Roxanne Tellier – The Kids Are Alright

My kids are Gen Xers, the ‘middle child’ of generations. Praise the lawd and hope the creek don’t rise, they’re safely ensconced in solid careers. They’re good people, with good hearts and a firm grasp of reality, if at times, perhaps a little jaded from growing up in this society and as our kids.

The grandkids – well, that’s another story. Caught between two larger generations, the Gen Xers and the Boomers. the Millennials are poised to officially take over as the major demographic in North America in 2019, surpassing Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation.

And I couldn’t be happier.

It is time to marvel at how capable, thoughtful, media savvy, and socially conscious most of them are. It’s also time to be aware of what kind of country and world we want to live in, as, when this generation takes the reins, they will eventually becomes ‘the boss of us’ AND of our own kids, their parents.

Too many people of my age and slightly older still direct the course our governments have followed for decades. In an allegiance to slash and burn capitalism, and an inability to cede power, we are seeing a spastic, greedy final grasping at mining the best our countries have to offer in an effort to line their own pockets. It’s as though the physical siphoning away of these riches invigorates them like an infusion of virgin blood. That group of supposed fiscal conservatives have little consideration of the current or future environmental or financial welfare of the real inheritors of our countries  – the kids.

Or in the case of America, of most of their citizens. The decisions made by the current government reward the wealthiest of the people, at the expense of the social safety net.

We can plan for our futures, and keep our fingers crossed that we get from cradle to grave without too many inconveniences, but we have to acknowledge the truth – the quo rarely stays statused.

Stuff happens. People get sick, and people get old. Some will lay down their lives for their countries, while others will never have the wherewithal to become productive members of society. No one can really plan for the catastrophic effects of extreme social or climate change, but there are towns, cities, and countries coping with it anyway.  Natural disasters and human frailties take lives, and leave calamitous after-effects.

This is the core of community, the reality of a society that places it’s trust and bets it’s life that everyone in the community will work together for the common good, that the strong will lift up the weak, and that every human being has equal rights.

That kind of thinking seems foreign and weak to those that have made their fortunes, and risen to power, with a dog eat dog attitude that screams, “ME FIRST! ME ALWAYS!”

But the Millennials have grown up watching this lascivious corporate greed and disregard for the well-being of others. They have looked on as the ruling class redefines what we call ‘normal‘ – and they strongly disagree.

These Millennials simply don’t have the moral apathy of their elders. They are rising to adulthood at a time in which the world has never appeared more off-kilter, and they refuse to bow to the attitudes of those that made it that way.

They’ve watched as we, their elders and supposed advisors, snidely point to the law breaking, insanity and inanities of the left and right and tear each other apart politically, and they have seen that a lack of diplomacy and the inability to negotiate, in politics or in business, endangers all citizens, not just those who will profit from aggression.

They’ve watched as political leaders plop their nuclear insecurities onto the war table, and wondered why these ammosexuals cannot see that the use of nuclear weapons would kill millions of their enemies, but also slaughter their own people.

They’ve watched in disbelief as America’s president, with all of the class of a cornered rabid dog, exhibits a cruelty on a Grand Guignol scale, with no perceived opponent too big or too small to publicly crush and humiliate. He exhibits not a shred of compassion, no ability to feel or even acknowledge the pain of others, and considers his brutish, meaningless, contempt and cruelty for all of his subjects to be a feature, not a bug, of his reign.

Incompetent, ignorant, and unable to comprehend his own ineptitude, he and his equally vile henchmen have begun the normalization of social instability, as psychological stress, along with housing, medical, and food insecurity, ramps up to a fever pitch.

And the kids have been watching.

They have watched as their natural inheritance has been squandered by those too married to greed to acknowledge their own incompetence and  complete abdication of sanity, morality and ethics.

They have watched as we have asked them to consider it ‘normal’ that a president of the United States would advocate the death penalty for those who produce or sell opioids. A president who casually dismisses countries with a largely black population as ‘shitholes, and who believes that the police system should violate due process whenever due process is inconvenient. A president who tells police officers to unleash their own brutality on prisoners, guilty or not.

They have watched as the president of the United States demands complete fealty, as he makes sweeping decisions of national consequence that he later upends and denies ever having said, all the while assuring his citizens that he never lies and must be trusted unconditionally.

They’ve watched as this normalization of the abnormal extends to what would appear to be treason – an allegiance to a foreign power, even as mounting and incontrovertible evidence proves that Russia is attacking American democracy. His refusal to impose sanctions nearly unanimously agreed upon by the House and Senate – hell, his refusal to so much as mildly rebuke the Russian intrusions – point to a president that is severely compromised, and should be removed from power.

They have watched as everything that we claimed to believe and to pledge allegiance to is overturned… and they have judged us, and found us wanting. And they are right. We seem to have caved to those who seek loopholes that would pervert the rules of law, and unbalance the scales in the hands of Justice. They cannot, and will not, live in that world. We didn’t raise them to live in that world. And now they’re holding us to what we promised them.

More than any previous generation, the Millennials have been taught to not see colour, religion or gender. They clearly see through the hysteria and misinformation the bigots and misogynists bray, and are politically engaged beyond the standards of our own youth.  We led them to believe that they were capable, and nurtured their interests and abilities. They are doing what we taught them to do on the playground, in their class rooms; they are paying attention, and talking and listening to each other.

And ‘dying at the hands of a psychologically wounded fellow student ‘  was not on any to-do list we gave them.

In the last election, 35% of Americans were willfully blind to the lack of ethics and morality, never mind good business practices, that were so evident, and they gleefully placed their X next to Trump’s name.

But this year, millions of Millennials will be eligible to vote.

And they’ve been watching us.

=RT=

Roxanne’s column appears here every Sunday 

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.com

Roxanne Tellier has been singing since she was 10 months old … no, really. Not like she’s telling anyone else how to live their lives, because she’s not judgmental, and most 10 month olds need a little more time to figure out how to hold a microphone. She has also been a vocalist with many acts, including Tangents, Lady, Performer, Mambo Jimi, and Delta Tango. In 2013 she co-hosted Bob Segarini’s podcast, The Bobcast, and, along with Bobert, will continue to seek out and destroy the people who cancelled ‘Bunheads’.