I agree with the sentiment of most of your post, but this part nags at me. "They...They...They..." And I must ask:
a. How They attained the power to do all of this?
b. Who gave that power to Them?
I know the answers, and I think you probably do, as well... You aren't guilty of anything, so please don't take this as an attack or be defensive...But at the same time, we're all guilty. We're guilty as fuck. These things are the consequence of out learned sense of civic apathy. It wasn't an active decision, but it was one we allowed to happen, gradually.
We allowed the charlatans we've voted for to instill it into us, and into our children. We've become soft and lazy and complacent....and trusting... And, we were foolish enough to think our exceptionalism was normal, and not unique in the entire history of Earth. That nothing could ever really change it. It really is (was?) exceptional and unique, if you are historically literate and objective.
We've all taken America for granted, for generations. And we're all going to take some lumps for it in one way or another, I fear.
Well...
a: They voted things in. THey gathered signatures and the like, as well as got onto city councils and the like.
b. They took it. At first, with the city and county boards, they just convinced older people that teenagers were terrible using themselves as examples, then they just pushed people out.
Let's use cruising. Now, cruising was so popular that all the Boomers did it. Hell, that was how you showed off your car. When their kids got old enough to start cruising, they immediately made it illegal. Same with buying up the land and pretending the easement didn't exist. Then getting things like "Becca's Law" and the like. They really did "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" that they'd been molesting, beating, and aborting about everything.
Now, let's have some real blame too. The Silent Generation were some grifting, grasping, crooked motherfuckers who would rather die than give up power. A lot of the crooked politicians were Silent Gen. Hell, Silent Gen still has a lot of people in power.
But yeah, we gave them the power because we thought our apathy would shield us.
WE promised ourselves we wouldn't fuck up our kids and instead we fucked them up in new and different ways.
But we did become too trusting. We thought that if we left them alone, they'd leave us alone.
Of course, communist infiltration didn't help.
