Asking our youth to save us from ourselves just isn't fair

We are a polarized nation, no doubt about it.

There are two enormous groups of people inhabiting this great but roiling land of ours, and they view things through two, completely different lenses. Hell, we might as well be living in two different worlds.

It’s really hard to imagine we will ever see eye to eye on anything sometimes.

Face it, folks, we are a nation of young and old people ...

There are no two things on Earth that are more different than a young person and an old person. The way we dress, the way we speak, the music we listen to, our individual needs, and the way we view things couldn’t be any more opposed.

One group has sore feet all the time, the other runs across rocks barefoot. One group looks ahead to what could be, the other looks back and wonders where it’s all gone.

I literally have no idea what’s inside the mind of an 18-year-old kid these days, and can guarantee you they think the same thing about me. This I can type with some authority, because even I was an 18-year-old kid once.

I guess, there’s something to be said for lugging around decades of experience, even if it makes your back sore ...

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how the young people are going to save the day this year, overwhelm the polls, and protect us from the detestable Trump and his morally busted, fawning Republicans.

I don’t take much stock in that. Not because they will or they won’t, but because I simply don’t know.

I do know this, though: It’s not fair to put something like that on them. They got enough to deal with trying to navigate their way through a tricky life and to safe harbor.

I have only a vague sense of what’s going to drive the younger folks to the polls in November, or if they’ll even be interested in going to the polls at all. Young people are unpredictable, and that’s part of their beauty. They see things in bright and fancy colors that have slowly begun fading away from me. Frankly, things have gotten too damn black and white as I’ve gotten older. I suppose that makes things easier, but there is a lot to be said for the thrill of the unknown and imagining a rainbow of possibilities ...

When I cast my first presidential vote in 1980, I’d just gotten out of the Navy. It was helluva time in America. It was hard to think things could have been much worse for a brand-new adult, because like the youngsters of today, I had no experience in these matters.

Sure, there were history books, and stories from the old folks, but actually experiencing life and reading about it are two completely different things. All I knew for sure was that it was hard as hell for a young man who had just served his country to find a job, and to buy gas to put in his rickety 1968 Volkswagen Bug.

We were still shaking off the ugly residue of Dick Nixon, and a brutal war which settled nothing, but killed and wounded thousands and thousands of Americans. The economy was awful, and Iran was taking Americans hostage.

We had a good and decent president who seemed to care, and was honest as all get out. He admitted things could be a whole lot better, and figured it was up to all of us to row together to get to a better, safer place. He was worried about us, and where we were heading.

Jimmy Carter gave a beautiful, brave speech about this in July of 1979, that laid it all out:

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

That speech hit people right between the eyes, and could have been delivered at just about anytime in our nation’s bruising history, and certainly right now.

Powerful and truthful as those words were, asking people to do more when they feel they have less, is always going to be a heavy lift. Jimmy Carter was everything Nixon wasn’t. Unfortunately, all that was doing nothing to help with my terrible situation.

I stood in line once for two hours to apply for a job pumping the gas we had so little of when Carter was president. I’ll never forget handing the station manager my application. He took the clipboard and said, “Damn, I’m sorry, son. We should treat our vets better, but I filled this job an hour ago.”

“Shit,” is all I said.

I was broke and desperate.

When it came time to vote a few months later, I vigorously pulled the lever for Ronald Reagan, because I was at a point in my life, when I literally had nothing to lose. And if you’ve decided you’ve heard enough out of me because I voted for that man, before you go let me add that if I knew then what I know now about Reagan, I can’t promise you I wouldn’t have done the same thing over again.

It doesn't mean that Carter wasn't the far better man, it means hunger is a powerful motivator.

Things got better for me, and I can’t say for sure if Reagan had a whole helluva lot to do with it. I ended up getting a job swinging a paint brush, met a nice girl, and went to night school studying journalism.

By the end of the 80s my life was on far steadier footing, but I’ll never forget the early part of that decade. It hurts thinking about it, it really does. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, and you can take that any way you want.

Growing up is hard work.

This November, a lot of young people will have a decision to make. They’ve been through a helluva lot in their own right. Sure, there are plenty of jobs out there, but two years of their lives, give or take, were taken away by a killer pandemic.

Their sample size of life is small, so two lost years is unusually cruel.

Things are seemingly spiraling out of control in the Middle East, which sadly is probably one of the few things the young folks and the old folks can commiserate over. The place has always been a hornet’s nest that we can’t stop kicking. But that makes it no less stressful and awful.

The 18-year-old who goes to the polls in November was nine when Trump announced his candidacy for president. While many of us were aghast at the prospects of this lowlife somehow ascending to the highest office in the world, it didn't even register on their radar screens.

Trump is nothing new to them. He’s just another unfortunate, ugly thing like Covid that has been swirling around for half their lives.

Hard as things were for me when I was a young man, at least people weren’t looking for me to save them from some grotesque, orange monster intent on devouring everything good in his proximity.

Democracy wasn’t on the line in 1980.

When I started writing this piece, I was going to lay a lot of numbers on you, and provide commentary. Some of it pointed to how engaged our youth has been at the polls since 2016, and some of it might have surprised you and sparked some concern.

I’ll spare you of all that. The last thing anybody needs is another old white guy pointing fingers and warning you about what some young person might or might not do with their vote.

I know what I did in 1980, and every election since then. You might not agree with my choices, but I guarantee you I can tell you why I made them.

What young people decide to do in the voting booth this November will be their business. They’ll have their reasons for where they land. The only thing I truly hope is that they understand that good or bad, right or wrong, they’ll have to live with their decisions a lot longer than I will.

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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.