GENERATIONS ON A TRAIN

Mags and her companion had a seat inside

-by Mags

A month or so ago I went to Chicago on the train to see a dear friend of mine in from Oregon. She was a professor of mine who is one of the most wonderfully intelligent and just plain wonderful people I know.
 
We talked of the current disaster wondering if there was a solution. We wondered if Al Gore would enter the race and answer the call of the people who desperately need him. She said he wouldn't, but I held out hope. I am the Pollyanna of the group in my own cynical way. We spoke of the power of established law eroding under the Bush appointed conservative court. We still speak in the same language we always did.
 
We caught up on all of our personal news which was substantial considering we had not seen each other for 6 years (how I miss her). Then, at the pre-determined time, I made my way out of her hotel and to the train station for my return trip home. Oh well. (Had I known Howie was in Chicago the same week, I would have gone down a day earlier to meet him and the crew.)
 
The train home was crowded and instead of being allowed to sit where we pleased, we were herded into cars according to our destination. It was a Thursday before a holiday so it made sense; folks were on their way out of the city. Lucky for me a young woman sat next to me, just a run of the mill kid not unlike my own. When traveling alone one is always wary of sitting near strangers. As it turns out she was a law student from a school in Chicago. My seat mate will remain nameless as will her school to protect her anonymity... but also because of my poor memory.
 
The week I traveled was the same week that Monica Goodling, the pseudo-legal expert from Pat Robertson's dubious school of law had been forced to testify on Capitol Hill. Sad, sad day for young women in law school. As a liberal, I am wont to begin political discussions at some point in a conversation. As a college instructor, I am one to ask questions of young people regarding their student status and their majors, their goals. The young woman with whom I conversed was a law student. And, she had political aspirations. She wanted to help draft speeches and policy.
 
It is always hard to talk politics, and especially sensitive when one must share a very small space for several hours with a complete stranger, but being a middle aged uppity woman, I normally do not shrink from being opinionated as I used to when I was younger.
 
Let me get to the point, I had spent the day talking, roughly 6 straight hours, and I was not particularly interested in a long political conversation, but at some point my seat mate made the statement, "I doubt there will be any real change until your generation is out of power." The rest of the dialogue is fairly benign compared to this statement. It quieted me, even if that is not what it was meant to do.
 
It did not quiet me because I took any particular offense to it, nor because I thought it was true, but simply because it gave me food for thought.
 
I wondered, who did she mean by my generation? And, did we as a generation have a characteristic? Was George Bush my generation? Not in my opinion, he is in his sixties, and the kids a decade before us were quite conservative and quite establishment, to my way of thinking. As a generation, it seems that my generation was liberal, most of us. We broke new ground. Due to our efforts high school students can now wear pretty much whatever they want. Due to our generation, the Viet Nam war was widely protested. Due to our generation awareness about environmental issues came to the fore. Our generation continued to work for social justice and equality. Our generation was one of the first generations in the modern times to awake, to hope for something better than business as usual. Was George Bush part of that? Not likely.
 
When I took Environmental Studies in the late 80's in college, I learned a lot about how the environment was polluted by the factories of my father's generation. Like most people who learn too late the effects of the past, I confronted my dad. Why didn't he object? How could they let harmful practices continue.
 
It was then my dad gave me a lesson in overgeneralizing. My dad looked at me with concern. "Do you think," he said, "that I have not all my life cared about the environment? I have gardened and I have lived a good portion of my life outside in appreciation of nature. I was not in charge. Do you think I did not notice?"
 
I was not so quick with my young companion. I must admit that for a moment I was taken aback. My mind raced with possibilities of what she meant. What had we done? Surely, she was not equating George W. Bush with my generation. Perhaps I had been too liberal in some of my conversation and she was criticizing my hippified generational stance? I had no idea. It was not until later that I was able to think it through.
 
The issues we face today are not generational. I wish I had thought to say that to my young friend. Like my father I might have answered better. I might have made the case that I was not for war, that I was not for profiteering, that I was not for policies that left the ravages of climate change unchecked or the sick and dying untreated. I might have said, "I am not in charge." That would have been the unmistakable truth.
 
I am not in charge. You are not in charge. Not as individuals, and not as generations. The issues we face today are the ones our founders faced. They are the ones all generations throughtout history have faced. They are issues of class. They are issues of power. They are issues of greed. Down through the ages, for the most part the people have been able to stand up to power eventually.
 
Again and again, wealth and power seek to obscure the issues, to make it look like our problems were easily blamed on the populace or some other segment of it, a particular race, a particular economic segment, a generation.
 
And, so in this season of our tradition of celebrating our independence, whether we feel we can or not, I simply think of my meeting with a member of the younger generation on the train, a person who just as we did in the 70's had come to believe in a generation gap. Let us not be deceived. The problems we have are not generational, they are not racial, they are not economic or cultural, unless one is speaking of a culture of corruption and greed. George Bush and those like him are the problem. He is not an adherent of some generational ideology, certainly not the ideology of mine!
 
At this time as in generations and times before the people need to stand up and remind this administration and this Congress and this public that we are the people, that we individually are not in charge, but by God we are supposed to be in charge collectively. From the youngest of us to the oldest of us, this government was meant to serve the people. It was never meant to serve greed and avarice.
 
It got quiet on the train. My body was tired, my mind was tired. But, as my unwitting companion got up to leave I sincerely wished her luck in her studies. She really was a clever and smart girl. But, before she left I said, "Please, when you get your law degree and you are a lawyer and when you get into the government on some level, do not shame other women like Monica Goodling just did." She smiled... it seemed genuine.