I wonder, do you believe that children are our future? I do. In fact, I often catch myself thinking how important it is to teach them well, and indeed to let them lead the way. Hell, some days I even resolve to show them all the beauty they possess inside – you know, give them a sense of pride, to make it easier, right? And their laughter reminds me … Okay I’ll stop now.
Whitney had one thing right, at least. Children, young people, are the future. Or rather, they’ll experience more of the future than I, at 46, am likely to. Not a difficult point to grasp, or a difficult point to make, and of course we should keep our hands on our wallets when politicians invoke The Young. Such invocations are to politics what The Bodyguard is to cinema: transcendentally anodyne.
And yet, and yet … Young people, youth, the kids, whatever, are facing a very uncertain future, and their place in it is fast becoming an inescapable modern theme. Indeed a healthy sense of grievance would appear to be brewing in their hormone-addled brains. The young are revolting, and by that I don’t mean that their complexions resemble pizza dough or that their hair smells like a forest floor. No. I mean that they’re pissed off with the world and with the indifference of our political Kevin Costners to their current and future prospects within it. [More here.]