I am not among the political junkies who anxiously await each presidential (and vice presidential) debate with the excitement of an eight year old waiting for Christmas. I consider them more or less a silly waste of time, if you want to know the truth. It's not that the opinions and thoughts of the candidates are not important. They surely are the very thing we should be basing our votes upon. But the reality is, they know the basic questions in advance, and prepare their answers with more precision than Eisenhower and Morgan planning the D-Day invasion. I am left to think that we are not going to cover any new ground in the effort, even if the event is broadcast live.
I would have a lot more respect for the debates if the moderators had more guts to hold the debating adversaries accountable for answering the questions. When someone is asked if the sky is blue, and the resulting answer doesn't have a yes anywhere to be found, I am strongly suspicious that they are not wanting to give me a straight answer. In fact, it appears to me that they are trying to do anything but answer the questions. Personally, I think that's because they are afraid if they tell us what they really think, we might not like them.
I don't know about you, but I don't think the vote for the leader of the free world should be a glorified popularity contest. We are not talking about prom king or homecoming queen, here. We are talking about someone who will make decisions that will affect six billion people around the globe one way or another. I don't think it matters if I like the person living in the White House, but it certainly does matter if I respect them and believe they are going to be truthful and forthright, and most importantly, represent us well among the world leaders in whose circles they will move.
So I personally don't really have an interest in watching the presidential debates. I do, however, really enjoy being a high school debate judge. That is where you cover new ground. The students take a topic, and they research and develop a plan to solve a problem, usually something of international concern.
Last year, the topic was, more or less, should the United States government send additional aid to Sub-Saharan Africa for medical interventions, and if so, what would your plan be? While at first blush, the answer seems an obvious yes, since that is a part of the world in total medical crisis, the how of it is a lot more complicated. While rates of AIDS, malaria, and childhood illness kill off their population at a rate that should shame the remainder of the world into doing something about the situation, exactly what form that aid should take is certainly a complex and complicated affair.
How do you deal with corrupt governments that would rather divert donated food and medicines to the black market to sell for guns or drugs or whatever else the leaders deem necessary to maintain their own economic and social superiority? What do you do with people who are afraid to vaccinate their children because they are suspicious that what is in that syringe is more dangerous than the viruses that are already killing off more than half of their children before they reach the age of one? What is the point of throwing even more money at the problem, when the money already flowing in that direction is being misused and inappropriately diverted away from the people who need it to line the pockets of the already wealthy?
It was fascinating to listen to high school students, who have researched and dedicated hours of their lives and their free time to the problem, and who came up with a host of creative, and perhaps even effective, solutions for the problem. It was also fascinating to watch the students whose job it was to argue the negative, as they raised objections, and, in general, offered alternative solutions of their own.
While young people are often idealistic, and things that they think should work depend upon a perfect world unlike the one we live in, I think the leaders of the so-called civilized nations could probably learn some things from these very bright kids who have a vested interest in the outcome, after all. The world they inherit and will someday administer themselves is the world we will hand over to them, and they care, passionately, about what kind of shape that world will be in when they do take the reins.
While AIDS is the poster child, literally, of what has gone wrong in that part of the world, it is probably not even the most deadly killer of children. That dubious distinction falls to childhood diarrhea, which kills an astounding number of children every year in the undeveloped world, especially in Africa, mostly because of contaminated water.
Many of the teens addressed the problem head on by suggesting a wide variety of means to provide people with clean water. The most interesting solution I recall included directing more money to research for making dirty water sanitary in the glass or the pitcher, since there is no possibility of maintaining a clean city or local water supply where there are no cities, no real houses, and people are living in so called shelters that we wouldn't consider for housing our pets.
I remember from when I was growing up, watching commercials on television for groups like Save the Children, and wondering how they could possibly be genuine. Winsome tots with enormous eyes staring out of emaciated faces, or little children with distended bellies belying the malnutrition that was slowly killing their bodies and their minds, all of which could be remedied with mere dollars a month. How could that possibly be, I wondered. Are they really living in that kind of squalor? Why doesn't somebody do something about it, I thought. To say that I had no understanding of the kind of poverty experienced by those in the Third World is an understatement, of course. But it is virtually impossible, sitting in a cozy house in the United States, to grasp the life realities for people who are not worried about where their next meal is coming from, but when their children had eaten last.
Then I took a trip to Southeast Asia, and got an education for myself. I saw what it really means when they talk about flooding in those places where sanitary sewers are non-existent. It is not necessarily that they are under ten feet of water, like when a catastrophic flood happens around here. It's that one foot of foul and contaminated water covers dozens of square miles, taking hours or days to recede, and leaving behind not only mess but disease and pollution in the hovels that pass for homes for the truly poverty stricken people who live in the way. There is no government to sweep in, to provide aid and clean up supplies and financial assistance for people who had nothing to begin with. They simply endure, one day after another, until they die at an age which is a shameful reproach to the civilized world that has not made a difference, no matter how much aid we have thrown their way.
