{"id":5150,"date":"2014-03-30T12:16:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-30T12:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5150"},"modified":"2014-03-30T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T12:16:20","slug":"young-people-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5150","title":{"rendered":"Young people today &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Thomas Friedman writes a fascinating essay in today&#8217;s New York Times in which he tells of a night he spent aboard the USS New Mexico, a nuclear-powered attack submarine.<\/p>\n<p>The New Mexico ducked under the North Pole ice cap, punched its way through, and then went back under.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Parallel Parking in the Arctic Circle\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/svc\/oembed\/html\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F03%2F30%2Fopinion%2Fsunday%2Ffriedman-parallel-parking-in-the-arctic-circle.html#?secret=aaTZeE0OPh\" data-secret=\"aaTZeE0OPh\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Friedman&#8217;s essay deals with several aspects of serving for months on end underwater on one of these ships.<\/p>\n<p>He writes: &#8220;My strongest impression, though, was experiencing something you see too little of these days on land: &#8216;Excellence.&#8217; You\u2019re riding in a pressurized steel tube undersea. If anyone turns one knob the wrong way on the reactor or leaves a vent open, it can be death for everyone. This produces a unique culture among these mostly 20-something submariners.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He tells of how the ship examines the effects of climate change and how it functions as a self-contained world within our world.<\/p>\n<p>He asks a young sailor how he is able to spend so much time underwater, with severe limitations on the communication with his family.<\/p>\n<p>The sailor responds: \u201cWhenever you board this submarine in port, that American flag is flying and you salute that flag. And every time I salute that flag, I remember the reason I joined the Navy: service to country, being part of something bigger than myself and in memory for the attacks of 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then he asks: &#8220;Remind me again what we\u2019re doing in Washington these days to deserve such young people?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an arresting conclusion to an interesting and informative essay on life aboard a very dangerous weapon.<\/p>\n<p>It also should serve to instruct us all that generations going back, oh, to the beginning of time have questioned whether the <em>next<\/em> generation will be capable of carrying on.<\/p>\n<p>The young sailor&#8217;s response to a seasoned reporter tells me our nation will be in good hands.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Friedman writes a fascinating essay in today&#8217;s New York Times in which he tells of a night he spent aboard the USS New Mexico, a nuclear-powered attack submarine. The New Mexico ducked under the North Pole ice cap, punched its way through, and then went back under. Friedman&#8217;s essay deals with several aspects of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5150\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Young people today &#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3287,3620,4447,4799,5062],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-new-york-times","tag-polar-ice-cap","tag-submarines","tag-thomas-friedman","tag-uss-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}