Recently, I was watching an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher." This is a show that, while hosted by a very liberal guy, still provides a panel of five or six people from different political views and religions with an open floor to debate. It is refreshing to see compelling conversation in a time where everything on TV is filled with pundits shouting over others on corporate news stations. I think that “Real Time” is fantastic because it is the poster boy for free speech. Maher and the occasional guest (but it's mostly Maher) say a whole lot of controversial things on the show. He is an atheist questioning all religious doctrines, hates conservative politics and curses a lot during his program because HBO is unhinged.
One of his biggest controversies ever came two years ago when Maher had Ben Affleck, Michael Steele, Nicholas Kristof and Sam Harris on the show, talking about ISIS and radical Islam. Check out the debate here, but in short Affleck got upset when Sam Harris, an atheist scholar said that Islamophobia was not a real thing (he later on said he phrased his sentence wrong).
Affleck just lost his cool and this huge debate went on for the entire show with at the end of the video Maher saying about Islam, “That it’s the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.” Now Maher was scheduled to talk at the University of Berkeley’s graduation a couple of weeks after this happened, and a group of students at the university petitioned for him not to speak, but the administration let him talk at the ceremony. After that debate on his show, he has gone too far with many things he has been saying — mainly about Islam.
But last week, he decided to talk about millennials on a segment on his show called “New Rules.” During this segment, he talked about how Bernie Sanders made the idea of Democratic Socialism in America mainstream to most younger Americans mainly from Millennials. He continued to go on about how Millennials created this idea called “Santa-ism,” saying that he read a poll that stated young Bernie Sanders supporters wanted complete free college without paying taxes and free healthcare without paying taxes. Going on with the same stupid millennial bashing I hear from so many baby boomers.
I’m so sick of baby boomers and older Americans putting young Americans down, telling us that we are lazy because we never rolled in the mud like they did when they were kids. How can you judge an entire generation of people by just looking at one poll? I even had a conversation about this a couple of weeks ago with an older family member of mine, saying that he would have love to live in the 50s “when everything was traditional and people followed the rules.”
Look, every generation has pros and cons to that generation. I can guarantee you, no matter who you are in this society, it really doesn’t get any better than this in human history. We have made leaps and bounds when it comes to racism, homophobia, poverty, the expansion of medicine, treatment of women — the list goes on and on. Millennials have helped carry that idea of acceptance; something the baby boomers were just scratching the surface of. I respect the older generation for many great things they have done but blaming us millennials is not going to help us in the path to success in the future.
Let's remember the baby boomer generation has left us with such a twisted economy that is impossible to get a livable paying job out of high school, something they could do during their lifetime. They have elected politicians that have shipped almost all manufacturing jobs overseas. Now us Millennials have to go to college, be in a massive amount of student debt and maybe then we can get a job — if we're lucky. After all of that, they come back and point the finger at us! Outrageous!
Why do you think Millennials like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump during this election? Because they talk about how the economy has changed and how it is harder for Millennials to get a job. We, as Millennials, now have to stand up and change how the political system is run with all of this money in our politics. The older generations let their guard down and let corporations take over everything when we weren't even a concept to our parents yet. We are the last line of defense to save the world from utter destruction of climate change. This fight against climate change is going to be something bigger than anything any generation has had to face in human history. Bigger than what the “Greatest Generation” had to go through with both the Great Depression and WW2.
So, to all the older generations who put us down as being lazy, stupid and entitled, how about you cut it out. Talking down to us in this kind of manner doesn’t help us become unified with the gargantuan problems we are going to have to tackle. I can see the courage and the struggle that the previous generations of Americans had to go through with this Millennial generation. The Paris Hilton's, the Justin Bieber's and other celebrities in the entertainment business do not represent us; they have overshadowed this great generation of people who are doing unselfish things for the future of this world. We need to start making these people the faces of what we are going to be. We will not be labeled as generation pop and generation entitled, no, we will be labeled as generation innovation, generation hope, generation together, the BEST generation.
We will lead our world closer to Utopia than ever before if we all stand together, generation to generation learning from our past mistakes. We will not survive as a species if we let people separate us by race, religion, age, looks, and culture. Leading the charge together is the only way to go, so stop trashing millennials for so-called laziness, it's uneducated, stupid and unproductive. We have barely gotten our feet wet and you want to judge us, just be patient and see. One of my favorite journalists Fareed Zakaria wrote of piece last year for "The Atlantic", called "The Try Hard Generation" about Millenials and I'll end with a statement he says in the piece, "An older generation may have spoken loftily about morality and virtue and nobility. But many of them could be callous, cruel, and selfish in the way that they treated so many of their fellow human beings — blacks, other minorities, women and people who were less fortunate than they were. The young today are perhaps less articulate. They search for morality and the meaning of life in more incremental and practical ways. They seek truth and justice, but through avenues quieter than the showy ones of the past. They try to combine their great urges with a good life."
