Even before I was a kid (a long time ago), this was a popular song by The Association:
Here they come Here they come Here they come, yeah
Some are walking, some are riding Here they come, yeah And some are flying, some just gliding
Released after years of being kept in hiding
They're climbing up the ladder rung by rung Enter the young, yeah Yeah, they've learned how to think
Enter the young, yeah More than you think they think
Not only learned to think, but to care Not only learned to think, but to dare
Enter the young
At that time the reference was to the 60’s generation, whom few can argue changed the course of history in this country and the world. Radically, whether you liked the changes or not, those changes came. Whether you think they were lasting or ultimately “compromised” or not. They both inspired and scared a lot of people, and we’re still seeing the aftermath of those effects today. When the 60’s generation spoke, the world shook, and it acclimated itself to them, not the other way around.
There are new kids in town now, as Tim Kreider points out in this op-ed for the New York Times: “Go Ahead, Millenials, Destroy Us,” which may alternatively infuriate and delight you, as it should:
As with all historic tipping points, it seems inevitable in retrospect: Of course it was the young people, the actual victims of the slaughter, who have finally begun to turn the tide against guns in this country. Kids don’t have money and can’t vote, and until now burying a few dozen a year has apparently been a price that lots of Americans were willing to pay to hold onto the props of their pathetic role-playing fantasies. But they forgot what adults always forget: that our children grow up, and remember everything, and forgive nothing.
As someone who has seen the Democratic Party over the last twenty years resign itself and acclimate itself to the NRA and the gun lobby, as someone who has watched the best liberal voices of my generation urge caution, urge complacency, to that lobby’s seemingly inexorable control over our electoral process, I have to say that what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is really something new and ...different:
The students of Parkland are like veterans coming home from the bloody front of the N.R.A.’s de facto war on children. They’ve seen their friends, teachers and coaches gunned down in the halls. To them, powerful Washington lobbyists and United States senators suddenly look like what they are: cheesy TV spokesmodels for murder weapons. It has been inspiring and thrilling to watch furious, cleareyed teenagers shame and vilify gutless politicians and soul-dead lobbyists for their complicity in the murders of their friends.
And my generation couldn’t do this. We became ossified in our pursuit of electoral advantage. But these kids haven’t grown up with the same fears, the same caution, the same “pragmatism,” and it shows:
Last week Wayne LaPierre was reduced to gibbering like Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” about a “socialist” takeover and “hardening” our schools. You could see the whites all around his irises. That look is fear.
So even someone of my last-ditch Baby Boomer generation-- who always believed these things but ultimately didn’t have the guts to carry my beliefs through to their logical conclusion— find myself agreeing with Kreider’s ultimate conclusion (and even he messes it up, because these kids are not really Millennials, but at least a generation removed): We really fucked this up. So it’s the natural order of things to let the young take us down:
My message, as an aging Gen X-er to millennials and those coming after them, is: Go get us. Take us down — all those cringing provincials who still think climate change is a hoax, that being transgender is a fad or that “socialism” means purges and re-education camps. Rid the world of all our outmoded opinions, vestigial prejudices and rotten institutions. Gender roles as disfiguring as foot-binding, the moribund and vampiric two-party system, the savage theology of capitalism — rip it all to the ground. I for one can’t wait till we’re gone. I just wish I could live to see the world without us.
That’s the way it should be. And it’s a beautiful thing.
Enter the young.