The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are increasingly objectified and disposable.

In any totalitarian society, dissent is viewed as a threat, civic literacy is denounced, and those public spheres that produce engage citizens are dismantled or impoverished through the substitution of training for education.

War at home is matched by a war on youth. I wrote about this recently. Young people graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt, and they are the ones saddled with it. Youth have become indentured servants and that turns them away from public service.

History remains an open horizon that cannot be dismissed through appeals to the end of history or end of ideology.

There is an attempt to deskill teaches by removing matters of conception from implementation. Teachers are no longer asked to be creative, to think critically, or to be creative. On the contrary, they have been reduced to the keeper of methods, implementers of an audit culture, and removed from assuming autonomy in their classrooms.

I also think that one of the things we often fail to realize is that that kind of violence is now legitimated in multiple public spheres.

As the pleasure principle is unconstrained by a moral compass based on a respect for others, it is increasingly shaped by the need for intense excitement and a never-ending flood of heightened sensations.