Considerations

Politics, business, religion, and culture by Samuel J. Scott and Jeff Guevin

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Why My Generation is Pissed Off

June 26th, 2008 · 27 Comments · Afghanistan, Business, Culture, Economics, Education, Energy, Entertainment, Environment, Essays, Global Warming, Globalization, Iraq, Islam, Journalism, Law, Media, Oil, Personal, Politics, Technology, War on Terror

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Fourth in a series of essays

I’m 27 years old. The more I read the head­lines every day, the angrier I become. The more I see my peers dis­cussing the head­lines of the day on pop­u­lar Inter­net forums like Fark.com, the angrier I see them become.

At first I thought that this is the typ­i­cal, over-dramatic angst that so many young peo­ple feel, but then I real­ized that we nat­u­rally out­grew those feel­ings after we had left our hormone-driven teenage years behind us. Instead, I think we all know that we have been screwed over. We see what the Baby Boomers have done to the United States, and we know that we will be the ones who pay the price. And the price will be huge.

We grew up see­ing Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton impeached after a polit­i­cal witch-hunt had forced him to lie under oath about a blowjob, but then we saw that no one had the courage to impeach George W. Bush after he mis­led the Amer­i­can peo­ple — or per­haps even out­right lied to us — about the threat posed by Sad­dam Hus­sein and then caused the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple our age in a mis­taken war.

We saw Saudi Ara­bian ter­ror­ists kill thou­sands of our coun­try­men from a base in Afghanistan, but then the United States decided to invade — Iraq.

We hate that Osama bin Laden is still alive.

We were told that every­one needed to go to col­lege to have a good life, so we gladly took out tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in stu­dent loans to get a bachelor’s degree. When we saw that we had no com­pet­i­tive advan­tage because every­one else had a bachelor’s degree as well, we took out tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in addi­tional loans for a master’s degree. Now, we have tens upon tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in debt by the time we are thirty, but we see that plumbers and mechan­ics are earn­ing more money than we do.

We are dis­mayed that peo­ple who stu­pidly took out mort­gages that they could not afford are get­ting assis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, but no one will ever help us with our stu­dent loan pay­ments. In fact, the gov­erne­ment even amended bank­ruptcy laws so that stu­dent loans are now pre­vented from being erased in bank­ruptcy proceedings.

We have jobs for which we prob­a­bly didn’t even need the col­lege degrees in the first place.

We were gullible chil­dren at the age of eigh­teen when our uni­ver­si­ties allowed preda­tory credit card com­pa­nies to give us numer­ous credit cards, which we then pro­ceeded to use stu­pidly. Now most of us have thou­sands of dol­lars of credit card debt in addi­tion to our stu­dent loan debt.

We are harassed by our par­ents and grand­par­ents, who ask when we are going to get mar­ried, buy a house, and have chil­dren – but we are sad­dened because we know that we won’t be able to afford them for years, if not decades.

We work for com­pa­nies that are cut­ting our health insur­ance, no longer offer­ing pen­sions or retire­ment plans, and con­stantly think­ing about ship­ping our jobs to India or China, and we will prob­a­bly never have Social Secu­rity because the pro­gram will be bankrupt.

We see the Baby Boomers — our col­lec­tive par­ents and grand­par­ents — self­ishly screw­ing over their col­lec­tive chil­dren and grand­chil­dren through lob­by­ist orga­ni­za­tions like the AARP that are not allow­ing enti­tle­ment pro­grams to be saved by being reformed.

We see that Baby Boomers are refus­ing to retire and allow us to obtain higher-level posi­tions in com­pa­nies so we can now afford homes, fam­i­lies, and student-loan payments.

We see the United States going bank­rupt in our life­time because of its ever-growing national debt, the sky­rock­et­ing cost of the war in Iraq, and the $40 tril­lion in future debt owned to enti­tle­ment programs.

We hate that our ide­al­is­tic coun­try must suck up to despotic regimes just because we are addicted to their oil. We hate that our gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant to wean the United States com­pletely away from oil, even though it will likely run out or be sig­nif­i­cantly rarer in our lifetime.

