The Future is Not American

I was noodling on a story about the cost of Trump when I realized an important truth. (This is Ladi Delano, Nigeria's youngest billionaire. From millionaire.ng) 

Because of Trump, the future is not American.

I don’t know whether the future will be based in China, or in India, or even in Africa. I just know it’s not going to be here.

Because of Trump.

Barack Obama had a dream, of an inclusive society, multi-ethnic, diverse, and tolerant, that would attract people from all around the world and keep America from falling down the demographic cliff single-ethnic societies were falling into. We would beat China by attracting their best minds, renew ourselves with immigrants from every land and remain forever young.

It would have worked.

But it won’t, because of Trump. Who will want to come to this country, even after he’s gone? We’re kicking out the best we have left-and-right, sending people back to India and China in droves, and they’re not going to forget the humiliation.

By rejecting democracy, and rejecting anyone from outside our borders, Trump has put us on an unsustainable demographic path. Americans today have the same median age as people in China, and now both will age out at the same rate.

Thanks to Trump, America will no longer be able to paint itself as a free people, or a democratic society. Our children will never again be able to say, with any degree of credibility, that our shit don’t stink, or that their history of evil is all in the past.

Because it’s all over our present. And the stink of that present will remain, even without Trump.

I don’t blame Trump completely.

As I’ve said before, I blame myself. I blame Baby Boomers. My generation. I’m ashamed to be part of it.

Our parents went down in history as the Greatest Generation. They battled the Depression. They beat Hitler. They created the suburbs.

What have we done? Baby boomers will go down in history as the greediest generation.

We’ve always been self-centered. The main image of our youth is that the world should revolve around us, our needs, our desires, and our comfort. Woodstock was heedless of the need to make a living and accomplish anything but a good time. Those who didn’t go kept the heedlessness part and applied it to everything outside themselves.

That is the through line linking my youth to my old age, a narcissistic, self-absorbed demand for comfort at any price. My generation fought wars for oil, more accurately sent younger generations into wars for oil. We despoiled our own country and the rest of the planet. We kept minorities and women from reaching their full potential. We were wasteful of both our physical and human capital.

Trump is the price for all that.

Trump brags about our stupid, loudly. Every Trump rally is a stab to the heart. Every Trump tweet is a cry of complaint against any criticism over our sins, and a promise to keep those sins rolling into the future, by any means necessary.

This is the truth. America has seldom lived up to its ideals. We have committed genocides, fought wars of conquest, kept whole continents under our bootheel for two centuries. Those times where we rose up, such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement, were all followed by long periods where we ignored our responsibilities and just got fat.

Americans are like the man I saw in an Alabama breakfast counter a decade ago, 100 pounds overweight but wearing a ripped t-shirt, acting like the belly hanging over his belt was a six-pack.

I see this attitude in women as well. The one anti-discrimination movement that has gained real currency in Trumpistan is the one against fat-shaming. Have you seen some of these women? That’s not healthy. Statins and blood pressure medicine have acted like seat belts, as excuses for going faster. The number of people killed in highway accidents remains stable, despite all the safety features we put into cars, because those safety features just tell some fools to drive faster, more recklessly. The modern technology we have offsetting the effects of obesity is doing the same thing. We just eat more, exercise less. Our life expectancies no longer increase.

Baby boomers talked about fighting pollution, but still drove 90 minutes to work, and back, each day. Baby boomers talked about equality but used property taxes to segregate every city and town. Baby boomers talked about balancing budgets but kicked to the curb the party which did it and had another party.

We cry peace, but there is no peace. We are the ones we claimed to be fighting against. We are the baddies.

Our kids see this. They see that we’ve guaranteed them a lesser life than we’ve had, and most are mad as hell at us. Mad enough to vote? I hope so.

But even after Trump is gone, won’t his crimes be forgotten, as those of George W. Bush are now forgotten?

It’s up to future generations to make sure that doesn’t happen. Not by writing about the sins. But by doing better against the damages our sins have left.

Even if my children do fight their whole lives against the sins of my generation, however, they will now remain in an inferior position, against the countries that are now young, scrappy and hungry. India, Nigeria, Vietnam, even Mexico. That’s where the future is going to be. And there’s nothing, now, we can do to stop it.

Thanks, Trump. And thanks to all the self-absorbed Baby Boomer assholes that put him there.