Silence Is Not Disengagement. It Is Enforced.
My Humble Analysis on an Article by Zorain Nizamani. This article is being widely read as an observation about generational disengagement. That interpretation is convenient. It is also inaccurate. What the article actually documents is not a generation that chose silence, but a generation that was silenced. There is a meaningful difference between withdrawal and removal, and blurring that line allows responsibility to dissolve into abstraction. Analytically, this is not a crisis of youth apathy. It is a crisis of legitimacy. When authority no longer persuades, it manages. When it no longer convinces, it constrains. History shows this pattern clearly, long before it is named as such. Our generation did not drift away from public life. It was edged out of it. From classrooms where questions became liabilities. From platforms where speech was conditional. From professions where compliance carried fewer risks than integrity. From public discourse where certain truths survived only when dil...