Hi, kids: On Friday, America will inaugurate its 45th president. It will also be your first inauguration as adults.

It feels like this is the point where my generation hands over the future to yours. Sorry, but it doesn’t look as good as I’d been hoping.

Barack Obama was sworn in as president eight years ago when you two were in the sixth and ninth grades. I thought we had come to a turning point in history.

The policies of the 1980s and 1990s had failed, the nation was in the middle of an economic free-fall driven by unlimited greed at the top, and American troops were bogged down in two unwinnable wars.

Obama came along and told me what I wanted to hear: That we were not as divided as our politics would suggest. That we could all move forward together if we just could get past our petty differences. That we were all part of an American story of ever-expanding freedom and justice.

I admit, I fell for it.

Eight years later, the rich are richer than ever, but the poor and middle class are no better off. Politics is even more toxic, and a living embodiment of that will be taking the presidential oath on Friday. The people’s movement I’d hoped for is being led by a billionaire who stiffs contractors and maybe is being blackmailed by Russia.

So, OK. I didn’t see that coming.

Things don’t look so good to me, which should give you some reason to hope. As you know, I’ve been wrong before.

Instead of looking forward, let me take a step back. The ceremony that takes place Friday on the Capitol steps has been decades in the making, and it has little to do with Donald Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton or any number of famous names who will be getting the credit or blame, depending on your point of view, for putting the country in the position it is in today.

I came of age in the years after Vietnam and Watergate. People didn’t challenge just the president and the military, but all of the institutions in our society.

We were taught to question everything. At various times, the courts, the colleges, the churches, labor unions, the political parties, charities, even the news media itself have all come under investigation, and not one of them came out clean.

A lot of wrongs were righted, but there were other consequences as well. Now we live in a country where nobody trusts anything.

Some people say we need to go back to America in the 1950s, where all those institutions were strong and prosperous and everyone was unified. That would be a terrible idea, and fortunately it is impossible.

Many people who actually lived in the 1950s did not find it to be the paradise you hear about. America was less than great if you were black, gay or an immigrant, or if you were interested in watching something on television on a Sunday night other than a guy who could spin plates on pool cues.

Those institutions that we remember so fondly could be oppressive. Conformity was stifling. People couldn’t wait for the 1960s to come along and shed themselves of those bonds. The decades that followed led to more individual expression and more opportunities.

And it turned out that there was good reason to stop trusting politicians. The Pentagon Papers showed that the president lied about Vietnam – not just Richard Nixon, but a whole string of presidents.

The problem of living in a society where there is so little trust, however, is that we become vulnerable to con men.

It’s too easy to discount anything you don’t agree with by screaming “Fake news!” It makes us easy to manipulate and hard to lead.

The task for your generation won’t be going back to a time when we were great, but building institutions that you can trust, ones behind which people can put aside self-interest and work together for the common good. We need new kinds of political parties, labor unions and other organizations that can give ordinary people a powerful voice, and new kinds of media outlets that allow everyone to argue with a similar set of facts.

Don’t trust leaders, but learn to trust each other. Don’t fall for every conspiracy theory that comes along – the bad guys aren’t that organized.

Don’t be afraid to stand up for what’s right, but don’t expect other people to be perfect, either.

And don’t be discouraged by what you see in Washington. This is the last gasp of something old.

It’s time for you to build what comes next.

Listen to Press Herald podcasts at www.pressherald.com/podcast.

Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at:

gkesich@pressherald.com

Twitter: @gregkesich