I need to admit something. I have the overwhelming urge to believe in Barack Obama. The cynic in me, after 7 years of the Bush Administration, knows that this may be naive. Is any politician that has succeeded in this system capable of really turning it around? I'm not sure. But out of any of the candidates that have a chance to win this year, I think Barack Obama has the biggest chance of actually being able to shift the country's direction. The reason is largely generational.

I was born in 1982. Most of what I know about the 50's, 60's, and 70's (the decades I associate with my parents, and therefore the Boomer generation) I learned about on TV and in school textbooks. People tend to have wildly varying opinions on the Boomer generation, but one thing I think everyone can agree on is that Boomers are fascinating.

The 50's was the era of I Love Lucy, when men controlled their women and the world was focused in black in white, in just about every way. Our parents were around the same age as little Ricky, and back then, the world was segregated by color of skin and gender. For the well-to-do white people, especially the men, the 50's sure seemed like a hell of a set up.

But then in the 60's, during our parent's teenage years, some people realized that the superiority of one group over the others was wrong and they started fighting for equality. This seems to be when the big split happened. There was a divide created between the people that wanted equality and those that didn't. Those that didn't want equality were the group of people that enjoyed the way society was structured in the 1950s and who wanted to keep it that way.

The people that wanted a more equal societal structure got JFK elected at the beginning of the decade. Then, on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. It was a horrible national tragedy, the 9/11 of their generation. But just as 9/11 is turning out to be so much more than a terrorist attack, something terrible happened on that day which I can't believe is limited to the loss of the President. I'm starting to think that the JFK assassination was the real launch of the coup. Up until recently, I thought that the big shift from democracy and equality to corporatism and extreme division of wealth was the election of George W. Bush. But then I did these things:

Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Watched The Good Shepherd
Watched JFK
Wrote this post.

I'm afraid to say this (and I mean that quite literally), but I'm starting to think that the group that has control of our government and society (a group I call "The Club", for lack of a better term), were able to take over the country, in part, by creating the CIA.

I guess I always just assumed that the CIA was natural section of our government, but upon some non-school book reading, I have realized that couldn't be further from the truth. The CIA, everything about it, has been some sneaky shit since its creation. Two years after its initial roll-out, when the spotlight had moved off the new agency, the laws governing the agency were altered so that the the people running the CIA would have no meaningful "civilian" oversight (when I say 'civilian', think regular, non-"Club member" human being). The amendments ensured that instead of having to disclose its budget to the public like every other big government department, the CIA would be allowed to keep their budget a secret. The CIA would also be able to accept money from other departments without reporting the transaction, opening the door for all other government departments (i.e. Defense, Justice, State) to take advantage of the CIA's legal secrecy. Then the members of the CIA were given legal permission to omit the following things from their records and therefore keep secret from the public and/or any investigators their:

Names
Officials
Salaries
Titles
Number of persons the CIA employs
The Organizational structure
Functions of the CIA

So what do United States citizens get to know about this agency we pay for if we don't know who is in the CIA or what the CIA does, you may ask? Well, damn near nothing.

This shady business has only been going on since 1949.

In the early 1960s, the secretive group found itself in mortal danger when JFK took on the CIA. The biggest moves that pissed off the CIA were when Kennedy didn't provide the air support the CIA requested for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and many of the CIA members participating in the invasion were captured or killed. After that humiliation, Kennedy then fired the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, and his chief deputy, Charles Cabell for screwing up the operation. JFK also said he planned to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces".

Then, bam! JFK gets popped. Allen Dulles, the guy Kennedy had publicly humiliated and fired, was allowed to sit on the Warren Commission, the group that published the widely debunked "official" story of the JFK assassination.

It was around this time, when the people who should be investigated starting getting positions as investigators, that I think we started to lose the rule of law.

The Shock Doctrine, picks up the story from there. The 70's, the time of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, were also a time of a political dark skies in the country. The individual Boomers either fought in or against a war they couldn't understand. Over 58,000 Americans would die in Vietnam, but their enemies weren't Nazi's. They were Asian farmers and hunter/gatherers. What were they fighting for? It's a question that would push the two groups, those that wanted equality and those that didn't, even further away from each other into their separate corners.

In the 80's and 90's, our parents had their babies (where I come into the picture). With the threat of being sent to the Vietnam war over, they just wanted to live their lives. Man, were the Boomers awesome parents! Growing up in the 80's and 90's, in hindsight, was so cool. With relative peace in the world and doting parents, us kids were able to focus on our schoolwork, sports, and social lives. Our parents worked hard and prided themselves on being able to give us everything we would need...tutors, sports training, cool toys, ect... so that their little angels could excel at anything and everything, if we cared to. Our parents showered us with support and pride and told us we could accomplish anything if we just believed in ourselves and worked hard. And if that didn't work out so well, we were told it's OK because each one of us was special in our own way. We believed our parents with all our hearts. Why wouldn't we? We've turned out to be an independent and confident group of people as a result.

Unfortunately, childhood couldn't last forever and we turned 18. I'm in the high school class of 2000. It amazes me how dramatically the world changed the moment I became an adult.

I'm not going to get into any of the details of what has happened here since the turn of the century. We all know this part of the story all too well. Let's just say that the news became more serious, and it stopped being just another TV show. Events that we either read about in school books, heard about from our parents, or had seen on TV were suddenly coming back to haunt us. My generation was slapped in the face with the reality that we were the ones that would suffer the consequences of decisions we had no say in, decisions we never even thought to pay attention to. Like the frog that doesn't realize that he's dying in boiling water because the increase was so gradual, the country has been fundamentally shifted, going back to the 1960s. Our generation came late to the party. We probably have a better gage of how hot the water really is and likely have some new ideas about how to stir the pot (ideas which might not occur to the frogs that are used to the temperature where it's at). Eventually, it will be up to us to solve these problems, because (let's face facts) the Boomers can't rule forever. But doesn't now seem like a good time for this story to be continued by us kids?

I think the reason so many Boomers are resistant to this idea of allowing the next generation to take over is that the battle between the people who wanted equality and the people wanted to keep their good thing going appears to have been won by the greedy. I think some Boomers may consider this reality a failure, and they want to keep fighting until they win.

But the thing is, while the Boomers were struggling and fighting amongst each other, us kids were kicking back and watching our crazy parents duke it out. We've listened to the best arguments of both sides of the Boomer battle, and something you may not realize about the next few generations is that we have learned a lot from you. We've learned that fighting amongst each other is going to get us nowhere good. We've learned that left vs. right is an inferior argument to right vs. wrong. We've learned that the best way to beat a system is to change it from within. These are lessons we have learned by watching you guys fight the best way you knew how.

Let us build on that and move forward.

I want to believe in Barack Obama because I think he can bring about this kind of generational shift, a much-needed major shock to the system. Its a move that, just by nature, cannot be accomplished by Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. They are brilliant players in an old game. Barack Obama when he speaks is talking about not just changing healthcare, or the rules that govern corporations. He's talking about changing the whole damn thing. How we run our country. How we lead our lives. He doesn't give us many specifics, but I'm OK with that because he's giving us his big picture view of what he thinks the United States can and should be. I like the picture he paints. I want to help him make it happen.