It was fun seeing the college protesters demanding electricity, wifi, cafeteria meals and door dash be delivered to the kids who were occupying school buildings, like they were being denied their basic human rights. They think they're going to be the vanguard leading the working class to glorious revolution against mom and dad and they can't last 24 hours without being able to charge their iphones.
I’m sorry, but these fucking kids. There has never been so much content available to them to be “excited” about. They had basically every song in history in their pockets at all times, generally for free on YouTube. There’s more TV shows and films than there was in any prior generation. Their ability to connect with people across the world is that which the wealthiest and most powerful rule didn’t have access to seven decades ago. And yet… they apparently need it from politics too. Nothing can be “boring”. Nothing takes time and hard dull work.
This is not the same as prior generations. It isn’t. The baby boomers, for all of their faults, were willing to get beaten by cops to fight for civil rights and go to prison for openly demonstrating their opposition to a war they felt was wrong. Gen X didn’t do much, but you guys never pretended to. You weren’t sanctimonious self-appointed arbiters of universal morality; you basically just wanted the world to understand that YOU DONT UNDERSTAND ME DAD!
Us Millennials can be annoying, and we didn’t start great, but have come to appreciate nuance and patience despite coming of age in an economic crater and the fall out from a war we never wanted. We fought for what we thought was right, but understood the limits of protest. We understood that Barack Obama was not a perfect president, and that much of his term was fruitless, but we also understood much of that wasn’t his fault and that the ACA is a transformative piece of legislation that has saved tens of millions of lives and improved health of people (including those of Gen Z).
Thee kids have demanded everything must be contextualized in the scope of all human history…except when it isn’t convenient (Jewish history only started in 1948 and gay history only started nine years ago so both groups are privileged oppressors… and Trump)
Many of these kids, especially the ones most “disappointed” in Biden live in major cities where they have the easiest access to entertainment, communal spaces, and sex than ever before.
But politics isn’t as exciting as Game of Thrones so… Make America Great Again…?
This post I’m sure has tons of typos (sorry about that) and sounds like Abe Simpson howling at the moon, but Gen Z can eat shit.
Well put. I can relate to your viewpoint. It's so damn frustrating. But they are indeed young and stupid, and if they don't learn by being told, they'll learn what really sucks through experience. We've all lived through Bush v Gore and remember the day after Trump won vividly. They don't. They think it's a forgone conclusion Trump won't get reelected bc of how stupid he is. A reckoning may be coming for them, and us.
I totally get your point, but I would respectfully push back a little bit. In 2000 we watched the first electoral college/popular vote split in about 125 years. In 2016 we saw that 2000 wasn’t another EC/PV fluke of history but the openly celebrated path for the GOP going forward. We saw what complacency could do, and I’d argue we saw it again in 2020, where Trump’s vote was likely suppressed due to both his lack of self control and stupidity as well as MAGA World’s confidence they had it in the bag and yet he STILL managed to find 11,000,000 more voters! If these kids can’t go back and look at one election that happened this century and two more that happened in their lifetimes when more of them were in school learning to read… I can’t chalk that up to just kids being dumb like all kids are.
Learn the easy way or learn the hard way. Either way, it WILL happen. I just wish there weren't such awful consequences for the rest of us due to their ignorance.
Yeah I get it. But buck up fellow Gen Xer, if there's one thing our generation excels at, it's indifference to the crappy hand we've been dealt in life. Enjoy Pretty in Pink.
Also, I now understand the "current events" exercises that all my grade school teachers *tried* to inculcate us with (didn't work, but perhaps that was the leftist conditioning that the MAGA cohort goes on and on about.)
Learned more from that class than most others. Had a really great teacher (Mr. Ed Holladay) who broke issues down and approached it from multiple angles. I'm forever in his debt for that.
My first time vote was when I turned 21 for the 1968 election. Couldn’t vote at 18 then. We had skin in the game. Because ‘Nam. But without that, I don’t think politics would have penetrated all the drug, sex and rock and roll. Bring back the draft?
I am going to say that many GenXers that i grew up with were very focused on getting the heck out of our dysfunctional homes (meals included). We were dealing with the possibility of nuclear war in the 80s. We tried to live our young lives to the fullest because who knew if we were going to make it to the next day. We relied on Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw to give us the truth, and we trusted them for the most part. Now, I don’t trust too many in broadcast news and rely on many sources to get something true. Voting was not the zero sum game that it’s become. Many Millennials and GenZers have had a very privileged upbringing. I see my students with expensive shoes , clothes, cell phones, and school issued laptops, even though most come from low income homes. The ubiquity of technology and the parenting styles that are a result of it, have had a huge role in where we are today. When I was a teenager in the 80s, we had dinner together. We TALKED during our meals. Now, that technology has resulted in families eating while they are all on their phones NOT TALKING! it also serves as a babysitter! Our generation had TV, but we couldn’t take it with us everywhere. I’m not excusing privileged behavior, but I would like to point out how technology becoming extremely accessible has changed our society. Google has taken over the parenting role, which is unfortunate. Instant gratification is expected by all generations, and solving the worlds problems needs to be taken care of immediately. Time is not a luxury anymore. This is obviously a rant, but I hope that you get the gist!
It was fun seeing the college protesters demanding electricity, wifi, cafeteria meals and door dash be delivered to the kids who were occupying school buildings, like they were being denied their basic human rights. They think they're going to be the vanguard leading the working class to glorious revolution against mom and dad and they can't last 24 hours without being able to charge their iphones.
