There has been and will be a lot written about the Brexit. One note particularly struck me:
“We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied […] taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.”
There is a universality in the statement that someone like myself in Colorado could relate with it as if I was the writer in the UK.
If the young don’t participate in the political process, and specifically voting, our future will be decided by older generations. The next fifty years will be decided by those that will see less than half of that time. We see it in big international events like Brexit, in federal politics like the Hyde Amendment, at the state level with Colorado’s TABOR, and at the municipal levels with ideological battles going all the way down to local school boards. The effects can be long-lasting and damaging. Policies and decisions can be like anchors around our collective neck if we continue to let them happen without our voices.
We have to participate or we are ceding our future to a voluntary fatalism that will make America worse again. Brexit proves this isn’t a false alarm.