The Greatest Generation
Not too long ago, I read a thread in DU by a young person lamenting his generation. But, now, really, let's be real here. What did the previous generations give us?
- WWI
- WWII
- Korea
- Vietnam
- Iraq
- Slavery
- Lynching
- Jim Crow
- Shooting of strikers
- Subjugation of women
- Oppression of gays
- Development and use of nuclear weapons
- Looking the other way while corporations infected our land and water with known carcinogens
- A do-nothing policy as AIDS ravaged the gay community
I'm sure it would be easy to add dozens of atrocities to this list.
Let's stop kidding ourselves about how the previous generations were better. Each one created messes or looked the other way, and later generations cleaned up those messes.
Each generation had a tolerance for all sorts of abuses, and later generations said, "Enough!" It took the deaths of 60,000 American troops and over a million Asians before we stopped the Vietnam War. In Iraq, a later generation forced the war to end after under 5,000 Americans and 250,000 Iraqis had died.
My simple point is that the Greatest Generation is the current one. On the heals of a generation that helped elect our first black president, today's youth is creating a brand new left movement. Win or lose, Bernie Sanders is changing the face of American politics, and we owe that not to my generation or the previous ones, but to the today's youth, the Greatest Generation. Thank you! This is your time, and though the struggle for fairness and justice won't be won for a long time, my God you're off to a good start!