I’m sorry, but these fucking kids. There has never been so much content available to them to be “excited” about. They had basically every song in history in their pockets at all times, generally for free on YouTube. There’s more TV shows and films than there was in any prior generation. Their ability to connect with people across the world is that which the wealthiest and most powerful rule didn’t have access to seven decades ago. And yet… they apparently need it from politics too. Nothing can be “boring”. Nothing takes time and hard dull work.
This is not the same as prior generations. It isn’t. The baby boomers, for all of their faults, were willing to get beaten by cops to fight for civil rights and go to prison for openly demonstrating their opposition to a war they felt was wrong. Gen X didn’t do much, but you guys never pretended to. You weren’t sanctimonious self-appointed arbiters of universal morality; you basically just wanted the world to understand that YOU DONT UNDERSTAND ME DAD!
Us Millennials can be annoying, and we didn’t start great, but have come to appreciate nuance and patience despite coming of age in an economic crater and the fall out from a war we never wanted. We fought for what we thought was right, but understood the limits of protest. We understood that Barack Obama was not a perfect president, and that much of his term was fruitless, but we also understood much of that wasn’t his fault and that the ACA is a transformative piece of legislation that has saved tens of millions of lives and improved health of people (including those of Gen Z).
Thee kids have demanded everything must be contextualized in the scope of all human history…except when it isn’t convenient (Jewish history only started in 1948 and gay history only started nine years ago so both groups are privileged oppressors… and Trump)
Many of these kids, especially the ones most “disappointed” in Biden live in major cities where they have the easiest access to entertainment, communal spaces, and sex than ever before.
But politics isn’t as exciting as Game of Thrones so… Make America Great Again…?
This post I’m sure has tons of typos (sorry about that) and sounds like Abe Simpson howling at the moon, but Gen Z can eat shit.
Well put. I can relate to your viewpoint. It's so damn frustrating. But they are indeed young and stupid, and if they don't learn by being told, they'll learn what really sucks through experience. We've all lived through Bush v Gore and remember the day after Trump won vividly. They don't. They think it's a forgone conclusion Trump won't get reelected bc of how stupid he is. A reckoning may be coming for them, and us.
I totally get your point, but I would respectfully push back a little bit. In 2000 we watched the first electoral college/popular vote split in about 125 years. In 2016 we saw that 2000 wasn’t another EC/PV fluke of history but the openly celebrated path for the GOP going forward. We saw what complacency could do, and I’d argue we saw it again in 2020, where Trump’s vote was likely suppressed due to both his lack of self control and stupidity as well as MAGA World’s confidence they had it in the bag and yet he STILL managed to find 11,000,000 more voters! If these kids can’t go back and look at one election that happened this century and two more that happened in their lifetimes when more of them were in school learning to read… I can’t chalk that up to just kids being dumb like all kids are.
Learn the easy way or learn the hard way. Either way, it WILL happen. I just wish there weren't such awful consequences for the rest of us due to their ignorance.
Agreed, friend. Agreed.
Great, now I am totally depressed, and I will go back to my VHS tapes of John Hughes movies...
Yeah I get it. But buck up fellow Gen Xer, if there's one thing our generation excels at, it's indifference to the crappy hand we've been dealt in life. Enjoy Pretty in Pink.
Also, I now understand the "current events" exercises that all my grade school teachers *tried* to inculcate us with (didn't work, but perhaps that was the leftist conditioning that the MAGA cohort goes on and on about.)
Learned more from that class than most others. Had a really great teacher (Mr. Ed Holladay) who broke issues down and approached it from multiple angles. I'm forever in his debt for that.
Lately I’ve been thinking that all I needed was a teacher like Jack Black.
I am coming to the realization that we will probably never have a Gen X president. They're gonna skip us completely me thinks.
My hunch is we'll get one or two, but they'll be more transitional than they will be monumentally noteworthy.
My first time vote was when I turned 21 for the 1968 election. Couldn’t vote at 18 then. We had skin in the game. Because ‘Nam. But without that, I don’t think politics would have penetrated all the drug, sex and rock and roll. Bring back the draft?
I am going to say that many GenXers that i grew up with were very focused on getting the heck out of our dysfunctional homes (meals included). We were dealing with the possibility of nuclear war in the 80s. We tried to live our young lives to the fullest because who knew if we were going to make it to the next day. We relied on Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw to give us the truth, and we trusted them for the most part. Now, I don’t trust too many in broadcast news and rely on many sources to get something true. Voting was not the zero sum game that it’s become. Many Millennials and GenZers have had a very privileged upbringing. I see my students with expensive shoes , clothes, cell phones, and school issued laptops, even though most come from low income homes. The ubiquity of technology and the parenting styles that are a result of it, have had a huge role in where we are today. When I was a teenager in the 80s, we had dinner together. We TALKED during our meals. Now, that technology has resulted in families eating while they are all on their phones NOT TALKING! it also serves as a babysitter! Our generation had TV, but we couldn’t take it with us everywhere. I’m not excusing privileged behavior, but I would like to point out how technology becoming extremely accessible has changed our society. Google has taken over the parenting role, which is unfortunate. Instant gratification is expected by all generations, and solving the worlds problems needs to be taken care of immediately. Time is not a luxury anymore. This is obviously a rant, but I hope that you get the gist!