Lacey Woodrow
Contributing Writer
Enter the 2016 Presidential Election…
My god, if we thought social media was unfortunate before, then the combination of it with the 2016 presidential election can only be described as nothing less than catastrophic.
And there’s a terrifying possibility that 20 to 30 years from now, historians will reference this point-in-time as the beginning of the demise of the United States of America.
The demise of our country; an entire nation of approximately 330 million people that prides itself on “freedom”, brought to its knees all because some a bunch of boomers decided to believe Russian bots spewing nonsense conspiracy theories.
How embarrassing.
Even worse, as the year 2020 left us all “bored, just sittin’ in the house,” the QAnon movement recruited thousands of followers that now believe in their conspiracy theories.
The New York Times recently reported that according to a December poll by NPR and Ipsos, there are now approximately 17% of American’s who believe in farcical QAnon theories.
Now, I’m clearly exaggerating as QAnon, boomers and Russian bots are just a fraction of how we ended up where we are today as a nation.
And it would take another entire essay (perhaps a book) to accurately sum up all the different ways we got to the point at which we are now.
But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention just a few which include, systematic racism, gigantic wealth gap, our two-party political structure, the electoral college over popular vote system, the list goes on infinitum.
We are running this enormous country based on the same logic as the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
How does that make any sense?
I’d like to stress to the reader that I am not against all political constructs or an organized civil society.
Quite the contrary. I believe whole-heartedly in the democratic system, when it works properly and isn’t taken advantage of by the people we’ve elected to their respective positions of power.
Having said that, I also believe we are way past due on a major overhauling of the whole goddamn thing.
I propose we get rid of all the ugly, corrupt policies, systems and politicians who have been clogging up our Nation’s arteries and hindering us from facing our collective past.
They are obstructing the healing process necessary for us to move forward as a country.
For a nation that claims “All men be created equal,” we’ve surely been missing the mark.
Boomers have been running the show for decades and look where we’ve ended up.
They’ve steered this ship directly into the ground and then kept going, assuming they’d eventually find water again.
It’s time for Gen X, Millennials and Gen-Z to take the helm because in my unsolicited opinion the majority of us have somehow miraculously managed to grow-up with faith in Science and compassion for one another.
When I started writing this piece, it was August 2020 and the climate of our country was disparate.
And while we may still be reeling from the recent insurrection on Capital Hill and the collective Trump Administration, the United States did manage to come together and vote Donald Trump out of office.
What is more, I am confident that President Biden and Vice President Harris will work diligently to do what is right for our country as a whole and all of our citizens.
I sincerely hope that the people “across the aisle” can finally wake up from their “Trump-Coma” and do what’s right as well.
I am confident that more and more of our Millennial and Gen-Z cohorts will continue to get out and run for office so we can commandeer this ship and start sailing toward calmer waters.
Email Lacey at:
mwoodrow2@live.esu.edu
