My generation was supposed to be the most fortunate one in the modern era. We were born into the end of the longest cold conflict in history, where the threat of total nuclear annihilation was ubiquitous and the world seemed divided down the middle in ideological warfare. I was born a few months after the the first pieces of the Berlin Wall were chipped away by joyous crowds celebrating the end of a divided country. I never had to know the stress of nuclear sabre-rattling or arms escalation: the US was, by all accounts, left as the lone power in the world.
That bred a new wave of patriotism and American pride throughout the 90s. Children heard in schools about how the US was the greatest country in the world while we sang all the patriotic songs and pledged our allegiance to the flag, even if we didn't understand the pseudo-contractual terms of the agreement. We were told we could do anything and be anything we wanted. We were promised the world. We couldn't understand nuance; we were children. We took it literally.
Being critical of the US throughout the 90s was tantamount to being a lone voice screaming in a desert. The economy was expanding massively. The most nationalist mouthpieces would point to Russia, in shambles after the end of the Cold War, or to Europe, where the newly formed EU was already withering against its first challenge in the collapse of the Soviet satellite states on the border and the refugee flows that emerged from there. Any problems the US faced, they would argue, were small beans on the grand scale of international perception. No one would care about mass uninsured or systemic racism: the civil rights movement already happened, they'd say. America was equal. America was free. Even when republicans and democrats alike pushed for draconian crime laws to punish even the lightest offenders, the country was still free.
9/11 pushed that hardline patriotism into nationalist xenophobia. Anyone not for the war was anti-American. Anyone not looking to support the troops was a traitor. No matter if the Bush administration used that war to savagely curtail the basic principles of civil rights or to profit off the pain of people living thousands of miles away; they attacked us, no matter the reason, and we'd make them bleed.
It was around then that my view of the land of the free became jaundiced.
Global warming was an ignored threat despite the growing consensus of the scientific community, and the US refused to take any action to ensure a safer, cleaner environment. Here arose another round of nationalist mouthpieces pointing at China and saying 'their emissions are rising, they're worse', as if we didn't live on the same planet and share the same atmosphere.
And then the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression happened right as my generation was entering adulthood. Those who perpetrated the whole thing received plenty of government bailout funds while the average person languished. All the banks that knowingly signed off on bad mortgages and then used those bad mortgages as fluff off of which to profit faced no consequences beyond having to pay back the bailout money over time and some trading restrictions.
The job market was dead for people just entering it. Even after finishing undergrad, entry-level wages were stagnant and barely liveable for metro areas. Attaining a job was competitive without paradoxical years of experience for entry-level. The economy was still reeling. Student debt was, and is, at record levels.
Obama's election granted hope. The promise of universal healthcare was alluring. But the disinformation thrown around by both media and members of congress and the inherent conservatism and fear of the word 'socialism' ended the possibility of having such a thing, leading to a disjointed, byzantine system too easily deconstructed by its opponents.
And then he increased the use of the drone strike program to target 'enemy combatants' abroad, though the term was used to encompass any male above the age of 16 regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with global terrorism; renewed the Patriot Act, and continued allowing new sites for gas drilling (fracking) and expanding capacities for oil production in the US even while he touted his beliefs in global warming during his campaign and while every successive year became the warmest on record. He refused to prosecute or investigate the Bush administration for war crimes. And when Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been actively spying on Americans, that it could turn every phone and computer into a microphone and access a webcam without showing it had been activated, the Obama administration enacted counter-propaganda.
This isn't to say Obama didn't have his successes, but the hope he carried with him into office hit a wall. Whether it was self-imposed or the strictures of the office, it's hard to say.
And then a preening racist narcissist got elected president. And beyond all the other things he's done, his completely inability to think of anything besides himself has caused ~150,000 deaths due to his mismanagement of the pandemic as of this writing, and plunged the country into the makings of a deep recession, if not depression. There is an impending homelessness crisis, with millions unable to pay rent because of being laid off from the pandemic, which also means millions more are without health insurance in a time of a health crisis.
The best development over the past decade has been the proliferation of camera phones to finally show the discrimination that black Americans had faced for decades, but white America ignored. How that will develop is hard to say, and whether the recent protests are more of a reaction against Trump rather than a movement to truly end systemic racism is a question that can be answered once he's gone.
But all the hope and patriotic fervor that inculcated itself into the children of the 90s now finds itself at loggerheads between the blind nationalism of uncritical thought and the dream of America promised to many, but given to few. It's now been 2 decades where we've seen the gap between the richest and everyone else rise exponentially, where we've seen global temperatures rise without the necessary actions taken by the US and China to lower CO2 emissions, where we've seen the slow decline of a world power whose leaders continue to proclaim it to be the 'greatest country in the world' while millions of its citizens barely subsisted; and I wish I could speak for everyone in my generation when I say that we were lied to, that not everything is possible, that all those promises we were given about being free and happy and able to achieve our dreams were hollow, because there will always be those for whom the world is an open road paved with countless opportunities, free from speedbumps or roadblocks. They'll never struggle and likely won't be majorly affected by the repercussions of things like global warming, systemic injustice, bankruptcy due to health issues, or the like; we can only hope they have the introspection and the empathy to know they are lucky.
The children of peace were promised the world. We were promised infinite pathways to success. What we were given was manipulation by those in positions of responsibility, war, struggle, inequality, and a slow march towards a self-made catastrophe. But we were also given awareness, critique, and the ability to question authority that proclaims itself in absolute justice. Whether that lives or dies as we age will be a result of our apathy, or passion. So defines my generation, for now.
