Trafford Publishing: Youth Quake: A Manifesto

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Youth Quake: A Manifesto

by Cousin Sam

247 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0026; ISBN 1-55369-213-6; US$22.50, C$25.95, EUR18.50, £13.00

Youth Quake is the battle cry of America's youth. First in a series of 21st century youth-power novels by the enigmatic young author, Cousin Sam, it offers a fictional glimpse at the impending youth revolution on America's horizon.

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About the Book

A struggling young rock musician and his motley crew of friends start up their own grassroots political party to make a bold run for congress. Although initially designed as a clever CD marketing gimmick, their fiery theatrics and catchy "kill the baby boomers" songs inadvertently ignite a national youth revolution that sets the country ablaze, culminating in a Million Youth March to Washington DC that has frightening results.
Intriguing, provacative and downright scary, this prophetic tale about America's future youth revolution will exhilirate younger readers and terrify older ones. Definitely not a book for the faint or old at heart.
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About the Author

Cousin Sam is America's long lost prodigal son.
Some claim he is the illegitimate love-child of a geriatric Uncle Sam and underage White House intern, discreetly delivered in an Oval Office broom closet and dumped along the presidential campaign trail somewhere. Raised by wolves in the wilderness and winos in the back alleys, he has recently emerged from exile to reclaim his noble birthright.
However, other less devout believers argue that this so-called "Cousin Sam" fellow is simply some homeless idiot savant who stumbled across a tattered old Uncle Sam Halloween costume out in a dumpster somewhere, and now walks the streets (and cyberspace) as a self-proclaimed prophet and patron saint for America's huddled young masses.
Well, whoever he is prodigal or not his purpose is clear: to rally his fellow abandoned young Americans under his star-spangled banner and together, reclaim their birthright.
So America, meet your long lost little Cousin Sam, all grown up and back for good. Unfortunately, he's yours to keep, whether you like it or not. Unlike your friends, you can't choose your family. And this guy is definitely family. Distant, disowned and disturbed perhaps... but still family.
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Excerpt (from Chapter One)

"It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won." (John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States)
"The most heroic word in all languages is revolution." (Eugene Debs, early twentieth century American political activist )

