Sixty-six percent of people aged 19-29 supported Barack Obama. It surprised some of the pundits, but I was not surprised. I was acquainted with that age group. Like some college instructors, I taught high school first - for me it was nineteen years. After hearing about the age of the Obama supporters, I recalled a graduation speech I was honored, surprised but honored, to give. The 1993 graduating class asked me to be the special graduation speaker. What follows is that speech.
As far as I can remember, the statistical information was taken from The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath by Kevin Phillips.
Title of Speech: Triskaidekaphobia: Fear of the Number 13
The Speech:
On my mother-in-law’s birthday, March 12, 1991, I found out that my wife was pregnant. After two years of arduous and exhausting effort, finally, I struck the mother-lode. I was elated! The next day, the 13th, I remembered that I was forty-five years old and had never really been responsible for anyone else’s life. I was frightened.
On Saturday November ninth my wife started labor. (Now I truly know what that word means. She made me sure of that.) Five days later, on Wednesday Nov. 13 at 8:02 am Hilary was born. In that time I saw pain, courage, determination, and I felt anxiety and fear but then, ultimately, joy and serenity.
A year later on Friday November the 13th 1992 my daughter finished her first year and on that same day she became sick. On Saturday her fever hit 104 and while my wife held my sweet Hilary, my wonderful little red-headed daughter jerked twice, stiffened, roller her eyes back and went limp. My most precious love had a fibril seizure. And I learned what true fear was.
But we got lucky and she recovered.
But I have retained this mixed feeling of both joy and dread of the number thirteen. And, appropriately, behind me sits the thirteenth generation, and instilled in me is a profound and unrelenting feeling of desperation and happiness.
They will be responsible for what happens to my sweet Hilary’s future and I am frightened and happy for her. She will be the fourteenth generation of Americans and their future may be dismal unless the group that sits before you, (the generation of Americans who will determine my daughter’s future, the thirteenth generation, the generation that represents what our great American Society has become) can drastically change things.
However, they are a generation that has been criticized more severely than any other generation. They have been maligned as being, lazy, irresponsible, drug infested, crime ridden, careless, spoiled, unconcerned and immoral.
But I will tell you what they really are - angry! Angry because they are inheriting a troubled country for which they are not responsible. Angry because they have been forced to endure a deprived and depraved environment that was not of their making.
After all, they did not decide to:
- Build a national debt of 4 trillion dollars
- Develop the largest gap in the industrialized world between the rich and the poor
- Shift, through a change in the tax laws and interpretation of regulations, 4% of the wealth from the middle class so that the top ten percent of Americans would control 68% of the nation’s wealth.
- Have, by 1987, the bottom 10% of Americans earn 10.5% less while the top 10% increased their earnings by 24.4%
- Have the top 1% increase theirs by 74.2% while the middle class earned zero % more
- Have the average high school graduate’s earnings drop from $24,000 to $18,000.
- Have in 1991 the medicare system spend 19 billion dollars on the health care of households earning $50,000 or more
- Spend 9.2 billion dollars on military and civil service retirees who earn more than $100,000 a year
- Distribute 55 billion dollars a year in social security to people who earn incomes in excess of $50,000 yearly.
- Decrease federal benefits by 7% to households with incomes under 10,000 dollars while doubling the federal benefits to households earning in excess of 200,000 dollars
- Give a total of 400 billion dollars in 1991 in federal entitlements to households earning over 30,000 dollars and 200 billion to households with incomes over 50,000 dollars.
- Wreck a savings and loan institution that was originally designed to provide loans so that average middle class Americans could afford a home.
- Increase college education cost so that it becomes only a distant dream for many people.
No, this they did not decide. That single infamous honor belongs to my generation, the dirty dozen, the generation of the roaring eighties.
It was my generation
- Who no longer wants to identify with the working man, but rather, now worships and protects the ideology that the wealthy are the chosen ones.
