Are we ready to move on from the whole, "ok boomer", "middle aged women are Karens", "I'm not sure we should trust this person because of their age", and "this group that I don't like is probably made up of old people" thinking that is prevailing through our cultures and countries like a plague?
Have we forgotten that the boomer generation was the generation of people that managed to unify by the hundreds of thousands to bring change for several different human rights groups?
We have gay and lesbian elders still alive, who survived the AIDs crisis and were activists for gay liberation and women's liberation in the 70s and 80s, that we can connect with and learn from. They won't be around forever. Many of us are wandering around calling them "cis gays" and "terfs", holy shit. Are we ready to actively listen to them as opposed to attempting to do most of the talking? Are we ready to experience that they might disagree with our own beliefs and perceptions?
We have women who are still alive in our parents and grandparents generations, who were alive when it was legal in America to beat wives and children in public and experienced about the same level of decency as a trashcan by men. Are we ready to listen to their stories, to hear about what their lives were like when they were young women?
We have men and women who were still alive during the height of the struggles against residential boarding schools and civil rights, who still carry experiences from the effects of the Holocaust with them. Are we going to hear what they have to say, or are we going to just performatively listen?
Can we implement the perspective of age into our activism and thoughtful discussions, and actually attempt to incorporate intergenerational knowledge into these conversations? Consider the needs and rights of our elders? Someday these rights will apply to us. Are we really against "boomers", "Karens", and "old 'cis' XYZ people", or are we against the wealthy and powerful, the disrespectful, the entitled, and the violent who permeate all generations? This was who the boomers were protesting for human rights and an end to wars by the way, not those who were older than them as a group.
This intergenerational disconnect will be one of the things that hurts us the most. The millennial generation (my generation) has especially poisonous thinking pertaining to the boomer generation, and it is deeply depressing. We devalue them, we pretend to listen but don't actually hear them, and we dismiss them sometimes directly on the grounds of them being older. Distance yourselves and cut off ties from abusive family members if you need to, but let's refrain from aiming vitriol on elder people. It is terrifying how much of a lack of a relationship we now have with the generation that quite literally built the infrastructure and ideological framework pertaining to the rights of groups we talk about today.
They won't be around forever.
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Humans are weird: Interview with the Devil’s right hand
*Recording starts*
Interviewer: Is it alright if I record this?
Subject: Well you’ve already started so why bother asking me?
Interviewer: I’m sorry, it’s a force of habit.
Interviewer: I can turn it off and take written notes if you want.
Subject: Nah, recording is fine.
*Background noise of children playing*
Interviewer: May I ask why you chose such a public place for this interview?
Interviewer: It seems so out of place given your line of work.
Subject: Were you expecting it to be in some shady bar on the far side of town that holds all the ne’er-do-wells and vagabonds meet and scheme?
Interview: *sounds made of sentence starting and stopping*
Subject: Bars get boring after a while and I wanted some fresh air.
Subject: And what do you mean by “my line of work”?
Interviewer: Well, you know….being a hitman.
Subject: Been a while since I’ve been called that.
Subject: Personally I prefer mercenary.
Interviewer: Is there a difference?
Subject: I’m sure you’d be able to find any poor sod that’d give off a list of reasons and nuances, but at the end of the day we all just kill people for money.
Interview: I’ve heard that you have a preference for being called “The Devil’s Right Hand”.
Subject: I don’t actually.
Subject: But you do one job for a galactic dictator with a tad of genocide and the next thing you know you got a nickname.
Subject: You know how hard it is for people to just use my real name and not that cheesy nickname?
Interviewer: What is your real name anyway?
Subject: Francis O’Connell.
Francis: Never got your name by the way.
Interviewer: Mortica Preces.
Francis: Haven’t met a Peline since the resource wars on Nifelen II.
Mortica: You fought in the resource wars?
Francis: I did. I made myself a scarf from the all the sacred braids your people wore from the dead I left on the battlefield.
Francis: Was the only thing that kept me warm during those freezing nights.
Mortica: You scalped my people?
Francis: Only from the dead ones; I’m not entirely a monster.
Mortica: …..
Mortica: Do you realize the religious significance of our braids, and what it means to take them?
Francis: I did and I didn’t care.
Francis: You were my enemy and I was damn upset at your people’s attempts to end my life.
Francis: Thankfully the war ended and we can now meet here as friends.
Mortica: …….
Mortica: When you agreed to do this interview I had pictured this much differently.
Francis: I told you that I would give you my side of the story.
Mortica: You did.
Francis: Did you expect me to sugar coat it?
Francis: Make it like I was fighting for some noble cause and lost myself in the throngs of war to become the monster the universe now sees me as?