We want our politi­cians to have seri­ous debates on the impor­tant issues that the United States is fac­ing, but instead they focus only on triv­ial bull­shit like lapel pins and whether a can­di­date had his hand over his heart dur­ing the Pledge of Allegiance.

We are sad­dened that we fake news pro­grams like “The Daily Show” are more insight­ful than the evening news, cable tele­vi­sion, and many news­pa­pers — the media out­lets that are sup­posed to search for the truth and stand up to those in power.

We hate that for­eign­ers always equate us with an idiot like George W. Bush when­ever we travel abroad. We hate that 23% of Amer­i­cans still think he is doing a good job. Who are these people?

We are sick­ened by the fact that the media is obsessed with real­ity television, entraping pedophiles, and celebrity hijinks rather than address­ing the dire issues that are fac­ing the United States.

We are the most diverse gen­er­a­tion that has ever existed in the United States, but we are dis­mayed that older Amer­i­cans are still sus­pi­cious of other races, gen­ders and reli­gions — and we have seen this dis­crim­i­na­tion in areas rang­ing from the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to the per­va­sive dis­crim­i­na­tion against non-Christians in the United States.

We are dis­heart­ened that gov­ern­ment offi­cials are always crit­i­ciz­ing vio­lence and sex in movies, tele­vi­sion and video games when the most immoral actions are always occur­ring in the White House and the halls of Congress.

We won­der how much the cli­mate will change in our life­times — and those of our chil­dren – as a result of global warm­ing and the lack of rad­i­cal, sub­stan­tive action to pre­vent it.

I write this essay not to whine about my generation’s plight. Every gen­er­a­tion — from the Great Depres­sion in the 1930s to World War II in the 1940s to the Cold War in the 1950s to Viet­nam in the 1960s to stagfla­tion in the 1970s to the reces­sion of the early 1990s — has faced its share prob­lems. But we seem to be fac­ing so many prob­lems in so many dif­fer­ent areas that it can feel over­whelm­ing — and, more­over, it seems that our par­ents’ and grand­par­ents’ gen­er­a­tions are doing lit­tle to help us by solv­ing these press­ing issues.

This is why young peo­ple are over­whelm­ingly sup­port­ive of Barack Obama for U.S. pres­i­dent. All of the politi­cians in liv­ing mem­ory have done lit­tle to help my gen­er­a­tion, so we are look­ing for some­one as com­pletely new and dif­fer­ent as pos­si­ble. More than any other can­di­date, he sym­bol­izes dras­tic change on all lev­els. Plus, Obama exudes hope and opti­mism — and my gen­er­a­tion needs that more than anything.

Prior essay: In Defense of Free Trade and Glob­al­iza­tion. Related: The Upcom­ing Gen­er­a­tional War

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Related posts:

  1. The Lost Generation
  2. The Self­ish Generation
  3. A Not-So-Modest Pro­posal to Save the Economy
  4. Who Should I Sup­port for President?
  5. Sav­ing the Next Generation

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27 Comments so far ↓

  • msannomalley

    I’m a 38 year old who is whole­heart­edly in favor of Obama for Pres­i­dent for many of the same rea­sons you’ve men­tioned in this post. Most politi­cians in recent mem­ory haven’t done much to help us out, either. We tried to say some­thing about Social Secu­rity going broke fif­teen years ago, but nobody would lis­ten to us. We were those moody kids in the flan­nel who liked to pierce extra­ne­ous body parts, drink a lot of cof­fee, and lis­ten to that grunge music. (Kurt Cobain being my generation’s John Lennon was some­thing the Boomer’s coined so they could relate to us. I heard this a lot when Cobain died. He was not. Some of the emo kids lis­tened to him and looked at him as if he were some sort of prophet, but he was not the sec­ond com­ing. It still makes me roll my eyes.) There­fore, what we had to say couldn’t be all that important.

