Richard Kimball, founder and president of Project Vote Smart, has a personal blog. And his most recent post went (in brief):
Public and private debt, global warming, dependence on foreign oil and capital, drugs, the brain drain, bankrupt social security, decaying bridges and roadways, war in strange lands for confused purposes, hungry children and abandoned veterans? We are definitely not our parents or anything like the Greatest Generation.
The best and the brightest in a dozen fields point their fingers and say we better duck — we have changed the world. A world built on previous generations whose selfless nature valued independence, self-reliance, and the kind of clear thought, hard work, generous spirit and devotion to responsibility that made our nation so great.
Like a nightmare in blinding daylight, our heads jerk from the pillow, as an apparition says, “You Suck.” We see ourselves, as no Americans have ever seen themselves before.
And I noticed that there were no comments on that post. So I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the matter with him.
I hate to say it, but your generation definitely does suck. You (and not personally, mind you. I like what you do very much) took an unbelievably strong country given to you by your selfless and honest and hard-working parents who started with nothing, literally nothing, during the Great Depression and went on to claim the world as theirs to protect. And your generation took nothing away from them but the desire for more and the means to get it through greed, selfishness and self-centeredness. You’ve put my generation (those still in college and high school) in the distinct position to repeat what our grandparents had done years ago and drag this country back up by its bootstraps through hard work, discipline and the ability to see a greater good than the volume of our bank accounts. I hope and pray that my generation learns more from your generation than yours did from the one before you, and, more importantly, that we have the sense not to repeat the mistakes you made.
The failure of the previous generation is crashing down around us all daily. I hope there are still a few of us standing when all is said and done.