Francis: Well that’s just horseshit people tell others to make themselves out to be more sympathetic.
Mortica: So you don’t want sympathy?
Francis: What the fuck am I going to do with that?
Mortica: Then why did you fight in the resource wars?
Mortica: Why did you commit such acts of malice and cruelty upon my people?
Francis: Simple really.
Francis: Because I was paid to.
Mortica: That’s it?
Mortica: Because you were paid to?!
Mortica: You butchered thousands and helped rip a peaceful star system asunder because you WERE PAID TO?!?!
Francis: I was paid very well if that makes the difference for you.
Mortica: How can you sleep with yourself at night???
Francis: *pauses*
Francis: When I go to sleep at night I am greeted in my dreams by the faces of everyone I have ever killed in my line of work.
Francis: Not just from the resource wars, but from every conflict, murder, and killing I have ever committed.
Mortica: So that rumor is true for humans then?
Francis: Oh yeah; that bit is very much true.
Francis: Each dream is the same. I’m walking down a long hallway that stretches on far beyond the horizon, and lining each side like a decorative mask collection is the face of a person I’ve killed.
Francis: Some of them are screaming at me; shouting out their last words or begging for their lives as they weep.
Francis: Some have the bullet or knife wounds from their death fresh on their skin as the blood drips from them like a fountain.
Francis: Then there are the ones that don’t say anything and just stare at you as you walk by; their silence piercing me like a blade through butter.
Francis: It’s a bit impressive how no matter how far I keep walking I never see the same face twice. I would be walking for what seems like hours or days and yet each face is different.
Mortica: A fitting nightmare for one such as you.
Francis: Oh but I haven’t told you the best part yet.
Francis: Attached to each face is a tag, like the ones you see for clothing sold at department stores, and written on each tag is how much I was paid to kill them
Mortica: By the gods….
Francis: I’m not even sure how I remember that but I think it’s my subconscious trying to punish me for the life I’ve lived.
Francis: While I’m walking down the hallway I will stop every now and then and look at the tags and smile to myself at a job well done.
Mortica: I don’t think I can continue this interview?
Francis: Why?
Francis: Because you are just realizing why someone would be called “The Devil’s right hand”?
Francis: You need to grow up.
Mortica: Excuse me?!
Francis: I said you need to grow the fuck up.
Francis: I’ve read your puff pieces promoting military life and the benefits it brings to the enlisted.
Francis: I couldn’t help but notice you left out all the PTSD, the horrific injuries experienced on the battlefields, the emotional trauma of losing your comrades day after day and realize the only way to survive is to cut off any emotional attachment to your squad mates just to ensure that you have some sanity left by the end of the war.
Francis: Only to find out that even if you do somehow survive you find society no longer has a use for you so you are left to rot on some run down street corner begging for scraps.
Mortica: That may be what your people do with your soldiers, but we Peline’s know how to treat our returning veterans.
Francis: Oh do you?
Francis: Then please explain why one of them paid me to do this interview with you?
Mortica: Wh-what?
Francis: I doubt you ever spoke to one of your returning soldiers in your entire career, have you?
Francis: Too afraid to get the real details of military life in favor of keeping the status quo.
Francis: Much less than first grade Ensign Tublek Frent.
Mortica: Who?
Francis: Oh you know who he is.
Francis: He came to you after the resource wars, after losing an arm and a leg, and offered to give you the scoop of the century.
Francis: An in-depth look of how your military bungled the entire war and then cast aside returning soldiers.
Francis: But you didn’t meet him; oh no.
Francis: You reported him to military command, who then had him declared mentally insane and locked him away in some dark corner of your medical facilities.
Mortica: How do you know any of this?
Francis: See my government found out about Tublek and were very much interested in giving your government another black eye.
Francis: So they paid me to break him out of the medical facility and transported back to Terra for a live broadcast.
Francis: Job went easy enough and I was just about to hand him over when the old sod learned who I really was and slipped me a coin.
Francis: Can you guess what that coin was for?
Mortica: You would kill me for a single coin?
Francis: Having read your articles I would have killed you for the sheer pleasure of it, but a man such as myself needs to keep up appearances and the devil’s right hand doesn’t do jobs for free.
Mortica: We’re in a public place; not even you are so foolish to try killing me here.
Francis: On the contrary, it was the only way to make you feel safe and draw you out.
*Rustling sound and the click of a weapon being pulled out*
Mortica: This recording has been going live to my office. If you kill me everyone will know.
Francis: Eh, publicity is publicity these days.
*Cocks gun*
Francis: I wonder where your place on the wall will be?
Mortica: Wa-
*GUNSHOT*
*Screams of children in background and footsteps slowly walking away.*
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