My generation and the ones on its coattails do not have the greatest of reputation among our fellow Americans. We’re commonly seen as shallow, narcissistic, celebrity-obsessed and selfish brats who are more concerned with the latest inaction on The Hills than the action on Capitol Hill. But next week this country will witness the most important election in most of our lifetimes, and the younger generations have a whole lot at stake.
It seems every election there’s an enormous push to get young people out to vote. Most of them are focused on celebrities imploring us that it’s our civic duty, that we must be heard, that we’re the ones who will lead the world in the coming decades.
If you say so, P Diddy.
None of these efforts have had much of an effect on youth turn-out. Unless the
US government starts allowing us to vote from our Facebook pages or via YouTube video, many of us just aren’t going to bother. And this election, above all others, it’s essential that we do. So, forget the celebrities telling you this is your civic duty. Forget needing to be heard. That’s what your blog is for. And if you need to be told to vote, you’re not going to be changing the world any time soon, either.
So, let me offer you a different motivation, one that encourages you to embrace the more selfish traits of our generation. You need to vote in this election because the older generations are stealing your stuff, and you want it back.
It’s true. Trust me. They’re stealing from you every day. They stole over two thousand dollars from each and every one of you because a bunch of absurdly rich, old CEOs screwed up on the job. Two thousand dollars. That’s like four iPhones.
But that’s just one specific case. The truth is they’re getting so sneaky in their thievery that you probably won’t notice what they’ve stolen for years. You won’t miss it tomorrow, or even next week. But at a certain point you’re going to wonder where your ability to retire went, or where reasonable college tuitions went, or where Florida went.
In the past eight years, nearly every aspect of our country has been screwed up by the older generations. The economy. Our military. Education. Even our Constitution has been bent to curly-straw proportions. The way the Bush administration feels about your privacy they could be reading your text messages as we speak.
OMG!
And who says things can’t get worse? If I had a nickel for every time I thought that in the past eight years I could have funded the Wall Street bailout myself. And while I did help fund the bailout, I had help from all of you.
But the economy isn’t the only thing that’s crumbling. We’re stretching our environment to the breaking point, and though some of us may pass on before Florida and Manhattan get slurped up by the Atlantic, many of us will see it if we don’t start devoting some attention to our carbon emissions. And if our government would rather spend ten billion dollars a week on war than things like education, our children aren’t going to be bright enough to rescue us when we’re hoping to retire to The Keys for our twilight years.
Shoot. I forgot. The Keys are underwater.
I know you young people don’t like politics much, but most of you don’t like the dentist either. And from what I’ve seen there’s no epidemic of twenty-somethings spitting molars into their cappuccinos. So, I’m warning you, if you want to keep the stuff you have now, and still have your dreams to look to in the future, you need to vote.
Politics don’t care about you, because you don’t care about politics. But if you turn out in large numbers this election day, you may make Washington a little bit nervous the next time they want to steal from your future.
