Why Millennials and Gen Z Hate Boomers, and What To Do About It.

Karla Vermeulen's Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 is a starting place to mend the new generation gap.

Nick Gillespie and Regan Taylor | 10.13.2021 2:43 PM

What are the long-term psychological effects of growing up in a world where the 9/11 attacks and school shootings drastically restructured your childhood around overblown fears of random violence, where the Great Recession wiped out your parents' savings, and the historically slow economic recovery hampered your job prospects for a decade, and where you were reminded every single day that the world only has a few years left before climate change makes the planet uninhabitable? And on top of all that, you face massive political polarization, growing racial strife, and COVID-19?

Meet "Generation Disaster," the subject of a fascinating new book by State University of New York at New Paltz psychologist Karla Vermeulen. Subtitled Coming of Age Post-9/11, Generation Disaster is built around a massive national survey of people born between 1990 and 2001. Vermeulen looks at the cumulative impact of being raised in a relentlessly apocalyptic social and political environment, the role that Boomer and Gen X parents and authorities play in stoking anxiety, and how new forms of technology and media have influenced the worldviews of millennials and Generation Z members roughly between the ages of 20 and 30.

In an era of mounting generational hostility, Vermeulen is an essential mediator between older and younger Americans, and her book, Generation Disaster, is a rich, empathetic portrait of a group too often simply—and wrongly—dismissed as weak, lazy, and entitled.

Photo Credits: Karla Vermeulen; People Walking on Urban City Street, Envato Elements; Etienne Tremblay, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Office of Senator Kamala Harris, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Photo by Mark kassinos on Unsplash; Nicolas Landemard/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; ImageSpace/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Ronen Tivony/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Mark Hertzberg/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; BILL GREENBLATT/UPI/Newscom; Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash; Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash; Photo by Ümit Yıldırım on Unsplash; Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash; Photo by Alex Motoc on Unsplash; Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash; Philwelch, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Rowland Scherman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Prelinger Archives, via Archive.org; Photo by Alexandre Desane on Unsplash; Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash; Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash; Photo by Jordan on Unsplash; Photo by Marko Beljan on Unsplash; Photo by Holly Mindrup on Unsplash; Photo by Jeff Kingma on Unsplash; Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash; Reason Archives, 1990, 2001; Photo by Joe Woods on Unsplash; Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash; Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash; Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash; Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash; Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash; Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash; Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash; Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash; Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash; Photo by Alexis Antoine on Unsplash; Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash; Photo by Katsiaryna Endruszkiewicz on Unsplash; Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash; Photo by Tanya Pro on Unsplash; Photo by Onur Binay on Unsplash; Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash; Photo by Ma Ti on Unsplash; Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash; Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash; Photo by Ludovic Toinel on Unsplash; Our World in Data; Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash; American Enterprise Institute, Scott Kinship page; Photo by Konstantinos Papadopoulos on Unsplash; Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash; CNP/AdMedia/Newscom; Time magazine, 1987; Photo by Mike Von on Unsplash; Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash; Photo by Ma Ti on Unsplash; Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash; Life Magazine, May 17 1968; Anthony Souffle/TNS/Newscom; Carlos Gonzalez/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Mehri Jamshiri/Polaris/Newscom; Alba Cambeiro/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Lev Radin/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

Footage Credit: Isaac Reese and Noor Greene

Music Credits: "Wild Cat," by Ian Post, and "Punch," by Oliver Michael via Artlist.io

Produced by Regan Taylor; map graphic by Isaac Reese; audio post-production by Ian Keyser

NEXT: Bill Kristol and Scott Horton Debate U.S. Interventionism at the Soho Forum

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Chumby 3 years ago

Judge individuals individually.

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1. Unicorn Abattoir 3 years ago
  
  *checks proggie handbook*
  
  No.
  
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2. Diane Reynolds (Paul.) 3 years ago
  
  Ok boomer.
  
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  1. Chumby 3 years ago
    
    I’m in Gen X
    
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    1. 5.56 3 years ago
      
      I'm early Z. Somebody is planning to reset everything back to A after me... But I won't let them.
      
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      2. Fats of Fury 3 years ago
        
        Next up will be the Eloi, generationally and on the menu.
        
        Log in to Reply
      3. Dace Highlander 3 years ago
        
        Resist alpha-normative behavior.
        
        Log in to Reply
    2. Fats of Fury 3 years ago
      
      Soon to be in generation X-Lax.
      
      Log in to Reply
    3. Mickey Rat 3 years ago
      
      "Boomer" is just a general put down for anyone, likely but not necessarily, older who tells a woke Millenial or Zoomer something they do not want to hear.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. mad.casual 3 years ago
        
        something they do not want to hear
        
        And, frequently, something nobody wants to hear. And I say that as a Gen Xer who's first reaction to the word 'pogger' was the people who used to play with milk caps.
        
        Log in to Reply
        
        Nardz 3 years ago
        
        I'm a millennial who was a kid for the pog fad. Had my own slammer and all, but didn't get into it too much.
        
