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Analysis Of ' The Unconstitutional 40 Year War On Students ' Essay

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Biology teaches that any given stimulus will elicit some sort of response. Similarly, Isaac Newton taught us that one force provokes another, in direct opposition to it. Although various life experience may “elicit” a response, our emotions tend to gravitate towards the laws of physics rather than biology. It may seem counterintuitive, but the pressure of provocation is arguably the best method of impelling us to act. Adversity, after all, stimulates, coerces, and sharpens people in ways that prosperity simply cannot. Indeed, it allows us to test the boundaries of our assumptions, to expand our knowledge of diverging opinions, but ultimately, to help us determine where our truth lies. Similarly, in her belligerent manifesto entitled, “The Unconstitutional 40 Year War on Students,” Maureen ‘Moe’ Tkacik deliberately infuriates her audience—25 to 35 year old college graduates frustrated with their mounting student debt—through her sarcastically crafted narrative of an elitist opposition in order to incite revolutionary fervor; Tkacik does not simply request a response—she demands one.
Rage is a fruitfully destructive emotion that Tkacik intends her audience of resentful Generation X individuals to experience. Mired in a plethora of tragic events, Generation X is characterized by its intense angst and revolutionary fervor. Marginalized and misunderstood, they became accustomed to being associated with the zealous wails of grunge bands and the aggressive anti-establishment

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