Ritter’s Rant 075: Millennials, We Need to Talk

Hello and welcome to this edition of Ritter's Rant. Hey, um, millennials, we need to talk. We need to have a conversation. Um, you guys aren't doing your job. You're not stepping up to the plate. I'm not talking about the various social issues that are out there that you've embraced. Uh, I applaud you. Um, but what I'm talking about is the survival, not just our country, um, your family units, but the the world, humanity. Um, news flash, my generations failed you. The boomers, we screwed it up. The baby boomers that came after us, they screwed it up even worse. Um, so it's it's up to you. The millennials, it's up to the to to the zoomers even. You've got to pass the baton. You got to work with them. the zillennials, you know, those people that occupy the space between millennials and zoomers. Um, you're the next generation. You know, we can't live live off the laurels of the greatest generation forever. Yes, there was a generation of Americans who answered the call, who saved America, saved democracy from the scourge of, you know, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We had a lot of help doing it. Just ask the the Russians. Um, ask the British who stood who stood tall while we dithered. Uh, ask the French who sacrificed everything. Um, but we we did answer the call. 16 million Americans answered the call and um they did their job. And then, you know, next thing you know, we're in a cold war. It's as if we uh we didn't want to end wars. And then the the greatest generation and the boomers um we created this this network of perpetual war and we brought into reality we gave birth to the nuclear era to nuclear weapons. Now you millennials have no clue what nuclear weapons are. I know you've seen movies. Openheimer was pretty cool and a little scary when the big bomb went off, but come on. You guys, you've grown up with uh computerenerated uh graphics. Uh special effects is what it's all about. that there's nothing a nuclear bomb is going to do to scare you. Hell, you've seen death stars destroy entire planets. You're not scared of it, except one thing. That's all fake. You live in a fake world, an artificial world. Let me bring you to reality. And the reality is that nuclear weapons will destroy this planet. The reality is that the boomers, my generation, we recognize that. And so we instituted something called arms control disarmament and starting in 1972 even before that in the ' 68 with the nuclear non-prololiferation treaty se 72 with the anti-bballistic missile treaty then we moved on to salt one salt 2 hey millennials read about it read up on it because it matters and let me tell you why it matters because then we get into the intermediate nuclear forces treaty that's where this boomer cut his teeth and then the strategic arms reduction treaty and you see we're headed in the right action reducing weapons. But then the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union went away and we got intellectually lazy. We stopped being afraid of the bomb. And when the boomers passed the baton off to the baby boomers, the baby boomers were just cocky, cocky, cocky. America was the sole remaining superpower. We were the global hedgeimon. And we didn't fear anything and we respected nobody. And we certainly didn't respect the institution of nuclear weapons because it is an institution. It has its own legacy. It has its own philosophy that's born of you know conflict simulation game theory. Um let me introduce you to one such game theory. Um mutually assured destruction mad. You may have heard about it. um that that came about after the first arms race in the 1960s when both the Soviet Union and United States realized that we're spinning ourselves into death building more missiles and trying to build missiles to shoot down those missiles. So we put more warheads on the missiles that we built and it was a vicious cycle. So we broke it by saying no to ballistic missile defense. We recognized that nuclear wars cannot be won. Therefore they should never be fought. Therefore, we should not try to defend ourselves that if a nuclear war was going to be fought, everybody would die. And that's the greatest deterrence to not fighting a nuclear war. That theory lasted for a while. Then, of course, the baby boomers came in and they screwed it all up. They uh they decided and the boomers, I mean, again, we we take responsibility. We decided we wanted missile defense because after the end of the Cold War, we decided the Russians just weren't worth our time. We didn't respect them anymore. And we wanted missile defense ostensively to protect ourselves from um you know rogue nations like North Korea and Iran. But what we really wanted it for was to position ourselves to be the dominant nuclear power on the planet. See ballistic missile defense as you start to reduce the number of warheads and you create ballistic missile defense suddenly you create the possibility that you can actually defend yourself against a limited ballistic missile attack. that if you launch a preemptive strike, counterveiling, look it up, guys. You're gonna have to learn a whole new lexicon here. Counterveiling strike, you strike the offensive capability of your enemy preemptively, decapitating the majority. What's left, if it's fired against us, our ballistic missile defense system should be able to protect us and then we can annihilate them and we survive. We win a nuclear war. Remember, we