Ff
As a Millennial I was scarred by having my formative political years coincide with the rise of Dubya.
I didn't think anyone could possibly be thick enough to vote him in. And they didn't-! But he was escorted over the line by others in power, went on to miss a devastating attack on home soil and used it to start a war for oil, THEN GOT ELECTED FOR REAL ON THAT RECORD. All while coming across as a total nitwit.
Since I was in middle school I have been dumbfounded by what Republicans will steal in broad daylight and browbeat everyone into shifting the overton window to accept. No one called foul on them. No one EVER calls foul on them.
You can go all the way back to America's Original Sin and see the exact same pattern that has repeated over and over and over again. A small group of wealthy people pitch a fit about a policy that would hamper their acquisition of more wealth and power, cloaking their greed in the language of religious righteousness or patrotism or paternalism or fearmongering, and the rest of the people with wealth and power may talk a good game about equity and justice but at the end of the day they have far more in common with their fellow parasites so they agree to carve out an exception for them. But the wealth addicts have no concept of 'enough', only 'more' so they spend a few decades learning to exploit the status quo and when they hit that ceiling that bust through it increasingly brazen audacity and act like they're the victims, or they're entitled to it, or God promised it to them, or just WHAT'RE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT, HUH? Actually ousting and defanging these leeches would risk the whole country coming undone. (WOULD IT THOUGH?! Maybe now, but that's because it's been left to fester for so long!!!) So we'll pretend this coup/ethnic cleansing/fraud on the people doesn't actually count. But just this once! Just the one time. We'll definitely get serious and punish the next person who tries something really bad.
When I was a teen I was appalled by everything about the War On Terror. I couldn't understand why my fellow youths weren't marching in the streets. Our parents were former hippies, what happened to that spark?! The apathy was deafening. It broke something in me: I felt so helpless.
Now I know why they didn't march. Because the hippies were always a minority counter culture, and the rest bought into Greed Is Good, this is how the world works so you better learn to play the game. Even my former hippie dad was adamant that I needed to learn the game in order to look after myself. As a generation Millennials were told a lie about how to secure our futures, and certainly older Millennials bought it. If the global economy hadn't crashed in 2008, it we'd been allowed the same advantages as our parents, we would be just as insufferable as the worst Boomers.
I worry that the decades of zero options, zero hope, zero money, have fostered that apathy. We literally couldn't go anywhere or do anything because that requires money. Many of us still live hand to mouth. I've half-joked for years that our generation's retirement plan is going to have to be to dismantle capitalism, but it becomes truer every day.
The system is working as designed. We are all too tired, too poor, too anxious, too sick, or too scared to take any risks. We're all one car failure or health incident away from penury. We keep hoping someone will go marching in on our behalf and sort things out, clean up the mess, provide some relief, be the adult in the room.
There are no adults here but us.
Do we deserve to call ourselves adults if we won't take a stand for something that really matters?
Adulting didn't have to be hard. America didn't have to be hard. Other people made them hard and convinced us that was the right and proper way to do things.
We're burned out and barely hanging on for whose benefit? The gerontocracy that refuses to let go of power, but WILL die sooner than they want to accept? The shareholders who are addicted to making money, even though they could never spend it all in a human lifespan?
I don't think I'm the immature one here. I'm not the snowflake who has a tantrum when someone suggests I share the toys I stole. If I'm sent to the corner I don't call the other kids liars who are out to get me. I don't crap myself in public or fall asleep at my own trial. And I'm not dumb enough to believe it when a kid covered in chocolate tells me he's never taken any pudding but if he did that would be fine because he deserves pudding and he should definitely be given more pudding now.
America is being held hostage by squalling toddlers.
No one is coming to save us but us.
We are the adults in the room, if we act like it.