Hi there.
My name is Joshua. I grew up being told my generation was special. We came of age in the new millennia, we were born as the USSR fell and our American homeland obtained a world hegemony not seen on this planet since the empire of Nimrod crumbled to the dust at Babel. With no foreign rivals, ample domestic wealth, and superb educational resources, I suppose it was logical to conclude we would become something fantastic. And yet here we sit, a generation of disappointments.
We don't have to be this way you know. The great rallying cry of 50 million free young men and women doesn't need to be, "We are the 99%". The mass. The group. The herd. The average. I am embarrassed to hear this cry. I am ashamed to have waited so long to say so.
We are the genius. We are the free. We are the promised. We are the heroes. We are the 1%. Where are these cries, brothers? Where is this rally? Lounging in Starbucks, waiting to be discovered by Jersey Shore's Got Talented Dancing Idols, asking why the government hasn't stepped in to make life easier yet, we are less than ourselves. Gone are the Republicans of Lincoln who fought a war to free the slave, now the party platform is dictated by the gun-toting xenophobe, demanding all americans learn the thoroughly vulgar and unremarkable english language so as not to be an inconvenience to those who can speak no other. Gone are the Democrats of Kennedy who did not ask what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. Now the party is overrun with entitled children of all ages, walking with outstretched hands demanding money or, more cancerous still, social acceptance.
It is the fault of the new generation and no other. Our amorality and pragmatism are the tumor lodged upon the soul of this nation. We are the 99, protesting everything and nothing at all. Protesting by sitting around in our own filth until some unnamed being comes to fix some undetermined problem with some unimagined solution. The absurdity makes me uncomfortable. It makes me silent. How does one reason with such a lifestyle? When a generation votes in unprecedented numbers for intangible "Hope" and barely has the energy to craft internet memes in the face of IRS targeting, a coverup in Benghazi, the hunting and killing without trial of American citizens by the US government via predator drone, the massacre of children with weapons that can be legally acquired, the DOJ's seizure of AP documents, the instantaneously infamous PRISM program, and on and on, what is there to be said?
Arise. No longer droop in apathy. Educate yourselves. Reject the culture of the irrational. Search for truth and dismiss with disgust those who would serve you demagoguery in its place. Develop a love of thought, and abhor the cajoling of the politician and the journalist entreating you to accept theirs instead of your own.
Old men need each other. Old men are set in their ways. The last living generation historically finds solace in oneness, in togetherness, in community. It is our responsibility to be young. To be passionate. To be creative. To be individual. To denounce imperfection and aggressively reform our society, not to demand that it reform itself. Our new generation is acting old, and it will leave our nation crippled and inept. Freedom, independence, individuality; these should be our rallying cries. These should resonate at our core.
I hope they do. If not, I hope they will.
