by MICHAEL ALBERT
I know you have lives to lead. Friends and parties to enjoy. Tests to take and grades to earn. Jobs to be hired for and retain. I know your values shine. Your empathy sings. I know you bemoan Donald, curse Donald, ridicule and laugh at Donald. I get all that. Great. But Gen Z, you are 70 million strong. 70 million. Where are you? First one, then another.
I tell myself you are preparing yourselves. You are meeting to get your arguments in order. You will soon burst amorously onto the activist scene. Trump to savages education. Trump exiles students. Did Trump’s troops grab you? Grab a classmate? Grab someone across town? Trump commands whole universities to bend a thousand knees and some rush to do so. Are you at one of those? Are you applying to attend? Are you at work wondering who gets fired next? You must be minutes away from boiling over, mustn’t you?
As students still in high school or college or as young employees I tell myself you are meeting in corridors, dining halls, and even bus stations. I tell myself you are talking, talking, planning, planning. The lid will soon blow off. But will it? Where are you?
NYC, SF, DC, and countless towns from sea to muddy sea display white-haired demonstrators galore. Oldsters march forth on wobbly knees. They carry signs. They know their song well. Their homes are starting to reverberate with committed conversation like colleges ought to. Wonderful. But dear Gen Z, you are 70 million strong. 70 million. Your knees don’t wobble. What is in your minds? What is your song? Where are you?
I hear that today’s music revolves around everything but the real world. I wonder where the performers who earlier rejected Trump and still do in private have gone in song. I wonder why athletes are essentially silent too. Millions demonstrate which is great but not them and too few of you. I get that Trump may seem to you like a walking, talking, joke. After all, he is. But this is no laughing matter.
I get that the idea of collectively addressing reality has been seriously wounded, perhaps even amputated. I get that what arises from today’s cyber culture as a way to address danger is to avoid it or anonymously curse it, but certainly not forthrightly collectively confront it. I get that you feel mature and cool to personally rail at or joke about Donald but that you might feel tacky or just a bit out of place to collectively organize and demonstrate to stop him. Work on a resume. Keep a job. Get a new one. And, yes, I also get that responsibility for your diverse feelings don’t rest exclusively on your shoulders, but on me and mine too. After all, my generation birthed your parents and together we and they handed you a nasty world. But still. The sky is falling. Where are you?
I wonder what to write or to say to impact your thoughts and feelings. I wonder how to steal away fears you may have. If your getting out of bed in this world that we gave you is hard, I wonder how to sunder your slumber? I wonder if loneliness too is an issue? For guys, I hear that it is. And I wonder very much is your mood due to things we who went before you did or didn’t do? Do you fear, slumber or endure isolation—or is it something else entirely?
Am I being unduly harsh? Honestly, I hope that I am. I hope you about to demolish my worry with your determination. I expect it each day. If so, I will extremely happily apologize for my worry.
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