    I’m from the so-called “Gen­er­a­tion X” or the “Baby Bust” gen­er­a­tion. We are fewer in num­bers than both your gen­er­a­tion and the boomers. My gen­er­a­tion knows your anger. Your rea­sons are same rea­sons that made us angry as twen­tysome­things, and sadly, now just resigned to accept it as thirtysomethings.

    When you’re young, you still haven’t lost your ide­al­ism, but as you get older, it goes away. Some peo­ple call it real­ism. Other’s call it cyn­i­cism. What­ever name you call it, that hope and ide­al­ism tends to dimin­ish as you get older. I think for my gen­er­a­tion, we’re resigned to a lot of these things because for our entire lives, we’ve also been left with the messes that the Boomer’s cre­ated and the con­se­quences of their actions. It was when I was a kid that the term “latch key kid” was coined, because we were 9 or 10 years old with house­keys and we came home to empty houses after school while our par­ents were at work and we were largely left to our own devices. There were no after school pro­grams unless you played sports in high school. We were kids caught in the mid­dle when divorce became more accept­able in the 1970’s, and the child sup­port laws were not enforced and the courts did not have pro­grams and medi­a­tion like they do now. Our boomer par­ents were so caught up in their issues, but we suf­fered for it. It was always about them and not about the fam­ily as a whole. I per­son­ally think that the rea­son why fam­i­lies are so kid-centeric these days is that it’s a reac­tion that my gen­er­a­tion is hav­ing to how we grew up and not want­ing to do that to our kids. But I also think that we take it too far, too.

    I think we just grew resigned to the fact that the boomers were never going to lis­ten to us and grew tired of try­ing to be heard. The issues you bring up are the same issues we cared pas­sion­ately about. We still care about them because it affects our chil­dren, too. But we’re resigned to the way things are. In that regard, I think we failed you guys. In our defense, it was very dif­fi­cult to be heard and they wouldn’t lis­ten to us. But I think that my gen­er­a­tion and your gen­er­a­tion need to speak up and work together with each other. Maybe then, we’ll be heard and some­thing will get done. An entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple have been doing what they wanted for far too long and it’s time that they be held account­able for their actions and for the messes they left us. This prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen unless there is a gen­er­a­tional shift in who is run­ning the show. I don’t trust the Boomer gen­er­a­tion to fix this mess. Liv­ing for today is their motto and the future is not in their inter­est. Me, me, me is their credo, and think­ing about some­one other than them­selves seems to go against that.

    I hope Obama wins this and I plan on vot­ing for him because for the first time in my 38 years, I actu­ally feel hope­ful that we will get some­one in the White House who will act like a leader should act and who will act in the best inter­est of the coun­try and the future.  

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  • 99ppp

    The politi­cians have done their share, yet I believe it best to look our­selves as a cul­ture in the West. Con­sumeris­tic, indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, apa­thetic. I’ve lost com­plete faith in the polit­i­cal sys­tem. Even if a well intended per­son seek­ing change runs for office, along the way they are sub­ject to the cor­rup­tion of the polit­i­cal machine. This has also occurred to Obama show­ing luke­warm sup­port to a bill grant­ing immu­nity to tele­com spy­ing: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/19/obama/  

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  • Patrick Mosolf

    I didn’t read all of msannomalley’s response, but I just want to say that I don’t think there’s any rea­son to become cyn­i­cal or lose one’s ide­al­ism. I am almost as old as that poster and I have not lost my ide­al­ism. Becom­ing cyn­i­cal only plays into defeat.

    My answer to your post? Become active! But judg­ing by the num­ber of posts on this blog (I haven’t read them yet) I would guess maybe you already are… The only solu­tion to these prob­lems is to keep on going at it, and to try to get oth­ers to join in.

    And don’t for­get, there are always good things… the moon, the stars, friend­ship… we have to take joy in these sim­ple things no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult things get.

