The Millennial Landslide

Telling Us What We Don't Want to Hear

This has been something that I have thought about quite a bit and used to defend my case for Barack Obama. These 'conservatives' that ran on fiscal responsibility and foreign policy prudence, and have lead us into this insurmountable budget deficit the last 8 years never challenged the American public to do anything, or to sacrifice anything. Coming from a generation that doesn't know what this experience feels like, but hearing stories of the sacrifices of the greatest generation (WWI-II) makes me wonder if we are a nation that could be told what we don't want to hear anymore. The politicians love preaching to the toughness of the American people, but are we really? Joe Biden hinted at this last week saying that it was a patriotic duty to pay taxes, that caused uproar, but it was a hint at the challenge. The challenge we have begun to shoulder under the Bush administration is a budget deficit that has swollen to $10.6 Trillion. If that seems hard to grasp it looks like this:

$10,600,000,000,000.00 

With all that has gone on within the credit markets and the proposed bailout plan from the government, that will ratchet up to approximately $11.3 Trillion.

$11,300,000,000,000.00

Someone needs to tell us what we don't want to hear. Someone, preferably a politician, that holds, or will hold the power to do something about it, needs to tell us we have to start paying for this. Someone has to tell us that if we don't start paying for it and restoring the confidence in our government's financial standing and worthiness of our economy in the view of the rest of the world (i.e. international investors), it will continue to decay. Except it won't decay quickly, it will slowly decline and diminish, like a small leak in a tire, while different economic sectors/industries eat away at each other (retail, energy, housing, auto, health care). Only then, when the Gaps, Home Depots, and Chilis, become a lot harder to find, will we be told that something is wrong and a lifestyle change may be coming. As Allen Greenspan said last week, our nation absolutely cannot afford John McCain's tax policy (continuing Bush tax cuts without any significant cuts in spending) We have to start paying soon. Its hard to understand how anyone could logically come to the conclusion that a country could spend $410 Million a day on a war and somehow think that it could cut taxes, while letting a deficit balloon out of control. Maybe this is a start, Tom Friedman goes further, he knows its no laughing matter.

After last night I craved for 'hope'

After the MSM reaction to Palin's speech last, which they felt the need to ignore everything they had been uncovering the past 5 days and come to the conclusion that one fiery speech means she's a formidable candidate, I needed a reprieve. I dug into my Obama speech archives, I needed, I hate to say it, but I needed some hope. I needed to read something that washed away the cynicism and slime of division that this party has represented for so long. I needed something that reminded me that we still had a chance to say goodbye to all that a couple months from now. I ended up settling on Mr. Obama's address at Ebenezer Church -The Great Need of the Hour: 

Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans... But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts. It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart - that puts up walls between us. We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do.

There was no broadening of anything last night but division, division of our parties and of our ideas. There was no mention of a unified country to march towards making America great again, it was our plan and their plan, choose one. Thats what their party and their strategy has been for these past few elections, I know, I was a part of it. Obama opened my eyes and my mind to dispel the arrogance and ignorance the republican party had been feeding me for so long. This morning, after watching all of those tired republican dividing attack lines with the same old sleazy smile delivery, it feels so good to have escaped when I did..

My Generation Spoke

I wrote this after the Iowa Caucus (before I entered the blogosphere) and as we look back, we see that night as the launch of the legitimacy and competency of the Obama candidacy. Last night that candidacy was affirmed and celebrated, rightfully so, it was the largest and most sophisticated of any political campaign in the history of our country, and its not over yet...

January 3, 2008

I sat here tonight watching my generation stand up (in whatever small part) to make their voice heard on a national (in some parts global) level. I write to you as a 24 year old lifelong conservative, who much like yourself supported Bush in his early years but grew weary of his faith based motives suffocating our basic faiths in the American system domestically and abroad. I guess the biggest thing that made me smile tonight is that hope for a united America seemed to win for once. I have watched politicians (in my short life of following politics) get up and tell me they will get past partisan politics, but there was something inside of me, deep down, from I don't know where, that told me not to believe it. It told me they couldn't escape the chains and shackles of our modern Political system. Something that told me it could never happen with the type of country we had morphed into. The type of country that could give more daily hits to people.com than thenytimes.com. That is what saddened me about my generation, its what saddened me about the American political system its what I thought I would have to witness the remaining years of my life.

 

But tonight sitting here watching that Senator from my hometown of Chicago, I smiled wide and hard, and I felt that joy release from that uneasy feeling I had deep down inside me... I don't know if you can put a price on that. It was that joy that completely reversed the tables, that made that cynicism I had for my generation turn to optimism. I sit here accepting the notion that the people of my generation may not read, understand, and discuss the headlines of the New York Times more than they do People Magazine (at least for the near future). But I think what happened in Iowa tonight deserves a turn of the head, a raise of the eyebrow, a pause... from us young voters outside of Iowa to those who stood up for a valuable democratic process inside Iowa. It deserves that because it shows us the meaning of a voice in democracy, the power it can have within our nation and within our world. That's what came out of me tonight, my HOPE is that it was mutual.

Music Mandate

I have followed/bought/been obsessed with - Girl Talk for a while now. Gregg Gillis was a biomedical engineer in Pittsburgh while he worked on his creations, now spanning 4 albums with the recent release of Feed the Animals (name your price), he has created something that is hard for Millennials to turn away from. Girl Talk creates mash-ups of hip hop, indie rock, dance, pop, and dozens of subgenres together.

Girl Talk's last album, Night Ripper, is a mash-up masterpiece. Composed of 16 continuous dance tracks featuring 167 artists and dozens of subgenres, the album's samples are so subtly integrated that they are often difficult to discern. One track seamlessly splices indie rockers Neutral Milk Hotel with rapper Juelz Santana; another fades James Taylor's "Your Smiling Face" into 50 Cent's "In Da Club." Rolling Stone,Spin, and Blender magazines put Girl Talk on the national scene in 2006 when they included Night Ripper on their "best albums of the year" lists.

From Chris Bodenner (via The Daily Dish)

Girl Talk embodies the Millennial Generation like no other artist.  An archaeologist from the future could find no greater musical artifact than Night Ripper or Feed The Animals, which feature music from the 80s (new wave, gangsta rap), 90s (grunge, Dirty South) and 00s (emo, crunk).  Much of the fun is recognizing songs you haven't heard since middle school.  But his albums aren't just nostalgic soundtracks; their ingenuous genre-blending makes them far greater than the sum of their parts.  And Girl Talk would hardly have been possible without the generation-defining Internet.  Online file-sharing allowed him to get almost any song for free.  Editing software on his laptop (which he uses at live shows) allowed him to splice and dice music without the need for expensive studio equipment.  And of course blogs and websites made word-of-mouth and distribution far easier for an amateur with a day job.

Also, I can't help but notice parallels between his music and the cultural atmosphere surrounding Obama.  At age 46, Obama certainly isn't a Millennial.  But his campaign -- buoyed by young fans and volunteers -- embodies that generation in so many ways, as does Girl Talk.  Obama is a young, diverse, and unique politician running an innovative, grassroots campaign that thrives offs the Internet.  Similarly, Girl Talk is a young, innovative, Internet-based artist whose level of sampling is unique and incredibly diverse -- racially and stylistically.  And both Obama and Gillis draw from the same demographics: African-Americans and young liberal whites.  Plus, they both put on killer live shows.  (Incidentally, nearly half of the songs on Obama's iPod -- including Jay-Z, Elton John, and the Stones -- are sampled on the last two Girl Talk albums.)

More from Chris  here

Girl Talk Videos - enjoy