An Open Letter to My Daughter Jasmine

What Would You Say to the High School Graduating Class of 2024?

I have been in long conversations with my 17 year old daughter Jasmine regarding her, and her high school classmates, future intentions. If you were to write a commencement speech during these tumultous times, what would you say in it? Here is my best try to address the graduating class of lockdown lunacy:

Greetings to the Class of 2024,

I hope that 2024 finds you all well and relatively unscathed from the difficult past years. You should have your entire future ahead of you. Instead we are looking at a cliff. I don’t know what the future holds but it looks dark in many ways. Our once taken for granted hallowed institutions have proven themselves to be irredeemably corrupt. In this vacuum there is bewilderment. Where do we go from here?

You are the graduating class of Covid, arguably the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the world and the human race. In an effort to supposedly prevent the deaths of the old you were asked to sacrifice your young lives. You began your freshman year of high school on Zoom online classes and stayed away from your peers. When in person school resumed it was with mandatory facemasks and befuddling restrictions. These included Covid tests, quarantine of those both infected and exposed and several more rounds of school closures. There was social distancing and A and B attendance days.

Then there were punishments for those who opposed wearing a facemask for any reason and later for those who did not take a Covid vaccine for any reason. Rape victims and the psychologically and physically vulnerable were all lumped together as dissidents. Many were outcast from school all together. Bullying became once again acceptable and in some cases encouraged for the greater good.

In my conversations with you, Jasmine, I sense the confusion and hopelessness of you and your peers about what to do after high school. You mentioned a surprising number of even the best and brightest of your classmates who are not sure that they want to go to college. In my generation attending college after high school was viewed as the default thing to do by any respectable middle class family. Yet the value of a University degree has been declining for decades all while the cost to obtain one skyrockets. Perhaps a tipping point has been reached over the Covid closures which you all came of age during.

The overriding lesson of the past few years was that your education means nothing. It can be turned on, or off, as though at the press of a button. It still can be. Of course you can go to college and take on tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in the process. It will only be to obtain some compliance certificate that says that you are willing to jump through hoops to appease your money masters. It doesn’t really matter what degree you get. It can be in political science, or basket weaving, or in any number of woke nonsense things. The point is that they won’t be teaching you anything important anyways.

They certainly won’t be teaching you survival skills, or how to obtain the FEW resources of food, energy and water on your own. These things are becoming all the more important to know as the threat of World War III looms larger in the background. They won’t teach you to question what you are told. Colleges and Universities hold intelligence and critical thinking skills in contempt. They won’t teach you anything about money management. They don’t want you to know about compounding interest rates, or tax obligations, or debt servicing costs. They certainly don’t want you to know about fractional reserve banking.

They want you to know that you have to work for them to get the money to obtain the FEW resources which they control. What they want you to know is how to sign on the dotted line to get your thousands of free carrots, while they now wield hundreds of thousands of sticks on the back end of the deal. The amounts are carefully calculated to keep you in debt servitude. They want you compromised and thus compromizable. It is the currency of the Devil.

Of course you could always work for corporations or the ever expanding US government, although most of those jobs do require compliance certificates. To get ahead it helps if you speak the same pablum of nonsense that you were taught in school, but many also preferentially hire people of color and the genderfluid. Due to corporations longstanding practice of punching down on workers who do actual work, however, these jobs are seldom as good as they look.

Let’s move on to the bureaucracy, which in both corporations and government have emerged to be about the same thing. These are well paying jobs often with good benefits. Almost all of them involve in some way tracking, tagging, or enforcing compliance on the human cattle moving through the system. These jobs are rewarded to those who do the best compliance enforcement with the least questions asked. Come to think of it, this area explains half of how we got in this mess in the first place.

Perhaps I am being too cynical?

There is supposed to be a timeless wisdom in the best graduation speeches. I couldn’t help but think of my own high school graduation as the Class of 1997. This speech was widely shared at the time and is one of the best known. Although it is often attributed to a song by Kurt Vonnegut entitled “Wear Sunscreen,” it actually began with a Chicago Tribune article by Mary Schmich entitled “Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young.” I am posting the letter below. Perhaps the only advice in it which I never took to heart was to wear sunscreen.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.”

I worry about the chemicals in sunscreen, but otherwise think the advice is solid. I certainly hope you all grow old, as it was taken as a given for the high school class of 1997. I find it odd, Jasmine, how little talk there is of any budding high school romances or thoughts of starting a family in the future among you or your classmates. Perhaps the uncertainty of the time has bludgeoned such thoughts into obscurity. In my graduating class there were some scandalous teenage pregnancies. Some of the girls married the father of the baby and some didn’t. Perhaps youth is wasted on the young.

I’m surprised at how little you talked of you or your classmates going into the apprenticeship trades. I’d think learning how to build houses, wire electricity, dig wells or do plumbing would be great skillsets. You also didn’t mention a single classmate who was interested in starting a small business. The class of lockdowns perhaps saw parents or other family members whose hopes, dreams and aspirations were shattered as political edicts destroyed businesses that took a lifetime to build. I have no doubt that many of you feel jaded and cynical.

That’s why I found it most chilling of all when you expressed your interest in going into the US military and mentioned how many classmates are thinking about doing the same thing. I understand that white Midwesterners are commonly recruited as canon fodder for these senseless wars. But I found it shocking that while you admitted to not having the physical interest in heavy lifting such as in construction or plumbing or HVAC repair that you somehow think you’d be better in boot camp.

I warned you that the US government tends to over promise and under deliver. There’s war theaters emerging potentially on three continents all at the senseless behest of the power brokers at the top. These wars are being fought for access to infrastructure. The profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses are reckoned in lives. There are some things you should never have to see and some things which you should never have to experience. I do not want to see a flag drapped coffin caused at the expense of psychopaths who hate us.