    And when you think its really dif­fi­cult for you, have a look around the world to see how peo­ple in many other coun­tries are liv­ing…  

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  • Bomber

    Just wanted to add that I share many of these sen­ti­ments and wanted to add a cou­ple points that annoys me about the boomers. I’ve just turned 40 (gen X) and when I went into the job mar­ket, there was no place to go or if you did get in, all the man­age­ment posi­tions were filled by guess who?

    Aggres­sive boomers at the height of their pro­fes­sional power try­ing to push their stan­dards onto us. We could not get ahead at all. The sil­ver lin­ing for you is that the boomers are either gone or soon to leave the job mar­ket, that there are not that many of us Gen X so your prospects of the remain­ing jobs are prob­a­bly better.

    Also, these peo­ple were com­ing into their own dur­ing the gas crunch of the 1970s so what did that do with that les­son? That’s right went out and bought SUVs.

    You’re right to be pissed as are we. We can only hope that the boomers lis­tened hard to their par­ents talk about the depres­sion and saved well for their retire­ment. Because the rest of us have to sup­port the load.  

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  • Aaron

    You make some won­der­ful points, and I am sup­port­ive of many of your argu­ments. I am 28 and have faced sim­i­lar eco­nomic pres­sures. I have a Master’s degree, but I, like your­self, have incurred a lot of debt in order to obtain it. This, in turn, has pushed back my abil­ity to afford a fam­ily, a decent home, good insur­ance, etc. With your words there is power, how­ever I do dis­agree with you on one point. I think that the state­ment that Obama, or any man, offer­ing us the hope of any­thing is illu­sion­ary. A man can­not sat­isfy the over­whelm­ing trav­es­ties that past gen­er­a­tions have heaped upon our gen­er­a­tion. I truly have faith that through Jesus Christ we can see a turn­around in our world. It is not too lit­tle, too late. I don’t know that I will receive finan­cial rewards because of my faith, nor do I hope to obtain them. I do believe that the prob­lems of this life will con­tinue to per­sist. Amer­ica, left to itself will con­tinue to self-destruct. We shouldn’t sit idly by and allow this to hap­pen, but on the same hand we must pro­cure that believ­ing God has a great plan is the most rad­i­cal, and yet sane thing we can hope for.
    I am not a reli­gious zealot. I have trusted Christ to for­give me of my past sins, and I believe by faith that He alone did that. I am ashamed of our lack of stew­ard­ship in this coun­try, and this world. We aren’t owed any­thing, but we shouldn’t have to pay for past mis­takes of for­mer gen­er­a­tions as well. Intel­lec­tu­ally, it would seem easy to believe the most sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent thing is the best, such as for­sak­ing past pres­i­den­tial cab­i­nets. How­ever, a per­son, any per­son, sit­ting in an elected posi­tion on Capi­tol Hill will never cure all the prob­lems we face. God alone can do that. Psalm 118:8, “It is bet­ter to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.”  

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  • C-Walk

    It seems as though these feel­ings are grow­ing every­where, as I find myself talk­ing to peo­ple more and more about the need for a renais­sance in our world. The U.S. has grown into a nation with the wrong set of pri­or­i­ties. We do not live in touch with the nat­ural world any­more. The world right now is obsessed with money, and I believe this is the inher­ent prob­lem. Greed has taken over, and the world does not change in the next few years, it might be no more (see 12.21.2012). But I feel that our gen­er­a­tion will one day bring about a new era of human­ity.  

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  • TJ

    we’re resigned to the way things are. In that regard, I think we failed you guys. In our defense, it was very dif­fi­cult to be heard and they wouldn’t lis­ten to us. But I think that my gen­er­a­tion and your gen­er­a­tion need to speak up and work together with each other.”

    As a ‘boomer’, I can say exactly the same thing. *We* tried to change a lot of the BS and ‘they wouldn’t lis­ten to us.’ I guess I hafta con­clude, as James Bald­win did: Free­dom isn’t some­thing that’s given. Free­dom has to be taken.

