The End of The Innocence

The great failure of my generation is simply this:  We got while the gettin' was good.

We're not Baby Boomers.  We came right after.  Born in the early to late Sixties, we just missed out on the Beat, the Aquarius, the Disco days.  Those came in our childhood, when we were too young to have a place in them.  We began to find our ways in the world in the Days of Reagan - the genesis of the socioeconomic evils which have shaped this One Percent world.

We saw the Boomers cash in on their fortunate place in time and knew we'd missed out.  We saw the outward focus of the Love Generation turn inward, to the building of nest eggs.  And too many of us simply did the best we could, stashing away the crumbs that were left to pick up.  In doing so, we kept the system alive.  We fed the machine.  We led it to rot.  And we did our damndest, through every means available, to keep it's bloated body protected from harm.

My generation has cared only about self preservation.

And here we are today, the parents of Millennials, the only things that can redeem us.

There's a wave in the world right now.  Gay rights.  Transgender rights.  Black lives matter.  People are people.  Love wins. 

There's a political trend in Canada away from the current governing party, possibly in the furthest opposite direction.  And in the past few days I've seen a few articles published, asking what this Thing is.  Why it's happening.  How to make sense of it.  And I know what it is.  It's not the right, or the left.  It's almost not political at all.

This world I see is sick and tired of Paternalism.

It's a world, not just this country.  It almost happened in Britain.  It could happen in Russia, in Australia, where the leaders of their countries are practically comic-book villains.  It's happening in the USA, where politics actually become offshoot religions, built on the suffocating oppression of Paternalism.

The tone.  Snide.  Condescending.  Dismissive.  The speaker's every word betrays complete indifference to the personal worth of each citizen.  Political discourse has become so transparent that these people don't even bother to conceal any level of their immorality.  They needn't bother because over the past thirty years, politics became so cynical, so incivil, that my generation simply stopped listening, and cared only for self preservation.

But our children know what they're hearing.  And what they're not willing to listen to.

Paternalism may have meant something once.  When our leaders had actually been there and done that.  Put boots in the mud, and bled for our rights.  Those today who use the voice of Paternalism - my cohorts - did nothing to assume it.  And the next generation knows it.

Voters today, all around the world, are seeing that the emperors are nothing but frightened men in glass palaces.  And that Paternalism is nothing but Entitlement.  And that every voice matters.

Something's coming.  Maybe it's already here.  All I know is, I'm beginning to believe again.

I'm done now.