        The way pogger is used today, after looking it up, is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen.
        
        Log in to Reply
      2. ThomasD 3 years ago
        
        Boomer is also a general put down for a generation that thinks what they have to say is innately valuable.
        
        (I'm early Gen X BTW)
        
        Log in to Reply
3. JesseAz 3 years ago
  
  Brandy and sarx give boomers a bad name.
  
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  1. Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf 3 years ago
    
    No, they give themselves bad names.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. Sevo 3 years ago
      
      ^+1
      
      Log in to Reply
  2. ThomasD 3 years ago
    
    Is Brandytwit really a boomer? My impression is that he's late GenX
    
    Log in to Reply
4. The Encogitationer 3 years ago
  
  The Life of Brian--"You are all individuals! You hve to work it out for yourselves!!"
  https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ
  
  I had a chalkboard sign in the back of my car window saying that in the beginnings of the 2020 Summer riots. No one ever asked about it or commented on it. 'Guess everybody turned NPC all of a sudden.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. mad.casual 3 years ago
    
    Guess everybody turned NPC all of a sudden.
    
    I blame the internet.
    
    Log in to Reply
  2. Dariush 3 years ago
    
    You might as well have put up Egyptian hieroglyphics on your car window.
    
    In a society that values the collective and identifies people not at the level of the individual, but by the constituent elements of their racial and gender groups and their victimhood status at the hands of the Patriarchy, who is there to be curious and ask questions?
    
    I think it’s a fine quote, but unfortunately the zeitgeist of American society is not the uniqueness of the individual but the conformity of the group through a Post Modern/Marxist lens.
    
    Log in to Reply
Longtobefree 3 years ago

Boomers don't care what you think of us; just get a job and pay your social security taxes!

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1. Gaear Grimsrud 3 years ago
  
  And stay off the lawn.
  
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2. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
  
  ""Thanks for the Medicare / For Blue Cross and Blue Shield / For a hip that finally healed / Remember, on prescriptions, generic is a steal / We thank you so much!"
  
  Log in to Reply
3. GroundTruth 3 years ago
  
  I don't care if you get a job or not, and eff social security, but don't come looking to me for a handout after you graduate high school.
  
  Log in to Reply
Overt 3 years ago

Pretty good video. My takeaway is that- just like previous generations- Millenials and Zoomers are being handed a world full of problems and told, "Get to work!" But *unlike* previous generations, our ability to relate with The Other has been (perhaps irreparably) damaged.

We live in a world where factions of the press make money off of getting rage or fear clicks. The market demands- and boy does it get- news that divides us.

Unlike Nick's advice that we have more "fact based" discussions, I think we need the opposite. We need more discussions based on basic premises and the logical outcomes of those. Simply put, I can find whatever fact I need to support my bias. There are millions of people out there generating theories and proofs as facts to support the notion that the Earth is flat. How will having a "fact based" discussion help those people?

The real question is how we are going to live together on this rock (or...er...disc) without killing each other. And that isn't a question of facts. It is a question of moral premises- when you are going to force someone to do something or when they are justified in doing the same to you. Arguing over facts is what gets us to today where the highest stakes are riding on which political party can censor the most "inconvenient" information.

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1. Diane Reynolds (Paul.) 3 years ago
  
  Facebook can moderate the global conversation just fine.
  
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2. CE 3 years ago
  
  Or, generational differences are arbitrary and overblown, and a lot less significant than the divides between urban/rural and conservatives/liberals/progressives/independents.
  
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-generations
  
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3. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
  
  Yeah, Boomers had some advantages with having cheaper college, an economy where blue-collar work was its backbone and a high school diploma could get you at least a subsistence job out of the gate, and an overall lower cost of living such as in housing. They also relentlessly brainwashed subsequent generations with the "everyone needs to go to college!" nonsense, rather than encouraging their grandkids that trade professions and skilled labor like machining was a viable career path, all while those factory jobs had gotten nuked in the 80s and 90s.
  
  There's also very little dispute, in my mind, that Milennials and especially Zoomers are mostly a bunch of entitled shits who took slacktivism to a whole new level, acting as if they deserve to have an upper-middle class life with very little effort put in to achieve it. These generations are completely unprepared for a situation like the 70s malaise, let alone a really catastrophic event like the Great Depression or Panic of 1873. However, they have these attitudes because their parents and grandparents in Gen-X and the Boomers stupidly indulged them out of spite for being raised in more disciplinary households by the WW2/Depression generation.
  
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  1. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
    
    As bad as the dotcom bust and the Great Recession were, the worst of those periods was actually pretty short, and really affected particular sectors of the economy more than anything else, so recovery was easier. Just imagine if this whole thing with the pandemic turns in to a decade-long malaise period like the 1970s, or 20% of the workforce ends up on the dole like the Great Depression, when a lot of jobs weren't being outsourced overseas and the economy wasn't so heavily dependent on the service sector.
    
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    1. Eeyore 3 years ago
      
      Trying to put the "Great" back in depression again.
      
