|
Edited on Sun Sep-07-08 04:35 PM by Tangerine LaBamba
I want you to keep that confidence, that strength of belief, that courage and hope. I want that to be what defines you, and I want you to hold onto all those things as long as possible.
Some of us who are older than you - old enough to be your parents, very easily - were once just like you, all those things guiding us and lighting our way.
Then we learned about loss.
We lost JFK. Then we lost MLK, Jr. Then we lost RFK.
And all this happened within a 5-year span, while we were also losing the boys we grew up with, the ones who went off to a place in SE Asia called Vietnam, wherever that was.
We learned about loss, and we watched as Watergate almost destroyed us, but some heroes - Sam Ervin, Sam Dash, Peter Rodino, Alexander Butterfield, Katharine Graham - saved us, and then we started to get back up.
Along came the Iranians taking our Americans hostage, and holding them for 444 days, with daily reports about them slowly, slowly breaking our spirits and showing us how powerless we were.
They were released just as Ronald Reagan was sworn in, and then began our true "long, national nightmare." The mentally ill were turned out of hospitals and into the streets, the rich began to get richer, and the poor began to disappear from the map.
After that, Bush The First, a slow decline, followed, thankfully, by Clinton, who then proceeded to run so fast towards the center, we of the Left who had supported him, couldn't quite believe it. Once he got caught getting blown in the White House by an intern, our hope was left, yet again, in a shattered mess on the floor of our lives.
Watching the election being stolen in 2000, and again in 2004 left people like me bereft and utterly without hope. Certainly with no more trust in the system. Still, along comes this charismatic and powerful young man, Barack Obama, and whatever hope and faith we still have rises up, and we remember quite well what it felt like to believe, to feel like you do, only without the weight of our decades of experience.
This is a long way of saying that there are those of us who have every good reason to despair and to be fearful. We have seen far too many ways that we can be robbed, that Republican operatives or madmen with guns or the cruel whims of destiny can steal from us the things we hoped for. I hope you never have to endure any of the kinds of losses we have experienced, and that when you are our age, you are still rather baffled by us, the ones who held it back and pushed down our hope and waited for the worst, all the while hoping for the best (with apologies to Mel Brooks).
I hope your confidence and faith will always remain intact because Barack Obama was elected President - TWICE! - and he did a phenomenal job. I hope I can share all that with you.
But, until then, I hope this lengthy screed helps you, my young friend, to understand the perspective of a generation that came before you and watched it all turn to dust and ash.
|