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The Joystick Generation
Just a quick quote from a recent speech by General Conway, the current Commandant of the Marine Corps:
Our young Marines are just doing marvelous work. There was a time when some of us who are graybeards still on active duty looked at this generation and wondered if they were going to have what it takes. We called them the “joystick generation” — not enough PT, questionably enough discipline to be good Marines. Well, we were wrong, quite frankly. This is a wonderful generation. We’ve seen them in combat now. Their raw courage, their sense of team play, and their sense of sacrifice is as great as any that we’ve seen as a Corps. We are going to be in good shape for a long time to come as these young men and women continue to develop in more of the positions of responsibility.
I think everyone has experienced this stigma in some form, and it currently seems to be common for anyone born after the late 1970s. Older generations constantly complain that newer generations will doom our society because of their lack of [insert various virtues here]. History always proves these assertions to be wrong, and it is refreshing to see General Conway say as much.
This idea isn’t new. In Book 4 of Plato’s Republic Plato has a discussion with Socrates about the ideal education for youth:
Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from the first in a stricter system, for if amusements become lawless, and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted and virtuous citizens […] Thus educated, they will invent for themselves any lesser rules which their predecessors have altogether neglected.
What do you mean?
I mean such things as these:–when the young are to be silent before their elders; how they are to show respect to them by standing and making them sit; what honour is due to parents; what garments or shoes are to be worn; the mode of dressing the hair; deportment and manners in general. You would agree with me?
Yes.
But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about such matters,– I doubt if it is ever done; nor are any precise written enactments about them likely to be lasting.
I think daily about our young and older Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and I worry about them not only there but when they come back and the haunts of PTSD. 4 years ago I got diagnoed with diabetes and a friends suggested I lay a claim on the VA as I was a Marine in Vietnam. While doing so the VVA service officer said I should also apply for PTSD as I’d been married several times and moved around quite a bit - so I did. 16 months later I get a rating of 80%,70% PTSD and the rest diabetes and neurapathy. So I go to North Chicago to learn about PTSD in a 5 week program and then 10 months later get re-evaluated with 100% PTSD. So my wife, two daugthers ages 11 & 13 move to the country to the country, buy a small farm.
In May our house got broken into, I slugged the 1st intruder, the 2nd ntruder choked me, my wife got him off I raced to the bedroom got a gun chased them off. I am now facing a felony assualt charge.
BEWARE - civillian life is dangerous. Macomb, IL, McDonough County, IL is especially danger - their marching orders are “your best bet “sh-t on the vet.” So any of yu guys coming back beware of you local law enforcement, especially if you have PTSD - they don’t understand it and they don’t care.
Scott Brooks-Miller
Table Grove, IL