- Who wants to pay $10 worth of taxes and receive $100 worth of services
- Who failed to pass school bonds because it would cost them the price of a six pack of beer each month
- Who failed to pass taxes to hire more police because it would add the cost of two six packs of coke to their monthly local tax bill
- Whose corporations complained about having to pay 17% of the total tax moneys collected while in 1955 corporations paid 30%
- Who wanted criminals to be given severe sentences and to serve their full sentences but were unwilling to pass tax bills and bonds to hire more prosecutors, judges and to build more jails
- Who wanted teenagers to find something better to do than hang around the street corners and get into trouble, but were unwilling to finance youth centers and expand recreation programs
- Who wanted students to receive a better education but would not miss Monday Night Football to come to open house
- Who turned the 12 percent of children who lived in poverty in 1981 and made it 20 percent by 1987. A full one fifth, now approaching one fourth of America’s children live in poverty. No other industrialized country in the world has even half that many
- To be the first generation of Americans to fail to pay off the debt that they had accumulated. We were the first to leave that task to our children, the very children of which 20% now approaching 25% are already living in poverty.
- And finally, who talked about a thousand points of light and left our children to wander alone in the darkness.
We, the twelfth generation, were the generation who as Fitzgerald so aptly said, "They were careless people, ..... — (we) smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into (our) money or (our) vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept (us) together, and let other people clean up the mess (we) had made..."
They did not ask to grow up in a country where there is little opportunity, high crime, drugs, and "benign neglect," a synonym which condoned racism. But that is the country we leave them.
My generation has no excuse. We were told by people in our generation and the previous generation what would happen if we lived for today and greedily reached for every pleasure and luxury. But we did not listen. Those people were alarmists, unpatriotic, troublemakers, spoilers. They were just trying to ruin the great celebration of borrow and spend.
Graduates, do not be what we were. Listen to the warnings. Be the alarmists for your generation and the next, my daughter’s.
Behind me sits the only hope that my daughter has. They have been more maligned, abused, measured, probed, prodded, pushed, degraded and defamed than any other generation. Unlike the dirty dozen, they will give back far more than they take. They will stand where we fell. They will run where we crawled. They will rebuild the industrial empire that we destroyed. They will turn despair and pessimism into faith and optimism. They will be selfless where we were selfish. They will be careful where we were careless. They will be fearless where we were fearful and they will be our salvation.
Graduates,
Do not let anyone tell you that you did not do this yourself. Whatever you accomplish, it will have been with the least aid that any other generation has ever received. You deserve much more than the country that we left to you. Your generation is stronger, smarter, and better than my generation.
Do for my innocent sweet daughter what I and my generation failed to do for you.
I’m sorry.
End of Speech:
Until recently, little had changed since the 1993 speech - at least for the good. The problems that existed then have become even worse today. The inequities are even more pronounced. More than fifteen years later there had been no hope until Tuesday November 4. Now the questions become, "Will changes really be made?" "How long will it take to set those wrongs right?" "How many of those wrongs will remain untouched?"
I can tell you this about Gen 13. For most of the students, race, religion, ethnicity didn’t seem to have a bearing on who their friends were or who they decided to "hang" with. Most of them mixed together without regard to those externals. Many more cared more about the environment and equality than previous generations. Were they the difference that allowed Obama to break through? Will they be the difference that this country so desperately needs? I hope so. I need to believe that my daughter has guardians and mentors to prepare her generation.
Another thing I can tell you - we know who holds the greatest blame - the baby boomers. These were the children of the first middle class. These are the same ones who had the courage to demonstrate against the Vietnam War. For some it was a matter of conscience, but for others it was a matter of convenience. The war would interrupt their acquisition of money, comfort and power and that was unacceptable - think Cheney and Rove. Some rose to the heights of the corporate world, the upper echelon of the military, and the seats of political power. For some those same selfish desires would drive them to demand more and more and more of the country's wealth and power. The thought of sharing any part of that wealth and power was sacrilege. For their entire adult life these baby boomers would complain about the size and cost of government while sucking at its teat until it was dry, and they would never even say, "Thank you."