My Hopes For The Future

            History, if left to its own devices, will invariably create itself. As simple mortals, we don't, really, create history, as much as we would like to think that we do. Honestly, all we can really hope to do is shape, or direct, history, and hope that we don't mess things up too badly in the process.

            I hope my generation can, somehow, find the balls to say "enough is enough" and take a good look at its foreign policy. I'm not talking about isolationism; I am talking about, maybe, getting our shit together before running off and spreading the gospel of the American way to hundreds of nations around the world.

            I hope my generation can finally come to a point where we can sit down and discuss racism. I'm talking about everyone, from the fundamentalist Islamic militant to the fundamentalist catholic militant, the fundamentalist Aryan militant to the fundamentalist feminist militant, sitting down and really hashing out everything that happens to be bothering them. Let's take power away from words like kike and spic and nigger. Let's not forget the past, but move on enough that we don't have to tip toe around real issues.

            I hope my generation can throw out political correctness. I want balls to the wall truth. I want bigotry. I want violence. I want old wounds and new ones. I want salt and vinegar, old scabs ripped off, and I want it to be a blood bath. Until we lance the boil of discrimination, hatred, and bullshit, we can never really get to a point where things can be okay. Until we change the educators, matriarchal and patriarchal leaders, and problems of today, we cant even worry about the future.

            I hope my generation can cast of the shackles of me too, one-upmanship. Don't get me wrong, I love competition. Nature, the free market, and the free world thrives on competition, but all this bitter, self congratulatory, ego masturbation has to stop. Really. When the Bible and Torah condemn pride, I, personally, believe they're refereeing to the bitter, self congratulatory, ego masturbation previously mentioned, not the healthy respect for what one has accomplished. Until our generation can grasp the distinction, there isn't a thing that we can achieve worth achieving.

            I hope my generation can finally educate our masses. I want to see a nation with widespread literacy. I want to see a nation with uniform understanding of literature and politics and science and medicine. I want conversation to turn from Justine Timberlake to J.D. Salinger. I want informed voters pushing buttons and pulling levers and casting their hope for the future of our country. I want well worded, strongly voiced opinions on the state of the community, the state, the country, and the world.

            I hope my generation can finally embrace free speech as not a toy, but as a dictum. If we can understand that a man calling a group of individuals a bunch of "nappy headed hoes" is nothing more than flamboyantly uncouth, we can move on to greater issues. Thousands of dollars and countless hours of news coverage went into a story about a washed up comedian calling some man a nigger, and a single article was devoted the fact that a local Pittsburgh schools raised thousands of dollars to donate to multiple worthy causes that will benefit people in the city and all over the country.

            I hope for a lot of things. I hope I have the bravery to move towards these utopian ideals. Most of all, I hope that fuckheads everywhere don't get in my way.