used to believe that you couldn't win a nuclear war. But starting in 2002 under George W. Bush, we began to believe we can win a nuclear war. And see, that philosophy ran counter to the philosophy of disarmament. We no longer believed in, you know, limiting nuclear weapons. We started looking around saying, how can we be dominant? How can we be the the the the nuclear hegeimon? Um, and this has led to the absolute decay and termination of nuclear arms control. Last Friday, February 4th, I think Thursday perhaps, um, the last remaining arms control treaty, New Start, died. Not a damn one of you was in the street. Don't expect anything from the boomers. Hell, you know, we we marched we marched in 1982. We put a million people in the Central Park. We sent a message to Ronald Reagan that we would not accept a proliferation of nuclear war that we wanted it to end and Ronald Reagan was compelled to listen to us and that's how we got to the reduction that we had. I called for a million person march back in 2022. I could get 35 people. Nobody gave a damn. You didn't give a damn. The millennials, the zoomers, the zelennials. You have become so addicted to creature comforts. You have wrapped yourselves in a cocoon of comfort. And so long as the system keeps you satisfied, feeds you with the addiction of the internet, social media, uh whatever it is you guys do for fun, you're not you don't want to rock the boat. You're afraid to rock the boat. So, you don't march. You don't engage. You know nothing about nuclear weapons. You know nothing about disarmament. You know nothing about arms control. And so it's over. Now, why is this important? Because as you sit there in your cocoon of comfort, the boomers that are still in power, imagine that. You guys let the boomers stay on forever. And then you're so weak politically that the baby boomers are going to dominate the political spectrum for another 30, 40 years. You're never going to be in power because you gave up, because you quit, because you don't engage. So, while you sit back in your cocoon of comfort, the last remaining boomers are rearming as we speak. Weapons that have been taken out and should have been destroyed or being brought back in. We went from 1550 deployed nuclear weapons. We're probably going to end up doubling that or tripling that within a year. And that's irreversible. We're never going to get it back unless you come to the street. you know, one of the uh one of the baby boomers out there, uh, Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, you might want to look up his name. He gave an interesting talk in November of 2024 to a think tank in Washington DC where he talked about the willingness of the United States government that time. Joe Biden boomers, we own everything, baby. Um, Joe Biden said, "We're ready to have a nuclear war with Russia." The CIA briefed a 51% chance of having a nuclear war. Now, you guys aren't afraid of nuclear war, but trust me, if it happens, you'll all be dead or wish you were dead. That's how bad it will be. You need to figure out how to stop it. But in addition to saying that we could fight a war and win a war, Buchanan said something very interesting. He said, "Maybe we need to be honest with the American people about what winning a nuclear war would actually look like." One would think that every millennial who heard that, but you don't hear because you're in your cocoon of comfort. But break out of it and start reading, start listening. If you heard that, you'd say, "Well, wait a minute. We have questions. What do you mean? What would winning a nuclear war look like? We know what victory is. You know, we have victory parades. We we shout USA, USA, USA. That's what winning is, right?" No. Winning a nuclear war is the death of American democracy. the constitutional republic will cease to exist because we will live forever under martial law because society as we know it will cease to exist. Maybe you want to start asking questions of your leadership as to why would we engage in a nuclear war to save the constitutional republic that's known as the United States of America when the process of winning the war destroys that which we say we want to save. Is it really then worthwhile fighting this war? And the answer of course is no. But what are you going to do about it? Where are you? We need to have this conversation, guys. We need to have a long talk. You need to take the baton and start running this race. I'm 64 years old. I've been running it a long time. My knees hurt. My body's wearing down. I'll keep going. I'll help you. I'll be there for you. But you got to take charge. You got to step up. You got to shout once more into the breach. And you've got to be willing to put it all on the line because if you don't, it's all over. As we speak, mechanisms are in play that you know nothing about and you have no ability to stop because you're not engaged. These mechanisms are in play to rearm America, which will trigger a global rearmment. We're going in the wrong direction on nuclear weapons. And this is being done by people who believe that we can fight and win a nuclear war. So therefore, one day they will be tempted to fight and try to win a nuclear war and then it's too late. We need to have a conversation. That's my rant. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know.

The Boomers and Baby Boomers have failed society when it comes to arms control. It is time for the Millennials to step up and take over.