Wherein I make the case for every human being in the country younger than me to take action and vote in November.
If you feel I made the case with enough eloquence, please share and post elsewhere. Permission is granted. On this site I’m preaching to the choir… mostly. I would like this message heard everywhere.
Hi there. I’m Chris. As I say these words it is Spring of the year 2016. I’m 51 years old. Married, two children – both of whom are just about college age. I’m American. Depending upon your math that makes me one of the last of the Baby Boomers or one of the First of Generation X.
Whatever. I’d like to talk to all of those Americans younger than me out there right now.
I am what we used to call solidly middle-class, right down to the college degree, the job and middle-aged spread. Except that being middle-class isn’t what it used to me. I don’t have a mortgage, I rent. My debts are laughably higher than my income and my income is pretty good, and with kids going to college my debts are increasing at a time when everything should be paid off. I could probably afford a home with my income but that would mean a LOT more debt and I’m just not interested anymore.
Hey there kids, that’s what you’ve got to look forward to. Owing more money than you make even as an older grownup and no end in sight. It’s not fair. It was supposed to be the job of my generation to make all this better and we failed you.
Instead of dealing with real problems like infrastructure and equality and generating opportunities for everyone we’ve mostly spent the last 35 years making ourselves stupider, bowing to the singular idea that everything we do should be something that someone makes money from. It’s hardly a new idea and in principle there’s nothing wrong with it either. You want to get rich? Go out there and by god, get rich!
But we made cuts to education so that schools would have to raise their prices. We made cuts to the military so that businesses would do the work our military used to do. We made equality harder to attain by “protecting” the rights of people who didn’t need any help. We latched onto economic ideas whose basic principle can be boiled down to the phrase “greed is good”.
Greed can be good for a person. Greed is NOT good for a country.
So the question is, how do we fix it? How do we reverse this trend? Well let me ask YOU a question in return – does it look like WE are going to fix it? Does it look like my generation is going to get the job done?
Hate to break it to you, but despite the best efforts of a lot of us, you probably shouldn’t rely on us to get the job done.
So I’m asking all of you to vote. I am asking all of you to vote as liberally as your conscience allows. Why? Because it’s 2016 and my generation needs to be dragged into the modern age. Because my generation has been conservative in far too many elections we have dragged all of you into this mess. Because almost every problem I’ve discussed so far is the fault of conservative thinking. Conservativism has been given a very long time to work – over 40 years – and it simply hasn’t.
I have heard from many people younger than me that they skip voting because this election is just a damned circus. I can’t fault you for thinking that but that’s just not a good excuse. While this might be the worst one I’ve ever seen guess what? They’re ALL circuses. Working our way backwards from the last presidential election we have Obama v. Scrooge McDuck lite, Mr. Hope and Change vs. Cranky McWhite Guy, the war criminal vs. Most boring war hero ever, America vs. The Supreme Court, The Playa vs. Cranky 3rd person guy, Mr. Hope vs. Mr. Out of Touch (formerly Mr. Legacy), Mr. Legacy vs. What’s His Name, Mr. Stand tall vs. the hamburger ad, the actor vs. the Malaise, the pardoner vs. the peanut farmer, the crook vs. …you get the idea. That 40 years went by in a confused blur.
Once upon a time we elected statesmen. General Dwight D. Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy. Although we’ve come close a couple of times, no one in even my lifetime has reached the heights these men could reach and the reason why is simple. Government has fewer resources than it once did. Taxes are much lower now than they were when we built up our nation from the embers of world war, creating the infrastructure of our nation’s roads and highways, bringing plumbing and electricity and phone service to every citizen, created a real middle class and even raced to the moon.
People who complain about high taxes are just trying to get more for themselves. The truth is that taxes are lower than at any point in even my lifetime, and as a result the country can’t pay for the things that great statesmen can accomplish. As a result those statesmen don’t get to be great.
It also doesn’t help that people in elected office have lost all pretense in having any respect for anyone else in elected office. These past 8 years have been the first time in my life that a President’s policies have been opposed simply because he EXISTS.
Governance is about compromise. American Government is about meeting somewhere towards the middle so that everything can continue to function. We have sent far too many people to run things in Washington and in the various state houses who are so against compromise that they aren’t actually doing the jobs we elected them to. In salaries and benefits alone these people make more money than I do, and I’m doing all right. Hardly seems fair.
It’s not. Anyone who promised you fair was lying.
The big lie has been that we can function with a smaller government. This is a backlash to the bloated government we once had – before any of us including me were born. But we’ve reached the point a long time ago where the reaction became an overreaction. We’ve tried for almost my entire lifetime to run the country with a smaller and smaller government, with the promise that business will pick up the slack. Well, they haven’t picked up the slack and it’s time to stop waiting for it to happen.
