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Generally Speaking
By: Alexis E. Santí
I come from the generation of GI Joe and Transformers action figures. Star Wars, a good & a dark side. There always was an enemy, there was always good there was always evil. I have been raised and fed this message time and time again. I grew up where the world of my passivity gave way to commercial breaks. This is the commercial break. And this is what I have to say.
I am from the generation of cynicism. I have always lived in the world of strife of worlds digitally connected, of computers blipping and screaming at us loudly. Things got easier. Things got more complicated. I have been cast away, tossed aside by the elite. My purpose has been undefined I am the heir to the throne of millions of dead dying of AIDS, cancer, heart disease and obesity. At birth my great inheritance was the debt of my country. I am depressed. Medicated. Scared and proud. I am a generation; I am a single voice that speaks. You will hear my voice; you will feel the words spilling out into the page, for these words were drawn from the blood of my tears.
I am apologizing. In an effort to begin again I am reintroducing myself to you. I am America. I am the future of America, and I will no longer remain silent. My pain is the pain of millions like me who have popped the pills we were offered as a child. We have no war to fight; the terror is our own lives a fear of a future that remains unseen and undiscovered. There are thousands just like me across America today unemployed, underemployed, employed leading pathetic lives that they do not believe that they were supposed to live. The America that their youth promised them is unfulfilled. They are tired of waiting, they are ready, and they are hungry.
We are tired of your half-truths. The politics of daily life that have invaded every inch of our sense of decency. A world where honor and trust has been lost to cronyism and bigger businesses getting bigger and then heading abroad. Our icons have marketed themselves without the desire or intent to move our lives to a better place. While our schools fail we remain convinced that our tax dollars would go towards saving it, when the only thing saved is the pocket change of the privileged.
Cynicism has become the great cancer of our generation; it is a sickness that is eating away at the inside of our bodies, and the inside of our souls. The great sadness of our generation is not that we are unable to change the world it is that we have been muzzled from doing so. We are passionate, articulate, and emblazoned to change the world while the men and women we have watched publicly serving us have paid lip service to our mores and gone along the same road, long paved. They have proved that back room deals and side stepping values will pay off in the long run. They have waged war against our generation, a generation of nameless citizens that grew up fighting wars in their mind. Their great battles seen on the computer screen, for reality held nothing for them. TV shows emerged attempting to prove that our voyeurism of other's lives may prove to make up for what our lives lack.
I am calling for an end. I am calling for a new beginning. I am calling for the end of divisions and divisiveness that seeks to attack legitimate leaders for illegitimate means. I am calling for a leader of our generation that knows of our pain and has personally struggled against the same system. I am calling for a warrior who knows the depth of humanity. He has taken life. He has given life. He inspires. He weeps freely and does not judge others nor seeks to destroy their lives, but seeks to make them believe in the world we were promised as children and we are on the verge of losing. A leader who will not be mocked for understanding the complexity of the world, but who leads the country in complex times. A multi-linguist. An inspiration not corrupted by the cancer eating away at our society and our political system. Someone who saved thousands from the holocaust of ignorance.
A hero of a war that our generation has been told to hate. A man who can ease our pain and unite our country to greatness. He will repair the fellowship that was cast aside for immediate gains, in favor of the future of our country, and the good of the world.
We can die meaning something; the great society that was built will be rebuilt. We are no longer playing games with the toy soldiers of our youth. The future of our generation is firmly on our shoulders, it is time to choose the man who we were promised as children would lead our country. A generation is speaking, a generation is crying. A generation is torn by the reality of our state, and all that will become of it if we do not act now. Our greatness will depend on a leader -our generation will step forward into its rightful place in destiny, they are led by a General, General Clark.
Alexis Santi is a tri-lingual, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who lives and raves in Washington, DC. He is a freelance journalist and has been published in a range of newspapers and E-zines ranging from the Hartford Courrant, to the Democraticunderground.com. He can be reached at ourwinteratyahoodotcom.
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