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  2. Overt 3 years ago
    
    "especially Zoomers are mostly a bunch of entitled shits who took slacktivism to a whole new level"
    
    The oldest Gen Z is just getting into the work force. Honestly, the kids I am hiring out of college are 1000x better than the 30 year old Millennials I am dealing with. They are the biggest petty tyrants or even worse, "I'm your friendly Manager, let's be friends!!!" I have ever seen as many of them enter into their first manager roles.
    
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4. BigT 3 years ago
  
  We live in a world where factions of the press make money off of getting rage or fear clicks.
  
  Yellow journalism lives!! What a surprise.
  
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5. Fats of Fury 3 years ago
  
  Spare the rod, spoil the millennial.
  
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6. mad.casual 3 years ago
  
  Simply put, I can find whatever fact I need to support my bias.
  
  Yup. I've said it before; implicit in Occam's Razor is the assertion that, given a finite set of facts, an infinite number of plausible explanations can be generated. Moreover, despite the 'Razor' being presented as axiomatic, it's really more of a pragmatic suggestion.
  
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Marshal 3 years ago

Didn't boomers coin the phrase "don't trust anyone over 30"?

Delicious.

My takeaway is that- just like previous generations- Millenials and Zoomers are being handed a world full of problems and told, “Get to work!”

At the same time they are demanding more of our production they are refusing to contribute. They think this makes them brave.

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1. goneGalt 3 years ago
  
  Didn’t boomers coin the phrase “don’t trust anyone over 30”?
  
  Nope. It's a Jack Weinberg quote. Born in 1940. Popularized by Jerry Rubin. Born in 1938.
  
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Ken Shultz 3 years ago

"What are the long-term psychological effects of growing up in a world where the 9/11 attacks and school shootings drastically restructured your childhood around overblown fears of random violence, where the Great Recession wiped out your parents' savings, and the historically slow economic recovery hampered your job prospects for a decade, and where you were reminded every single day that the world only has a few years left before climate change makes the planet uninhabitable? And on top of all that, you face massive political polarization, growing racial strife, and COVID-19?"

I can make a list of similar things that happened to boomers.

1) Growing up in society that would force them to join the military, against their will, and fight their parents' and grandparents' war.

2) Parents' incomes wrecked by inflation, the end of highly paid factory jobs, and high unemployment.

3) Reminded every day that the world was likely to be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust over your parents' and grandparents' wars.

4) If you think political polarization is bad now, you should have seen the late '60s and early '70s.

I think we're missing the point here. The millennials aren't a reaction to the boomers. The millennials ARE the boomers! And they're the boomers for the same reasons the boomers were boomers, too.

If you're looking for a reaction to boomers, the Gen-X kids in the early '80s hated their boomer overlords, but we didn't initiate a war on capitalism, free speech, and non-conformity. Punk rock was a reaction to hippie and disco era boomers. I'm disgusted by millennials for the same reasons I was disgusted by the boomers. Their conformity is one of the worst things about millennials, too. It's worse than hippie conformity because millennial conformity is more ubiquitous than hippie conformity ever was--probably because of the internet.

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1. Overt 3 years ago
  
  Much of the same points are made by The Jacket. He says they aren't terribly unlike the previous generations.
  
  As I noted above, the main problem is that EVERYONE in this new world can live in their bubble as long as they want. In the 80s, if you were super lefty, or ultra right, if you wanted to have a conversation in public, you very likely were talking with someone who didn't agree with your politics. This was doubly true if you were a Flat Earther. But today, you never have to talk with anyone that you disagree with. You can go to "ItsFlatDealWithItLizzardSlave.org" and spend all your time there. Or go to RedState. Or go to Dem Underground.
  
  Everyone throws a temper tantrum once and awhile. But whereas we used to have to go make amends with the people we screamed at, today we just find a site full of people having the same endless temper tantrum. And, surprise, the kids who grew up in this perpetually connected world, are the most inundated with it.
  
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  1. Stuck in California 3 years ago
    
    > ItsFlatDealWithItLizzardSlave.org
    
    SOOOO bummed that's not a real website.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. Eeyore 3 years ago
      
      Make it real.
      
      Log in to Reply
  2. Joe Friday 3 years ago
    
    Overt, some of us seek out disagreement and discussion. The welcome I receive here tells you there aren't many of us though.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. 5.56 3 years ago
      
      Low-resolution, de-brained psychopaths can't tell the difference between "discussion and disagreement" and "trolling and spreading misinformation". News at 11.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        Indeed 5.56
        
        Log in to Reply
        
        5.56 3 years ago
        
        Yeah. That was referring to you. Some cases are so bad that you need to make everything explicit...
        
        Log in to Reply
        
        DesigNate 3 years ago
        
        L O fucking L at him not realizing who you were talking about.
        
        Log in to Reply
      2. mad.casual 3 years ago
        
        It's kinda funny how psychopathic it is to expect to wade into any given discussion on the internet and be greeted like Norm from Cheers. Especially regardless of whatever discussion might be going on or what you say as you enter and to the point that even if a 'regular' did so, they'd be greeted standoffishly.
        
