Kids these days

I think that perhaps we need some new language. Kids just doesn't seem to be an accurate description anymore when we talk about those in their teenage years and no one really seems to know how to refer to them.

There's a racial problem of course, when young black teens are described as "grown men" to justify their public execution by cop, yet the shooter from the other week, age 19, is called "a sick, broken child". That is another, awful, related issue.

I think the Millenials and Gen X have kind of failed the new generation a bit, at least on progressive ideals, yeah we are suffering from the appalling abuses of the boomers, but folks, that generation is dying out pretty rapidly and we still elected Donald Fucking Trump last year. It is fair to say we haven't done out job, yes the job is ongoing and probably never ending but we have to face reality.

The current generation that is now beginning to reach voting age has grown up in a world where school shootings are an accepted fact of life.

The only world they know is one where their are murdered regularly at their place of education. They know lockdown drills and have had to seriously think about what they would do in an active shooter situation.

That world is not their fault, it is ours, and the fault of our parents and grandparents.

If the last two weeks are any indicator it seems like they are beginning to take matters into their own hands and doing a better job of it than we did in twenty years, with people like Marco Rubio being forced to express some variety of support for gun control legislation in defiance of all odds.

They aren't doing it alone of course, their allies from the older generations are right there with them and they are using tools and methods developed in the years leading up to all this, but make no mistake, on this issue at least they are carrying the torch and we aren't.

We had our chance of course, black youth have been protesting for gun control for decades now to silence from their progressive allies, we allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to expire, our generations showed historic levels of political non-participation, this could have been our fight to win but we dropped the ball and now have to rely on those too young to legally drink.

But not too young to die.

Every article I read about them, even those giving the most full-throated support, refers to them as children, as kids who are doing something extraordinary. It all seems so patronizing in a lot of ways, like they shouldn't be capable of it, that it is unexpected. But that is wrong, it isn't that they shouldn't be capable of it, it is that they shouldn't have to, it should have been our job and we fucked it up.

They are dying for our mistakes, and fighting to correct them, a problem not of their making but effecting everyone. That doesn't seem like the act of a child to me. And I do not believe that Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School just happened to have the only group of motivated teens in the country either.

We need new language for this, yes they are still growing, their brains and bodies not quite done maturing, but that doesn't make them less capable in many ways. There was a time that there would be no question people that age were adults, those times are long past but there might be something we can still take from it. Teenager and young adult still imply a level of immaturity incompatible with the actions they must take, but that is what we have right now.

We should be proud of them, but we should be ashamed of us. Yeah we had obstacles, forces opposed to the changes we want to see, but so do they, and they are still pushing.