Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s Coming

 

Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s Coming

 

On May 4, 1970 the world stood still. The sixties had ended, and Richard Nixon was in office. A law-and-order president who vowed to give all the hippies a haircut, repeal the civil rights act, and restore America to whatever fantasy it had been living in for the previous one hundred and ninty-four years. 

 

The youth of America had some serious grievances. Just for starters there was a draft. Finishing school for all boys over eighteen years of age with all ten fingers could be enlisted in the army on graduation day and sent to Vietnam for their senior trip. IQ tests were not required, and girls were exempt because at that time it was recognized that girls were not boys. Some boys did try to pretend to be girls at the induction center, but one “short arm” inspection cleared that up. 

 

Suffice to say the students at Kent State had real issues. And Nixon had a real solution. Without going through all the why’s and wherefores of the politics of the era, that’s not what this article is about, let’s dwell on then and now. And two tribes. The Baby Boomers and The Gen X (Not so boomers.)

 

You’d expect that when a teenager runs away from home there is a contributing cause. Anything from doing the dishes to “daddy touched me there” would do. A Boomer would usually have a “bug out” destination. Sometimes viable, sometimes not so good, but their nose was set like flint for somewhere. They knew they had to eat, and money was not plastic, yet! Boys would usually have something they could do to at least earn food and girls, well, a$$, gas, or grass. Nobody rides for free. You can understand why it was imperative to differentiate the fine line between male and female. Slight pause here for snowflakes to go to their safe place. 

 

Now, compare this to The Gen Z variant of the human Genome. First you must consider where they came from. Most likely coming from a pseudo family of spoiled rotten prodigies affectionately known as Millennials. This title was the implied hope that the generation thereof would receive some kind of blessing at the changing of time to a new millennium, but the only things they gave us were Y2K, and these little punks and punkcesses we now refer to as Z in the hope that they are the last generation and Jesus will come back and put an end to this whole sloppy mess. By the way, I know you’ve noticed Jesus hasn’t returned yet. It’s not that he’s not there. He’s just smarter than we are. Think about that. Take all the time you need. 

 

And the parents wring their hands and wonder what they’re gonna do with these video game addicted, sexually confused, future unemployed graduates of Whassa Madda U. They can’t read cursive, or a map. Don’t know whether to squat or stand, and can’t run away from home because they can’t tell north and south. But they’re gonna take over the world. Well, one point two billion Chinese say, “Not on our watch!”

 

So they retreat to extreme social disobedience. And I mean not even a civil word. They parrot every cockeyed idea some whack a doodle posted on their Bible (That would be the internet) as if it were carved in silicone. In times past it was assumed that all teens and young adults were semi-crazy, but time, tears, and alimony would bring them down to earth. Listen to me! You can’t REhabilitate those who were never habilitated in the first place, or, as the Prophet Ron White tells us: You can’t fix stupid!

 

But Nixon fixed it. Riots, riots, and more riots. Then, four dead in Ohio. America had enough. It had degenerated down to the tail wagging the dog and ended with that girl crying over that body at Kent State University. Reality check! It wasn’t a permanent fix. Watergate rolled the stone away and Nixon left in disgrace. 

 

The Baby Boomers begat the Millennials. The Millennials begat the Zs, and the Zs begat, well, themselves. A generation lost in space with no way to start again. Kent State made absolutely no difference at all. It’s not even included in history books. Those four kids died for nothing. 

 

You expected an answer, didn’t you? Well, there ain’t one. If we, the dying breed do not impose the law of common sense, America will have run its course and will become just a track of land that used to be one nation, under God, indivisible. We ran God off. Now we are not indivisible because we are certainly not one nation. We can’t even elect a Speaker of the house. We’re Democrats, Republicans, conservatives and liberals, anything but Americans. We’re Mexican Americans. Afro-Americans. And we despise immigrants while forgetting if you don’t have a feather in your hair you ain’t from here. We pledge allegiance to our pronouns which is useless. Well, Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s coming. We’re finally on our own.