A Dialogue between Youth and Age

I recently received an e-mail from a young man in response to my article My Answer to Mr. Obama. We have corresponded back and forth and I got to wondering if maybe this exchange between the young and the old might be of some interest to others. I asked Jake if he would mind my publishing our correspondence and he said he would not.

Mr. Osborn-

I greatly appreciated your June 18th post Answer to Mr. Obama. As a nineteen year old who worked and believed in the Obama campaign, I can heartily say I am greatly disillusioned with the lack of change I have seen. I like to think that it will still come, that it is just a factor of the economy and war, the standing order of things, why it has not. As each day goes by and each story breaks I fear I shall continue on disillusioned. Where does one find solace? Or something to believe in? Everywhere I turn I find a different construct designed to deceive and continuate a blank and bleak existence. Lies and bullshit upon more lies and bullshit–I cannot even find a point of reference from which to judge my surroundings. You seem like an interesting man. I’ve just finished my first year at Dartmouth and have never been more certain of the inanity of my path and surroundings. I am sure you are busy, but if you took a moment to send some advice to an aspiring writer and, more importantly, an aspiring “person” in the fullest, most romantic and realest sense I can muster, it would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Jake

Dear Jake,

Thank you for the kind words. I have been trying to awaken the American People for quite a few years now. When I get a letter like yours, it brings me hope. It is the youth of the world that our future depends upon, and we are leaving you one hell of a mess to deal with. I hope you are up to the task. With great misgivings, I voted for Obama. My misgivings were well placed. I fear that whatever, or whomever, is controlling this country does not give a tinker’s damn about which “party” wins because it owns them both. The emphasis changes a little when the parties change, but the bottom line is always increasing the bottom line of the rich and powerful and the increasing emasculation of the common man.

It is a fact that the predecessors of the Neocons hated Roosevelt for the New Deal, for stripping the wealthy of some of their power and wealth and giving the common man some dignity and safety. They have hated such things as Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Education. To them, that is all a waste of money that should go into their pockets. They cannot vote them out of existence, that is political suicide, but they have finally hit upon a scheme that will return us to the days of the “Robber Barons.” Give all the money in the US Treasury (our tax money) to the wealthy and the military, promote still more wars and pour more billions into those. One of these days, the government is going to turn its pockets inside out and say, “Sorry folks, but we have no more money for social programs. If you need help, go beg pennies from a billionaire.” The new Fed Chairman said to Congress the other day that we need “austerity” in the United States to survive. We need to cut back on Medicare, Social Security and other social services. Not a word about cutting back on our bloated military budget or ending our wars. That is where the money is, that’s where the profits flow.

As to education, any dictatorship does its best to reduce or eliminate it, for the last thing they want is youth that are taught to use their minds, analyze, recognize errors and correct them. A nation of the ignorant, the lazy, satisfied with sports and American Idol, or whatever is current these days, is perfect for what they want. Hence, lots of “bread and circuses” and carefully managed propaganda presented as “news.”

I’ve asked students and young folks if they study government in school. Some have no idea what I am talking about. They draw a complete blank when asked about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If we don’t have any idea of what we are losing, we’ll never know what we’ve lost, and that will suit the powers that be right down to the ground.

You’ve just completed your first year at Dartmouth. Work on getting your core courses out of the way and seek out teachers and mentors who really know what is going on. Evaluate, question, don’t accept anything or take it for granted! And, watch out for the propaganda! The “think tanks” have received hundreds of million$ to study how to control us, what words will trigger what reaction, etc. Believe me, that crap is everywhere, and used to do everything from sell us soap to engendering hatred towards people who don’t even know we exist (until the bombs start falling).

When I was nineteen, I was halfway through my navy enlistment and watching H-Bombs being detonated at Bikini. (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll, 1956) I’ve had radiation poisoning (and survived) and have seen the future if we don’t take back our country.

