In Praise Of Younger People

One of the worst things you can be is irrelevant and out of touch. It happens to a certain extent as you get older, there’s not a lot you can do about it. You don’t have to go gracefully into that good night, but you can look pretty foolish trying to pretend you’re something you’re not.
That’s why I love Facebook. It connects me to younger people in their 20’s and 30’s without having to show up at their local club or show dressed like them and trying to act like I fit in. I get to hear their views on the world, I get to laugh at their jokes(the ones where I get the references), and I get to learn about new shows and movies and music.
If nothing else, the pop culture stuff really makes it worthwhile. Sometimes it takes me longer to catch up, but I do get there eventually. There is so much good music I would know nothing about if it weren’t for younger people who are just as passionate about music as I was when I was younger, before the world had beaten some of the joy out of everything. I suppose that I am living vicariously through them in a way.
There’s nothing wrong with that. People live vicariously through their children all the time. A lot of the time, they mock them and distrust them as they do it, which makes me sad. Most of the people I know who are my age blame every bad thing in the world on the younger generation, and that is their loss. I don’t like stagnating. I don’t like the thought of the world passing me by. I don’t like the thought of becoming bitter and miserable.
That’s the other good thing about having a bunch of younger friends. They call me out on it when I do seem bitter or out of touch, and I encourage it. I think it’s funny, but I also think it’s essential if I want to stay even a little bit vital and connected. I don’t get angry over such silly things, I’m not that frightened and insecure. I grew up with a father who my brother and I teased mercilessly when he said or did something that was out of touch, and he laughed along with us. I learned to take good natured ribbing in stride. In short, my parents taught me how to bust balls, and how when done right, it was actually a sign of respect and love. If you listen, you can get something out of it and learn to laugh at your own mistakes. As a result, I can take criticism without getting too defensive, and I have parents who are in their 80’s, but still doing better with technology and culture than a lot of people I know in their 50’s.
So whatever, I realize that by this point, most of my younger friends have stopped reading, because they don’t really enjoy having to read long posts on their phone when there is so much more entertaining and interesting stuff available to them. Damn millennials, destroying the printed word! But if any are still hanging in there, thanks for providing something precious and irreplaceable to me. You’re all that’s standing between me and some of the things I hate most, and I appreciate it.

Anarchy In The US

I see so many people worried about electability. I see them fretting about some candidate winning the nomination who might turn off old people, or young people, or progressives, or conservatives, or independents, or a whole bunch of other groups they've managed to divide its into.
Why start out compromising? Why play by their rules? Why go for the safe and uninspired choice, simply because you're afraid?
Warriors do not attack from a place of fear. Champions do not become champions for settling before they start. Changing the world requires risk. It requires bold moves and leaps of faith. It requires resolution and determination, and adhering to your hopes and dreams, even when they seem lost.
So if you want national healthcare and the rich to pay their fair share, demand it. If you want free college, if you want worker's rights and accountability for the powerful, and if you want help for the poor, demand that as well. Don't start out hoping for breadcrumbs. No visionary or winner ever set out looking for second place.
Don't settle, especially when no one is even asking you to settle. That's fear talking. It's being frightened of the unknown, as if the unknown could be worse than what we have now. That's trying to bargain, like when you hope to influence fate or the heavens to help you win the lottery by saying you would be happy with just a million rather than 100 million. It's as if you think that's a sacrifice, and that it will ever be heeded by whatever indifferent God or leader or leprechaun might overhear you.
You're not always going to get what you want, but you're never going to get what you want if you don't ask for it. No one is going to respect you if you're begging for what's already yours. We have the power, all of us. We vote. We outnumber them. We can paralyze the nation if we all join together. That's what the people in charge are afraid of, and we play right into their hands. That’s why they outlaw protesting and bust up unions and intimidate voters. We crave change, but fear the sacrifice and uncertainty that comes with it.
So in the primaries, vote for who you want to vote for, not for who you think might appeal to other people you don’t even agree with. When you try to game the system, you usually wind up losing more than you win. Nothing has really changed in your lifetime playing their game, so why keep playing it?
Sure, if in the end, your candidate doesn’t win the nomination, and you're backed into a corner and have to choose the lesser of two evils, you choose the lesser of two evils. But until then, why come from a place of capitulation? You vote because you want your voice to be heard, why let that voice be dictated by fear and by other people’s beliefs? That’s how young people feel, and they are young enough, as well as desperate and brave enough, to go down fighting. It’s always that way whenever a younger generation tries to change the world they live in. In the 60’s, the hippies were treated like freaks and anarchists, simply for asking for most of the things we still want today. As David Bowie said,

