By Bethany “BST2” Armstrong

Amongst the things I’ve noticed in the way the world “works” as it were, the nuances of our language are getting lost and it is rippling through us with disastrous consequences. The ultimate example of this is the term “respect.” The expectation is that it is a commonsense understanding, but respect has multiple meanings.

noun: respect; plural noun: respects
1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
2. due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others.
3. a particular aspect, point, or detail.
verb: respect; 3rd person present: respects; past tense: respected; past participle: respected; gerund or present participle: respecting
admire (someone or something) deeply, as a result of their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

Somehow the term respect has been tied with authority particularly with “due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others”.

Noun: authority
1. the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.
2.a person or organization having power or control in a particular, typically political or administrative, sphere.

I am quite the defiant bitch. I am known for acting in direct opposition to authority that I have no respect for, even to the detriment of myself. I can give due regard for others’ feelings but I cannot tie that with “Power or right to give orders… and enforce obedience”. Who gave you that power or right? Not I, I assure you.

So when I hear, “kids these days don’t respect their elders,” a cry that every generation fading into obscurity uses to try to regain authority, I hear it for what it is: Children are not doing things the way we did things!

There’s a lot wrong with this perspective, but let’s start with the failure to recognize our elders were onced forced into compliance with The Old Ways, which they rejected until domestication and selling out made more sense than sparking fires and joints. And now, The Old Ways, safe, stable, and wholly irrelevant claws from their coddled toilet paper hoarding hearts. Now they, the Authority of what is Right and Good and True seek to cram the newest generation of round pegs into the square holes they had to contort into by bartering their souls for complacent complicity. Gross. This is a tradition that I cannot respect.

“It’s one nation… UNDER GOD….” Is it His authority that you’re flexing?
“Why aren’t we teaching cursive in schools?”
“The New Math is hard!”
“In My Day…..”
“My parents beat the disrespect out of me and I turned out fine….”
“Kids these days….”
“Kids these days….”
“Kids these days…”

A broken record of sounds from broken minds ready to retire to the great beyond. Not just death, but complete and utter irrelevance. When you choose to deny growth, you have chosen to die. That’s just the science that they all fear denies the existence of their Gods, the strange things they give authority to without question. Blind obedience expects likewise.

I say instead that elders do not respect their children – an all inclusive term spanning anyone younger than 50. The oversight here is a common one – to receive respect, it must first be given. Giving has been a problem for this generation – we, the eternal children who have now reached middle-age, our very essence has been boiled to lackluster caricature, our only gifts rejection, shame, and neglect. If you know anything about the great lie of the American student loan situation, you’ll know they set the vultures on us; what else did we deserve? We are little more than mere extensions of themselves, one more box to tick on the path to locking down a full and rewarding American Dream ™.

As a nation we have learned to infantilize the young, for fear of their ability to Get Shit Done. This sort of thing is not welcome when you’ve got 65 years of skin in the game that relies on absolutely nothing changing. The status quo must be maintained.

The traditions of the youth are openly mocked just as the previous generations were. Jazz Mad, Hippies, MTV, TikTok, Selfies, Dabbing, Paper-instead-of-stone-tablets, Tablets-instead-of-paper, Goldfish swallowing, Memes, Taking a Knee, or Avocado toast. Whatever will hit the Shame Button, whatever will silence.

These elders making all of our important decisions in politics, religion, education… were making these decisions for us (as Gen X’ers and Millennials) when they were in their prime. In their 30’s and 40’s they had control. They had authority. But now, those of us in that position are still expected to show respect and deference to people who will not even respect our right to choose how we exist. Make no mistake – these are people who expected immortality – to defy the Natural Order through the power of being so very, very special.

The Boomers account for nearly 26 percent of the population. The average age of Members of the House in Congress is 57.8 years. The average age in the Senate is 61.8. This is the oldest among the oldest government body in U.S. History. We backward kids, millennials and X’rs, make up the largest adult population yet seen, if one is to believe the United States Census Bureau. If you feel confused by these disparate sentences, do not fear – you should be. None of this makes any fucking sense, anymore. And if you think we are bad, just wait until you get a whiff of the nihilism and absurdity Gen Z wears like a brutal prison face tattoo – these kids know the score, and they live with the full white-knuckle terror of having realized that they may, indeed, be the last generation of humans who tread this weary rock.

