Time for a "Greaterest Generation"

One of the problems with advancing in years is finding yourself longing for something in your past. In my case, one of the things I long for is the respectful disagreements of those who want the best for our country.

When I was eight years old LBJ and Barry Goldwater were vying for the office of president. I was completely ignorant of either’s politics – at least I don’t remember being aware of what either stood for at the time. This was the blissful state of my childhood. I was aware that my father was a vocal advocate of Goldwater and my mom was a quiet supporter of Johnson. We lived in Costa Mesa, California, which at the time was a middle class, monochromatic universe, where I climbed the lemon tree in the yard, walked to school with a group of friends, and the grocery stores gave away Disneyland ride tickets instead of Green Stamps. (In those days you got into the park for free but bought tickets for rides.)

For some reason, we went to (the precinct maybe?) GOP headquarters. I have no idea why. I don’t remember picking up a yard sign or carrying anything out; rather, I think we were dropping something off. (Now I’m puzzling over what that could have been. Signatures? A donation? Who knows?) My dad took me in while my mom waited in our Chevy Corvair. The room seemed cavernous to an eight-year-old, with shiny Linoleum floors, lots of chrome-framed glass, and florescent lights overhead. Across the room was a counter with smiling men in ties and white shirts. There were quite a few folks scattered around the room with posters and stacks of signs, and buckets of buttons. Conversation buzzed like bees in a field of clover.

After we did whatever it was we’d come to do and were heading for the door, I declared loudly “All the Way with LBJ”.

Everyone chuckled at the skinny, freckled kid. My dad shrugged and whispered to me “Wrong guy,” and we walked out.

You tell me. Would there be chuckles now?

We have lost our collective way, and not just in the diametric opposition of partisan politics, but in our recognition of our unity and our need to collaborate to resolve today’s issues. I don’t mean to imply that 1960’s suburbia was “the way”. We as a nation have always been painfully divided by many issues. It seems to me, though, that now the divisions are more granular and less forgiving – and this is the opposite vector from what is necessary.

Necessary not for mere success. Necessary not for meager advancements. Necessary for survival.

Our economic, our political, and our existential necessities are an interdependent web. Pull on one thread and it effects the rest of the structure. Rip a hole in a section and we scramble to keep the whole together.

Unfortunately, we don’t even try to see the whole through our political lenses. We tug at bits of it that we think are good for our little corner, and complain that others we disagree with are frustrated or angry with our tugging.

Now, like never before, we have to step back and see the whole picture, and work with each other to survive and thrive.

Whether one supports open boarders or impenetrable walls, I think we all agree that people come to the United States because they want a better life. They flee poverty and oppression and persecution and violence. Who wouldn’t try to escape those conditions if there were any chance of success? As long as there are gangs running roughshod in neighboring countries and poverty is the rule and not the exception, people will want to come to the US. People will risk rivers and militias and walls and shipping containers and crowded rafts across the Caribbean to Florida or the Mediterranean to Europe to save their families and find a better life. The more unbalanced the world economies and the safety and security of the people from nation to nation, the more people will seek to meet their fundamental needs of food, water, shelter, security, and safety elsewhere. We live in one of those “elsewheres”, by the way.

Like poverty, like physical security, our global climate is a fundamental element of this web we tug at. In the United States, as in many other industrialized nations, we tug at the strands like a greedy bedmate pulling on the blankets on a cold night. Solving global warming will take a world-wide approach and world-wide cooperation. Bigger players have a greater responsibility. Richer countries have to contribute more to the complex solutions required. But it will take every government participating to stop the destruction of our planet, and it has to happen now. It will take the great minds of science, the great leaders of thought, the great communicators of media, the courage of the common person, to face the challenge, reverse the trend, and literally save the world.

Stabilizing Earth’s climate is a collaborative effort that dwarfs the Second World War. Tom Brokaw popularized my parents’ generation as “The Greatest Generation” because of the adversities overcome and the sacrifices they made. That same generation lived with the fundamental belief that their children would be better off than they were, and worked, like so many generations before them, to make that belief a reality.

We need to be an even greater generation, facing a greater enemy than ever imagined by our parents. We need to back up and view the whole web – including world poverty and world strife and war-torn nations and health and climate – and begin to treat the whole problem. We need to do it, as my father would have said, “quickly and carefully”. I would add to that, we need to do it collaboratively.

I believe we can find and employ the technologies we need. I believe we have the leaders amongst us now to shine a light on the right path. And I believe in the end we will be better for it if we make the fundamental changes and sacrifices we need to make now, as a world, to save a world. We do this because we want those who come after us to be better off than we are. My parents’ generation would not have wanted to be labeled the greatest generation. They’d have scoffed at that; been embarrassed by the very idea. “That’s up to you,” they would say to all of the generations that come after them.

This is our legacy: Be a “greaterest generation” and save the world.