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through”

He could not be more correct. Don’t instill your fears into them. Don’t act like they are clueless, simply because you are afraid that they are going to upset the status quo. The fact that Bernie or Warren scares people is probably the biggest reason to vote for them. As much as we hate Trump, were we actually happy with what we had for the decades preceding him? As great a president as Obama was, we still didn’t get a lot of the things we wanted and he promised, not that it was really his fault in most instances. He had a Senate and a Republican party thwarting his every move, the same exact thing we have now, and they get away with it for the very same reasons: enough people let it happen. Are we just supposed to be satisfied going back to the disillusioning and mediocre ideas and stalemates from the past? Nothing was working, so why look to the same things and expect it to work now?
So people are really going to get mad at me for saying this, but I don’t care. If you’re really feeling revolutionary, if you really want change, vote for who you want in the general election, even if they aren’t going to win. If Biden is the choice, and you really don’t want him to be president, vote for Bernie or Warren or Pete or whoever you feel represents you. Let Trump win again, and maybe it will eventually sink in to the establishment that if they want to win, they have to listen to people outside the establishment as well. Kowtowing never really gets you anything worthwhile; things that matter take work and sacrifice and bravery. I would hate four more years of this corrupt and psychotic imbecile. Millions of people will suffer. Our country will be harmed for years to come.
Sill, it’s happened plenty of times before, and will keep on happening until someone breaks the pattern. Sadly, people are very slow learners, and they seem to have to suffer greatly before they figure it out. I’m at the point where I would be okay with it, if that’s how people choose to go. I’m not going to blame them for doing what they think is right. If it happens, there’s not much I can do about it anyway. The last three years of blaming each other for Trump’s victory accomplished absolutely nothing, and the Republicans couldn’t be happier. We are still just as divided and in disarray as ever, standing in a circular firing squad and headed for the same outcome.
Personally, I would vote for Biden if he was the candidate, even though I really do not want him as my president. I am old, though. I am tired. My anarchy days have passed me by. I didn’t vote for Hillary because I thought she was safe, I voted for her because I thought she was the most qualified candidate. This time, I would vote for Biden just because it seems safer and easier and less aggravating than having Trump in office. So much can change in a four year election cycle. As I said, though, I’m old, and a lot of what happens isn’t going to affect me very much, at least not anymore than it already has. It’s the younger people who are going to have to deal with the repercussions for decades, so who am I to tell them what to do? If they want to make a statement, if they want to try to change the world, then have at it. I will understand it, and I will support it. It beats doing the same dumb thing over and over again. Another song quote comes to mind, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” I would rather go down fighting, and die on my feet rather than live on my knees. Voting for someone I don’t even like really feels like living on my knees.
Vote for whatever and whoever inspires you, and you just might find that you get what you want for a change.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Here's an example of why I try not to get cynical and negative.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr day. Right off the bat, you could point out how it doesn't seem to get the respect that most national holidays get, but that's dismissing the achievement, and diminishing the celebration of a great man. A man who represents something very important to civil rights, and a whole lot of people.
King was always optimistic in the face of adversity. African Americans have had to remain strong and optimistic for centuries, otherwise, why would they bother? Why wouldn't they just lay down and die? They were enslaved, and had to endure centuries of horrific torture and cruelty. They had to endure another century and a half of mistreatment, oppression, violence, injustice, and a million other things that would break lesser people.
But it did not break them.
They held onto their culture, as well as their dignity, through it all. They have been fighting, and making progress all of that time, and they should be proud. They have held onto their dreams, in the face of a nation that seemed hell bent on holding them back. They have not given in to despair and cynicism. They have not given up.
