By Julian McCall, Features Editor
Artwork by Shonali Palacios, Design Lead 
Every 17 years, Brood X cicadas crawl out from the ground to fill the air with a million-chirp symphony. These cicadas serve as a helpful, if annoying, record of time. Their reemergence is an opportunity to think back on the last 17 years and think ahead to the next.
Last time they were here in 2004, the oldest members of Gen Z were in elementary school. George W. Bush was at the head of a Republican White House and Congress, and the embers of 9/11 still glowed as the War on Terror was in full swing.
In the time since, this country inaugurated its first biracial president. Before our generation could drive, the world hit atmospheric carbon levels unseen in millions of years. Many of us cast our first presidential ballots last year, only to see a violent insurrection attempt to overturn the results of that election. We’re slowly overcoming a global pandemic.
This summer, Brood X returned to provide the summer soundtrack for America’s cautious emergence from a year of COVID-19 lockdowns. Joe Biden is our president, and Democrats control Congress by a razor-thin margin. His administration takes power as environmental disasters this summer have forced us to look the climate crisis in the eyes.
Soon, these loud insects will complete their life cycle. As the cicadas disappear to their underground homes, our disillusioned generation emerges into the world. During their 2021 visit, Gen Z stands mostly on the sidelines watching the world chart an unsustainable course to the future. By the cicada’s return in 2038, our generation will be of age to affect change in this world.
“Disillusion”
To cause to lose naive faith and trust
Our disillusion stems from our struggle to reconcile the story we were taught about America with the America that we see. We grew up in the same post-WWII American mythology that generations before us believed. America, according to this story, is the greatest country in the world. A shining city on the hill, this nation is a beacon of freedom and democracy and Good to the rest of the world, a country with a special place in history due to the values America was founded upon.
As we grew older, this image began to crumble. Venerating the founding fathers becomes difficult once we recognize them as hypocrites preaching equality while owning humans. Believing we live in the greatest country requires more and more fanciful faith when we realize America is the only developed country without universal healthcare; when we see rampant poverty and homelessness exists in one of the richest empires to ever exist; when we watch police murder with impunity; when 25% of the world’s prisoners sit behind bars in the “land of the free.”
The sins of our forefathers are not the only culprit for our disenchantment. In our short lifetimes, Gen Z experienced a global recession, a president openly hostile to the principles of democracy, and a pandemic that was allowed to kill hundreds of thousands too many. Today, the night sky is streaked with billionaires racing to space while billions struggle for food and shelter on this planet. A planet that’s evidently disdained, given how long warnings about carbon civilizations’ impact on the atmosphere were ignored, and how ecological chaos and environmental destruction became costs of doing business.
We know painfully well that our political and business leaders do not operate with our interests in mind. Instead of aggressively jumping on a generational opportunity to address critical infrastructure problems and begin shifting to a zero-carbon economy, key leaders are chasing bipartisanship with a party that just recently admitted that climate change might be real. Not only are they dragging their feet in transitioning their own country, but they are also shirking their global responsibility to help those already feeling drastic effects from global warming-most of whom contributed comparatively tiny amounts of carbon to the atmosphere-adapt to their evolving climate reality which America helped cause.
Our housing prospects are slightly rosier, but not by much. Politicians’ reluctance to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour is laughable, given that a renter needs to earn at least $20.40 per hour to reasonably afford a one-bedroom rental home in this country. A millennial caricature is the proverbial 20-something futilely grasping at homeownership while drowning in student debt and sky-high rent, a situation that doesn’t show signs of changing anytime soon.
Within this disillusion, however, lies the potential to reimagine this country. The story we’ve been taught about America fails to ring true, giving us the opportunity to rebuild liberty’s bell with harder irons and carbon fibers that never fail. Not only do we have the possibility to create a new vision of America-we have no choice. Our current path is leading to an unsustainable future. There is hope though, for the future isn’t something that we stumble into. It’s a reality that we create with our everyday actions.
