“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s a no go? Why things are what they are?”
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Remember the days when Barack Obama was referred to as “the adult in the room”? As with the young it’s a coveted position for a politician to hold, a perception they very much wish to convey. Unfortunately, saying it doesn’t make it so, and desiring to be viewed as an adult doesn’t always make you behave like one. Cover-ups, arrogance, belligerence, outright dishonesty, shirking responsibility while finding time for pleasure… these are not signs of adulthood, but of adolescence (though so-called adults often have a hard time moving past their adolescence!). It is unclear whether our adolescent President is the product of the nation, in Benjamin Button fashion, regressing from adulthood, or if the nation’s further regression is part of Obama’s fundamental transformation of America.
The problem is pervasive. From our poorest urban communities where a participatory father is a rare sighting; to our middle classes where mothers and fathers are increasingly more interested in being their children’s friends than their parents; to grandparents, healthier and wealthier than ever, bent on enjoying their retirement apart from families that could still benefit from their wisdom and assistance; we are becoming families without rudders. Our institutions too are showing the signs of a lack of adult leadership. Corporations are mired in greed, dishonesty in the press has become commonplace, institutions of higher learning have become the haunt of bullying ideologues, and politicians have become caricatures, mouthing words they neither believe nor value.
Perhaps you have heard of the elephants at Kruger National Park, South Africa’s largest conservation area. When the elephant population at Kruger became more than the area could sustain, authorities killed many of the adults and transported some of the children to other parks, a generation of orphan elephants. The young elephants had no role models to show them how an elephant should act, and they began to act more and more aggressively; attacking tourist vehicles and killing the endangered white rhino. The problem became serious enough that the aggressive elephants had to be killed until a solution could be found. The more humane solution that researchers landed on was to bring larger adult bull elephants into the herds to keep the younger ones in line, and from mating too early which produced excessive testosterone. Children cast in the role of adults do not become adults, they become dangerous children.
Nations are like people. They are not all adults. Some act like destructive children throwing tantrums. To suppose that the world can function perfectly well without the guidance of developed nations is the same as supposing that adolescent boys on a deserted island could form a peaceful society. President Obama’s flaccid foreign policy, his intentional weakening of American influence, and his ludicrous concept of leading from behind have left a dearth of adult influence on the world stage. Understand that having done a thing wrong in the past is not a rationale for neglecting to do it right in the present. To a great extent, we have left children in charge because we have failed to act like adults, and now we are reaping the consequences.
IMHO: When 73 year old Ronald Reagan was questioned during a debate with Walter Mondale about how his advancing years might be a concern should he be reelected to the Presidency, Reagan quipped that he would not exploit for political purposes the 56 year old Mondale’s “youth and inexperience”. It was a funny line, and it put the age issue to bed, where Reagan was content to leave it. But in the brilliance of the joke it’s easy to lose track of the rest of Reagan’s response. He paraphrases Cicero by saying, “If it were not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.” (Go HERE to listen to what an adult President sounds like).
It may be in a land where 30 year olds are living rent free in their parent’s basements, where 27 year olds are considered children on their parents health insurance, where 40 year olds try to look like teenagers and succeed in acting like them, where some of the fastest increasing rates of STD’s are in our retirement communities, that we have become a nation sorely lacking in real adults. Likewise, with the humanitarian crisis on our southern borders, the anarchy and despotism in Eastern Africa, the shooting down of a civilian jet with apparent impunity, the constant turmoil in the mideast, etcetera, etcetera… one could question where the adult influence is on the world stage. In a nation or a world without adults, governments become gangs and principles are sacrificed to expediency and the lust for power.
“This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.”
“…We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
There’s a limit to how much childishness the world can endure, it’s time the grownups came back to the island.
