This is written as a brief response to the question of why so many of us COTB's (Children of the Boomers) are continuing to fall away from the systems of thought and politics with which we were raised. Upon much soul-searching and consideration of circumstances, I decided to address the issue - so here goes... (Hold on, because I don't really know where I'm going with this.)
Personally, I was raised as a conservative Republican, and worked early on as a young Republican operative. I faithfully toted the party line of God, Guns, and Glory around Maine via tables, talks, and telephone calls. I am still fond of some of those actions. Via those moments and movements I learned to stand up for what I believed in. I learned to face harassment in supporting those beliefs, and that this harassment could lead to the distilling and clarification of those beliefs. I learned to carry myself well in public view, how to debate in a crowd or in person, how to deliver a short and concise message, and how to provide a good television interview. In fact, I am still proud of some of the positions and ideas I supported, though I am much more nuanced on them now.
The same holds true for those children of the Boomers who were raised as Liberals or Democrats. Despite the ideological and political differences in position, the experiences are often the same. In similar ways, we fought for our idealized positions, convinced of the righteousness of our causes. Interestingly, the values with which we were endowed by our parents were often not only similar, but of similar origins and circumstances. I protested abortions because God wanted me to - the same reason that some young Democrats protested the lack of funding for the poor. I stood up against "the system" when I decried the loss of family values - while young liberals did the same when they stood up for the rights of LGTBQ individuals. And I felt I simply followed the dictates of conscious and common sense when I worked hard for the election of conservatives who would work to make sure that the large corporations and wealthy "job creators" kept trickling down funds to us poor undeserving masses - while my counterparts labored for the election of those who would stand up for the rights of the workers and union members who they felt (rightfully so) were the real backbone of society. Unfortunately, what we all discovered as we grew older was that we had all been given the proverbial shaft.
I started this missive out in order to point out to my friends on the right the severe difference between the values with which I was endowed as a child and the real world values which I was expected to hold fast to once I was grown. This started out as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek analysis of the G rated Disney movies with which were plied as children... you know, the kind where we learned that the wealthy and politically powerful were always the bad guys, unless they had a change of heart. The ones where we learned that things were never what they seemed, that miracles could happen in favor of the little guy, and that we should never find ourselves falling in love with the obvious choice. Where we learned that dreams could come true, that good people win in the end, and that greedy buggers always get their comeuppance. I was going to discuss the values that we were taught in Sunday School - how we were taught that judgment, vengeance, and life and death belonged to God, that greed and the laying up of riches was antithetical to Christian thinking, and that God was on the side of love, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and clothing the naked. I had intended a thoughtful yet light analysis of how those values were as thoroughly debunked as the mythology of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny when we got to be grown up Republicans, and how these values stayed with us despite the debunking - just as the joy of giving and celebrating the life of spring never left us either.
However, the truth is that I don't feel very jovial about the situation anymore, and I don't think that my counterparts who have arisen from the left do either. The fact of the matter is, I am royally pissed off. All of us, left, right and center, are simply fed-up to the yin-yang with the blatant disrespect and disregard for the values that we all know are true - despite differences in how they were presented to us when we were young. In all actuality, we were all fed a line of bull the size of which dwarfs some of the greatest piles of crap in the history of the world... up to and including the one that led to bets in favor of Napoleon at Waterloo. The truth of the situation is - as we are gradually discovering - that none of it mattered at all. Our energy, our zeal, and our commitment were all used shamelessly and cynically to further the causes of a very few, very wealthy, and very evil people and conglomerates that were (and are) intent on driving the rest of the world into slavery and/or peasantry so that they might rule the world with as little opposition as possible. This is something that many of us have sensed, and some of us are convinced of. The current unrest around the world is a symptom of this realization - a realization that has led to a quickening of the process, rather than a withdrawal of the threat. The post-ideological and post-partisan nature of the current youth movements is due to the very desperate nature of this threat.
