What do we have to offer? This blogging, internet-savy, plugged in, tuned out generation--what do we have to offer, well besides sass and uncalled for sarcasm?
Trick question!
When you have those aforementioned qualities, you really don't need anything else. We stand not on the shoulders of our meth-addicted ancestors, but on the bones of the disillusioned youth of generations passed. We saw what protesting, univeral love and other high-minded ideas got them, so my peers, rather knowingly or not, have processed history and distilled out the rich minerals from which we shall build the future: greed and apathy. To put it simply, this generation just don't give a shit. The world's falling down around me, yet I realize not only am I powerless to stop it, but I could care less about what happens as long as it doesn't affect me personally.
But can you really blame me? Everything that has happened, globally and nationally, the generation currently in charge has just let it happen. Letting the government run rampant and unchecked, supporting a useless and increasingly bleek war, ignoring the crises on our own shores and the ones America has directly/indirectly caused and pursuing the almighty euro in sacrifice of everything else; with a model like that, is it so hard to source where the values of someone my age truly lie? Hope is a fool's luxury, kids.
We're all depressed, on drugs and getting dumber as the years wear on. Not all of us, of course, as there are exceptions to all ruless. See: gay republicans, straight choreographers--Fosse? Really?--etc. There is a crop of twenty-somethings coming up who are conservative, savvy and ruthless--a throwback to that shoulder-padded glory era of yuppie dominance--but the 80s are always coming back. The general assumption is that everyone 18-25 or so is a liberal, a democrat or at least a moderate, but the country itself has shifted so dramatically to the right that the majority of us are conervative on some level. Take into account that the future lies in the hands of the educated and the priviliged, hands that are ignorant to the toil of hard work and have forever been pampered with the warmest/silkiest of oils, I like patchouli, and it seems that we as a nation have only begun our obsession with all things that hang to the right.
But if there is one thing I am proud of in my contemporaries, besides the six pack abs and rock hard pecs that have become requisite for any male old enough to curl a dumbbell, it is the acceptance of the queers. This is literally, the gayest generation, like, ever. My teenage years weren't the greatest, but the biggest problem in my life was never that I was gay. It was an issue, but there were so many resources available to me, be it the internet, support groups, the local gay bar--and I grew up in upstate New York, above said gay bar--that I never feared what might happen to me in the halls once the school bell rang. Also, race has become so blurred in 20 odd 6, with the multiracials representing a larger and larger percentage of the population,* that I feel racism is slowly but surely on its way out of the country. However, for this to truly happen, someone's gotta take the necessary steps, once someone knows just what the hell those steps are.
Who'll be the next great leader? Who's willing to step up and lead us all into a brave, new world?...Anyone? No, not today? You know, that was really a rhetorical...nevermind. I kind of lost interest in what I was doing, anyway. Whatever. What was I going to say? Oh, yeah. Someone's going to have to step up to the plate and lead this generaton and future others...oh, fuck, I don't even believe what I'm saying anymore. Fuck it.
*I don't do research...so FUCK you.
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