    I’ve heard boomers called the ‘self­ish gen­er­a­tion.’ Funny: I thought the WW2 gen­er­a­tion was the self­ish one — they were all buy­ing up sec­ond homes and lake homes and rental homes, rais­ing the prices and mak­ing it impos­si­ble for many of us to own a home.

    I don’t think there’s much value in a generation-bashing approach. Those of us who envi­sion a dif­fer­ent Amer­ica need to pull together and work for it. Because ‘The Man­agers’ have man­i­festly FAILed.  

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  • Luna

    We are harassed by our par­ents and grand­par­ents, who ask when we are going to get mar­ried, buy a house, and have chil­dren – but we are sad­dened because we know that we won’t be able to afford them for years, if not decades.”

    You hit the nail on the head. I am 25 and I would give any­thing to leave the “per­pet­ual ado­les­cence” that the boomers accuse us Gen Y-ers of and assume these respon­si­bil­i­ties. Buy­ing a house is out of the ques­tion because salaries aren’t com­men­su­rate with hous­ing prices. And unfor­tu­nately, I’ll never have the time or money to become a par­ent because I’ll be stuck sub­si­diz­ing my aging in-laws, who are blow­ing through their retire­ment fund before retire­ment even begins. And yet they con­tin­u­ally ask when I am going to give them grand­chil­dren. Per­haps some­day I will answer, “I don’t have the time, because I already have two big chil­dren.”  

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  • Kat

    It is time for America’s Jubilee.  

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  • confused

    I am search­ing for the answer as to WHY are the baby boomers so self­ish? HOW did they get this way?

    It’s 2 am and I am sit­ting in my apart­ment thou­sands of miles away from my par­ents hav­ing returned from a 2-week vaca­tion vis­it­ing them. After years I am still utterly and totally con­fused by their actions and can’t wrap my mind around it.

    I just can not for the life of me fig­ure out how my grand­par­ents of the depres­sion era helped my father through years of uni­ver­sity, they retired early to take care of his 4 chil­dren when his wife divorced and left him abruptly, they con­stantly bring gifts when they visit my father (and us grand­chil­dren too if we are home). While my father and his sib­ling who are 2 doc­tors, a lawyer and an exec­u­tive, sit idly by and watch their aging par­ents take red-eye flights and dis­count motels because they can’t afford any­thing more when they come to visit.

    How is it that a par­ent can show up to their child’s wed­ding and pitch in $25 for the wed­ding cake and call it good?

    How does a par­ent buy overly priced cos­met­ics and actu­ally wrap up the free per­fume sam­ple as a Christ­mas gift for her daughter?

    How does a grand­par­ent not show up to their grandson’s foot­ball game because they had “things to do?”

    How can a par­ent con­tin­u­ally cri­sis their child for not pay­ing off their school debt, or bet­ter yet offer a loan higher than bank inter­est rates, whilst their par­ents helped them pay theirs off in the 70s.

    The best part is, is that when they do some­thing a nor­mal par­ent would do, like by their child a new pair of shoes, they act like it is the gift of the holy grail.

    Fur­ther­more I have a whole bag of friends who say exactly the same things.

    I am 36 years old and I am my sib­lings have been con­tin­u­ously dis­ap­pointed by the self­ish­ness of my par­ents. Per­plexed by this I decided to search for an answer. I stum­bled onto your blog and I feel the same why as you do. I love the com­ments that you have made. Espe­cially about tak­ing out more and more stu­dent loans to get ahead, when really we can’t get ahead because they’ve sucked us dry. My par­ents can not fig­ure out why at our age, their chil­dren are in so much debt, don’t own a home, have crappy used cars, no retire­ment, pay-you-go cell phones, our clothes are patched and socks darned, and basi­cally just bar­ley get­ting by and we all have cor­po­rate jobs. It’s like a giant smoke and mir­rors game for my sib­lings and me. On one side they give you the, we love you and sup­port you game, and when it comes time for the lit­tle sup­port we finally do ask for, they can’t afford it right now because they just bought a new BMW Mini in cash.  

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