I’m sorry.

On behalf of my fellow baby boomers, to those of you who have just begun or are about to begin your participation in the political process, I apologize for the mess we’ve made of the country you will inherit.

I have witnessed your disillusionment, and I do not blame you. It used to be said that if you weren’t outraged, you weren’t paying attention. No one’s outraged anymore. We are inured to outrageousness. We expect it.

It wasn’t always this way.

We are the sons and daughters of “the Greatest Generation.” Our parents, hardened by hardship and war, summoned the fortitude to make this country the envy of the world. When we were at the depths of the Great Depression, we put people back to work building the dams, highways, bridges and tunnels that serve us to this day.

When we were drawn into the Second World War, our parents turned a nation unprepared for war into the mightiest military force in history. And when the war was over our fathers came home and used their educations, paid for with the GI Bill, to build the greatest economy the world had ever seen.

In the years that define the baby boomers, 1946-1964, our forebears increased our GDP 300 percent. Median income more than doubled, from about $3,000 to about $6,600 per year. Taxes were paid — the highest marginal income tax rate ranged from 92 to 77 percent. Yet people still got rich. The number of people in the top 20 percent of incomes rose at a sustainable pace, 10 percent over 18 years.

And in that time, our parents brought us closer to fulfilling the promise of a more perfect union, finally passing laws to extend the full rights of citizenship regardless of one’s ethnicity. We were the last generation to be old enough to remember the indignity of segregation and the lie of “separate but equal.”

But even after growing up at the hands of heroes and pledging our allegiance to the flag of one indivisible nation, we spent the succeeding years dissecting that more perfect union in pursuit of power and fortune.

You are inheriting a nation of “the other.” We have lived our lives in narrow bands of conformity, eschewing different ethnicities, religions, castes, sexual orientations and especially political affiliations.

We treat intellect with suspicion and celebrate “common sense” as if a lawn mower mechanic with enough of it might build a space shuttle from scratch — as if it might be enough to govern an aging superpower contending with rising superpowers.

We pay about half as much in taxes as our fathers paid, yet we complain as though no one has ever paid taxes before.

We have abdicated much of our responsibility as parents to teachers, whom we are unwilling to compensate appropriately, working in schools we don’t want to fund.

We have defined our politics by extremes, making consensus unthinkable, compromise treasonous and governing impossible. We treat each other like enemies. We have degraded our institutions, abandoned our protections and made a mockery of public service.

We squandered our advantages. We rationalized our greed, and now we’re living in the ruins of the house of cards we built. We have earned your cynicism. Unfortunately, cynicism can only hold you back from the America our fathers built, the America that should be your birthright.

I pray that you will be intellectually honest. Avoid labels and stereotypes. Never substitute another’s judgment for your own. I pray that you will be efficient. Avoid waste, but embrace thoughtful investment. It is essential to competitiveness.

May you always think beyond yourself. It is natural to want to take care of one’s own but understand, as our fathers did, that broad success is sustainable success.

Finally, if you would make a better country, begin now.

“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that is important,” Gandhi said. “You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

For as much as my generation has done to earn its humility, it is still possible to right the course. The elements of greatness are still present for all of us, but especially for you. Accept no less.

Kevin Smith lives in Aberdeen. Contact him at kevinasmith@gmx.com.