Mike DomitrzPresident, Author, and Speaker on Respect, The Center for Respect, Inc. · Author & Speaker on Respect for Schools, Corporations, & the Military since 1990 (has reached

Together we are growing a culture of respect!

11 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, long‑time speaker (Speaker A) reflects on three decades of speaking out about social issues, noting how perceptions of his credibility shift with age—young voices are dismissed, then later valued, only to be dismissed again as he ages. He points out that each decade repeats the same pattern: society gives intense, short‑lived attention to problems like the MeToo movement, then treats them as resolved once the news cycle fades. The speaker argues that this cycle persists because underlying, systemic issues are never truly addressed; instead, only temporary, superficial "Band‑Aids" are applied when crises surface.

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That's 33 years ago when I started speaking out. And yes, did it look different than it does today? Yeah. But here's the wild part, Josh. People would say to me, well, students will listen to you now because you look like that, but nobody's going to listen to you when you're 30. And then when I got to 30, they'd say, well, they're still listening to you because you're not too old. But when you get to 40, no one's going to be listening to you. Now, the wild part of the— about that, Josh, is along this journey is exactly what you just said. Wow. Now more than ever. is what people have been telling me every decade. So it's fascinating that this topic keeps rearing itself, showing itself. And the reason why is because nobody's actually addressing the foundational issues. They're just putting Band-Aids on it when it pops up. Yeah. MeToo is a great example of this. The whole country paid attention for 2 years at most, at most, and then acted like that wasn't a real history that had occurred once it got out of the news.