A Proposed Graduation Speech

In this season of graduations, for the 76^th year in a row, no one has asked me to give a commencement address. If someone had, this is what I would have said:

“Graduates – 

First of all, do not listen to a word I am about to say. I speak today as a representative of the generation that has given you the world upon which you are about to embark. Look around you. Look at that world. Why the hell would you take any advice from someone who gave you that.

I sat down and tried to figure out how many wars are going on in the world today. I couldn’t. There are so many. I certainly couldn’t even try to count up all the people in this world who are starving while others are throwing out more food than could feed Gaza. I couldn’t count the number of people who have diseases that will kill them while so many others similarly afflicted will simply take a pill and barely miss a day’s work. And there is no number that could be applied to measure the continuing hate and prejudice arising out of our continuing need to view ourselves as “us” and “them”.

Now compare that to the sounds we made in the sixties about how we were going to change the world. Bob Dylan songs are now being used in commercials.

Oh, yes, our generation did some good along the way. We opened doors that previously had been closed based on race and sexual orientation and gender. But even that clearly didn’t go far enough. Now, we drop into your laps that cretinous orange Leader who is hell bent on closing those doors all over again.

We gave you that. You don’t have to thank us.

And let’s talk about that Leader. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?  Where do you begin? The number of his atrocities is so massive that talking about any of them makes it mistakenly appear as if it is possible to even make a list. 

Let’s take a look at a small part of what the cretin brought us just today, the day I write this. Here are two situations involving immigration.

First, the guy the Cretin once said had been mistakenly deported, but then fought anyway to keep him deported, has now agreed to ship him back here, but only so that he can face charges for crimes that no one had ever mentioned before.

Second, it turns out that one of the Cretin’s guest at his extravagant party for the people who gave him the most money for his crypto scam was a tech executive from Communist China, exactly the kind of guy that the Cretin had just days before said  we should never allow into our country. 

That’s the man in a nutshell – fuck the poor guy and welcome the rich one, especially if he gives me a lot of money.

We gave you that. You don’t have to thank us.

I remember sitting where you are now. I remember thinking that we were going to change the world and make it perfect. The thing is, we didn’t know shit about what was in front of us and you guys are no different. As a matter of fact, you’re worse off than we were. We were at the very beginning of the technological revolution. No computers. Hell, no copy machines. So, even though we loved science fiction – Twilight Zone was required viewing – we considered it fantasy. 

Those fantasies have now happened, hell, they have been surpassed. There was a show called, “Get Smart,” where the hero had a portable phone in his shoe. A portable phone? That was comedy to us. 

You must understand that because the world you will live in is so inconceivable, so is your personal future. Many of the jobs you now envision yourself having will likely not even exist when you are my age. So, the reason you shouldn’t listen to me is precisely because you shouldn’t even listen to yourselves.

 What we got wrong when we were your age was that we didn’t fully appreciate how much the world would change and how so many of our dreams for our future were so unavoidably wrong. They had to be. They were all envisioned for a future world that would never happen. That made it hard to apply our graduating dreams to the world that would eventually become our reality. 

And so, as well intentioned as were, the future got ahead of us. A whole lot of shit happened, and, despite our best efforts, even Trump happened.

That’s another reason why you shouldn’t listen to me. I, like you, have no idea what your future will be. How can I, or anyone for that matter, give you any advice on how to deal with it. 

And even what I just said is probably wrong.

I give you that. You don’t have to thank me.”