Why I’m Adding my Voice to the Chaos
A millennial’s tipping point into action
I lucked out. I was born into a peaceful California community in the United States of America to white parents in a quality school district in the mid-80’s. That’s what’s commonly referred to as “a leg up”.
From our country’s birth, the uncontrollable conditions a person is born into — their first religion, their ethnicity, their wealth, their citizenship, and the other million things that describe a person’s life — have played a significant roll in how “American” a person is deemed. The reality is that no man in America is considered to be created equal. That must change.
As a child, there was a consistent thread weaved throughout my American History lessons. It spun a tale of America as a righeous nation of determined and optimistic people who, through hard work and inherent virtue, created perhaps the greatest nation in recorded history. I was taught that America stands as the world’s high-browed champions of democracy, spreading peace, justice, and a firm moral compass across the globe.
An honest look at our nation’s history reveals far more nuance. Where two dimensional views have clear lines and little perspective, a three dimensional look at history is going to have shadows, nuance, and gray areas. Yes, we’ve had our shining examples of good. There’s a lot to love about America. But the shadows can’t hide our darkest moments. We’ve been known to bring stability to nations, to further human rights causes, and to provide aid in times of desperation. We’ve also been known to have the capacity for devastatingly immoral and oppressive actions. Our country, especially in times of fear, does not default to its citizens’ better nature.
The oppressed in America have, time and again, dragged the country up to its moral high ground despite itself. Oppressed and denigrated groups have had to insist that America become the land of the free. Abolition, suffrage, marriage equality, environmental protection, healthcare, reproductive rights, and every other cause that elevates the marginalized closer to an even playing field has been relentlessly opposed. To protect their advantage, my countrymen have hidden behind morally hollow guises of religious righteousness and legal mandates and false victimhood and, if all else fails, violence. In practice, American ideals tend to be just that: ideals.
Your gift to us is a cancer patient of a planet and a carton of cigarettes.
Our leaders are failing us because they aren’t concerned about us. Cynicism abounds, and our politicians make no effort to even pretend to work together. Dollars are the fuel of elections, and the number after the dollar sign motivates candidates far more than the number of people effected by a piece of legislation. Maintaining a free and just republic requires a sense of duty to the institution itself. That sense of duty is entirely absent in Donald Trump’s administration.
So I fear for my country. It seems that today, as in my childhood textbooks, truth is not beholden to facts. Today, truth is what the victors shout from their pulpit. Truth is an endangered species, and the EPA won’t be able to protect it.
Americans my age are being vilified for problems created before we ever had a chance to participate in our democracy, and trivialized for daring to want something better. Too many of us have compounded that by eschewing politics entirely. Considering the machiavellian train wreck we’re asked to participate in, I can’t blame anyone for turning away. We’ve inherited the recent disasters of supply side economics. We’ve inherited political structures that have been manipulated to leave us with a gutted voting rights act and a hyper-efficient corruption incubator called Citizens United. We have inherited a country that conflates net worth with personal worth, gives corporations a louder voice than actual living human beings, and saddles those striving to pull themselves up by their bootstraps through education with insane debt.
And now, Donald Trump.
The Millenial generation — my generation — was born into a system that perpetuated the disenfranchisement of young Americans by blaming long-simmering national problems on our own moral shortcomings. We were born into a system that intentionally disenfranchises inconvenient blocks of voters based on race, that fosters cynical power grabs and blatant crony appointments, that normalizes racism in power, and that has allowed our press to be corrupted to the point they’re no longer trusted.
Your gift to us is a cancer patient of a planet and a carton of cigarettes.
This effort to push so many people out of politics is intentional. But now, rather than look away, it’s time to fight. I feel compelled to speak to the state of my country because too many of my fellow Americans aren’t seeing the world in a reasonable way. Too many of us are caught up in the us-vs-them, tit-for-tat scoreboard of Team Republican versus Team Democrat that we can’t agree on a factual foundation to discuss what’s happening. The marriage of trickle down economics, severe social conservatism, and a frightening legislative strategy has us on the brink of national disaster. And they managed to birth this clusterfuck amidst the most peaceful and prosperous time in recorded human history.
…our elders are lost in the echo chambers that have brainwashed our parents and our aunts and our uncles into electing the walking id of a billionaire comic strip villain.
It’s no joke. We’re all being robbed, and an unscrupulous narcissist has been given the key to the safe.
It no longer makes sense to remain silent. It is imperitive that the voice of the kindest, smartest, noblest generation of Americans that I’ve witnessed dominates the national conversation. We’re faced with a grave threat — a world-as-we-know-it threat — that we must tirelessly oppose.
I’m going to do my best to speak out passionately, and rationally, and honestly, because I love my country. It’s on all of us to speak up. The loudest voice in the debate over our future must be the voice that knows that decisions with global consequences can’t originate in what one feels, but in what science and reason and history can tell us. We need to shout, right now, because our elders are lost in the echo chambers that have brainwashed our parents and our aunts and our uncles into electing the walking id of a billionaire comic strip villain.
We have the numbers. We have the facts. Now it has to matter to us more.
Looking to do your part? One way to get involved is to read the Indivisible Guide, which is written by former congressional staffers and is loaded with best practices for making Congress listen. Or follow this publication, connect with us on Twitter, and join us on Facebook.
