jumping right in, after you! Weeeeeee!

Ah! A plunge into this ol swimmin hole --how....REFRESHING!! (i didn't remember how refreshing it could be!) And, look, no leeches yet! heh heh! You said: This ideology and the control strategies it supported assumed that children and youth are incapable ========= I question that. I think The System and its professional Tools know that kids (in both history AND today) are quite capable, depending on how they are socially conditioned, and by whom. After all, they STILL (?) prosecute young people "as adults" for crime, for one. So in that context of knowing, i think the ideologues are merely opportunistically taking advantage. We're small enough in articulate, conscious numbers that, scientifically-speaking, we're "easy targets" for scapegoating. My study leads me to see that ALL social groups numbering under 1 million are "useful" to exploit for the severely alienated "interests" of propagandists. You said: The juvenile justice system promised that it could prevent delinquency in our society and, thus, it gained legitimacy for a time as an instrument of the public welfare acting for the common good. ================ I guess you haven't yet actually closely studied what Chomsky says in that MEDIA CONTROL speech (or perhaps the newer version "edited" that out?). What he shows, over and over in his writing, is that "there are TWO conceptions of "our" democracy" and the PREVAILING one is NOT AT ALL what we've all been led so often to believe. That means that when The System of elite-oriented "Shared Values" does things, it is NEVER with the "common good" in mind, at least as the stupid-ized masses believe! The "common good" means only what cynically "works" for elite's severely alienated ideology. As posited by Lippmann, Bernays, Niebuhr, et al. So-called "juvenile justice" gained "legitimacy" due to it having a new way to FORCE kids to "bend the knee" to the prevailing warmind. In the '70s, they did it a little more nicely, but the same meta-game was at work. Nowadays they do it quite nastily, and with a steady stream of context-less, un-empathizing propaganda, keep the sheeple Distracted and Afraid and systematically GIVING AWAY THEIR POWER. There IS NO "DEMOCRACY" in the USA (except MAYBE locally), and the biggest group of the "stupid" masses know this very well (they are the non-voting public). It's all a damn lie, and The System is utilizing whatever EMOTIONALLY POTENT OVERSIMPLIFICATION it can, to try to avoid having themselves over-run by the masses --whom've been TAKING THE BRUNT of their horrors for too many centuries now. We're the "scapegoat of note" and they are NOT at all interested in the rational as so many "well educated" dupes have to imagine (or go completely bonkers, eh?). Thus, Speaking Truth to Power (really, Big Coercion) is a bullshit activity. Better to speak truth to the people, demystifying the fuck out of all these ways that material elites use to keep us enslaved! Note: i do NOT advocate scapegoating the material elites in turn. I want to see humanity evolve from this dark age!! i see that perpetuating hate and non-empathy only perpetuates that same shit!! Better to radical's radically empathize, so that we can ALL begin to solve the problems as they REALLY are! That's what i love about Chomsky: he really goes closer to the heart than all the rest of the Leftish-leaning analysts i used to read too much. Now, i'm more for post-left anarchist critiques with a panarchist response and "program"! Wanna discuss? You did a good job in being the first one to even incline me to engage, again! (i didn't expect that!) "Nothing is more central to the maintenance of social order than the regulatory mechanisms employed to control and socialize our children."--Ronald Boostom