[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by pantophobia

no singular voice hinders many movements, everyone wants to go their own way and doesn't stand up for common causes enough

not to oversimplify, but that has to do with postmodernism, the end of "master narratives", the defeat of communism, the splintering of the left into "issue politics"... you know: one is for the environment, another is for unions, these ones want universal health care, others want pay equality for women, others want gay rights, etc. etc., nobody wants the same thing: a pro-union persoon may not care about the environment, the one who wants pay equality may be for private health care, some people are for gay rights, others for human rights, others for reproductive rights, etc. not all these issues coincide for example, there is a growing environmentalism among religious fundamentalists these days-- it's not just new age hippies or science types. those religious people are also against abortion and a woman's reproductive rights-- how can they join a single party?

the other thing that the internet has brought is the way people work, buy and sell. and with that a growing sense of a) possibilities for independent enterprise (you can start a little company that in 20 years is a giant, and you don't need a huge startup capital to do it, like in the industiral era), b) a growing freedom in the way we work and organize our time, c) a grater sense of a global economy.

this is definitely not the 80's, though on the surface it may appear that way.. but in a different sense we are still living under various paradigms started in the 80s (the arrival of home computers, for example, and the splintering of ideological blocks).

what else... oh, my brain is full of alcohol... oww...