Beyond that my dear largely unvaccinated, healthy and beautiful daughter, the US military has long been the recruitment center for all sorts of inhumane medical experiments on its soldiers. Although the Covid vaccines may no longer be required for service a quick google search revealed that 17 other vaccines might be given before basic training. They are always testing medical countermeasures on troops and once you have become property of the US government you have little ability to refuse. These can cause crippling disabilities and lifelong injuries at which point you will be discarded. Your life means nothing to them.

The fact that you are even considering the military makes me feel that I have failed you as a mother. I have given you no positive example of using my own talents and making any money from them. I sell paintings that no one buys and write books that no one reads. This is the only reason I can fathom for you considering something as incongruent with your personality as US military service. I am sure the recruiters are talking an aggressive talk to cover their own shortfalls.

The class of 2024 has learned some harsh lessons from the Covid closures. It taught you not to hope or dream or step out of line. You will suffer the consequences otherwise from which many in the dissident community have not yet recovered from. It taught you that none of the adults who should have been looking out for your future gave a damn about you. Those who advocated for the children were stripped of power and sometimes targeted by those well paid people at those innumerable government agencies.

It taught you not to love. It taught you not to sing. It taught you not to dance. How would you enjoy the power and beauty of your youth when it’s been stripped away from you by selfish emotional children? It taught you to view yourselves as disease carriers stripped of all autonomy or potential.

When do we as human beings tire of burying our dead and dare to hope and dream of a future again which we can build towards? You told me Jasmine of a boy you knew who commited suicide during the lockdowns. There may be others you have not mentioned. There are probably those in your class who have lost relatives in these past 4 years, some perhaps due to Covid, or despair, or addiction, or medical maltreatment. Perhaps some have lost relatives in close proximity to them being vaccinated for Covid. Perhaps some of the Class of 2024 has been quietly buried already. Others may be too sick to often attend school.

In 1997 at my high school two girls tragically died in a car accident. A memorial was put up at the site of the accident and I have classmates who over 25 years later still honor the anniversary of their deaths. In 1997 it was assumed that you would grow old. Now heart attacks on the playing field are quietly covered up. A student death at your sister’s elementary school was announced just two months ago. I had never heard of such a thing growing up.

Yet I see causes for optimism despite this all. How many of you take all expert advice at face value? How many of you trust authorities who have so openly shown contempt for you, the hope for the future? How many of you automatically assume that these old, dottering, incompetent fools in Congress, say, actually know what is best? How many of you realize that they are taking care of their own asses and that you should do likewise?

Perhaps from this rising cynicism I sense a coming pragmatism. I have personal advice for you, Jasmine, as your mother, in your thinking of a potential career path. You, my vegetarian, sweet daughter, are not suited for the military. Perhaps for the right person they might gain some tactical arms training and survival skills that are helpful down the road, but only if they can flip sides. Right now it just looks like a pointless bloodbath could emerge.

You are an excellent cook, Jasmine. I was impressed by your skills as I didn’t know how to cook a salad when I was your age. You came into being a vegeterian the right way, through careful personal introspection regarding how you felt about the killing of animals. Other than concerns about potential vitamin deficiencies I have always supported this. Yet not once have I seen you make your personal dietary choices into a political issue nor have I known you to judge others for their own choices. Perhaps this is because you don’t use social media, and therefore don’t realize that some people use this as a virtue signalling wedge issue.

I think you are also a very talented artist. Here I feel I have failed to set up a positive example as I’ve largely fallen into the starving artist stereotype. That said one of your uncles is a successful photographer. I recently reconnected to a high school classmate who I shared the art key with in 1997. I was pleasantly surprised to note that he works in graphic design. I sent him a photo of your butterfly drawing. He thinks you should try giclee.

Of all of your strong points though I think your greatest strength lies in being a uniter and not a divider. You are the therapist for all of your friends for good reason. You can connect with their myriad issues with empathy and respect and are the most well grounded 17 year old I have ever known. You always try to be kind.

You should never be a politician. The vast majority of them are sociopathic narcissists who have been morally corrupted. They divide people on narrow issues that always leave the big picture points off of the debate table. I am hoping that one day soon the lot of them are openly derided with the scorn and contempt they so richly deserve.

I still remember how enchanted I was when you were nominated for class president in 5th grade. You had to come up with a campaign slogan and put posters around the school. I remember the picture of you holding your cat and the slogan very well Jasmine: “A Vote For Me is a Vote for Kindness.”

You didn’t become class president, needless to say. Politics is all about tapping into the hopes, dreams and fears of the voters. But I would have voted for you as President, both then and now. We can and have done so so so much worse.

In conclusion my advice for the Class of 2024 would be this:

Take care of yourselves. Nobody else is looking out for you.

Don’t trust anything authority figures tell you. A life hack I’ve often said is that if you do the exact opposite of government health advice, you’ll be right about 90% of the time.

Don’t get bogged down in emotional debates about things which you have not seen with your own eyes or heard with your own ears. Suspect that psyops and counterpsyops will be used. Question everything and especially those who tell you that you can’t question something.

If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Learn useful, tradeable skills, especially around building, fixing, growing and the FEW resources.

Neither corporations nor government care about you or love you. You are replaceable and expendable to them. Treat them the same way they treat you. Try to find others who don’t think you are replaceable or expendable.

Bridge gaps in differences of opinion on wedge issues. We are all in this together. None of us ever truely understands the struggles of another. Forget about the power and beauty of your youth. Leverage the open acceptance of your youth instead.

And most of all, always try to be kind. A vote for me is a vote for kindness.

I still don’t care about the sunscreen. Perhaps that’s why I don’t look as young as I used to…

Buy me a ko-fi