterns, and when a pattern is detected, it is placed into a greater pattern — a conceptual schema — that allows us to derive meaning about our environment. This schema, in turn, empowers us to manipulate that part of the universe that falls within our reach.
This process includes, necessarily, a search for consistency. We need some things to be fixed parts of our lives, and of our worldview, in order to have a solid ground upon which we might build the framework of our understanding.
But the search for consistency can lead to an overwhelmingly strong desire for the comfort of predictability, which subsequently can effect a lifestyle narrowly focused on the preservation of personal preferences.
Most of us know people who are imprisoned in this sterile world. They tend to eat the same things, wear the same types of clothes, engage in the same hobbies, follow the same routines, talk about the same narrow range of subjects. They don’t like change, and they don’t like having their preferences foiled. Sometimes, they use their preferences as a weapon — knowingly or unknowingly — in a way that can impose on those around them who are less aggressive in protecting or asserting their own preferences. Often, these preferences are a pretext for, and justification of, a lazy lifestyle, when the subject is unwilling to own up to his laziness. In many cases, their preferences are so deeply and unreflectively assumed that they are blind to the irritation generated in those too civil to confront the occasionally negative aspects of such a preference-driven lifestyle.
I’m growing increasingly weary with this personality type. I know a few people who behave like this. They may have goals and aspirations, but they are, on balance, unwilling to do what is necessary to achieve them — because they are so strongly disinclined from stepping out of their self-defined prison. So they rationalize their present situation in such a way that militates against a change of strategy that would upset their psychological comfort.
I’m the first to admit that there are things I prefer. But, I’ll always try something new or think about things in a new way. Too many won’t do that. And that’s a shame, because even though a bit of consistency is a good thing, too much consistency locks us into the white-bread world of our own devising, from which there is no escape … only the emptiness that comes from existential boredom.

Personal, Politics & Culture

Generations

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I cut my hand a few days ago while doing the dishes.  No stitches required, although I did take a chunk out of my right hand.  Very bloody … and although it was hardly the end of the world, it was darned inconvenient.

Since my typing ability was curtailed (especially on Friday and Saturday), I spent some time doing a bit of shopping.  One destination was the local mall at Rivertown Crossings.  As I was browsing for books — I ended up buying Milton’s complete poetry, including some Latin stuff — I did some people watching.  I was struck by the increasing sub-specialization of generations.  I have never really identified with a particular generation or social clique, so I don’t have a lot of experience trying to conform to the demands of a particular tribal group.  But that notwithstanding, it’s curious to see how outward appearance is such a strong indicator of social status, and how minor changes of style can fairly clearly signify a narrow age range.

I’m 29 — young enough, I like to think, to recall the early years of my undergraduate experience.  I recall that a person’s appearance helped to define, broadly, his major social group; you could get a basic sense of what kind of person you dealt with depending on whether he wore athletic wear, grunge-style flannel and torn jeans, business-casual attire, etc.  Now, looking at upper-middle-class high-school and early-undergraduate students, I get a sense of just how much more different they are compared to my peer groups at that age.  And it’s not like we’re talking about a million years of separation, either.  There seems to be an increasing specialization of apparel that is, in a broad sense, interesting.  When evaluated with changes in technology (my peers were e-mail whores, whereas preoccupation with instant messaging, SMS notes and community blogging seems to mark today’s youngest adults) and decreasing understanding about the world around them, it seems that there’s a generation shift at work that could potentially rival the Baby Boomer phenomenon.  Not since the ’60s has there been such a complete change of culture within a generation as I think is going on right now.  And the implications of this, if my observations ring true, will rock American society in years to come.