I like to remind my contemporaries that we are no longer part of the target demographic. We are not the group that advertisers want; we won’t be buying that many new cars or furniture, and the vast majority of us are in the process of retiring.
Truth be told, our funerals are likely pre-planned and purchased.
What’s left is a legacy, and we will be leaving our children the largest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen. But it’s not good by any stretch of imagination. What have we allowed to occur? Housing prices are out of sight. Some states have taxes so high, a median income couple can’t afford to have children.
We let them get that way by allowing rent control, sprawling government and insane borrowing procedures that caused prices to escalate much faster than wages. We have emptied the asylums, and seriously mentally ill people are living on the streets. You can judge a society by how we treat those least able to fend for themselves, and if the homeless population is any indication, we have done very poorly.
We sired a generation that has outsized expectations, and when those expectations are not met, they start looking at creeping socialism – partially so they get what they want, but more to stick it to the other guy (who’s doing better than they are). Did we really teach them to act this way? We either did, or we incentivized their actions. It is our fault.
We let this happen. We didn’t stand firm with the ethics and morals that were demonstrated to carry the day. We let socialism creep in, we let government bloat, we regulated the bankers to the point that they can’t lose, so they take it out on us.
It is no one’s fault but our own. The last few weeks sum it up:
- The murder of an innocent woman on a train.
- The murder of a political pundit.
- Another school shooting.
If this does not scream “MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS”, I don’t know what does.
Our President has proven that there is a short-term solution to suppress the violence. He knows, as do all of us, that the long-term fix is much more complex. We need to project compassion and we need to implement old solutions – the one we threw away in an effort to try what’s proven to be a failed approach.
How did we get here, and what have we done? Those questions must be answered before we move forward, and that’s because it’s time to accept the real truth. You can demonstrate character by admitting that the program you championed didn’t work, and by starting something new.
We could do that and go enjoy our retirements, or we could continue watching as the nation crumbles.
We created this mess, and the upcoming generations seem hell-bent on making it worse. But, hey, that’s what we taught them, but now we all need to start fixing what’s broken.
