if you're not conservative when you're old...

My mother used to tell me that if you're not a liberal when you're young you don't have any heart and if you're not conservative when you're old you don't have any brains. She still says it. Both of my parents have always been fairly conservative in their views, neither belonging specifically to one party or the other. As a child, my father was a union plumber and for some reason (contrary to his personal views) voted for the party of democrats. My mother (more accurately reflecting her personal views at the time) voted republican. Their goal was to cancel each other out believing that the system was inherently corrupt and that whoever was elected was more so a politician than a man of conscience and belief. Elections are seldom, if ever, decided by a single vote - especially in populous southern California.

I'm getting older and I'm still not conservative, mostly because I'm not vested. I am of the opinion that as you age you have a greater invested interest in the status quo, and that is the how and the why of old age conservatism. What was conservative for our parents, for our parents parents is considered practically backwards today. The further back you go, the more it seems so. Each generation has lessened the load, eased off the restrictions - technology has played its part as much as say, women's lib or the civil rights movement, or Roe v. Wade. We've got a president with African heritage from a mixed coupling of the early sixties - we've come a long way since he was born - thankfully.

Here's my trouble, there is a rift between the old and the now. The youth of the country, those younger than me, by a decade or more especially, are coming of age into a unique situation in our history. Whereas the youth of Iran form the up and coming majority, the youth of America are outnumbered by the old. Just as the baby boomer hippies of yore changed the world with their massive protests, their women's liberation, civil rights and anti-war protests (back in their heart-driven liberal days), they are now fighting back civil rights and propagating war in the post 9/11 milieu. Presumably because 9/11 changed their status quo so severely, it was an assault on not just their country but their sensibilities that demolished their sense of safety.

While my grandparents are still getting out and voting, conservative demagoguery and tea party style politics are being fed to them like a mother feeds a baby; from the only hand they trust, the "Fair and Balanced" FOX news owned by Rupert Murdoch (with the number two shareholder being a Saudi Prince). They are setting the policy for the rest of us - oddly enough Barack Obama was elected, they must not ALL be old conservatives...

If our parents and grandparents are offended by Mosques being built on American soil (let alone hallowed ground), it is their grandchildren who will see a decrease in their constitutional rights. The past is putting the future of religious freedom in America on shaky ground. If our parents and grandparents are in charge of determining the future of healthcare, or of immigration procedures and regulation, or ANYTHING ELSE - it is not they who will lose the freedoms of America, but us.

Now, I don't think they mean it. I don't think that's their goal. I think it's about protecting America, protecting the cold war patriotism that has faded in the current and proceeding generations. I just think they're blinded by the corporate media, the corporate agenda, the corporate lobby. They see the detachment between the people and the government. They know, better than we do, that this is a huge and growing problem and they want to fight it - but they don't see the money agenda. They were warned by Eisenhower of the military industrial complex, but they don't understand that the whole system they set up for us is a dangerous game, that grows more and more dangerous in the future.

As our parents and grandparents rail against ecological reforms (because climate change isn't man made, isn't real) in the name of limiting government power and keeping us (their children) free - they'll be dead by the time their environmental choices are raining down on our heads. Although, our parents and grandparents can stand opposed to the (forced) government healthcare-reform in the name of budget deficits, the growth of the government (in terms of spending and scope) and anything else that puts more power in the hands of our elected officials; what they're missing is that the "big government" that they fear so intensely is powered by the big corporations and the massive lobbying apparatus of the modern political age.

They put the emphasis on the politicians, perhaps because they are blind to the ways of the system they created. Not the democracy of their parents and grandparents (people we've probably never met, or died when we were but babes), people who fought in world wars and provided for families through depressions, dust-bowls and prohibition (and some of whose parents saw the institution of slavery crumble in a bloody civil war), but the systems of consumptions and the growth of corporate interests. Either blinded by personal participation or a lack of education (not to diminish the importance of their experience and wisdom), our parents and grandparents, whose parents were tasked with destroying the Nazi's and the Japs, fought bravely against the communist threat, the big red menace, by any means necessary. They did it by making America the greatest economic powerhouse the planet has ever seen, they did it by making babies, they did it by making alliances with brutal dictatorships, by the doctrine of containment - wherever the Russians tried to go, we made every possible effort to deny them.

USA, USA. Meanwhile, their chemicals are poisoning us, but not before they have become our chemicals. Meanwhile, their alliances are becoming more problematic than beneficial, but not before they have become our alliances. Meanwhile, the companies they created are dominating our ideas of freedom - dictating to the masses through the media and the advertisement that keeps the TV on and the stores that sell them open, as well as feeding millions if not billions into the political system to keep the government in their hip pocket. Ten years ago, I was talking about the importance of removing career politicians from office, of voting against the incumbents, of term limits for ALL our representatives - and I still believe it. But, more importantly now, it has to be noticed that the influence of the massive money makers (be they corporations, those who run them, or just the incredibly, generationally, wealthy) on our government: the system must be changed.

Just as when these United States were founded, the founding fathers emphasized the necessity of separation between church and state, perhaps it is time to notice the need for a separation of finance from politics. It appears to me as daunting as separating church and state (which I argue to be externally plausible while internally impossible). This isn't something that is going to happen easily, quickly or without much debate and thought. The debate and thought of which must come not from the corporate or political world, but from WE THE PEOPLE. Once the decisions have been made, solutions reached, I wonder, what will the cost be to enact the resolutions and achieve, the nothing short of revolutionary, results?

Will it smack of socialism? Will it smack of government regulation? Can it be said that government regulation, if by the will of the people and beneficial to the vast majority of individuals (in these United States specifically, but also abroad - as the world is becoming increasingly global in nature and connection), is constitutional? As the generations shift, the old pass away and the young become the old, the world changes. Change is inevitable in this world and the beauty of America is that WE THE PEOPLE are those who should be shaping it. (Clinging to the past while resisting the future is a recipe for disaster as bad as any poorly thought out ideas for change.) Not we the powerful, not we the elite, not we the corporate big-wigs, not we the wealthy, not we the white, black or brown - WE THE PEOPLE.

We may be outnumbered between old and young, we may not have the inside track like those who have captured the ear of the government or hold them by the purse-strings, we may not have our hands on the wheel just yet, but, in the words of Rupert Murdoch, "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." We're coming for you Rupert, and we're faster than you - because the young are faster than the old. (though age and treachery are not to be underestimated...)

(also, I love my grandparents and my parents, but fortunately for my sanity, that doesn't mean I have to agree with their politics. It just means dinner is more interesting.)