If you look at mortality statistics, you will find that men and women in some parts of Africa and Asia have an average life span in the 40's. As in, if you reach aged 50, you have outlived your expected life span, and you are on borrowed time. How can that be, in the same world where Americans routinely expect to live past the age of 80, and at 48, I think of myself as still young?
It is easy to marginalize, in our minds, the people in those parts of the world which are disadvantaged. We prefer to assume that they have a different attitude towards life, towards themselves, even towards their children. I have heard people (possibly even myself) throwing around such silly statements as life is cheap in parts of the world where they appear to have nothing to live for.
But I learned, when I was in the midst of the very poverty that I thought was a television backdrop, that people love their children just as much, people hope for something better just as hard, and there is a reason that people who have access to birth control and health care immediately lower their birth rates. If you know your children will survive, you don't have more of them, you invest everything you have into the ones you have. Suspiciously like we do here, in fact.
I was in the countryside of northern Vietnam, being driven to what was simply the most hauntingly spectacular place I have ever been on earth, when I had my lesson in hope and faith. We drove past mile after mile of rice fields, with people standing in the midst of the muddy water wearing the conical hats that you think are a film prop, but turn out to be real. It was picturesque and fun to see, because it was the opposite of the negative pictures of the country I had grown up with.
Every now and then, we would pass what I would have thought were abandoned huts, and by calling them that, I am actually giving them more credit than they deserved, these little abodes were so run down. I knew people had to be living there, because there would be clothes hanging on a line in the front, or perhaps a child sitting on the porch staring at us as we passed. It was clear that these were children who wouldn't normally, in the course of their entire lives, see a white person with blue eyes staring back at them, and it took all my self-control to not stop at each one and try to help.
Then, we passed a particularly disastrous place. You could see the roof was falling in, and had some holes in it, making it almost pointless to call it a hut. The little porch area in the front was missing half of the floor boards, and the steps were cockeyed and coming apart as well. In the front were two little girls, enormous eyes staring out of their tiny faces as we passed, playing with a stick. One thing I noticed about the clothes in that rural part of the world - they are all in earth tones, for some reason, and these two girls were wearing dresses that were no different. It reminded me of the film, "Schindler's List," with everything in black and white. But then, I spied an unexpected drop of color in the picture, and it took my breath away. One of the girls had her hair in a little ponytail, and she was wearing a vividly red bow tied around it.
I almost wept for the sadness of that picture. It suddenly struck me in a visceral way, that her mother loved her just as much as I loved my own little girl, who was not much older than the one I was looking at. She even looked a lot like my own precious daughter, who is half Asian herself, and favors that part of her heritage in the best possible way. But because my girl was born into a country of wealth, she had countless bows strewn around a house that would be no more real than a fairy tale dream to these girls. Meanwhile, they had only one red bow between them to show the world that their mother cherished them just as much as I cherished mine.
I will never forget the sight of that red bow. It was a moment in time from a trip that last lasted many days, but it is the most important moment of the whole experience. Because it opened my eyes, and the doorway into my heart, and allowed me to understand that whether you are rich or poor, you have the very same hopes and dreams; you want security and food on the table, and most of all, you love your children just the same. And now I understand, in a heart way, instead of a head way, that even in the midst of abject poverty, you still want your children to feel hope and joy, and to believe in something better for their future.
That is why I was so impressed last year with the kids of my own world, who had so many creative and original solutions to problems the rest of us really don't want to think about. The problems are so big, and so overwhelming, that the older generations have almost given up. I have faith in the next generation, because I think they have big hearts and creative minds which think out of the box. I believe the 21st century will be the better for the presence of the Millennials, the bearers of those hearts and minds, and who are anxious to be a part of the solution.
The election this year will be impacted by their thoughts, their dreams, their opinions, and their vision for the future. If you haven't been paying attention, they have a totally different viewpoint, and the world is a much smaller place for them. They not only understand the importance of the world view, they live it, as they facebook with people all over the globe on a daily basis.
They will debate the same problems we leave them, and they are facing challenges as they enter the working world that many Boomers have never faced, but they have different life experiences and different tools with which to work on solutions as well. They are the first generation in American history who should not necessarily expect to have a higher standard of living than their parents, a shocking statistic I read awhile back, the truth of which is becoming clearer to me by the day. But ironically, at the same time, they are less interested in the material goods that have bankrupted their parents, and the leadership that have led us to the precipice of another Depression.
They are grabbing the mantle for themselves, and I believe they will shape the world in ways that are new and different. They volunteer at unprecedented rates, they are socially conscious, they were born recycling and they wear their seat belts because it's the right thing to do. They are stupid at times, there is no denying it, because they are young, and to be young is to be stupid. But they are also eager to learn, and eager to move forward and into the future. If the solutions I heard last year are an indicator, we are leaving the world to a generation that is more than up to solving the big problems they face. I look forward to the next 40 years, and to seeing them take the world by storm.
If you don't have the fun of being a part of the life of a Millennial, I suggest you get out of the house and into the schools and be a debate judge for a day. It's a lot of fun, and you will feel good about the future, I'll guarantee it.