I see a lot of white people who want social justice and civil rights for minorities and the oppressed. I see them champion noble causes, and fight for change. I see them want a better world for everyone. I see them want equality, and to stamp out hatred and racism and fear.
I also watch them get all defeated and cynical about it, and I have to laugh. They are straight white people, who have never had to struggle in any of the ways that the oppressed people in this country have had to struggle. They are getting depressed and defeated, yet not actually dealing with even a tiny fraction of what the targets of hatred and intolerance are facing everyday. Meanwhile, the people who are being denied their rights, who are being murdered in plain sight and not getting justice, who are victims of persecution, are staying determined and positive, and still fighting.
I suppose a lot of that is because when you're entitled, when you have advantages, when your life is easier, you become soft. You're not as defiant and determined when you're fighting for some abstract version of something you haven't really experienced. You can empathize with it, you can abhor it, but that's not the same as when it's life or death. Your life or death.
It's the same reason people get so cynical and defeated so easily with Trump. As horrible as the things his administration and party are doing to this country, most of it is still abstract to the ruling class, and if you're white and straight, you're part of the ruling class. Doesn't matter if you're a billionaire, or living on the street. If you're male as well, you're even more a part of the ruling class. Women are at a severe disadvantage in our society as well, don't kid yourself.
That's why so many people just throw their hands up, and say that there's no point. That's why so many people don't want to even think about politics. They don't want to be bothered. They are soft, and made weak by an easy life. The people who suffer the least give up the quickest, and that's a huge insult to the people they claim to care about.
Because make no mistake, being cynical and negative is hurting the causes you claim to care about. Apathy is what enables atrocities. Whenever you throw your hands up and decide its not worth the tiny bit of aggravation and you don't fight, you weaken a whole cause. When you don't bother to vote, when you stop pointing out inequality, your voice falls silent, and the chorus diminishes. The call for change gets quieter, and is easier to ignore.
I see so many people who are put out simply because they have to see political posts while they are scrolling through social media. The horror! Is there any better example of entitlement than someone who is beside themselves because they have to glimpse something they would rather not think about as they scan their free social media app on their high tech phone?
My whole point is that your cynicism and negativity is hurting your causes, and it's an insult to people who are really suffering. That's true of everything in your life as well. It's not that you're never going to get down, or feel like things aren't working out. It's not like you're never going to have setbacks, or fail at times. It's not that things aren't going to seem overwhelming or insurmountable now and then.
It's that you don't give up. It's that you keep fighting. That's what's important.
And you might say that you haven't given up, and you're not going to, but that's what a lot of people who have given up have said, not too long ago. That started with cynicism and negativity. That let the fear or the apathy in; gave it a foothold.
There are so many important things at stake right now. They affect us all. In the end, all injustice and oppression matters. All people who are being held down need our support. They need our hope and optimism, they need our energy and strength. You're not just helping them, you're helping yourself, even if you don't see it yet.
The nefarious psychotics who want absolute power are not going to stop at minorities. They hold you in contempt as well, and they are coming for you. You have a tenuous grasp on your place in society now, but that's being divided up and trampled on as we speak.
Hold onto your ideals, no matter how much the powers that be want you to give up on them. Hold onto the drive that keeps pushing you to demand what's right. Hold onto your hope and achievements, to the positives and the progress we've made.
Hold onto your dream, just like Martin Luther King Jr did, and you might still be inspiring the world long after you're gone. Be part of something bigger, and that all starts with believing in something and fighting for it, not giving up the moment it seems unattainable. Everything that has ever been attained seemed unattainable at some point, but because someone dreamed it, they made it real.
Don't be afraid to dream.