QUOTE(swmr545 @ Oct 5 2005, 09:18 PM)
These issues (excluding the gay movement) are barely touched nowadays. What's that one quote..."if we don't learn from our past we are bound to repeat it." or something like that? Well, we're not being taught in the depth we should be.
Keep in mind, "when good men do nothing, they let evil truimph."
I'm trying to think of a way to formulate my response without coming off as a patronizing old fart, but I'm not sure it's possible. So forgive me, if I do.
Though I appreciate your efforts to educate us, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, I don't think anyone here is unfamiliar with all, or at least most, of the examples of man's inhumanity to man that you list. Some of us may be old enough to have lived through the most recent ones, like the civil rights movement or Stonewall.
Believe me, it's encouraging to hear young people like yourself get outraged as you learn more about these things. There would be something wrong with your heart if you didn't. And the bad news I have for you is that the more you explore about these events, and the more you analyze the human condition, the uglier the things are that you will find.
I don't want to discourage you from coming here and preaching to the choir, or at least the jaded, but let me tell you a story:
When I was a kid, in 1975 in particular, I was nine and the war in Vietnam ended. Now before that I have memories of this war, or at least the name "Vietnam" on the news. I didn't know anything about it, but after 1975 no one talked about it, or wanted to talk about it. I suppose the scars were too fresh, and so I can't blame the adults for not wanting ot discuss it. So as a teen me and my generation grew up with this hole in our historical knowledge. Basically when we asked about it we got "It was this war, or police action, and no one was still sure why it happened and we kind of lost it and it was very controversial and.... ah forget it kid. You had to be there." So when I was in college this movie
Platoon comes out. And all of the veterans who were there were saying "yeah - it was that bad", and all of us young people were saying "really? No one told us anything about it at all. Tell us what it was like." And all of the sudden, after 15 or 20 years, a dialog was opened. We bypassed the historians and politicians and went right to the source - those who were there.
My advice, and take it for what it's worth, is that if you're finding that your peers are unfamiliar with this information, and grown ups don't want to talk about them, then go
make your peers familiar. Go find your sources and talk to them. For us the sources were the vets. For you it may be someone at Stonewall or someone in Rwanda or someone in Bosnia or.... the list goes on. You've got the knowledge, you are articulate, and you can hold you own in an argument, as you've proven here. So I know you can do it.
I know we goof off here a lot. And I know that may be frustrating to you because it appears we don't take the issues that you're now learning about very seriously. I'm not saying we don't want to hear it, but, for the most part, we already know that yeah, people have done some pretty barbaric things to other people. Sucks, don't it?
Still, for us old guys, it's helpful to be occasionally kicked in the butt by an idealist who's now figuing out what it all means.
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