This is not a new situation, nor is this the first time that a situation such as this has arisen. Power is seductive, and it takes neither a earth-shattering conspiracy nor a forceful coup for those with power to find ways to over-exercise their authority. All it takes is time... and once again, the time has come. The evidence is everywhere. From the consolidation of mineral and water rights around the world by a few powerful corporations to the consolidation of housing through artificially orchestrated foreclosure storms in the US by the same corporations, from the stagnation of wages around the world to the austerity measures that make sure that those in what should be the most prosperous nations in the world are largely forced to work harder and harder for less and less and have no hope to climb out of their current circumstances, and from (for the US and many Western nations) the ongoing warfare in nations where we have absolutely no concern to the refusal to intervene in situations around the world where intervention is much more morally imperative - there can be no doubt that there is little hope for those without much wealth or power to maintain any modicum of respect, dignity, or sustenance for much longer without willingly or unwillingly kowtowing to those who sign our paychecks and sometimes deign to bestow us with largess. Here in the United States this has become abundantly clear in the last few months, as the White House completely ignores and insults those who petition through the avenues the White House itself set up, as our elected representatives consolidate power to themselves through electoral restructuring, gerrymandering, and the installment of a militarized police state, and as our robo-cops have tear gassed, dragged, and bashed the heads in of those (including academics and veterans) who have dared to cry foul to the policies of the elite.
The end result is, we have refused to buy the bill of goods that we were having foisted upon us. Toting political party lines, marching to political drums, and carrying water for political hacks has gotten us where we are today. The in-your-face evidence of both the Bush and the Obama administrations and both the Democrat and Republican congresses has clearly shown that our representatives have sold their souls for the pittance of power given them by the wealthy and powerful of the world as surely as a cheap whore sells their body for the short high they can get from a needle. The only recourse open to the people was the courts, but decisions such as Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission and Kelo v. City of New London have made it clear that the courts are just as corrupt, while those few justices who have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Powers That Be will be likely run over, disbanded, or overruled by the soon coming installment of political scum who will be elected by people who are still to vested in the system to see when the system has completely failed. As our protests have been met with lies, fear, patronization, and finally outright violence, there is only one path left. We have chosen to opt out of your system. No more voting for donkey's or elephants because we think one side or the other won't screw us quite as hard as the other. The truth is that both are engaged in a rapinous rampage against the rights which we all recognize as belonging to all human beings. We are tired of being told who to hate, who to kill, and who to plunder in order to keep these idols in power. As the corptocracy/oligarchy/plutacracy in which we live tightens the hold on our information sources, our food, our privacy, and our education, we refuse to be engaged with and by those systems. We WILL find information and disseminate it regardless of corporate media and global laws to halt it. We WILL practice food independence, regardless of the walls of lobbyists thrown up in our paths. We WILL maintain our privacy, or see to it that those in power have no privacy to speak of. And we WILL educate ourselves and our children, in the face of those who think the only proper schooling is one which creates happy little wage slaves for the corporate machine which grinds them to pieces.
We stand in solidarity with the values raised by those heroes the world over and throughout time who refused to bow to any power or authority that violated basic human kindness and decency. We stand with those who insist that the time of partisan bickering in the service of clouding all sides of the issues be given up for reasonable and responsible consensus politics. We refuse to be co-opted by the instigators, infiltrators, and leaches of the dead political system which brought us to this point. And most of all, we stand UNITED in this cause around the world and for as long as it takes to throw off the bonds of our would be masters.
Finally, we will react with compassion, we will facilitate the communion of all of humanity, we will follow the prophets of so many religions and philosophies when they teach us of the simple and universal golden rule, and we will stand for the rights of EVERY HUMAN BEING to have an equal right to own their work and achieve the just rewards of that work for them, their families, and their communities. We do not care if these values for an individual arise from rational atheism, a solid religious upbringing, or a special message from a blue-green alien riding a ship behind Uranus... just so long as they are recognized and brought to life. We do not care if the political system from which your views arise is Communistic, Anarcho-Capitalistic, or a more conventional system... so long as you stand with us. We will live the values with which we were instilled, even if our fathers and mothers have forgotten they existed - or for that matter, in the face of their insistence that they matter not at all.
