I was born in the year of the bicentennial. Solidly Gen X, I grew up in an era of hope. Gone were the days of cowering under desks to escape Russian bombs. Gone were all the archaic tropes of my parents’ generation, their quaint Cold War fears.
My first album was Thriller. The greatest threat to me as a child was the zombies who danced with Michael in the street. Delicious, MTV imagery, more choreography than chaos.
I learned Russian, the words perestroika and glasnost. Mr. Gorbachev did tear down many metaphorical walls and when the Berlin Wall itself was torn down by jubilant masses of ecstatic Germans, I took it as par for the course. And Yeltsin after him was the dancing bear, a charming Russian, who would fling open the doors of freedom where once an Iron Curtain had blocked our view.
The only demons who haunted my adolescence were the twin spectors of AIDS and drugs, both of which I had the power to keep out of my own life. If I practiced safe sex (or abstinence, though many of our Baby Boomer parents remained too mindful of the summers of love in their own pasts to proselytize that hard), I could protect myself. If I kept my experimentation under control or just said NO (though Nancy Reagan was a bore and anti-drug commercials are only good for quoting when one is high), I could protect myself. Imagine the agency we eighties and nineties teens possessed! It was within our own power to protect ourselves from the greatest threats to our welfare. We were in charge!
I came of age in an era without constant war, an era of widespread economic prosperity. There were problems, but they were lovely and salacious: blue dress scandals and white Broncos on the highway. Something called the World Wide Web was making millionaires out of everyone and I moved to California before anything crashed but the waves. Danced on a bar as Y2K failed to end the world.
As such, I cannot imagine what kids go through now. All their fears are real and impossible to protect against. They have to face a renewed Russian threat, one where the antagonist is literally everywhere, pretending to be your friend in cyberspace.Privacy is a non-starter. We are afraid of nuclear bombs again. And they could come from a variety of sources. There are terrorists on the news, who might blow you up or mow you down with a truck. The cops are shooting kids in the street and young men in their own backyards.
And people are bringing guns to school. And murdering children in their desks and hallways.
In the midst of our blissful Gen X ascension into adulthood we ignored the implications of Columbine. We let ourselves believe it was a freak moment. We did nothing.
We made no speeches. We organized no protests. We started no movements. We let Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold start us on a national path to nightmare and we did nothing.
I am so, so sorry. I am sorry families of Newtown, Connecticut and of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I am so, so sorry that we did not demand action when we had the chance.
But I will stand with you now, you brave young adults of this fraught and terrible moment. If it is not too late. If you will have me. I will do what I can to help you while you bravely take agency in your own lives, while you fight back against the terror that your generation has been forced to face because mine was too distracted by AOL and grunge rock to do the hard and important work that needed to be done.
Thank you for showing us what bravery looks like.
Thank you for refusing to give in to terror and apathy.
We are Gen X and we are here. We are standing by. We are ready to help.
baratheonpilled
2087
prguitarman
amandla
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
stormborns