        Sam: "So there I was with Miss November and Miss December, and we were having a heated discussion about how we should be free to contract amongst ourselves without government intervention..."
        Cliff: "It just makes sense."
        Frasier: "Agreed. Very reasonable. Go on..."
        Norm (bouncing in): "Hey everybody! You're all unprincipaled low-lifes who support liberty so you can treat women like garbage except you, Frasier, who's only redeeming quality is that you're married to Lilith."
        The Bar (in unison): "WTF, Norm?"
        
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    2. Sevo 3 years ago
      
      "Overt, some of us seek out disagreement and discussion. The welcome I receive here tells you there aren’t many of us though."
      
      There's a very good reason for that: You are a slimy piece of lefty shit assuming spouting the same nonsense we've heard for many years entitles you to a civil, response, asshole.
      Here's what it entitles you to:
      Fuck off and die, steaming pile of lefty shit.
      
      Log in to Reply
  3. Dariush 3 years ago
    
    This is so true. I accidentally clicked on a link to Reddit where a mob of millennials were pillorying Kyrie Irving for not getting the vaccine. It was amazing how many medical experts, scientists, basketball handicappers, mind readers, and Hip Hop Cultural experts there were judging and condemning a man they didn’t know.
    
    It is one giant echo chamber without respect to any countering points or at least empathy for the man and anybody who does voice this is attacked and mocked ruthlessly.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. Dace Highlander 3 years ago
      
      Agreement can't be 80, 90 or even 95 percent. Agreement MUST be 100 percent only.
      
      Log in to Reply
    2. Nardz 3 years ago
      
      ESPN won't shut the fuck up about it, and obviously there's only one perspective allowed: complete intolerance and feigned incomprehension at any possible motive
      
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2. Overt 3 years ago
  
  And, FWIW, while the majority of Gen X reject communism, there is still a good 43%+ (depending on the poll) who think it got a bad wrap. And those people are teaching our kids.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. Commenter_XY 3 years ago
    
    They're probably the younger side of GenX = ...a good 43%+ (depending on the poll) who think it (communism) got a bad rap
    
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  2. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    We became politically aware as Reagan was elected. We saw him institute his reforms, and we saw the economy turn around. As we grew older and graduated from college or start careers, we saw the USSR collapse--something we never thought would happen. We idolized entrepreneurs, from the DIY guys in Minor Threat to tech entrepreneurs like Jobs and Gates.
    
    "Individualism is one of the defining traits of Generation X, and reflected in their entrepreneurial spirit."
    
    ----Entrepreneurship as an individual trait
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X#Entrepreneurship_as_an_individual_trait
    
    I think our . . . Generation X probably was different.
    
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3. raspberrydinners 3 years ago
  
  If you think that's at all true then you really need to read up. Every step of the way the boomers have pivoted all the gains to themselves and left millenials and younger holding the bag. Meanwhile, I don't see that much crazy from the millenials- they've been fucked by the previous generations and are asking for a fair shake. They look at other societies and ask why can't they just have the same thing instead of consistently being screwed over and told "to get a job" and "stop being entitled."
  
  Apparently "entitled" means just asking for your proper take of the pie. In an era of high inequality that is only getting wider it's pretty easy to see why millenials and Z-ers are the way they are.
  
  The fact you can't wake up and see that is a prime reason they dislike you Ken.
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    "Every step of the way the boomers have pivoted all the gains to themselves and left millenials and younger holding the bag."
    
    So, you're in favor of doing away with Social Security and Medicare? Glad to hear it!
    
    I suppose we can count on you to oppose Biden's and Sanders' attempt to expand Medicare, in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, as well?
    
    "As congressional progressives push back against right-wing Democrats seeking to shrink the size and scope of the Build Back Better Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday insisted that expanded Medicare benefits must remain part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package."
    
    ----Common Dreams, October 12, 2021
    
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/10/12/sanders-jayapal-say-medicare-expansion-reconciliation-package-not-negotiable
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. DesigNate 3 years ago
      
      Kill it. Kill it with fire.
      
      Log in to Reply
  2. Sevo 3 years ago
    
    "...Every step of the way the boomers have pivoted all the gains to themselves and left millenials and younger holding the bag..."
    
    Poor, whiny piece of lefty shit.
    Fuck off and die.
    
    Log in to Reply
  3. Gaear Grimsrud 3 years ago
    
    SoSoc and Medicare were here before the boomers were born and the confiscatory tax rate went from 2.25% to 15.3% in our lifetime so far. And we've been paying that rate since 1990 more than double what it was in 1970. Republican presidents attempted to reform the system from Reagan to GWB but in every case the democrats screamed their heads off at their blasphemy of the sainted FDR. These days nobody even bothers. Meanwhile Nixon and the FED destroyed the currency forcing everybody into speculative investments which are by all indications about to implode once again. The Greatest own the creation of SoSoc and the Democrats own it's demise. It's ironic that they've named their latest disaster after FDR's New Deal but that's how clueless these people are.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      That's false Gaer. SS was, but not Medicare. Created in 1965, it was the handiwork of the "greates" and "quiet" generations leadership.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. Sevo 3 years ago
        
        Fuck off and die.
        
