Indian tribes that remain within the Imperial Center of the United States say the mark of bad times can be seen in the way we treat our children. How do we treat our children? How does the Israeli government treat Palestinian kids? How do the Universities and the US government treat the college students protesting open-air slaughter and outright genocide of over 40,000 people, nearly 16,000 of those victims being children?
What does our government and institutions of authority do? They crush dissent at the barrel of a gun. They enforce policy by the threat of incarceration and violence. The ancestral people of this land also speak in the Seven Fires Prophecy about a very confusing time when the young turned away from the old, which would cause great turmoil in the shifting of the times. The Green Party’s 72-year-old presidential candidate Jill Stein reported being pushed over by two male police officers while protesting with faculty and students on the campus of Washington University on April 29th. When Stein reached out as she was falling to the pavement her hand brushed against one of the officers who then charged her with assaulting a police officer, a felony offence. She also reported that one of the faculty members received several broken ribs at the hands of the police. He also received felony assault charges.
It’s less about children for these people. Children are the guise. And by “these people” I am generalizing to those who believe they can enforce their agendas through force and coersion. These are the tride and true tactics of the mafia, gangs, the enforcement arm of the government, and American homes throughout the country.
When we start throwing phrases around like Lost souls” I think it is important to remember the frame of reference in that these children are not making pipe bombs here are they? Are they hurting anyone? What are the teenagers doing?
They are doing the same thing they did in 1969.
They are doing the same thing - to scale - that you or I or any previous generation did. They are rebelling. What and who are they rebelling against? Ask yourself what happened to you. As a young person. And ask an old person, if they will tell you. The answer often boils down to the same conclusion.
These kids are tired of being controlled by unreasonable people.
And adults setting impossible expectations that the chilren then see the adults not following (like killing innocent civilians whilst crying for civility in the schools when students ask the administrations to divest from apartheid governments (as it happened in the US during apartheid South Africa). It only makes sense that a teenageror young person’s personally identifyable rebellion could find relatable parallels in our government’s ties to middle-east dictatorships.
No wonder the government is trying to ban Tik-Tok. There are mountains of evidence to support the dangers of social media, how it increases levels of depression, warps perception’s of body image (particularly in young women), and increases confrontational behavior through the normalization of not having another human on the end of one’s insults to hold the spewer of them accountable. Yes, people have a hard time communicating these days. So why is it that our government is fine keeping Facebook and Twitter around, but Tik-Tok is the one that has to go? Probably because most of us old-fucks use those other platforms whilst people under 30 use Tik-Tok. And Tik-Tok contatins the vast majority of Pro-Palestine content and live footage from IDF soldiers committing war-crimes on Palestinian civilians, many of which women and children.
These kids are smarter than most of us give them credit for. They pay better attention and they watch what we do and say when we think they are out of earshot. In their schools they get shuffled around by grumpy teachers and parents who don’t follow their own rules. They dont know any other environments yet because they are kids. They’ve never lived all this stuff they are seeing before. But that means what’s been normalized for us, that which we may gloss over, is glossy and bright for the eyes that are seeing it for the first time. They see the holes that more distracted people miss. And many of them are “acting out.”
The parents, administrators, police, and authorities want these young people to just behave. Return to their seats, obtain their expensive education, and get out to go pay that money back with interest. These kids are trying to get our attention, for one reason or another, and a lot of them are fighting what they see as oppression. Do we respond to that with dialogue or action? How does more oppression teach these kids anything other than to oppress when the tables turn and they hold the seats of power?
Why does each generation forget that the kids who are supposed to remain seen but not heard will grow up and remember the way in which they were raised? No communication.
We are in a dangerous proposition with the way we are showing the youth how to handle their problems. How to define problems. We cannot put all of our faith into the children to save us. That is a selfish suggestion. What will be done today? More arrests? More condescension? Much harder to turn the finger towards oneself and ask how to approach a conversation with these young people. Couldn’t it start something like this?
“Welcome to the world. This is a very fast and confusing place and not all the rules make sense. I’ll help show you the way and when you’re able to you can change some of them.”
Maybe, said the Chinese farmer… maybe…