You know what the biggest casualty of this period is?

Trust.

I don't trust anyone, anymore, during this period.

Anyone, really. Anyone at all, completely.

How exactly do you inspire people to be teachers or cops or firefighters or political leaders when noone trusts anyone else?

How exactly is that a better society? How exactly is that progress? How exactly is that the best that we all have to offer?

It's not, clearly, is the truth. We are bullshitting ourselves and one another when we pretend it is.

It's so sad to have so many relationships with adults that are one long matter of bullshitting one another that we are better than we are. And there is not a single person that I have met, read, or have any familiarity with who could possibly be excluded from that description of so many of the relationships between people that all pretend to be something more real or honest or trusting or trustworthy than they really are.

That's why, when push comes to shove, I trust, more, my younger friends, around my age, than my older friends, around my parents' age. Because, when push comes to shove, I can be more honest, more myself, and I can trust, more, people of my own age than all of the lying and bullshitting of people older than us.

Hillary Clinton represents everything that is wrong with that era of liberal. Rudy Giuliani is a somewhat better conservative (and at least I know he'll stick with the war). Barak Obama isn't heaven on earth, that's for sure. But his openness about his drug use is an important step forward.

And I could never really ever trust anyone who I can't be myself with ever.

I wouldn't trust any of those folks, for real, by that standard, is the truth. I wouldn't trust most people, for real, by that standard, is the truth. And Barak's candidacy, as much as I am leaning towards Rudy Giuliani, represents a direction that young people will be taking whether Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani or Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama like it or not. I'm growing up, enough, to understand why Francis Fukuyama and Joe Nye don't understand this trend, well enough, and why they both foolishly think that their generation somehow hit upon that one final period of liberalization among liberal democracies (Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us, hubris). Because they and older people of all stripes want young people my age and younger to learn our limits. But what our parents' generation is still unclear about, at their advanced age, is their own limits. And, specifically, the limits to their own power to teach that lesson. And my generation will learn those limits with greater freedom, as a rule, whether my parents' generation likes that fact of life or not.

We appreciate the shoulders we stand on.

But if we want a world where people trust their government and one another, better, we will need to do so because we have earned that trust, not because we've tried and failed to bully our way to a destination that bullying cannot take us.

Love,
Ben