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    2. Carl Cameron 3 years ago
      
      Every Boomer was born before Medicare as were a small # of Gen-X.
      
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  4. Dace Highlander 3 years ago
    
    They look at other societies and ask why can’t they just have the same thing...
    So millennials are are clamoring for:
    Killing of anyone who criticizes Islam? (France)
    Throwing gays from roof tops? (Saudi Arabia, UAE)
    Running over protestors with tanks? (China)
    Only government approved haircut styles? (North Korea)
    No toilet paper, food or basic necessities? (Venezuela)
    Spying upon private citizens at will? (Was supposed to be Russia, but really any and all countries now)
    Areas of the country ran by crime/drug cartels? (Mexico, Most US cities)
    Elections declared by incumbent parties only? (Argentina, Peru)
    The list can go on and on.
    
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4. Commenter_XY 3 years ago
  
  Gen Xer here...I'd say it is easily as bad now (political polarization) as it was in the late 60's early 70's. I remember those times, Ken. I remember the riots, the shootings. And Vietnam. Today is just as bad. In some ways, much worse.
  
  The boomers, I have very little use for, as a generation. If the last five POTUS' are representative of boomers, then they are amoral and completely self-centered. They personify 'Me first!". I say this, having married a boomer woman who is the best thing that ever happened to me.
  
  I have high hopes for Millennials. They're smart. Wickedly good with technology. Stunningly naive about humans. Very focused. An interesting mix.
  
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  1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    "I remember the riots, the shootings. And Vietnam. Today is just as bad. In some ways, much worse."
    
    I disagree.
    
    Log in to Reply
    1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      Not even close. Try 1968 for the low point. VN, RFK and MLK assassinations, burning cities, drugs......
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. Sevo 3 years ago
        
        Fuck off and die.
        
        Log in to Reply
    2. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
      
      No, he's right, although we're starting to get there. Left-wing domestic terrorism was at its absolute peak in the late 60s and early 70s.
      
      Log in to Reply
      1. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
        
        Burroughs's Days of Rage is an excellent popular history of the period. Jesus, the bombings that were a near daily occurrence...
        
        So Ken's right there. So far. I wasn't alive to see the worst of the 60s riots, nor 70s political violence---or the 50's: can you imagine how badly Congress would lose their shit today, if something like the Puerto Rican separatists tried to shoot up the House Chamber? But in reading about the period, I don't see the rejection of Americanism then that I see now.
        
        This country is one Great Depression away from unzipping, very violently, into a half dozen or more regions, along at least four fault lines (ethnicity/race, culture, wealth, political affiliation). This time, when the Sheriff comes to kick the Joads off their land on behalf of the bank, he's getting shot. I've posted the "Clinton Archipelago" map here before. God only knows where you end up drawing the lines.
        
        Start meeting your like-minded neighbors---or go move to some---and begin talking about how you all think you're going to make it through this period.
        
        Log in to Reply
        
        Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        Burroughs’s Days of Rage is an excellent popular history of the period. Jesus, the bombings that were a near daily occurrence…
        
        I've recommended that book here frequently. It should be part of every American's library, in my opinion, even though Burrough is a shitlib who is sympathetic to these freaks. He just ended up revealing a lot more than he probably realized about how deep the rot actually went.
        
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  2. Carl Cameron 3 years ago
    
    How many Millennials build their own tech? They can't even drive a manual transmission and <0.01 % know Morse code. They're as susceptible to malware, phishing and tech-facilitated scams as the most doddering of the Silent Generation who at least have the excuse of being very old.
    
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  3. lysergicmonk 3 years ago
    
    Umm...even if you were among the first Gen-Xers born (1965), having memories of those times - the riots, the shootings, Vietnam - is highly unlikely.
    
    And using it as a lead-in to your point, apparently to bolster your point - a point not well taken by this boomer, one who was there for the riots, the shootings and Vietnam - only weakens it.
    
    Personally, I have high hopes for every generation. You, on the other hand...
    
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    1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
      
      I wasn't alive during World War II, but I have a pretty good idea about what happened and why, and if you weren't politically aware during the worst of the race riots in 1967 and 1968, you were probably familiar with the aftermath--as your white flight parents fled from the inner city to the suburbs. We lived between Baltimore and Washington DC, two cities that saw some of the worst of the race riots in 1968. I may have been more aware than others, in the aftermath, because of my location. I remember them playing excepts from Jesse Jackson's sermon the previous Sunday between cartoons in the early 1970s: I am! Somebody!
      
      I remember the controversies over school bussing. Regardless, the deep divide between liberals and conservatives and kids and their parents wasn't confined to black vs. white. Chances are your camp counselors, preschool teachers, daycare workers, and early elementary school teachers were hippies (undercover). In kindergarten, they had us learning how to make tie dye t-shirts and sing Three Dog Night songs about black and white and a bullfrog named Jerimiah.
      
