Peace or Else!

November 17th is International Students Day. It's also known as World Peace Day. These two things on their own are simply mildly interesting facts. But together and in light of current events, they do bring to mind an important question. What on earth has happened to our society?

With students protesting all over our country many have likened it to the 60's when protesting on college campuses was frequent. The biggest difference between then and now is the undiluted violence that has sprung up in almost every instance of protest among today's students. The hippies chanted "Make love not war" while protesters today call for the utter elimination of an entire race. They are blocking traffic on major highways and bridges and throwing rocks and keys at anyone who dares drive through. They are physically confronting police and authority figures, sometimes resorting to violent altercation. This is not free speech, this is mob mentality.

As a Gen X'er I sometimes have difficulty relating to Boomers. We had very different experiences through childhood. But now I'm finding it even more difficult to relate to Gen Z kids if this is what they see as acceptable societal behavior.

Where is the middle ground? Where is the desire to find solutions to issues instead of the narcissistic insistence of having your own viewpoint be the ONLY viewpoint. There seems to be no sense of common understanding or peaceful resolution. Surely there are better ways to have our voices heard than resorting to brutality and bloodshed.

Thankfully we haven't seen these kinds of violent outbreaks in the CSRA. In fact, the only protests I'm aware of happened in early November at the Columbia County courthouse and they were peaceful demonstrations by locals wanting the violence to stop. Some have family in Gaza directly affected by the conflict, some were simply concerned citizens. All of them had their voices heard without resorting to physical violence and that's something I think the younger generation could learn from.