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Idealistic or Unrealistic?

It’s funny how the roles switch from generation to generation. My kids look at me like I’m the one with my head in the clouds because I still believe in the possibility of change for the better, that individuals can make a difference, that every vote counts. Even my elderly father thinks I’m a dreamer who can’t admit that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

My young-adult sons are much more cynical about politics than I remember being at their age, even though we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Kent State, the Kennedy assassination(s), Watergate. It’s sad to see how let down they are by our generation—the current establishment. (Oh, my God, are we the establishment? How did that happen?) At the same time, they look at me like I’m incredibly naïve. They aren’t left, right, or in the middle; they are just disillusioned.

The difference between them and us is we were the generation of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and anti-war protests. We were passionate that social change and equality were things worth speaking out about.

In college, I co-founded a newspaper that challenged the administration and supported the arts—it was one of the most exhilarating times of my life. Go figure, that’s still where my heart is all these years later.

It isn’t like we weren’t exposed to political corruption. Maybe the difference was we didn’t believe that everyone in the government was power-hungry and motivated only by money and self-interests, and that there were no good guys running the show.

And some of us Boomers still believe that if we take action, we can have some kind of impact—on the environment, in education, in local and even national politics. No matter how small, we hold on to the hope that our voices and actions matter.

But in light of the recent riots and rampant destruction in Ferguson and Baltimore in response to police brutality against African Americans, we don’t seem to have made much progress half a century after Martin Luther King spoke out in favor of peaceful versus violent protest. But that’s because it doesn’t seem like anything is solved by peaceful demonstrations because we never seem to get to the root of the problem and help people escape the cycle of poverty.

It’s not surprising that my children feel the way they do. We have never been in such a polarizing political climate with such black-and-white thinking.

From my experience, and observing my friends, I believe it’s easier to be in an interfaith marriage than an interpolitical one. When we go to a dinner party, it’s understood that politics is off the table unless someone is itching for a fight. We just can’t seem to hear what “the other” is saying. We take freedom of speech so literally, so for granted, that we talk more than we listen.

We can blame that on the 24/7 news cycle in which talking heads interrupting each other mid-sentence barrage us with “he said, she said” before moving on to the next sensational story. On the other hand, there are qualified news sources out there with intelligent, seasoned reporters determined to get the facts. It just takes the time to discriminate between the ratings-driven “junk food” news that doesn’t require any thinking and the real, thought-provoking reporting and analysis that can still be found in print and broadcast.

Maybe I’m fooling myself, trying to recapture—or not lose—all of my youthful idealism. Still, I’ll continue to volunteer for causes I believe in, recycle my bottles, and bring my green bags to the supermarket. Because what’s the alternative—sinking into apathy, perpetual anger, and disillusionment? At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, some things are still worth fighting for—like our planet, our freedom, and justice for all.

Amy J. Barry is a Baby Boomer who lives in Stony Creek with her husband and assorted pets. She writes arts features and reviews for Shore Publishing newspapers and is an expressive arts educational facilitator. Email your responses and ideas for future columns to her at aimwrite@snet.net or visit www.aimwrite-ct.net.