FACT: Today's teen generation approximately thirty-five million strong is the largest in American history. By comparison, the teen population of the baby boom which peaked in 1976 reached only twenty-nine million. (U.S. Census Bureau)
    Seeds of a revolution are sown in the most unlikely places. Just when you least expect it, a vision for social and political upheaval sneaks up and bites you right smack on the ass.
    Or so it all began for Joe Buehler on that cold, wet Seattle morning. It happened so fast that the poor young guy hardly knew what hit him. The day started like any other, but by its end, the wheels were in motion and he was hell-bent on a mission, gathering speed at a frightening pace, sucking people right and left into the vortex of his angst like some great Hoover vacuum. Like a disoriented Dorothy, suddenly dropped on her butt in a distant, Oz-like place, he found himself hopelessly stranded in a surreal new land completely devoid of color. The once-technicolor world of his carefree slacker youth was lost forever. In its place was a stark new landscape where the sun no longer shone, the birds no longer sang and patience was no longer a virtue. There were no more fences to sit on and no longer a middle ground. Everything was either right or wrong, left or right, good or evil, rich or poor... young or old.
    Yes, life as a newborn revolutionary was definitely not all sunshine and roses. It was a hard old grind. He would awaken every morning to the same painfully stark, black-and-white reality with the same gnawing awareness of work to be done, wrongs to be righted and injustices to be avenged. Life would become one restless crusade after another.
    In retrospect, perhaps this is how it all started for the other great twentieth century revolutionaries like Lenin, Gandhi and Mao. Perhaps they too, were just pleasantly lounging around their local cafes sipping a vodka cocktail or herbal tea and pondering the weather, when a bolt from the blue suddenly jolted them out of their pastel daily lives rudely awakening some great slumbering radioactive beast within and launched them on horrible rampages through the countryside, wreaking havoc and kicking ass.
    If so, it was this same bolt of destiny this same epic chomp on the ass that unexpectedly jolted Joe out of his window seat at the Java Hut and sent his tiny cup of espresso splashing across the table in the process. It was truly an epic moment, although the blonde, shaggy-haired fellow was too dense even to recognize it at first. Muttering to himself, he irritably dabbed the muddy puddle with a used portion of his newspaper and shook his head, wondering what the hell was happening to him lately. This was the third time this week he had spilled his coffee. What was wrong with him? Was he turning into some kind of temper-tantrum epileptic, or one of those Ritalin psycho kids? Why did he have such a short fuse lately? He had never considered himself an angry person. He rather took pride in his cool aloofness and happy-go-fuck-you nature.
    But lately, there were just so many goddamn triggers out there that jarred his senses on a daily basis: from the bleating sheep in the street, to the cars belching exhaust, to the mind-numbing pap on the tube. He just didn't know how much more he could take. He was finding it increasingly difficult to remain sane in this insane world.
    But out of all the triggers that bombarded his senses lately, it was the newspaper headlines that rattled him the most. He usually enjoyed his morning ritual of reading the daily paper alongside his trusty cup of espresso. The steam from the cup kept his fingers moist for easy grip of the pages and the bitter taste of the freshly ground beans helped mask the sour bile in the back of his throat. But today was different, much worse than usual.The unexplained tremors upon reading the headlines were getting stronger than ever. His blood boiled and his ears steamed. Even his hair seemed angrier than usual. Glancing sideways at his pale reflection in the rainy cafe window, he could see the familiar jackhammer vein in his temple, pulsating to a spastic, throbbing beat. He knew the beat well: it was the rhythm of rage.
    The editorial headline scrawled across the top of his coffee-soaked newspaper read:
    "OLD GETTING RICHER, YOUNG GETTING POORER. WAR BETWEEN THE GENERATIONS ON THE HORIZON?"
    The rest of the article read:
    "The looming crisis in the U.S. social security system will result in nothing less than a war between the generations.As America's baby boomer generation reaches retirement age over the coming decade, no one quite knows where the money will come from to pay for this tidal wave of new retirees. However, in anticipation of this future surge, the federal government aware of their powerful vote is pumping billions of dollars into social security to create a massive surplus to cope with these aging boomers.
    "This alarming trend is happening at a time when the National Center for Children in Poverty warns that the U.S. has more kids living in poverty than at any other time in our nation's history. Fifteen million young Americans under the age of eighteen 20% of the entire American youth population live below the poverty level, more than any other industrialized nation in the world. Poverty is rising twice as fast among white children as among African-American or Hispanic children.
    "Obviously, it is not difficult to see which generation is the main priority for government. Not only are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, but more accurately, the old are getting richer and the young are getting poorer. And as history has shown us, when the gap between the haves and have-nots grows too wide, only conflict will correct it. But are today's young Americans too apathetic and disenfranchised to do anything about it? Will they fight back or simply continue take it like they always have? If so, 'Generation Y' will soon become 'Generation X-tinct'. Heaven help us."
    Another jolt suddenly shot through Joe's body, upsetting his cup of espresso again. Angrily, he threw the coffee-splashed newspaper across the table and glared down at his overturned cup. Maybe it's the damn coffee, he fumed, dump the java and things will be rosy again. Or maybe a daily Prozac baked into my morning blueberry bagel will candy-coat things to a tolerable level. But the headlines won't have changed, the situation won't have changed... and I won't have changed. I'll still be this pathetic whiner. Joe despised whiners, and self-pitying victims even more. That's why he couldn't understand why he was feeling and acting like one. Why couldn't he just chill out and let things ebb and flow around him like he always had?
