I am thinking about a girl. On the cusp of woman-hood, staring out upon a cold sea with goose-bumps showing on her arms and legs, I am wondering, what is she thinking? There has been a war on ever since she was old enough to be aware, a war that is increasingly a disaster and that her generation and the generations after her will be paying for, a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of crippled soldiers coming back from Iraq-nam to be dumped on the streets like so much garbage. Maybe her brother is in the Army. Maybe a boyfriend. Like so many of her generation, perhaps possessed of a cynicism and world-weariness beyond her years, as it becomes increasingly clear that her generation will be cleaning up this nightmare for the rest of her life. Is this cynicism hiding anger at the situation in which she will find herself in when she becomes an adult?
I wonder, what does she think of my generation? What does she think about how we have dealt with things? What about the baby boomers, what does she think of them? I fear that it is not going to be positive. What happens next, I wonder? Will the anger simply simmer, simmer, simmer, turning into self-hate and self-disgust as the years go by? Will she become as "bought" as my generation, leashed to our endless cycle of debt and work? Or will the destruction of the American dream by the Busheviks and their ilk result in something more explosive, more violent, more... revolutionary?
If the last, I fear for my own life and safety, for I have certainly done nothing to help make this young lady's life easier. Oh sure, I donated a few bucks to John Kerry and voted for both President Gore and for Kerry, but really, is that all that I could have done? I doubt it. I doubt it. And I doubt she thinks so, either. And really, who can blame her?
-- Badtux the Pensive Penguin
Some of my best teachers in life have been born from your generation, they taught me what was right and wrong, they taught me how to look at things from different angles, and how to forgive.
ReplyDeleteI do not blame a generation, how can I do that when my own is over come with apathy?
I blame the weakness in the human spirit, I blame the apathy at the hands who think "Some one else will do it."
In the end, there isn't one generation, one person to blame. It's all of us.
I'm one of the oldest baby boomers, and war has been going on all of my life. It just took us longer to know the details of it. WW2 was almost gone, the Korean War was just beginning, Vietnam, and somewhere in there the USA was supporting war in other countries all over the world.
ReplyDeleteI think the blame is on humanity and its tendency to think first of self then of other then of The Other. We are human. We can make choices that change this pattern of war. But, those choices will probably cost us our country - overrun by those who do not make the life-preserving choices.
Just one day at a time is all I can manage, doing one thing right, helping one person, loving one place enough to protect it, encouraging others to do the same. And, oh yeah, getting involved in politics and voting.
They'll get the last word, for in about 20 years they'll be the ones deciding the fate of Social Security and Medicare.
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