This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽 My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us! I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!! Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ?? Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity." Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress. Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."

In 1956, Harvey Keitel joined the United States Marine Corps at the age of 17. He completed boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, an experience he later described as both grueling and transformative. During training at night combat school, Keitel once shared that he was afraid of the dark. An instructor told him: “Everyone is afraid of the dark. It is the fear of the unknown.” Keitel never forgot this lesson. “What is the darkness? How do I learn to live with it?” he later reflected. “I heard that when I was 17 years old and I never forgot that he said it.” As a Marine, Keitel served as a fire team leader and was deployed to Lebanon during the 1958 Lebanon Crisis as part of Operation Blue Bat, a peacekeeping mission. Keitel has often spoken about the deeper impact of his time in the military. “For me, the Marine Corps was a spiritual journey,” he once said. “It’s not about war. It was a personal transformation.” After three years of service, he was honorably discharged in 1959, returning home with a sense of discipline, resilience and quiet confidence that would guide his life and career.