Generations

My parents were of the “Greatest Generation”: Dad served in the Army Air Corps in the European Theatre, and Mom was a defense worker. 

They had grown up in the Great Depression, which was a time of political division and grinding poverty. There was a populist element in the country that wanted the United States to be isolationist, led by the heroic pilot Charles Lindburg. Industrialist Henry Ford was a quiet supporter of Adolph Hilter. A Catholic priest named Father Edward Coughlin had a huge national radio audience where he spewed anti-Semitic hatred until the Catholic Church shut him down. There was a real fear of a communist revolution, and people who thought the youth of the era were weak and frivolous and had been “indoctrinated” by the “liberal” public schools. 

Yet the country — old and young — moved with a common purpose after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Young people of the 1950s were considered in some quarters to be corrupted by the new “liberal” musical genre of Rock ’n Roll. 

Kids of the 1960s were considered spoiled, lazy, and “liberal” by the pearl clutchers of that era, in part because many of them questioned the Vietnam War (although many of them served) Teens in the 70s were regarded in the same way …

and so on and so on.

People are people, generation to generation, and I have no doubt that if today’s young people are called to serve, as previous generations were, they will be here for the nation.

There’s the internet, with its thousands of trolls and bots who exist to make people afraid, angry, and divided — and then there’s the real world.

In the real world, the kids are alright.

Congratulations to the class of 2024. 

Dan Langdon