Our children's herculean task

When historians look back at this particular period of American history, I wonder what their judgment will be?

They won’t be kind, I suspect. Our country has slipped into such a state of malaise, selfishness and hatred that I scarcely recognize it. And it happened on my generation’s watch, which makes it all the more painful and all the more tragic.

We grew up in an era of peace and prosperity. Our parents pampered us and spoiled us in a way their parents were unable to do for them. Unlike our parents, most of us went to college, and our diplomas did not come packaged in bone-crushing debt. We demonstrated against and ended an unjust war, contributed our brains and brawn to the civil rights struggle, created the environmental and the women’s rights movements, and dreamed the dream of making a better world.

Tragically, it will be left to my children’s generation, the much-maligned Millennials, to clean up the mess that we Baby Boomers have left, and what a sorry mess it is.

The state of our democracy has never been more imperiled. The bloody, hard-fought progress we have made in racial, gender and LGBT relations is seriously threatened. The United States, once the light of a troubled world, has become a laughingstock before the brotherhood of nations.

At a time when environmental catastrophe looms ever larger, our leaders are retreating into the murk of superstition and false gods. And a large percentage of our countrymen feel so isolated from the world and so disenfranchised that they turned over, in their anger, frustration and fear, the reins of power to men governed only by nihilism, narcissism and greed.

Yes, I know. These are strange thoughts to have on the Fourth, normally a time of pride and celebration. But these are not normal times and this is not a normal holiday. I have a sickness of heart and an oppression of spirit so heavy that sometimes I can hardly draw a breath.

So amid the flag-waving and fireworks that normally mark this day, I humbly suggest we say a quiet prayer for happier times and for God to guide the hands of our children, who have inherited the herculean task of preserving our democracy and leading our country out of the wilderness into which we led it.

I believe they are up to the task. Our children -- the greatest gift we could ever give to this sad, troubled world.