I fully understand where the graduates are coming from. They’ve been born into a world that has not only impoverished their present but stolen their future. We can’t even guarantee a habitable planet when they go into retirement. But I’m concerned with some of the underlying themes here. Trump’s USA is in stark contrast with the Obama era but only on the surface. Obama wasn’t progressive and Clinton is a terrible role model for young women.

We need to go back to the Nixon era to discover the roots of the current malaise. We have to understand that the Democratic party is more culpable than the GOP for the demise of democracy. Obama’s success in 2008 illustrated the hunger for change but he did nothing to bring it about. If there’s anything these graduates should know its that the cavalry isn’t coming and it seems they instinctively understand that.

The only hope for the West is that we coalesce around a movement and not a person. That movement must call out the political establishment, red and blue, for the sham it is. Washington is rotten to the core.