As to writing, be honest, say what is in your heart and not what you think people want to hear. That way you will keep your own moral integrity, and perhaps awaken yet more people. Here are a couple of links to some of my writings during the past nine years.

http://www.populistamerica.com/steve_osborn This will take you to around a hundred articles, should you suffer from insomnia.

http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=10508 This is a site that was begun around the time the Afghan and Iraqi wars started. The site has thousands of poems, many by great poets. I’ve put in my two cents worth from time to time.

Well, I don’t know what else to write at this time. You probably got more than you bargained for. Please put me in your address book and keep in touch from time to time. Adrienne and I wish you all the best.

Yours for peace and sanity in our time,
Steve

Mr Osborn-

I am very pleasantly surprised at the speed and content of your message, it gives me faith that there are people out there still willing to talk to young people and to take the time to write a sincere message.

My biggest worry is that your hope for my generation is unfounded. I look around and I see complacency and ignorance. We take government courses and learn how to navigate the current system, not the principles on which it was founded. We look forward to taking advantage of the way things are, not changing them. No one has grand ideals about getting into politics and changing the way things are done. I think this is because we realize, rightly, that no one man can change the status quo. I hate myself for harboring such cynicism, but the layers upon layers upon layers of deceit and power seem impermeable to any conscientious objector. We have it too good, we are too easily entertained. Why think about the way things are, when thinking about it only yields frustration and depression? Why do this when we can easily live our lives, deceive ourselves into believing we are on the progressive end of things, that we are edgy and unique, even though we are as complicit in the illusion that we wish to escape as “whatever, or whomever” controls our lives?

It seems the corporatism and market values are impossible to change or escape en masse. I can leave the comforts of society, or even live on the edge and protest, but I feel I can never truly change. You speak of awakening, but I fear we sleep so soundly that you could not convince us we are asleep in the first place. Which way is up, Mr Osborn? They know how far they can push us, and they give us our victories when needed. Give us gay marriage, decriminalize our pot, but where is peace? Or education? Transparency? We are kept running, Mr Osborn, running through school, to the best college, to the best internships, to the best jobs to buy the best things. I’m tired of running, as I think most of us are, but we’re too tired to do anything else.

I apologize for ranting, though I feel as though it is necessary to do so. I don’t often get a chance to discuss my view of the world. My parents are too steeped in their values, my friends are unable to discuss any real issues without turning the debate into a big irony. Perhaps that is all we have left, anything can be rationalized away with an ironic witticism. I’ve added you to my contacts, and I look forward to hearing from you from time to time as well.

Sincerely,
Jake

Hi Jake,

You say that you fear that my hope in your generation is unfounded. You are here to prove that it is not. As you’ve no doubt noted, I have been writing (ranting?) for a long time. There Must Be No Day was written in the early eighties, and based on my experiences in the fifties.

I was born in the latter days of the depression. I grew up during WW-II. My brother was a Pearl Harbor survivor who had three ships sunk from under him during the war. My sister was a WAC. Technically, my service time crosses both Korea and Vietnam, but thank God I never had to fight in either one! I wrote and demonstrated against the slaughter in Vietnam, and what it was doing to our young people. I mourned, and investigated, the deaths of John and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, who had presented the world with hope and youth. When Bush was appointed, I wrote reams of protest and warning.

After the shock of 9-11 had worn off, many people from many professions joined together in disproving the myth of 9-11 and proving that it was a controlled demolition of all three buildings. The profits to the owners and the “in crew” were enormous and, it rallied the people for yet another pair of unjust wars. It is easy to get a war started and supported. Here are two experts on the subject
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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945
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“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same for any country.”
Herman Goering to Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg, 18 April, 1946
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For quite a while, I could not find a home for my writing. Everywhere I submitted it, it bounced. CommonDreams published What Happened to My Country, which was picked up and went around the world. Then Michael Boldin, owner and manager of the Populist site saw one of my articles and asked me to become one of his writers. Also, OpEd News opened their site to me. Globalresearch.com asked me to write on nuclear war and weaponry and so it has gone. I keep swearing to quit as I’ve said it all, then somebody else does something stupid or greedy, or destructive, and I feel compelled to man the keyboard.

