Casual Nihilism

[lead screenshot courtesy Youtube – Nena 99 Luftballons video. German, NEVER the English translation]

I can’t decide whether I’m charmed or horrified by the manner in which I see our youth dealing with the existential threats, both macro and micro, made toward them every day. As a late Gen-Xer who lived through the brinksmanship of the Cold War, duck-and-covering my way through one Red Scare after another, I can’t help but beam with a bit of pride at the casual nihilism I’m seeing in The Youth Of Today.

Let me set the stage: we’ve recently had a few threats, specific and otherwise, within our local school district. The kids were out of school for two days earlier this year due to some racially-motivated threats, and this week some more non-specific threats over the weekend went to many a school district – supposedly from that old boogeyman, Russia.

Extra police were on hand throughout the school district, but classes went on as scheduled. A suspicious package was found at a middle school – turned out to be a pile of advertising leaflets for a local fast-food joint.

There’s probably some sort of metaphor there surrounding the hyper-capitalist pamphleteering being seen as a Communist infiltration, but I digress.

The ads were properly disarmed and school went on as normal. Whether via social media or some other communication, it seems that 2pm was “the time” some had heard for an explosion. My kid relays to me that as 2pm came and went, the time was noted among classmates with apparent relief at still being alive. Someone else chimed in, remarking that the classroom in which they were seated was rather remote from the rest of the building so it’s possible something had happened and they had been spared.

And they nodded along and waited for the bell to ring, moving along to the next class.

We, the parents of these youngest generations, know the macro threat to our bones. We even had a soundtrack, from 99 Luftballons to Red Skies to It’s A Mistake, we bopped our heads to MTV, sipped our soda, and pondered nuclear annihilation. But we knew where the threat was, whether it was an itchy finger in Moscow or someone not playing tic-tac-toe with the WOPR.

Today’s kids head to school under constant threat. They should never have been aware that towns such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, or Uvalde even exist. They sit at their desks, passively aware that their time may come soon.

They just keep on hoping that nobody ever knows the name of their school.