Generation Wars

Today, the not-so-young adults of the early twenty-first century are still puzzling through that question. Even in the presidential race, the Gen X candidates are the ones most committed to tinkering at the margins. They want to reject ideology, to maintain the technocrat’s faith in the best ideas and the best people. (Kamala Harris’s proposal for a “student debt loan forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities” is the most notorious example of this style.) They remain skeptical of social movements, and one can discern in their ambivalence the long shadows of the defeats of earlier mobilizations. Their cool, today, appears more like complacency. At its most appealing, the idea of Gen X stood for an antagonism toward the political establishment and a deflation of pretension of all sorts. But it also embodied a mood of resignation and uncertainty that was the result of the right’s ascendance. It’s time finally to put to rest this category forged in political loss. Generation X, may you slip peacefully into oblivion, playing air guitar all the way.

It’s time to start blaming Generation X for things.

In the generational wars, people are sorted into two separate but equally important groups: millennials (AKA Gen Y) and baby boomers (AKA boomers).


This has become something of a meme to the point where, strangely, anyone who is older and in a position of power is referred to as a boomer, even if they’re not, while anyone who is younger is called a millennial, again, even if they’re not. For some reason everyone forgets about Generation X, and also whatever we’re calling the generation after millennials.

However they are now entrenched in popular usage, for better or worse.

If we look at the composition of governments and who is leading countries, it’s clear that Gen X should start shouldering some of the blame. They’ve been in positions of power for a while now, and terrible thinkpieces that fan the flames of generational warfare should start to reflect this. Should Gen X be doing more to address the climate crisis even though it is largely the fault of boomers? I say yes, yes they should.

I remember sitting opposite a fellow gen X-er lamenting the dismal state of British politics over lunch. “We let it happen though, didn’t we?” he said. “We didn’t get involved. Perhaps we should have. But we were too busy having fun.”
He had a point. 
We sat in fields and listened to bands, or we found our way to warehouses and raved, we took a lot of drugs and talked dreamily about the second summer of love. 

While this was going on, we cheerfully ignored the finger wagging and the tabloids’ outrage and we flipped them off when they called us a bunch of screw-ups. They’d have told us we were snowflakes if the insult was around back then. 

KinderLad wrote:Mislim, moras da get over the fact da je vecina tvoje generacije u razvijenim zemljama - levo. Srecom sto je tako, ali to je neprijatno za millenn's u Srbiji (popularno GenKK   )

bruno sulak wrote:polip je mentalno suvremenik jeremije lesa a ne milenijalac. toliko svetom ophrvanog cinizma je tesko naci.

bruno sulak wrote:polip je mentalno suvremenik jeremije lesa a ne milenijalac. toliko svetom ophrvanog cinizma je tesko naci.