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Tue Aug 21, 2012 at 04:13 PM CDT
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You are probably familiar with the lists that come out just before the new school year starts that help teachers (and the rest of us) get a sense of how this year's collegiate freshmen see the world. This year's list is a full 75 items, so below I have pulled out the more political ones. I've moved #33 up to the top just because of how real/sad it is. Enjoy.
- They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America's future.
- Michael Jackson's family, not the Kennedys, constitutes ''American royalty.''
- If they miss The Daily Show, they can always get their news on YouTube.
- Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge.
- The paradox ''too big to fail'' has been for their generation what ''we had to destroy the village in order to save it'' was for their grandparents.
- For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman's job in the State Department.
- Since they've been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percentage point jump in unemployment and a 16-cent rise in the price of a first-class postage stamp.
- Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles.
- White House security has never felt it necessary to wear rubber gloves when gay groups have visited.
- Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for ''save,'' a telephone for ''phone,'' and a snail-mail envelope for ''mail'' have oddly decorated their tablets and smartphone screens.
- Newt Gingrich has always been a key figure in politics, trying to change the way America thinks about everything.
- Stephen Breyer has always been an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
- There has always been a World Trade Organization.
- They have no recollection of when Arianna Huffington was a conservative.
- They watch television everywhere but on a television.
- Point-and-shoot cameras are soooooo last millennium.
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