Generations from now what will cause our children to weep? What about the way we are managing our world, our resources, will cause our future children grief? What are our priorities?
I do not think their grief will come from poor economic recovery in the U.S. or because we lost billions from not putting in a new pipeline. I don’t there will be grief even if our economy didn’t produce enough jobs and instead we shared the wealth among all. I can’t imagine our children’s children will care if we became more strict on fracking or shut down some coal mines.
But, I think they will cry when they realize the last lion is gone, the last tiger and elephant can only be seen in a zoo. Imagine the tears when the last few polar bears are endangered. I think at this point our children should hate us, I would, perhaps I already do.
Will our children care if we beat Mexico out of a few dollars of trade? Or will they care more if we form a strong relationship with Mexico and together we care for our drug addicts? Will our children care if we have the strongest military if we still must use it full time to maintain world order. Would they rather us lead the world in values, education, and caring about the world we live in?
Will our children feel great if we stop all terrorism on our shores and let thousands of Syrian children die? Or their parents? Will they be proud of turning out back on those that fought alongside of us in Iraq?
Will they cheer that we have the most effective nuclear weapons and we fail to disarm the world that one day burns from a nuclear holocaust?
To my future children … I have shed many tears about how we are treating this planet, its life forms and our fellow humans. I know you will find it hard to understand how a country spending trillions making war let our people die in the streets cold and hungry and how we let many suffer without medical care. How we treat addicts as criminals instead of humans that are struggling and need help. I can not imagine you will judge us well. I understand it is sad that we have done so little to form the values we need to rise above our pettiness and greed. Forgive us, we were not ready for the wealth we have received or our place of leadership that was bestowed upon us.
Roe, 1/29/17
