If you think the hope for tomorrow lies solely in the young — as did I — be advised the poison has seeped down through the veins of society to them as well. If you keep reassuring yourself that as soon as the present generation of bigots, morons, haters and blue star mothers (who take open pride in having sent their sons off to die) kick off things will be better...start worrying again. Because they've already gotten to the mass of kids, out there in the Great American Heartland. Even as they've been planted, those good mommies and daddies have reached skeletal hands out of the graves to clutch their children and intone, "If you want to honor my memory, if you don't want me to have died in vain, remember: niggers are evil, they all want to rape your women; Jews secretly run the world and they'll steal everything you have; Communists roam everywhere; sex is dirty; don't let them Ivory Tower liberals corrupt you; trust in hate!" And then the dirt is shoveled in on them and they go to that big Klavern in the sky, leaving behind them the butchered minds and closed-off potentialities of the next generation.

Harlan Ellison, The Glass Teat
Originally published in the Los Angeles Free Press, 9 January 1970
© 1970, 1975 by Harlan Ellison; © 1983 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.

Posted 1 May 1996

| No Comment menu | E-mail to Chaz