The fact is we are not living in a democracy. It is a gerontocracy. That is an oligarchical form of governing where the authority is significantly older than the majority of the adult population they are meant to represent. Historically, oligarchies are typically tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to continue to function. We were building to Trump for a long time by a lack of respect for our youth and for each other, and for equating age and income with ability to lead, to be a respected authority. A revered tribal elder.

Consider this: A tribal elder’s status comes from his or her ability to benefit the tribe with their accumulated wisdom. Usually about 30 years worth before brain worms or big cats dragged them off into the long night. Understand this – an 80 year old human is a novelty – an artifice – a miracle of medicine, science, or pure freak genetic anomaly that was until this moment in time, a near impossibility.

My apologies if any of this is a grand revelation. Your public schools have failed you. The current education system was warped by the Boomer’s great grandparents to their own benefit. Spoiler; it wasn’t to build critical thinkers, it was to mold complacent workers, producers and consumers, good little capitalists gears. The education system was designed to wrest, keep, and hold power from those who were meant to inherit it.

Boomers – you didn’t turn out all right. Neither did we. We are all victims in this great circle jerk. You knew this when you started the doomed hippy movement. Somewhere, somehow, you forgot it. And now you are very unhappy that we’ve figured this shit out and refuse to wade through the sewer you tread with grateful harlequin smiles.

That sucks for you, for us. What confuses me is why you continue to do whatever it takes to keep authority, power, control…. Instead of letting it shift to the younger generations as should be natural. You are living on borrowed time, our time. We are the most well-educated generation in the history of this country, and many of us will spend our golden years paying for that shit, knowing damn well you were able to work off your degrees with a summer job.

“It’s the way we’ve always done things.” Bullshit. History says otherwise, and not the history you fed us in tiny white-washed pellets, the history we discovered through the artists and musicians and the rebels screaming in this vast technological era that you ignored and belittled and disrespected. Your mistake was encouraging a college education to milk more money out of us. Your mistake was ignoring and shaming our feelings, wishes, RIGHTS, and traditions. Your mistake was in believing we would always be your children. Our mistake was believing what you told us was True and Right and Good. Just go to college, it’ll turn out fine. Picket fence, 2.5 children, and a zesty if not scheduled bout of missionary copulation at least once a month, like a good White Respectable Christian Family. Save the whips and chains for your mistress or midlife crisis.

Anyway. I’ve gotten off track. That’s just how we do.

I get it. Repetition of observed behavior. Desperation to feel relevant and valid. Jealousy over the lack of gumption to try new things. Bob Dylan sang it so sweetly: “Oh the times, they are a changin’.” It’s scary to be so close to death and realizing your legacy despises you and what you stand for. That you despise yourself for giving up and selling out for a factory job, denying your dreams based on the advice and coercion of your elders.

Broken record. The pattern repeats. Marry and Reproduce. Obey.

How can we expect to respect the authority of leaders who won’t live to see how their policies directly affect our lives and the lives of our children? How can we respect people who infantilize Millenials who are middle-aged while conveniently forgetting Boomers wrested power from their elders when they were middle-aged? How entitled to power are our elders? They should be given due courtesy for their experience and wisdom but they are not the minds to lead us forward; they won’t be here for forward. They don’t have skin in the game.

Let’s end this cycle already. It does nothing but damage relationships between the generations. It further warps the meaning of the word respect when we deny it to our future. Soon our children, Gen Z, will have the authority. Change will happen. We newly minted elders and our opinions will be irrelevant because our death is imminent, and like shades in a Greek tragedy, we will remain in a world we no longer understand or belong to.

I just hope we have the sense to get the fuck out of their way. I hope if nothing else, we can offer our children a break in the cycle. God knows our blind acceptance and trust in authority, our bewilderment at the betrayal of the world we thought orderly and sound and just did them NO FAVORS. My aged friends, do not mistake this diatribe – the sins of my generation are multitude, and we watch our children suffer for them. I watch them suffer. Our weak offering of being Cycle Breakers means fuckall to the kids who feel the doom we’ve brought down so profoundly that First Graders find suicide a viable option. I’ve seen this. I’ve lived with this. This is not hyperbole.

Soon enough my words will be irrelevant too, as it should be.
And now I’m rolling and ready to love on my brilliant man and pretend that anything I wrote will make a difference. God Speed You, Black Emperor. Dab on bitches.

PS: Boomers – seriously – you are the last generation who will get to actually retire. If you can’t enjoy it for you, enjoy it for the rest of us sinners who will never know such succulent excess nor obtain access to the hedonistic delight of rest nor contentment.

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