As the Israel-Lebanon war rages on, I find that the more I talk about the unfairness of it all just makes me sick. In general, I’m not an angry or violent person. I have faith that in the end, everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. However, I can not help but be utterly frustrated with the way things are now. One of my favorite writers/talk-show hosts is Dennis Prager. Like Prager, I seek and crave clarity in life. As religious as I may be, I have often questioned faith-based absolutes until my queries were satisfied.
But, as Mr. Prager says, it’s often painful to have clarity. It is far easier to be unaware, uneducated, uninvolved and uncommitted. While I wish everyone could appreciate and educate themselves about the world we live in, the reality is that it’s just not going to happen. Americans have grown weary of politics, news and wars. In the American society, we have insulated ourselves with “Must-See TV”, iPods and what new video Paris Hilton was seen in. We have grown lazy and apathetic because we no longer feel the need to do anything else. In our quest for the future, we have forgotten our past.
The generation of the Second World War was considered the “Greatest Generation.” Instead of improving on this greatness, we’ve rested on laurels of our parents and grandparents. The Greatest Generation‘s goal was to make life better for their children, that they should never again feel the pain and anguish of poverty and war. But instead of teaching them how to solve the problems they were to face in the future, they instead taught their children to “just say no.”
Sometimes, just saying no is not enough. As most parents will tell you, those words to a child are tantamount to an invitation to just say yes.
This “just say yes” attitude reached it’s zenith in the late-1960’s with the counter-revolution, anti-war crowd. The “Tune-out, turn-on” mantra for young Americans poisoned the minds of a whole generation. As these “flower-children” began to age, they began to understand the power and influence they held on American marketing and media. That influence manifested itself in public education, politics and society in general. In 1976, it sent a peanut farmer to the White House to do a job that he wasn’t remotely qualified to do. One of the most common cries of this generation is that we shouldn’t leave our debts to our children. Yet that’s exactly what this generation has done. Maybe not our financial debts, but an even more important one. Our children now have to clean up the mess left behind by all of the failed policies and idiotic ideas of the “just say yes” crowd.
Just say yes to drugs, just say yes to appeasement, just say yes to whatever the hell you want. Our parents never showed us how they made their generation the greatest. In their quest to make a better life for us, they just told us no. We now are forced to pay the bill for their, and our, mistakes.
Unfortunately, our generation and our children’s generation do not feel any sense of shame or guilt. We have been programmed with the Sheryl Crow written rule “if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad”. We have forgotten, or simply ignored, or just never learned the lessons of our parents. We have fooled ourselves into believing that we are the reason we have it so good, when in truth, we only have it good because of the sacrifices of the ones before us.
But, as Mr. Prager says, it’s often painful to have clarity. It is far easier to be unaware, uneducated, uninvolved and uncommitted. While I wish everyone could appreciate and educate themselves about the world we live in, the reality is that it’s just not going to happen. Americans have grown weary of politics, news and wars. In the American society, we have insulated ourselves with “Must-See TV”, iPods and what new video Paris Hilton was seen in. We have grown lazy and apathetic because we no longer feel the need to do anything else. In our quest for the future, we have forgotten our past.
The generation of the Second World War was considered the “Greatest Generation.” Instead of improving on this greatness, we’ve rested on laurels of our parents and grandparents. The Greatest Generation‘s goal was to make life better for their children, that they should never again feel the pain and anguish of poverty and war. But instead of teaching them how to solve the problems they were to face in the future, they instead taught their children to “just say no.”
Sometimes, just saying no is not enough. As most parents will tell you, those words to a child are tantamount to an invitation to just say yes.
This “just say yes” attitude reached it’s zenith in the late-1960’s with the counter-revolution, anti-war crowd. The “Tune-out, turn-on” mantra for young Americans poisoned the minds of a whole generation. As these “flower-children” began to age, they began to understand the power and influence they held on American marketing and media. That influence manifested itself in public education, politics and society in general. In 1976, it sent a peanut farmer to the White House to do a job that he wasn’t remotely qualified to do. One of the most common cries of this generation is that we shouldn’t leave our debts to our children. Yet that’s exactly what this generation has done. Maybe not our financial debts, but an even more important one. Our children now have to clean up the mess left behind by all of the failed policies and idiotic ideas of the “just say yes” crowd.
Just say yes to drugs, just say yes to appeasement, just say yes to whatever the hell you want. Our parents never showed us how they made their generation the greatest. In their quest to make a better life for us, they just told us no. We now are forced to pay the bill for their, and our, mistakes.
Unfortunately, our generation and our children’s generation do not feel any sense of shame or guilt. We have been programmed with the Sheryl Crow written rule “if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad”. We have forgotten, or simply ignored, or just never learned the lessons of our parents. We have fooled ourselves into believing that we are the reason we have it so good, when in truth, we only have it good because of the sacrifices of the ones before us.
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