A Bittersweet Graduation
I didn’t expect my graduation to occur in this fashion: me sitting on my computer chair, staring at the slides of names being announced through my computer screen, while the family members that I’ve been quarantined with cheer for my name all behind me. It’s kind of surreal actually, to think that a pandemic that our leaders were all unprepared for would halt the chance for me, and countless of other highschool and college seniors, from walking across that stage, being able to hug all of our extended family members and the friends we made throughout our school years. It halted the chance of us being able to celebrate a big milestone of our lives peacefully; instead, feelings of intense sadness and anger and anxiety would all pervade in our minds, even on what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of our lives. I know that it might sound selfish to say that, but it goes without saying that a big moment of our lives might’ve been robbed from us because this current administration utterly failed at taking the preventative measures to contain this virus. And, because of that, an entire generation has been forced to grow up way quicker than expected.
The precariousness of the post-COVID world is indeed daunting to many of us. For instance, a whole host of recent college graduates would have to enter a workforce that, at the present moment, is experiencing a surge of unemployment and position losses. Which, if this is a trend that persists, would prompt recent graduates to enter an increasingly competitive job market where they might have to take positions that they are overqualified for, a trend that seems to be increasing. Some may choose to attend graduate school, but with funding sources that might be limited from financial aid, fellowships, or even university apprenticeships. And, while all of this is going on, the destructive mode of thinking that is neoliberalism is being held onto by a thread even when it shouldn’t.
As a brief overview, neoliberalism is an economic ideology that rose in the 1970s, first being implemented in Chile, but which, upon the elections of Thatcher and Reagan in the U.K. and U.S., rose to global prominence. In fact, as Monbiot writes in The Guardian:
“After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed — often without democratic consent — on much of the world.”
Hence, neoliberalism is a unique economic order that seeks to increase the proliferation of the market, for the market is seen to be the most efficient sort of system, especially if free from government bureaucracy and oversight. This is evermore true for public goods also, where those services, under the guise of efficiency, can be privatized or marketized, giving corporations free reign to charge for those services, often for steep prices. An example of a public good auctioned off to corporations in the United States, and which is increasingly salient today, is health insurance, where the mere mention of healthcare as a human right gives someone the label of being a socialist.
In fact, neoliberalism has such an entrenched place in the United States that it has seemingly, and violently, invaded our collective consciousness. It’s gotten to the point where, even after the massive grandstanding by perspective nominees of the Democratic party, the main opposition party in the states, where candidates increasingly spoke of creating a new America, of Trump being a result of the nasty symptoms underlying this country, the presumptive nominee became a figure of the establishment. A figure who, even though seemingly moving to the left on certain issues, fails to back medicare for all, and who has a climate plan that’s not as aggressive as it should be in addressing the seriousness of the issue. And on the other side of Biden, stands Donald Trump, a man who has been effectively destroying the power of the civil service and government institutions, and seeking to spearhead the handing off of government entities, like the postal service, to the private sector. As it stands to reason, if it’s not profitable, if it costs too much money — even if something is for the benefit of the all — it deserves to die. And, that includes people who are seen as disposable because of this cruel system, in that they are not able to provide profits.
Thus the reason for bailouts that seemingly flow untethered to big businesses, while individuals are provided with a one time stimulus check and unemployment benefits that are intensely fought over in order to be passed. That’s how ingrained the narrative of neoliberalism is in the states, that social programs are always met with the question of “how are we to pay for it?”, while tax cuts and bailouts for corporations are seldom questioned. In fact, the disposability of people is so large that Republican leaders across the states have insisted on essential sacrifices of literal lives as long as the economy stays afloat. That shouldn’t be normal, but nevertheless is — and has been for decades in the face of another crisis that this batch of graduates must face. Which is the climate crisis. The latter crisis has been taking and displacing lives in the form of extreme weather events and increased pollution spells for years, but, due to the perceived disposability of the individuals facing the crisis on hand, the normal seldom changes. Instead, fossil fuel subsidies still exist, even when the negative health and environmental impacts of fossil fuel usage are well known. Everything needs to have a value in order to have a chance to be saved, and anything negative must be priced in order to be deterred.
That’s the world that us graduates are heading into — a world filled with privatization, deregulation, and austerity. The coronavirus pandemic didn’t cause this world, but it exposed it fully, and it’s an exhausting one, especially since our elders are looking onto us to fix it. We’re supposed to just be idealists in our late teens and early twenties, trying to figure out our lives. But, we now have to fight for our lives and the habitability of this planet, all because a loud minority of an older generation, that just so happens to reside in the most powerful countries in the world, pushed this narrative onto all of us — that it’s now, as it frequently said, easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Maybe that’s why so many of us report on having mental health issues and entrenched feelings of loneliness. Not because of the proliferation of technology, I would argue, but the proliferation of private spaces that decreases public space available to citizens. If everything has a price in order to be attended, then the generation that has huge boats of student loans and wages cut due to under- and unemployment can not attend those places. So, we delve back to the screen, a free space where we can engage with like-minded individuals to make friends and share our feelings that often get misunderstood as whining and entitlement. What people don’t understand, however, is that eco-anxiety is real; the feeling of hopelessness that stems from watching a world dismiss us is real; and, the feeling of being scared for the lives of your loved ones because leaders place the health of the economy over the health of humans is real.
So, even though I didn’t expect my graduation to go like this, maybe I could’ve imagined a world where neoliberalism finally caused us to be more isolated than ever, mostly by the diminishing of public spaces that did nothing but grow suspicions across people, making us treat each other like strangers. While, at the same time, causing us to think that we have more in common with billionaires than with people who are at the bottom of the totem pole because of no fault of their own. Maybe that’s actually the growing legacy of neoliberalism, the dismantling of trade unions that caused us to be more divided than ever, emboldening fascists with extreme ideologies and constantly causing us to seek for our own, while the billionaire class increasingly grows wealthy and forces us to buy from their services. It might be a cynical view of this world during a time when I should be filled with joy and hope. But, I can’t, not until the struggles of everyone against neoliberalism and tyranny can be realized and won. And, maybe that’s another growing legacy of neoliberalism: the radicalization of an entire generation that’s now striving for universal liberation against all oppression. I mean, if fascists can be emboldened in this age, so can leftist forces. And, we might just be here to take back the community.