It’s not going to and saying it over and over again doesn’t make it any more true. People in power believe that saying something over and over again makes it true, and have won elections and set policies because of it. We’ve gone to war over it. Who cares how big or small government is as long as it works? We need to do something about it and the one thing you need to understand is that my generation isn’t doing it. We’ve had lots of chances and we’re not getting it done. You don’t believe me? Ask a soldier about his or her experiences with the Veteran’s Administration.
So I’m asking it of you. Vote for Democrats. Vote for Liberals. Vote for Progressives. Vote for people who will throw money at the problem because believe it or not it almost always works when greed doesn’t get in the way – just look at the auto industry. Vote for people who want to increase spending on education, on health care, on infrastructure, on veterans, on the arts, doing SOMETHING about on great unimaginable things, on things that matter to YOU. Vote for these people in EVERY RACE ON THE BALLOT.
Vote for people who LISTEN to experts, not people who pay for experts. Vote for smart people. Vote for people who understand that the word “theory” has more than one definition. Vote for people who read and do some reading yourself while you’re at it. Vote for people who don’t mix up social issues and moral ones. Vote for people who want to help everyone, even the people who didn’t vote for them. Vote for people who respect our soldiers and military more than the people making money off of military missions. Vote for people who want to help and not hide behind excuses. The money is there. Anyone who tells you otherwise just doesn’t want to spend it.
Rich people stay rich because they don’t spend money. Scrooge McDuck isn’t a parody – he’s an instruction manual. Look at the very rich in this country and see how much money they spend so that they don’t have to give up even more. It’s millions and millions of dollars, all spent in the pursuit of keeping their remaining millions and billions for themselves.
Do you want everything to be better? Then be better. Be better than we were. It’s not fair but you’re not saving us. We’re screwed. You’re saving yourselves. You’re going to be here longer than we are so don’t be afraid to exploit that. We were and look what it got us. Make the world YOU want and don’t wait for our approval. We’re pretty slow at making decisions; you might have noticed.
Besides, you know whose taxes will be going up if you do this? Mine. Not yours, mine. The odds are pretty good that I make more money than you do. Not because I’m a better person but just because I’m older and have worked my way up through trial and error to a position where I have responsibilities – all of which comes with time. That’s just how it works. You’ll catch up to me someday and hopefully even pass me. When you’re my age you can pay those taxes. For now, make us work for the world you want and deserve.
It would be the most patriotic thing my generation has done in a long, long time.
It won’t be easy. Hell, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to take years and many elections and quite frankly people my age have less of them left so we tend to not think about that but instead think of the short term. That’s a mistake and we made it too long ago to fix it for ourselves. It will take vigilance.
The people who came before you will fight you with everything they’ve got. They’ll call you astonishingly insulting names. Some will come off as friends in an attempt to sway you. Some will actually be your friends who have already been swayed. They will try to belittle you by calling you outside of the mainstream.
If you are so outside the mainstream then why does every advertiser in the country target you? You are the mainstream – feel free to exploit that.
The Republican party of today – the party of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and everyone else helping to prop it up are AN EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT. They are not what they once were and you have to fight it with everything you’ve got. So do I. So do we all and it’s shockingly easy. All it takes is a bit of action on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Don’t stay home. They WANT you to stay home.
So to sum up all of this. Vote. Vote for people who think forward. Vote in every race. On every ballot measure. You’re going to be my age staggeringly fast – faster than you will believe - so do everything you can to make things better for yourselves. Participate. My generation has left an impact. How about yours do us one better and leave a legacy?
Thanks for listening. Thanks for thinking.
I do find it interesting that a majority of comments seem to want to focus on specific portions of what I said as opposed to the entire message. That’s fine, but it’s the entire message that matters to me. I haven’t voted yet because it’s not yet time in California. Do I have a preferred candidate? Yes. Does it matter to me who the candidate it? Yes. Is it my place to tell you who that is and stump for them?
No. Not in this diary. In previous elections there have been some who point out that they believe that because of how in the pockets candidates from both parties are to various corporate interests that there is little difference between the two sides. That’s just plain STUPID, and my main mission in life is to fight the stupid. The differences between the sides is vast, even between the candidates who have been speaking to the same corporate interests for years.
When it comes to elections, especially this one, my mission is simple. Vote in every race — on every proposition and defeat ANYONE who bases their philosophy on stupid ideas. On failed ideas. Conservatism has failed. It had its shot and it didn’t work. I am a one issue voter and that issue is that I don’t want idiots and blowhards to run things. Simple as that.