Martin Flavin, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Journey in the Dark, has a character remark, on his return from World War II, that it was the older generation that caused the war, though it was his to fight. And it’s always that way. Always has been that way. Somehow, though, it seems worse this time, for this generation, for this legacy. And so I feel compelled to apologize— —for leaving so many of you to face weather disasters unknown since the dawn of time, with storms stronger, more frequent, more devastating. Each day the news begins and ends with the weather, the accidents, the downed power lines, the leveled houses. Meteorologists are the new Cassandras, ignored as she was. —for creating levels of hatred across religious and racial and economic lines not seen since the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but with economic and political Sees replacing Rome, while drones and tanks replace steeds and swords. —for allowing illness, disease, and epidemic to regain its foothold on our children. In the interests of “freedom” we’ve ignored the needs of society as a whole, allowing an insane few to risk us all with their conspiracy theories and false “medicines.” —for asking children to grow up too soon in a world where we’re convinced everything and everyone is dangerous. They can’t be sent out to play in the neighborhood, can’t be left alone in a department store’s toy section. Instead we buy them electronic games that encourage isolation, or smartphones that pretend communication. —for worshiping the golden calf of money and forgetting that it’s not a thing to own, but a tool to be used. With income gaps at rarely seen levels and money mythologized, we bequeath you the carousel without telling you the brass ring has long since been removed. —for leaving you with crumbling communities: streets and bridges and highways and buildings barely holding on, the burden left to you because we believed there would always be time to take care of things later. —for creating an instantaneous network of fear, and for marketing it as a product. Each day what passes for “news,” isn’t, replace instead by packaged, ratings-oriented fervor delivered by people who once wished to be journalists but have since been reduced to reading facile copy while presenting a YouTube video that millions have already seen and ignored. —for building a war machine that is so entrenched in our economy that disabling it would be virtually impossible, creating economic chaos and throwing millions out of work. —for creating a culture that conflates a hunting rifle and an AR-15 and calls them the same thing, meant to serve the same purpose, and then collectively cowers to a lobby that is so powerful that nearly every single politician in America cares what they think. I could go on and on and on. Anomie, as we sadly know, is self-supporting…. Most of all I want to apologize for letting science become an option, and for letting facts become opinions. For letting “education” and “intelligence” and “logic” become four-letter words. This last, it seems to me, is the worst of all. It’s our legacy. And we leave it to you.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 15:32:37 +0000
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