      I remember listening to people have serious arguments about whether it was even possible to rape your wife in the mid-70s. "Didn't she consent when she married you?", the older generation would say. I remember our church tearing itself apart about whether an interracial couple should be allowed to get married in the building. The older generation said it was cruel to the children because neither the black community nor the white community would accept them. The groom had served in Vietnam as a conscientious objector.
      
      We haven't even started talking about women who stopped being housewives and started careers. We haven't mentioned the deep divide between generations over popular music in the 70s--cowboys/rednecks vs. hippies, shock rock bands like KISS vs. disco. My fundamentalist parents may have been more afraid of Christian Jesus freaks than they were of Black Sabbath. Everybody over a certain age seemed to be scared to death of marijuana, and everybody under a certain age was smoking it whenever they could. They would not let you in Disneyland if your hair was long. They wouldn't sell the hippies tickets! I remember when the lady down the street left her husband for the woman next door.
      
      The late 60s and early 70s were a time of social transformation and deep, generational political divisions, and the arguments people are having today don't even compare. Didn't the 70% of Californians who voted to keep Newsom cross generational boundaries?
      
      Incidentally, the technological changes we see today are nothing compared to the changes experienced by the boomer's parents. My grandfather was born in the days of horse and buggy. He was born en route to Shanghai, where is father was a missionary, and it took them months to get there from the United States. My grandfather lived long enough to take a commercial flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. The pandemic and the lockdowns have made things worse than they would have been, and the weird left sided activism in the press and its amplification in social media makes things seem more extreme. We're nowhere close to being as divided as people were in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
      
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      1. The Encogitationer 3 years ago
        
        In the words of Paul Harvey: "The Good Old Days'...Weren't...Always... Good!" I totally remember the ugly events and rhetoric of which you speak.
        
        And people believed the most most stupid shit, that peanut butter made you fat, that fat made you fat, that cholesterol came mostly from diet and not the liver, that drinking Coke and taking aspirin would get you high, that smoking dried banana peels would get you high, and that stress and spicy foods will give you ulcers.
        
        Oh, and 'KISS' stood for 'Knights In Satan's Service' and that a young woman was murdered during the recording of "Love Rollercoaster" by The Ohio Players. The Web Site Kissthisguy dot com also is a treasure trove of hilarious misinterpreted lyrics, mostly from the Sixties and Seventies. Most of these mulyrical malapropisms could be chalked up to drugs used by both singer and listener or just silly, potty-brained kiddies like myself.
        
        We've truly come a long way. Though it looks grim now, I hope our advancement ultimately never stops.
        
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  4. Truthteller1 3 years ago
    
    No millennials are not "smart". They are ill educated, historically ignorant and mentally and emotionally weak. But they did attend college.
    
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5. Mother's Lament 3 years ago
  
  The millennials ARE the boomers!
  
  This. The millennials are the boomers part two.
  
  4) If you think political polarization is bad now, you should have seen the late ’60s and early ’70s
  
  I wasn't alive then, but reading a lot of articles and stories from the time and taking to relatives and friends I get the sense that most of the conflict outside of race was confined to Universities and the media and that society as a whole was largely united.
  Now political consciousness is everywhere and in everything.
  
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  1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    The generation gap in the 1960s and 1970s was in your house, in your school, in your church, . . .
    
    We're talking Les Nesman from WKRP in Cincinnati vs. Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Les Nesman is your school principal, your teacher, the cops, your preacher, your boss, your friends' parents, and your own parents, too. Absolute, total division. Disneyland would not let you into the amusement park if you had long hair. Later, people would pull over if you were dressed like a punk walking down the sidewalk--just to beat you up--in southern California--circa 1980, and it was worse before then. My brother was older, and the shit he went through when we were in Maryland/DC was worse. The political polarization is not as bad now as it was back then. The biggest problem now is that the millennials and the boomers are mostly on the same side!
    
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    1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      I grew up in the segregated south, so yes, Ken is right. Political disagreements were more serious and profound than than now.
      
      Americans all pretty much accept fairness for all races, gay rights including marriage (you know how out there that would have been in the 1950s?), and capitalism with safety net socialism including Medicare and SS. We are pitted against each other on exegerated premises by those who profit from it: 24/7 "news" networks, talk radio, and demagogic politicians. It's mostly BS.
      
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      1. 5.56 3 years ago
        
        "We are pitted against each other on exegerated premises by those who profit from it: 24/7 “news” networks,"
        
        Normally you see something red under one of these words before posting. You either couldn't figure it out or are that feedback resistant by now...
        Anyways, I find you to be a self-righteous, pseudo-moderate excuse for an interlocutor and I'm not buying your whiny "we are pitted against each other by the evil media" for a minute. You are a shill and part of the problem.
        Like a good democrat, you flip-flop between what tries to come across as serious discussion attempts and ignorant, reality-bending, agenda-driven mendacity. You can't grasp that this nullifies your authenticity, and it does so particularly fast on reason. Because you can't process that, you bawl and stomp about all the negative comments you get. It must all be the evil environment, mustn't it, lefty?
        
