Look at these kids. Look at how bright and good they are. Sixty Minutes went and found some of the millions of recently homeless families living in cheap motel rooms around this country as they try to maintain some semblance of normalcy in a rapidly collapsing world of foreclosures and endless joblessness.

An entire generation of kids is going to grow up with a very different attitude about life and country than we baby boomers have had. These kids are the shock to the American system. They experience an America of grinding poverty and large corporations that heartlessly protect only the top earners in their structures. But these kids have a sharp awareness and a reflective quality that bodes ill for the status quo.

Republican policies would strip poor families of affordable access to health care and birth control services. Republican policies favor the very wealthy and corporate profits at the expense of everyone else. This is very strange since many supporters of Republican policies are themselves poor. Democrats are not much better. They tend to have a more realistic view of poverty and its causes, but they do not show the strength required to stand up and be great in the face of despair. Obama is a decent and dull failure. I am pessimistic about his chances at a second term because he has not behaved as if he did not want or need a second term. All presidential mediocrities temper their politics toward winning a second election. A great president only wants a single term in office.

America finds itself in strange waters during a time when it is supposed to be commanding a bright future. It bogs itself down in budget busting wars that are meant to spread democracy in countries that do not value democracy. America spills its blood and money into the earth, but will end up with nothing. The people it fights for will not build free societies. They will wallow in filth and slip back into the hands of despots or religious tyrants. Some people on earth have no possibilities. It is that simple. One must eventually leave those people to their own particular demise.  To believe otherwise is to engage a fantasy.

But not these people in this video. These are sharp and strong Americans who will recognize what’s been done wrong in this country and they will stand up and decide to fix things when they are just a little bit older.

I found this via Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds.