ATTN: 18-25 demographic, all races

I gotta bone ta pick with our parents. The baby boomers. Not YOU, Mom and Dad, because you're both ideal grown-ups, but the vast generations of adults who are fucking up all over the place. This is why.


That's a seagull. Or, it was, before the gulf oil spill. Critter's still alive, but he's not going to last long. When they get coated in oil like that, they can't fly. Which means they can't get food. They die. They're immobilized by the oil. So they're all dying.

They dive into the water because they don't know. They just see their dinner swimmin' around, because the fish that are still alive in the gulf coast swim beneath the tar bubbles, and the birds dive down through it, not realizing what they're kamikaze-ing into. They float up paralyzed and blinded.

I'm so infuriated. Like, frustration-tears-furious about this situation because I DID NOT ASK FOR ANY OF THIS. Thinking about and watching the talking heads babble baffling arguments back and forth on the television makes me want to pick up and leave. It was just released that the head of BP is handing off responsibility to this Dudley guy, an American (BP is a british company, I learned that today), so that blame can start getting shuffled around. They spent $3 million on that ad that's been running on tv, but they are slow to reimburse crippled businesses along the gulf who rely on the shore for fishing income. They're also only reporting the minimum gallon amount gushing into our waters to lowball the cost of the $4,300 per gallon they have to pay. It's much worse than we know.

This is not the America I asked for.

Older generations, I'm going to helpfully and politely point out your discrepancies.

You tell us to dream big and shoot for the stars, and that anything is possible if we work hard enough, but you make education so impossibly expensive and unobtainable that only certain classes can afford to "dream big."

You tell us that we're all created equal, but some of us can't marry each other if we want. What's that? Oh, sorry, I can't hear you. It's gotta be this glass ceiling above me.

You tell us to slow down and not grow up so fast, but you put Human Growth Hormone in the food that we eat, so that our bodies develop faster and we physically become adults before we're supposed to.

You tell us to eat right, but you put high fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate in all our food so that we get addicted and obese.

You tell us that our body is a temple and should be treated as such, but you are the ones that set the impossible standard of beauty in advertising and media that taught me to hate my body with such enthusiasm starting when I was a little girl. I can show you the scars.

You are the ones who just want us to be mentally sound so we can be productive members of society, but what that entails is that you first discover symptoms, attribute them to a new disease, and then prescribe us the medication to quell this sickness you fabricated so you can profit from our purchase of the pills.

You are the ones that started the war, and asked us to die for it. You also asked us to kill for you.

Capitalism doesn't work because it is constant warfare within one society. It is marred by free-enterprising battles, the terrain pockmarked with self-indulgent battle scars left behind in the wake of destructive corporate tankers, and since YOUR parents worked their asses off so you could go to college, you have put your education to work by looking out for yourself and proliferating your finite fucking nest egg.

My inheritance from you is a war, its debt, a crumbling economy, dismal job market, and a destroyed coast. Fuck you.

I have lost my faith in you. You have ruined this country. My hope remains with my generation. We are the activists. We are the ones who turned up in droves to vote for Obama- highest young percentage of votes ever. You're welcome. And for those of you who doubt my dear president, here's a list of achievements thus far. I like that list. It includes Bo.

To my peers, if you're out there and sentient, I'm going to ask something of you. Put down the xanax and the adderall. I know we're Generation Medication, and that fake prescription is our birthright, but just stay with me for a second. You don't have to be dependent. You don't need any of our forefather's bullshit. We have the right to take this country back and start repairing the damages. We just have to get angry first. Please. Get mad. Get fucking infuriated and do something. It's what we're really known for. It's what we're best at.

Activism.