Not another war story. I have heard it before. I know, I know. Dad, Reagan isn’t President anymore and I don’t know who he is anyway except some cowboy on TV.
Everything is moving so fast today. We have AI. We have instant everything. And somewhere in that acceleration we forgot that Dad — and Mom, I’m just shortening the typing process — are the ones who actually built the infrastructure we are all living inside.
Our children forget that Dads started Intel. Built Tektronix. Worked at Texas Instruments. That the company that became Texas Instruments was created by GSI — Geophysical Services Incorporated — because analog computing wasn’t getting the job done. That Dads spent years in Southern California discovering the oil that Standard Oil and Chevron pumped out of the LA Basin and the Santa Barbara Channel. That these things did not build themselves.
The grandchildren watch Saving Private Ryan. But they forget that Great Grandpa was the one bleeding in Europe and the Philippines. They just see old people without opinions worth hearing.
Maybe we rant because nobody will listen.
But here is what I think the real problem is. They can’t see what politics is anymore. All they see is TikTok. All they see is YouTube. All they see is one outlet calling another outlet fake news while being called fake news in return. And then they watch it all falling down and they can’t even find the question to ask, let alone the answer.
Maybe if Grandpa and Dad had stopped ranting and started explaining. And maybe if Johnny and Jane had stopped scrolling and started listening. Maybe some of this could have been avoided.
Maybe. Just maybe.
I don’t have all the answers. I want to be clear about that. This entire series has been questions more than answers and that is entirely intentional. But there is one truth I know from experience — and I have the scars on my shoulder and chest to prove it is experience and not theory.
When you pull a boiling coffee pot off the stove and it comes down on you, you get burned. You don’t do it a second time. You learned something real in a way that no amount of telling could have taught you.
So yes. You have to make mistakes to learn. You have to touch something hot to understand burns. You have to get things wrong before you understand what right costs.
But the secret — the thing the scars actually teach you if you pay attention — is to get a small burn and learn your lesson. Not go down in the flames.
And right now it looks very much like we are headed for the flames.
