It was probably 1995 when I tried, briefly and with muted enthusiasm, to become a student activist. I pretended to read Marx and Engels, but my politics were (small w) wobbly and uncommitted. The real problem, though, was that my college years fell in the middle of a triumphalist era, with the Soviet Union smoldering on the ash heap and America exulting in its victory over history. Among the undergrad radicals, the mood was bored and distracted, envious of previous generations.
It had been easy for our parents: a global anti-war movement united Vietnam refuseniks in America, soixante-huitards at the barricades in France, and stone-throwing anti-Fascists in Germany. In an era of unprecedented prosperity and relative political stability, we 90s revolutionary manqués had to make do with comparing Newt Gingrich to Adolf Hitler and letter-writing campaigns on behalf of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
