I wrote this a while back but thought it was too good for just a single posting. It was one of those moments where I just got angry and started typing and captured some raw emotion. So I'm presenting it again:
How Did This Happen?
I'm sitting here listening to Cat Stevens songs and thinking about my youth, we had such ideals back then, we wanted so much and dreamed so far. World peace, love, brothers and sisters to all. It's with tears in my eyes that I look at what we've become as America totters on the brink of fascism and we are responsible for the death of close to 1,000,000 people in Iraq. We railed and protested against our parents and their generation for being hypocrites, but looking back now they were practically saints compared to what this generation has become. The worst our parents did was fail to live up to the ideals of what America should be, what the boomer generation has done is throw those ideals to the ground and stomp on them as if they were evil.
I'm now old and tired, as old as my mom was when Cat recorded these songs, 3 years older than my dad ever made it to. Oddly enough there is still fire in my belly, rage against the machine. Too bad it's accompanied by nausea. My whole body hurts and I'm tired down to my bones and my beloved Darcy is about to die soon. And Cat Stevens is now a devote Muslim who did not condemn the Ayatolah's death sentence of Salman Rushdie, so much for peace and love.
And on top of that we stand at the brink of world disaster with global warming. It won't lead to the end of mankind but it will lead to world-wide problems like nothing we've ever seen, millions of refugees across the globe, hunger, misery and death for multiple millions of humanity. I fear the future will look at the baby boomer generation and see us as either monsters or insane, maybe both. We all claim Hitler and the Nazis as the worst evil that men can sink to but future generations will put that label on us.
How did this happen? Christians and rich people, the fundamentalists who have tried to ram theocracy down our throats and the neocons who have gladly used them as the means to power. If any good can come from all this it will be if both such groups are reviled and hated for as long as humanity lasts.
3 comments:
Will the last baby boomer on earth please remember to turn down the stereo before you leave?
It is ghastly to find oneself old and growing more insignificant day by day.
Kevin, what you said is so true. It seems like we've been going backward instead of forward as a society.
Cat actually is still on the "Peace Train". Did you happen to catch any of his "Live Earth" performance (Germany)? He was fantastic. He sang Cat era songs and one by Stevie Wonder, "Saturn". Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZftyNk_Nt4
If you want to see video go to the "Live Earth" site and follow the links to Germany, and then to Yusuf. There a videos of the performance of some of the songs. The ones on YouTube are just audio. It is great to see Yusuf back on stage. His voice is still great.
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