For a long time, I felt I was just shouting into a rain barrel. Adrienne kept telling me that I was being read, I was having an effect. Got a fair amount of right-wing hate mail, of course. Then, occasionally, somebody would write me back, who said I had expressed what he or she felt. That was my vindication and my reward!

A true “pearl of great price” comes to me every once in a while. One man, who had read some of my stuff, sent me an article he had written and asked if it might be worth publishing. It was excellent and I referred him to Michael. He is now one of his best writers! I get an occasional “old fart” like me who tells me to “keep up the good work.” But the true treasure, my young friend, is you. You and a number of other young folks with whom I correspond and, who wish to work out some way to change the world for the better, beginning with here. Some ideas are excellent, and some are impractical, but all of them are seeking for something that transcends the bottom line of power, greed, bigotry, violence and war.

Where there is one, or two, or three who write me, there must be ten or twenty or thirty who feel the same, but do not write and for each of them, there must be an even larger number who feel that something is wrong, and that there must be a way to fix it.

Look up the title The Hundredth Monkey, sometime. It is a small book by a naturalist or ethnographer studying a colony of monkeys on an island. When the monkeys would receive food tossed to them, it would land in the sand. The monkeys would scramble for the food and eat it, sand and all. Then, a monkey started taking his food to the water and washing it off before eating it. After a while, another noticed and started doing the same thing. The movement spread and soon all the monkeys were washing their food. Then, somebody noticed that, for no apparent reason, monkeys on other islands in the area, with no connection to the original island began washing their food. The author’s premiss was that, when a sufficient number of monkeys were doing the same behavior, then, somehow, it began to spread and become universal.

My hope is that, if a few of us keep working for peace and sanity, and others join in, eventually we will reach the “hundredth monkey” for peace and it will become acceptable behavior for all humanity.

Mohandas Gandhi was an attorney, educated in England. He had a good law practice, was comfortable and well off. Then, as he saw miscarriages of justice against the poor and the powerless, he gave up his practice, took off his suit, donned the loincloth and shawl of his religion (he was a Jain) and began to teach by example. His principles were non-violence and love, but he practiced civil disobedience. As Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, so Gandhi through asceticism and personal example stole the brightest jewel in the Crown of the British Empire and gave it to his people. The Raj had ended and he was well on his way towards healing the religious breaches in India when he was killed. Much is left to be done there, but it is a work in progress.

We could use a Gandhi in this country, but the road would be much steeper uphill, for while the British didn’t think it sporting to machine gun thousands of non-violent demonstrators, I fear our government has no such scruples. None-the-less, it may come to that before too long. We have degenerated into a third world dictatorship. Millions are losing their homes, have lost their jobs to other countries, are living in the streets, trying to survive

As the economy continues to tank, more people are going to look at the faces of their hungry families, living in tents or under cardboard, and they are going to look at the limousines driving by, and the sumptuous banquettes given by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and sooner or later, they are going to kick over the traces. If violence is the only way to get redress of grievances, than we will descend into anarchy and chaos. If there are some leaders who can show the way, perhaps the change can be peaceful and we can once again become a great nation, governed by a Constitution and Bill of Rights written by some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. As long as there is even the slightest chance of gaining that goal, I shall work toward it.

Jefferson said:
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The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
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And:
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“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
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He also noted:
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“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
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Jefferson and the other founders of our nation knew what dangers our new nation faced, and they knew that the worst peril came from within. They had, for the most part, studied history and were determined to avoid the mistakes of the past and create something new. They did, and for two centuries it worked well, until the new crew learned how to destroy it from within. Whether it can be resurrected again is problematical, but that does not mean we should not try.

Perhaps one of you young folks out there will be the new Prometheus or Gandhi, leading us to the light. I certainly hope so. As Perry said so long ago, as he lay dying on the quarterdeck of his sloop, “Don’t give up the ship!”

Your friend,
Steve

The dialogue will continue…