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        Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        OK 5.56, if you're up to an actual intelligent discussion, then tell me what are the big divisive issues of the day that compare to segregation vs integration, a war that 50k died in who were mostly drafted against their will, riots in the street, including blocks upon blocks burning, a much higher violent crime rate, and a monolithic militarily powerful enemy who's "threat" we all lived under. Don;t tell me libertarianism vs "statism". You're like 1% of the population and no one claims being a "statist". That's process not issues.
        
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        Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        PS Cursing me out is the best most of the idiots here can come up with, and not very creatively. Let's see if you've got something more.
        
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        5.56 3 years ago
        
        Delicious bawling and complaining.
        
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        Sevo 3 years ago
        
        Fuck off and die, asshole.
        
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        5.56 3 years ago
        
        "a war that 50k died in who were mostly drafted against their will, riots in the street, including blocks upon blocks burning,
        
        I feel your pain, loser.
        
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    2. Dace Highlander 3 years ago
      
      As a service member who was required to be part of the LA race riot curfew enforcement, just a question vis-a-vis people would pull over if you were dressed like a punk walking down the sidewalk–just to beat you up - have you ever walked down the wrong neighborhood as a white person? And, at the time, I thought that was only a reaction to the times we were living in, but its not. Polar bear hunting is still a game.
      
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  2. Gaear Grimsrud 3 years ago
    
    "that society as a whole was largely united"
    I think Nixon's landslide in 72 is evidence of that. Don't get me wrong. I thought the weathermen were pretty groovy back in the day but I was in a tiny minority. But the media in my life consisted of 3 TV networks, High Times, and Rolling Stone (way before they got woke) nothing like it is today. Amongst the great unwashed there was an enduring respect for things like free speech and individual liberty which we inherited from our parents who beat back all of those totalitarians in Europe and Asia. I really don't see that tolerance anymore. Gonna say on balance the culture is more polarized now than it was ten.
    
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    1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
      
      "Amongst the great unwashed there was an enduring respect for things like free speech and individual liberty which we inherited from our parents who beat back all of those totalitarians in Europe and Asia. I really don’t see that tolerance anymore. Gonna say on balance the culture is more polarized now than it was ten."
      
      To some extent, speech was more restricted before the internet because you needed a film production studio, a radio station, a broadcast license, a newspaper of your own, a record company or something like that for an individual to be heard. I'm trying to think of something truly controversial on television in the three broadcast networks era, and even when they mainstreamed hippies, it was Laugh In or Sonny and Cher. The most controversial thing may have been All in the Family, which looked a lot like real life when it started. Maude maybe?
      
      The internet and social media have given us the ability to have our voices heard like they couldn't be before. Elsewhere in this thread, someone said something about how people used to talk to other people who disagreed with them more, before the internet, and that may be true. But, nowadays, we can reach a whole lot more people than just those we talk to in person. Our online conversations are more vulnerable to censorship.
      
      When there was only one newspaper per city (maybe two in a giant city), and only three broadcast stations, they were all competing for the same eyeballs and the same ears. The real Archie Bunkers and real life Meatheads were all watching the same TV shows, the same news broadcasts, reading the same newspaper, etc. What does it mean to be more tolerant of speech back then--when very little in the way of controversy seemed to make it into the mass media?
      
      When my friend's big sister turned me onto the Misfits circa 1982, it was something no one really knew about--except by word of mouth in your junior high or high school. Some girl might hand you a flyer for a show or give you a mix tape in school. How tolerant was society of the Misfits really, when they didn't even know these things existed? It wasn't on the radio. You couldn't get it at your local record store. And when the larger society did find out about it, everybody from the cops to the media to the local thugs came down hard against it--like they weren't tolerant at all.
      
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    2. markm23 3 years ago
      
      "I think Nixon's landslide in 72 is evidence of that." Most people weren't voting for Nixon, they were voting against McGovern.
      
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  3. Nardz 3 years ago
    
    Except the boomers had the greatest generation as their big brothers and role models.
    Millennial got the self-absorbed, spoiled Gen X as mentors.
    
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6. Joe Friday 3 years ago
  
  Ken is spot on except for his last paragraph which I don't even understand. I am too old to be a boomer, but just barely, and mostly have the traits of that generation. Yeah, we didn't try to send our kids to VN and while nuclear war is still a possibility, you don't practice for it in school.
  
  I agree with Chumby also, that we shouldn't judge groups, by race or age.
  
  I suggest Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now to get a grip on how bad things are now. Hint - they aren't!! By virtually any metric you can come up with humans are doing amazingly well over the last 75 years. Boomers grew up in the shadow of WW2 and the Great Depression, or in another words, Armegeddon. That doesn't mean that humans - and Millenials and Gen Zers don't have huger problems to deal - when were humans born who didn't? - but we have mad skills, including an ability to cooperate, which is more key to our extraordinary success - we have inhabited every corner of earth and flourished - than competition. We have essentially ended major wars since WW2 - and just in time. The future will not be easy, but we have a fighting chance. I'm pulling for the younger generations.
  
