Friday, May 02, 2008

Youthful Idealism and Mature Realism

Andrew Sullivan has a post on this e-mail he received from a young Obama supporter. Frankly, it sounds like 20-somethings of every generation bashing the old folks.

What the old farts might want to consider is that these young people who have no particular vested interest in the current system might be seeing the rot much more clearly than the fogeys who have been entangled in it for decades. And the mature folk might want to accept that the burden of proof is on them to show why such a viscerally disgusting political game is worth playing.

I came from a family in which not voting wasn't an option. My father would pester each of us on Election Day until we trotted down to the polling place and performed our civic duty. It wasn't so much who we voted for that mattered. What mattered was that we took advantage of the voting process, something generations of soldiers like him made possible.

That's why I've always rolled my eyes when I hear or read childish rock-throwing like in the Sullivan post. It's always easy to argue how "unfair" the system is when you are too young to be affected by the system. That is, you haven't worked hard, succeeded, and then been wallopped with tax bills because some liberal decided "you can afford it."

I've been surprised at the amount of whining that Obama isn't getting a fair shake, just because he's spent the last six weeks having to answer questions from reporters who weren't drooling over him. These same people didn't mind Hillary Clinton getting grilled in debates or John McCain getting smeared by imaginary scandals in the New York Times. Yet, seemingly, it is unfair to ask Obama questions that are similarly intrusive. I have two words for young, ardent followers of the Obamessiah: grow up.