October 12, 2020 at 9:38 a.m.
As we sow, so shall we reap
Those darn kids. You know. The ones on college campuses having all those parties. Don't they know or care that they're endangering us older folks? We can't fight off Covid as easily as they can. Sure, we're asking them to forgo all the wonderful things associated with college life---living away from home; meeting and socializing with people from different backgrounds; finding their voices in their new environment; making friends and associations which may well stay with them into their adult years. How could they be so thoughtless?
I was frustrated with them. Then it dawned on me. What have we sacrificed for them? We've known about climate change for decades. We've done a few things, but not nearly enough. It was and still is "An Inconvenient Truth." "It costs too much, it'll ruin the economy, it's a hoax". How about the rising cost of college and the associated student-loan debt crisis? Uncontrolled gun violence that finds its way far too often into our schools and in our streets? An incomprehensible healthcare system that charges too many with high co-pays and deductibles and leaves too many out. (Thank goodness we old folks have Medicare.) Then there's the inability to deal with racism in a just, meaningful way. Oh... and the infrastructure the greatest generation left to us? Much of it was done through manual labor paid for by government programs which allowed them to work their way out of a horrible depression. We wore it out and did not pay it forward. "Too expensive." "No new taxes." And lest we forget... An economy in tatters and 200,000 people dead because somehow...somehow a spectacularly incompetent, unprincipled narcissist was elected president. Of the United States. Of America.
I am ashamed of my generation. We have failed our children and our children's children. To right this wrong, the most impactful thing we can do at this pivotal moment in our history is to VOTE. It's-Not-That-Hard. Men and women _fought and died _to preserve this right. Do not dishonor them by sitting this one out.
Pat O'Boyle,
Richland Center, WI
