Welcome, Anon. This is some fascinating stuff. I was in Straight, Inc. from `80 - `82. Lot of similarities.
Antibody?, you know me too well! :wink:
I don't think it's a lack of state oversite. I think these are really local matters that have not been attended. I think the reason they have not been attended goes back to a bit of slight of mind played on the American ppl (and many other good countries before us)
The plan seems to have been to find an issue that would expand Socialist authority to unimaginable lengths but that the right would embrace like a long lost child.
And so we have the invention of a mythical counterculture that seems to be identified by any and all things that might excite the interest of a young person. And it's all taboo. It's so obvious in a place like So. Florida. There's a beach that's unofficially reserved for retirees. Since it would be illegal under their own age discrimination laws to officially ban children from the beach, they can't exactly say it. But, when I first moved into the Deerfield area, I found out about the policy.
Anyone w/ kids should go to the north side of the peer. On the south side, there are rules like no bikes, no kites, no beach balls and no floatation devices of any kind. But they can't
say "no kids allowed" so, instead, a young and well built lifeguard
runs from her tower to stop you before you can spread out a towel to inform you of the rules.
Young people who do not identify strongly w/ the White Anglo Saxon Protestant ideal are dangerous animals to be controled. They're not really human, after all, and these longsuffering martyrs are spending their best years fighting to make them human again. We don't want to know the details of how they go about it.
I think I understand why So. Florida is so prone to this kind of mental illness. It's marketed predominantly to people who value low heating bills over having a direct hand in raising grandkids. But I see the seeds of that kind of thinking. I'm as sensitive to it as a Cuban to Communism. :wink:
That, not a lack of regulation, is the root of the problem as I see it.
It is already illegal to do many of the things that pass for normal in the cloistered culture of the Troubled Parent/Private Teen Prison industry. Those laws are not enforced because of a cultural issue.
What we need is a way to explain to the conservatives that the drug war and the war on young people who ask too many questions is the pan-ultimate New Deal program. "Better living through oursourcing private, family matters". Rich ppl think they're safe cause they can send their kids off to a private facility. But it's those same laws and enforcement standards that send poor kids to prison that are fueling the market for these programs.
It is, in fact, the largest, most expensive failed aspect of the New Deal and they should not embrace it.
When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.
-- Bill Clinton, 3-22-94
