Given the choice, I’d rather not deal with international terrorism, income inequality, and climate change. I’d prefer to spend my evenings and weekends having fun and doing what I please. These issues are complicated and confusing. They really suck. Wouldn’t it be nice to just shut them all out and forget they’re happening?
Of course, it would.
But, just when I’m ready to do so, I think back to my childhood experiences with my grandparents. They were part of what Tom Brokaw described as America’s Greatest Generation. My Grandpa Chuckie and I used to watch baseball together. He was a wonderful man—quiet, gentle, and warm. I’d ask him question after question about the pictures of him in uniform on his dresser. Was he a soldier? Did he fight in a war? Was he ever injured? He would patiently answer my questions and make clear that he was doing his duty to our country, that these horrible experiences were difficult but necessary. He talked to me about working at the Chicago World’s Fair during the Great Depression. He operated a rickshaw in order to earn enough money to pay for college, which he did. He completed dental school just in time to join the Army. Shortly after he did, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He didn’t come home to see his family (including my infant father) until the war ended.
My grandparents fought hard and made great sacrifices to build this country. It’s our job to responsibly steward what we inherited and leave it better than we found it.
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I was always mesmerized by his accounts, even though he wasn’t a very good storyteller. He came across as dispassionate and modest—clearly a man humbled by his experiences—as he describing situations that sounded epic and heroic to me.
But he told me these tales with the same duty-bound obligation that helped him endure the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and all the other great challenges America faced in his lifetime.
He lived his life driven by more than short-term self-interest.
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Let’s contrast my experiences of observing Grandpa Chuckie with watching a Donald Trump speech. When I watch him speak these are the messages I take in:
- I’ve gotten where I am today by steamrolling everyone who gets in my way. Elect me and I will steamroll America’s friends and foes alike to get what I (and presumably America) want.
- The challenges we face in this country are the result of dangerous, inferior people who either need to be kept out or deported from this country.
- The long history of American values, institutions, and customs—the ones that have helped create the longest period of stability and prosperity in recorded history—are passé, inconvenient, and disposable.
Gulp.
Is this collective sentiment of my parents’ generation? Are Baby Boomers prepared to say, “Hey, mom and dad, thanks for making all of those crushing sacrifices for me? I’ve loved all of the personal freedoms, material comfort, and economic opportunities that your tough choices gave me. Now, the world is scary again, so I think I’m going to retreat from all of these challenges and focus on my own self-gratification.”
This is what I’m starting to think is happening.
I think it’s time for much of this country to grow up mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, to see the problems facing this country and figure out how to tackle them.
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International terrorism is horrible. It’s a struggle that may endure for decades. Income inequality is worrying. Future generations may struggle to get ahead. Climate change is sometimes too frightening to consider. But the stakes are too high not to do so.
But how do people think my grandparents felt living in the Great Depression? 25% unemployment. Hunger and food shortages. It was over a decade of hardship.
How about World War II? The Axis Powers were essentially winning the war until 1943. Hundreds of thousands of Americans made direct and indirect sacrifices for the effort—and many the ultimate sacrifice.
The Cold War. The turbulent 1960s. Watergate. The list of challenges goes on and on.
This generation rose to each occasion—sometimes clumsily—and worked to find a solution.
And nowadays, what are the inheritors of America doing? It looks to me as though a great many of them are advocating the country close its borders, retreat from the world, and abandon its allies.
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I think it’s time for much of this country to grow up mentally, spiritually, and emotionally to see the problems facing this country and figure out how to tackle them. Is there blame to go around? Sure, but blame doesn’t deliver solutions.
This country deserves better leadership than Donald Trump. Name calling, bigotry, and retreat may satisfy our darker impulses, but they won’t fix our issues and they won’t leave future generations a better country.
My grandparents fought hard and made great sacrifices to build this country. It’s our job to responsibly steward what we inherited and leave it better than we found it.
I think Christianity offers important wisdom on this point: To whom much is given, much will be required.
We have been given a lot. Let’s raise our expectations of what’s required of our leaders.
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Photo: GettyImages
Humm…it is nice to idealize the past, we all have a tendency to do it. It is great that your Grandfather paid his way through college as a rickshaw driver – something that could not be done today, by any stretch of the imagination, because of regulations, policy enforcement, rules, taxes, etc… Trump and Clinton represent, so we are told, the top picks of the American people based upon the modern version of our electoral process, this is laughable. Somewhere between 9% and 14% of eligible voters selected these two ‘candidates’, if you do not side with Mark Twain about… Read more »
P.S.
I am pissed at my parents’ generation too.
Forgive any grammatical errors, my editor was busy reading by the pool 😉
Issac, my apologies for responding so late. I’m not quite sure I see the situation the same as you, but I feel the same way about the apathy that’s gripping the country. It frustrates me. I would love to see more people raise their expectations out of government.