The Millennial Dilemma: What Now?

Needless to say, but unemployment lines
have never inspired the masses. 

Let's be candid for a couple minutes: the United States is a shell of it's former self. We are currently $18.4 trillion in debt. Over ninety-four million Americans over the age of sixteen are out of the labor force. We have ceded our regional influence to Russia in the Middle East, while China asserts itself in South East Asia. College graduates and students collectively have a student loan debt totaling just over $1.3 trillion with a median income hovering around $29,000 annually. 

Millennials, the much despised technologically savvy generation that stands to inherit this grade-a clusterfark, is left staring into the abyss as we contemplate our standing and positioning in a world that seemingly makes no sense whatsoever.

Then we have the matter of the upcoming presidential election, where on one side of the aisle the front-runner is a self entitled multi-billionaire who has held every position under the sun at one point or another because it was politically convenient, while the other side has laid the red carpet down for a scandal plagued former attorney who has never accomplished anything besides once being the First Lady and basing her entire reason to be elected on her gender. 

How much lower can it go?

On top of that, we have a political system that is designed to force the electorate into choosing the better of the two evils, because truly good men either don't run for public office or don't last long once elected to public office. It's an intrinsically flawed system that resulted in approximately 42.5% of U.S. citizens deciding against supporting either President Barack Obama or his opponent Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election by not participating whatsoever in the electoral process. 

Here's the depressing reality of all of this: none of it is improving. It didn't improve under President George W. Bush nor has it improved under President Obama. In fact, the situation has actually gotten worse over the past fifteen years, as if the inertia that is America can only move towards degradation. 

I realize that none of this is exactly optimistic by any means, and that there are many great things that occur in this country every day, but by and large, we are steadily heading deeper into despair and many of us are left asking, "what now?" As U.S. Senator Marco Rubio likes to point out, we are heading into a situation where past generations will actually be leaving a worse off United States to their children. 

I wish I knew.

As a member of this generation that is facing these mind-boggling obstacles, I'm not really sure what is next. I'm not really sure if other generations have felt this way as well, although I suspect those that endured the Great Depression and the Cold War frenzy can relate to the confusion, but we're not facing a stagnant economy or a nuclear powered Soviet Union... we're facing the end of American dominance in the world... and that's never happened before.

There's a reason why Millennials are supporting U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in droves. It's not because they are more globally inclined or socialistic in nature, but because it's something different, it's a new direction. Think about it: we have grown up in an era dominated by fiscal ruin and war. Thousands of our brethren have died in brush fire conflicts while millions of our families have been strangled by the economy. 

The American people are a fair but just people. We have been taught this from birth by our parents, but when have we seen a semblance of fairness or justice in the past fifteen years? That's why so many young voters are supporting Sanders; not because they want handouts, but because the current system is seemingly broken and incapable of fixing itself, whether the ruling party be one, the other, or both in shared power. 

Then again, when we're living in a world where more people watch reality television and singing competitions more than the nightly news, which most Americans don't even trust anymore, can we really be surprised by the apathetic aimlessness of society as a whole?  

Does anyone else hear a fiddle?

I don't have the answer to that question or a solution to address many of the horrifying statistics I listed at the beginning of this column. This piece is simply to address the frustration and the future that awaits us, the next generation, the Millennials, because given the information we have, it doesn't look all that pretty. In fact, to be honest, I think we as a generation might have more in common with our counterparts toward the end of the Roman Empire. 

Aware that something bad is coming down the pipe, but unable to identify it given the vastness of the situation.