I’m tired of hearing the word “polarization.” It’s being used so much by older people that it’s starting to feel like an excuse.

An excuse for retaliation. An excuse for doing nothing. An excuse for why we should expect less from the people who ask for our votes.

Recently, while talking with someone about getting involved with my podcast, With All Due Respect, I encountered exactly that attitude. He told me he disagreed with what I was doing but would participate for a paycheck. When I pressed him about bringing people from different sides together to discuss solutions, he said the country was too polarized for it to matter.

I want this administration judged by that standard: Can people earn enough to live, and do workers have a meaningful say in the conditions of their employment?

I told him he could perhaps come back another time. That day, the disagreement wasn’t the problem. Declaring the effort pointless before we had even begun was.

Polarization may explain why a meeting is stalling. It should never explain why the conversation is over.

When people’s livelihoods, healthcare, and futures are involved, walking away has consequences. Someone still has to live with the problem after you’ve decided discussing it is a waste of time.

I’m a member of Gen Z and an Army veteran. My breaking point came when I could not afford to keep going to school while using the GI Bill.

The jobs I could reliably land were full-time. Meanwhile, taking at least one class in person could qualify me for a higher housing allowance than an online-only schedule. But those classroom hours competed with the hours I needed to work.

If I built my schedule around school, I lost work time. If I built it around work, I lost part of the housing allowance. My housing costs in Phoenix did not shrink to match. Credit cards filled the gap; interest made it deeper.

If a veteran cannot afford to use his benefit effectively, what good is the benefit to him?

The fight wasn’t with my neighbor. It was with a system whose promises did not add up to a life I could afford.

I hear older Americans talk about responsibility. I want that conversation. I want it to include responsibility for the decisions that shaped the country my generation inherited.

If your measure of success is how much your house has appreciated, what happens when the next generation cannot afford to buy it? If you tell young people to work hard, what are you prepared to change when their work still leaves them struggling?

Those questions deserve answers. Instead, I hear commentators, including on Fox News, mock my generation’s efforts at inclusion. I see those efforts as attempts to build a more perfect union. Disagree with our language or proposals, but engage with what we are trying to achieve.

Age and experience do not exempt anyone from explaining the results of their leadership.

This is why I keep thinking about Theodore Roosevelt.

Republican bosses in New York wanted Roosevelt out of the governor’s office. They helped move him into the vice presidency, where they hoped his capacity to disrupt their interests would be contained. Instead, after President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Roosevelt became president. He subsequently won election in 1904.

I cannot prove he would never have reached the presidency another........

© Common Dreams