A Walk Down the GenX Political Memory Lane

Part III: The Constant Undercurrent

As long as you can remember, you've had indifferent-to-negative feelings about your future, your country, and/or the future of your country. You grew up watching American Graffiti and Happy Days, listening to your parents telling you it was really like that, thinking it all seemed so quaint, and too bad that America was gone forever. Sure, you got a renewed sense of patriotism after September 11, but it's faded now, just like the red, white & blue that broke out everywhere at the time. Of course, you genuinely feel gratitude for, and pride in, the brave young men and women serving and dying for our country, many of them a full generation younger than us (as hard as that is to believe).

The oldest GenXers remember seeing through a child's eyes the way the returning Viet Nam veterans were treated and no matter what their own peers, the radical Boomers, said, we didn't understand it, and thought they deserved no less than the black & white newsreel ticker-tape parades that welcomed home The Greatest in 1945. To us, they were soldiers just the same.

(Thankfully, the Boomers have realized the error of their ways and have done a 180° with regard to the soldiers they are now sending off to war to do their part to save us from the evil of terrorism – a crucial mission, even if the current strategy and tactics aren't so great completely suck and have no chance whatsoever of defeating the terrorists.)

All your life, the Middle East has been on the news, radical Islamic terrorism a frequent headline. The oldest GenXers witnessed the Munich Olympics and Iran Hostage Crisis in real-time, through a child's eyes, and remember it all so clearly, those tragic events, and all that circa 1973 adult talk about OPEC, those goddamned, price-gouging Arabs, and how America must reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

Yes, that's right. 1973. Thirty-five years ago.

When we were kids, all it meant was it was really scary, seeing those blindfolded people on TV, and really boring, listening to our parents griping about gas prices and corrupt (Republican) politicians, and can we please, please change the channel on our one TV to Gilligan's Island? What it means now, of course, is that over three decades have passed and not only have these problems not been solved, they have been escalated to catastrophic proportions and we can't change the channel anymore, because now it's our kids who are depending on us to fix this stuff.

Another thing we remember from our youth is all those shaggy-looking scientists on PBS, talking about solar energy, wind power, and how chlorofluorocarbons were putting a hole in the ozone layer. Thanks to them, Boomers* and our own brilliant GenXers, we now have the technology. The time has come for our legislature to stop giving into Big Oil and get it done: put the 'oil cartels' we heard so much about as kids out of American business, out of our lives, and hello? do our part to reduce the damage to the atmosphere in the process.

If John F. Kennedy was bold enough to commit his generation to a man on the moon, we should be bold enough to commit ours to getting the Arab Oil albatross off our children's neck once and for all. We believe that Senator Barack Obama is the only candidate in this contest who has the courage, commitment, leadership skills, and tenacity to make it happen.

2008: The New 1973

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