We elected Reagan and Thatcher, sold off the public's assets at pennies on the dollar, ran up the credit card bills, deregulated everything, and passed it along to future generations. It was fun spending our grandchildren's money!

and misery has to end, it's killing people and the planet.

we had it good by comparison - wouldn't want to be here to see the seas take New York City ..

catastrophic environmental context as should be the case. That all-pervasive dread, a sense of closely-impending doom, and I am not exaggerating. There is much cognitive dissonance, denial to be overcome. Urgently.

Mr. Sanders is the only viable way for the USA and the entire biosphere.

Peace & love.

might be offended by this quote but here goes: "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."

All candidates who do not emphasise the environmental message need to be expelled from active politics. The alternative is mass (auto-)genocide.

Or what 16 year olds feel compared to other generations felt at age 16?

I'll bet the duck and cover generation felt some angst in their day.

and betwern nations.

I was born in 1954, went to school from 1959 onwards...

In UK.

Would it surprise you to know that in my schools throughout those cold war years we were subjected to not one 'duck & cover', 'under the desks' exercise?

In USA, I'm told, kids were subjected to this. To feel that fear. Why? Perhaps because the USA was and still is the only potential international aggresor on such a scale?

Fear --> Obedience.

If you were born in the UK in 1914 like my grandfather, duck and cover wouldn't have been an exercise in your teen years.

But you're right. The Great War of 1914-18 was the real thing all right. My German, French, Italian and other European friends here in Spain say the same. The end of the Old Order, entirely brought about by European elites squabbling amongst themselves, with entire peoples paying the price. All the young men of entire villages and towns gone. Cold wind blowing over empty fields.

Then part 2, 1939-45 following that bad French Treaty (Versailles) and the economic crash and depression caused by those same greedy selfish elites.

My father (British 8th Army despatch rider, Norton 500s, in North Africa, Middle East, Anatolia, Italy) told me, I paraphrase, "We came home from that war we'd won, with that recent experience, being demobilised but still with acces to arms. We said to our elites, this was your fault, again. We really do not want to have to do this ever again. Never again. So we're going to make a deal. We want socialism, this much socialism (education, health, heavy industries...). You will pay taxes, this much in taxes. We remain a capitalist, but mixed, economy. Either you accept this deal or we are going to go full Communist." The deal was, grudgingly no doubt, accepted. It was decided the Empire made no sense, the opposite in fact, and had to go...

We have not been aggressive warmongers since then. But we are certainly ready to defend ourselves and our friends. We sincerely hope our friends will not make that necessary, again.

We had duck and cover exercises throughout elementary school. But here they were because of our geology, not about politics or war fears. Since the Pacific Northwest is part of the ring of fire, with active earthquake faults and dormant/active volcanoes, we had earthquake drills, to learn to duck and cover under desks and tables or in a doorway at the start of an earthquake.

If you say so...

millennials, Blue_Tires.

If it's causing fear and terror, instead of helping motivate people to improve the world, what does that mean?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not making any accusations or recommendations. I'm just curious. I mean, crime was worse for the generations before them. The Cold War no less terror inducing. The economy no better. So what is different?

In the U.S., lack of resilience has been garnering more discussion as a problem for millennials and the following generation. For some of them, everything had been micromanaged, from minute by minute schedules of the day to schooling, which became more narrowly defined due to the constraints and emphasis placed on increasingly rigid testing and demands for ever more metrics and data surrounding that.

Teaching is, of necessity, done toward the test, and learning is measured by what can be memorized and regurgitated. This is forced by administrators onto teachers, then to students. Transitions from high school to college are a matter of checking all the requirements in the box, in a narrow path to a specific career field. Everything is measured and quantified, and often, found lacking. From there, it's no surprise that any mistake or failing, no matter how small, seems a major crisis or catastrophe and prompts an over-reaction. And knowledge is viewed as something specific and provided, rather than as something explored and questioned and re-examined.

Some succumb to the constant pressure and demands and medicate to conform or worse. Thankfully, some break out of this box, but it's not easy since the box can be a comfortable-seeming restraint.