Crying Wolf
the fears that dominate the memories of our next generation
2008-10-06
By Del Walters

When we were young, we were told the story of the little boy who cried wolf.  According to legend, a little boy loudly screamed that he was being attacked by a wolf.  When his mother responded, he laughed saying it was a joke and there was no wolf.  He did this twice more before, low and behold, the wolf appeared.  The bottom line being, the little boy cried wolf so often that when the real wolf appeared, no one believed him and the wolf gobbled him up. 

Fast forward, now, to the banking crisis of 2008.  We are being told this crisis, if left unresolved, will plunge the nation’s economy into the “Great Depression” of 2008.  Immediately, those old enough to remember the bread lines and soup kitchens warned the current generation that economic Armageddon was fast approaching.  The President, flanked by the Secretary of the Treasury and him flanked by the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, appeared before Congress and warned of the impending financial meltdown. On Friday, the bill was passed, but a fundamental problem remains: No one trusts anyone these days.

It took a group of college students to make that fact real.

I teach tomorrow’s journalists at Bowie State University.  They are a generation that has grown up,  post 9/11,  and have become accustomed to living in fear.  All are African American.  I quizzed them to name the great crises of their generation. The list they posted on the blackboard brought it all home. Their lives have been filled with fear.  So much so, they have turned off their TV’s and turned on their IPods.

This was the list:

The war on drugs:  This generation of young college kids are the children of the “lost generation” of young adult African American men.   For their fathers, the number one cause of death was by a bullet.  Those fathers who survived are now in prison.  Many of my students were raised by their mothers.

The sniper shootings:  They remembered watching the sniper shootings and running from their cars to get gas.  Suddenly, the thought  of a “madman with a gun” hit closer to home than the possibility of dying in a “drive by shooting” in the inner city.

Y2K:  On December 31, 1999,  they were told that  so many catastrophic events would occur at midnight when the year 1999 gave way to 2000.  Their computers would crash at midnight.  Planes and satellites would fall from the skies.  ATMs would lose track of money.  And life, as we knew it, would come to a crashing halt.   BUT….It didn’t.

9/11:  This is the generation that watched as terrorists flew planes into buildings.  Before that, they remembered arriving at the airport with their parents,  at the last minute, to board a plane.  Now, tack on two hours for domestic flights, and three hours for international flights.  They routinely strip shoes, coats and hats, and load their laptops separately onto the conveyor belt.  No drinks allowed or liquids over three ounces. Thank you.

The war on terror:  The students pointed out the difference between this crisis and the one we will list next.  The handling of the war on terror favors the Republicans in all of the polls.  It is about stopping the terrorists, over there, so they don’t strike us here at home.  They grew up with Code Orange Alerts and wondered what happened to the ‘constant threat.’

The war in Iraq:  The war on terror became the war on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. They watched as the president declared “we would be greeted as liberators.” We were not.  The war, they were told, would cost $55 billion dollars.”   One half a trillion dollars later, the costs are still piling up.  These students grew up fearing “weapons of mass destruction, or WMD’s,” and learned about “suitcase nukes” that could be smuggled into our ports.  As a result, they now believe the war on terror was nothing more than a sideshow to get Iraq’s oil.  Hmmmm…that has yet to be accomplished.

Osama Bin Laden:  This generation knows where they were when the planes flew into the World Trade Center.  They were told Osama Bin laden was to blame.  Ironically, Osama Bin Laden is still at large, and they are wondering why.  And they also wonder why the Democrats continue to talk about him, while the Republicans do not?

Bird Flu:  The infamous new buzz word ‘pandemic’ caused fear that this country, alone, would suffer 20,000 deaths.  Only six died…worldwide.

Global Warming:  How many times have they heard that the climate is collapsing around us?  Seeing images of glaciers melting, rivers rising, and pollution pouring into the atmosphere  leads them to believe  that unless something is done,  our planet will die. As a result,  they  conscientiously are making the effort to  “recycle” and “be  green.”

Katrina:  As if to provide more proof, this generation watched, in horror, as an entire coastal U.S. city was wiped off the face of the earth by Mother Nature.  They watched as thousands, mostly blacks, begged on television, to be saved amidst the stinking corpses of their neighbors, who wondered why and how they could be left behind by the most powerful nation on earth.  Their families and churches welcomed the survivors. They just knew Katrina would be the number one issue in the upcoming election.  After all it was almost an entire U.S. city that disappeared. They were wrong.

Gas:  When they were born, gas cost  approximately $1.25/gallon.  Now they have the privilege of paying just under $4.00/gallon. Sprinkle in OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson,  Jon Bonet Ramsey,  Natalie Holloway, and Paris Hilton,  and you have the sum of their collective media memories.  In that media vacuum,  they have been denied the one thing they hunger for the most…the truth. 

Instead, they have been told to fear the “drug dealers,” “terrorists,”  “global warming,” and even their “computers.”  Unlike my generation, they knew nothing of the “Pentagon Papers,” or “Watergate,” media stories that defined a generation.  Instead they know Fox “isn’t fair and balanced” and that CNN may or may not have “the best political team on television,” and BET is …well BET.   They also know the government  can and has lied.

There were no weapons of mass destruction. We were not greeted as liberators. 4000 people their age have come home in body bags. Thousands more maimed and wounded.  They watched as the president vowed to fire the person who leaked the identity of a CIA agent.  He didn’t. 

Like the parent of   “The little boy who cried wolf,” they have been told to be afraid far too often.  Now they are numb to any realities.

I am old enough to remember hiding under my desk for fear the “communists were coming.”  I remember the day John F. Kennedy was killed, and Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy.  I remember wondering how we, the U.S. would survive.  I remember watching America’s cities burn during the riots,  and being told school was cancelled.  I remember the body bags returning home from Vietnam, and the Gulf War, and Afghanistan.  (I never saw the images in the Iraq war; they were blocked by the Bush administration) I remember the war on drugs, and the war on terror, and Y2K, and all of their crises too. 

Now, like them, I am being told that my financial world is in ruins.

Only, unlike my students,  I remember my father telling me about a great president who told a once great country we had “nothing to fear but fear it self.” He told me how this country turned fear into the “greatest generation.”

Tell that to a generation that knows nothing but fear.  To them,  FDR is history.  They only know the story of, “The little boy who cried wolf!”

Del Walters is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, journalist and filmmaker.