    Up until then, Joe had devoutly followed a simple philosophy of life: "The reasonable man adapts himself to his environment, while the unreasonable man adapts the environment to himself." In layman's terms, it meant, don't rock the boat. Of course, this was simply his slacker excuse for justifying inaction at any cost. He had picked the quote up in one of his useless college philosophy classes a couple of years back, and had clung to it ever since like a life preserver. Although he couldn't quite remember who originally said it, he thought it was probably Descartes, the same guy who thought monkeys could actually speak but deliberately chose not to so they could avoid forced labor under humans.Actually, Joe felt exactly the same way. That's why he abided so faithfully by this reasonable philosophy. It made the sloth in him seem a noble beast. But there was a new beast slowly awakening within Joe: an illtempered varmint that was getting sick and tired of sitting around, twiddling his opposable thumbs. Unbeknownst to Joe, his inner sloth was slowly turning rabid.
    At age twenty-four, Joe really didn't have reason to complain. He had recently graduated from university with a four-year toilet paper arts degree, a history major and draft beer minor, and worked as a part-time Java Hut "barista" (fancy Italian name for coffee grunt). Life was good. He had a regular paying job and a cozy little hole-in-the-wall basement apartment on the east side of town. Seattle was a cool city; perhaps too much rain in the winter, but the summers were nice.The music scene was funky and he had a few close friends. Although struggling on the romance front lately, he wasn't suffering that badly. He was no Brad Pitt, but he wasn't exactly horrible to look at, either. With a slim, five-foot-ten physique, shaggy, dirty-blonde hair that curled down just over the tips of his ears, and pale blue eyes that could be interpreted as intelligent when the sunlight hit them just right, he knew he had the potential to score if he chose to pursue the matter, but as with most everything in his life, he just wasn't particularly serious about pursuing anything at all.
    So if Joe was so satisfied with his jolly state of affairs, why was he so goddamn angry lately? Where were the unexplained tremors coming from? Joe had tossed the matter over and over in his head over the past few weeks and now suspected he finally knew the reason. The last line of the front page arti-cle on his coffee-drenched paper had at last reached out and smacked him across the face with the answer: "Heaven help us." These three simple words perfectly captured how Joe was feeling lately. Things were good now, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his gut that they were going to be getting much worse very soon. The tremors couldn't be ignored. They were signs of something ugly on the horizon.
    Perhaps Joe's nervous condition was simply the instinct of an animal that sensed its life was in danger. If he were a dog, all the hairs on his body would probably be standing on end right about now. Actually, when he caught sight of his reflection every now and then in the cafe window, or the mirrored walls at the local shopping mall, he was shocked at how frazzled he appeared. Like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, he had those same big, helpless eyes. He appeared frozen in place, obediently accepting the inevitable, just a big dumb animal about to be splattered like road kill on the highway of life by a force it simply didn't have the capacity to comprehend.
    Yes, that's exactly how he felt lately: like a big, dumb, helpless animal. Modern life was humming along around him, and he was a big, dumb sloth, oblivious to it all. But he only had himself to blame. Up to that point, his reasonable life philosophy had dictated that he just stay off the roads and try not to get hit by one of those quick-moving machines of progress. As long as he hid in the bushes and kept absolutely quiet, no one would notice him at all. But even though he had been laying low over these past few years, blending into his surroundings like a reasonable soul, he sensed danger. Like a nervous forest critter catching a whiff of a hunter in the breeze, he had an instinctive feeling that his survival was in grave jeopardy.
    There is perhaps no stronger force than a living organism's instinct to survive. You can take the most docile creature even a reasonably minded sloth throw it in a corner against its will and watch it transform into a snarling, rabid beast. This is the power of life... and this was the only thing that would save Joe Buehler and his generation.
    Joe think that his recent gut aches and unexplained tremors were related to his fear of death? His fears both conscious and subconscious were not triggered by a vision of laying in an empty gutter somewhere on the bad side of town, starving to death. He doubted he would ever go hungry. He knew he would get by somehow. So, if it wasn't the fear of a grisly death in some foul-smelling gutter that was triggering his survival instincts, what was it?
    Well, perhaps the definition of "survival" had to be looked at a little more closely. A goat herder in remote Kurdistan would probably feel he could survive quite comfortably with just a few goats, good pastures, fresh water and a warm straw bed at night. However, a middle-aged housewife in suburban Seattle would feel she needed a little more than just goats and good pastures to get by. Anything less than the standard dream house with white picket fence and two SUVs parked in the driveway would give her the feeling that she was just not living to her full potential. Obviously, what you need to survive depended on your level of affluence.
    Perhaps that's what was bothering Joe: he would never enjoy the same level of affluence and lifestyle that his family enjoyed. He would never attain the standard of living he grew up with. But when he weighed this idea deep in his gut, he realized that the materialistic concept of survival wasn't what was ailing him either. There was more to it than that.
    When an animal is cornered, its basic instinct is to protect itself from physical harm. Instinct is primarily a natural response mechanism to a physical threat. Perhaps Joe's recent jittery state was simply a natural response to something or someone out there determined to harm him. But who or what was it? What was his troubled subconscious trying to tell him?
    With all these unanswered questions grinding the gears inside his feverish head, Joe continued to rabidly steam and drool into his empty espresso cup as he glared out the cafe window at the herds of sheep dutifully trudging along to work in the cold February rain. At seven o'clock sharp, the first customer of the day walked in and Joe reluctantly sauntered over to his designated position behind the cashier counter. But when he looked up at the customer's face, it was the last person he wanted to see at that moment.

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