Millennials as the problem (again)

You can't have it both ways, Americans.

Young people can not be blamed for not voting in the mid-term election (as they have been in recent media), and then be blamed for their cluelessness causing "our current political troubles" (as they have been in comments made to this viral video interviewing Texas Tech undergrads, among other places).

Get it together, people. Millennials can't not vote and also be responsible for the current political system we are existing under.

They can, however, be painted as easy scapegoats for serious political, economic, and social problems we face the U.S. due to efforts aligned to consolidate power and focus the blame on the people. And they consistently are.

As a generation that is silently larger than the Baby Boom, Millennials can also lose any semblance of power they might have had in sheer number by being hated and mistrusted by the rest of the people struggling in America. And they consistently do.

The many are not powerful when they are told they are not supported. They are not powerful when we choose to affiliate with scapegoating, dehumanizing, divide-and-conquer oppressors over them. They are not powerful when we erode their education with No Child Left Behind testing over critical thought, when we take away their opportunities for meaningful involvement in society, when we decimate their parents' security, when set targets on their teachers' backs, when we tell them they are on their own and set them down in front of the screen to learn what is important in life.

You can't have it both ways. Drink the Koolaid, or live. It's our choice.

Never mind what they're selling anymore, it's what we insist on continually buying. While Millennials are not the reason we struggle as a country, their blame is one of the factors turning attention away from real sources of our current political troubles. I suppose if someone needs to be blamed, then, we might look in the mirror. Then we can make an effort to start looking at who is whispering in our ear and telling us to take our frustrations out on those rotten kids today.

What have we learned about our youth that keeps us from troubling inequitable power structures? What have we been recruited into buying about young people that deny their humanity and undermines our collective strength? How are marginalized youth used to divide and to conquer?

How powerful youth are, in the end.