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  1. Sevo 3 years ago
    
    Make your family proud: Fuck off and die.
    
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  2. Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP) 3 years ago
    
    I am too old to be a boomer, but just barely, and mostly have the traits of that generation. Yeah, we didn’t try to send our kids to VN
    
    There is something so off about this poser. Being just barely old enough to not be a boomer would make this guy at least 77. Nobody has ever abbreviated Vietnam as VN, the slang has always been 'Nam. He also wouldn't have been worried about sending his kids as they would have been just children like I was.
    
    My dad was born in '43 and one of the things he is most grateful for in his life is that he wasn't a boomer. Of course, my dad was also a child of migrant workers who was put to work himself and a Vietnam veteran with a Purple Heart, so he wasn't a self-entitled POS.
    
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7. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
  
  If you’re looking for a reaction to boomers, the Gen-X kids in the early ’80s hated their boomer overlords, but we didn’t initiate a war on capitalism, free speech, and non-conformity.
  
  As a Gen-Xer myself, I'd dispute that. That shit is largely the fruit of hyper-left Gen-Xers becoming professors in the late 1990s-2000s and further radicalizing their students. Nearly every single TA I worked with in grad school in 1999-2000, and I'm not exaggerating here, was either a Democrat or a Green, and we even had one that was a literal card-carrying communist. I think the only non-leftist in the TA group besides myself was a Mormon.
  
  And I'd argue that Gen-Xers are the biggest conformists in the country. Sure, there's exceptions, but the reality is that Gen-X hasn't been culturally relevant since the late 90s (Woodstock '99 was probably their last hurrah as a youth culture), and they don't have the numbers to really push back, as a generation, against the more toxic elements of cancel culture. They're going to have a very brief period, maybe two Presidential election cycles at most, of holding significant political power before the Millennials snatch it out of their hands and force them to go along with whatever the cultural status quo is at the time.
  
  Hell, you want a great example of a modern bandwagon-hopping Gen-Xer, just go sample the timeline of John Cole's articles over at Balloon Juice. The guy went from a neocon to a neoliberal to an Antifa wannabe in the span of 20 years, depending on what the popular media consensus was at the time, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had been a culture war conservative in high school and college during the 80s. A lot of my high school classmates went the same route--just a bunch of unprincipled, bleating sheep who are constantly chasing dopamine hits on social media.
  
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  1. Vondy 3 years ago
    
    I think Gen X is so much a group of conformists as we are a bunch of grinders, cynics, and loners. We were the "latchkey kids" who were left to our own devices by our boomer parents, who aborted 1/3 of us, and were forced to see to our own defense. No one was going to take care of us so we had to step up, put our heads down, and got to work. We walk an uncomfortable line between being self-reliant out of necessity and cynical self-interest. If your own parents tell you to suck it up and raise yourself you aren't going to be big on trust, even with family. What's really telling, and this has been borne out in studies, is that the older Millennials are very often the older Gen Xers younger siblings and had a very different experience than their older brothers and sisters did because their Boomer parents who blew up their families decided they had finally "found themselves" (whatever the fuck that means) and then overcompensated by being helicopter parents to their younger kids. Almost all of my Gen X friends and acquaintances are latchkey kids from broken homes whose younger siblings were spoiled and given an extra-helping of most everything. This, I believe, is why Gen X generally chooses to "walk alone." We love our parents and younger siblings, but damn, suck it up and take care of your own business. We did.
    
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    1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
      
      That explains a lot.
      
      About my younger sibling.
      
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    2. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
      
      "What’s really telling, and this has been borne out in studies, is that the older Millennials are very often the older Gen Xers younger siblings and had a very different experience than their older brothers and sisters did because their Boomer parents who blew up their families decided they had finally “found themselves” (whatever the fuck that means) and then overcompensated by being helicopter parents to their younger kids. "
      
      Lived it. Absolutely the truth. I mean, God bless them for finally getting it right, but damn...some of the concern and affection would've been nice at the time.
      
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    3. Nardz 3 years ago
      
      You were handed your professional life on a silver platter. You entered the workforce in the 80s and 90s with relatively no competition, and you turned everything into shit.
      
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      1. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        Oh, bullshit. Gen-Xers really didn't start to become a foundational part of the workforce until the late 90s, and that was still largely in entry or lower-level positions. We were told for years, "All the Boomers will be retiring soon and there will be a bunch of job openings!" Except the process of Boomer retirement has taken 20 years to finally come to fruition, and that's been influenced by the Great Recession, which forced a bunch to stay in when their 401k got nuked, and now the pandemic, when they've FINALLY said, "Ok, fuck this, I'm done."
        
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        Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP) 3 years ago
        
        The boomers took particular advantage of the public sector. A bunch of boomers 'retired' when their pensions were threatened after the dotcom bust and were immediately hired back as 'consultants' in the exact same position because the public 'couldn't afford to lose that much experience all at once'.
        
        I know for a fact that this happened in city governments and schools. They held on to those positions and double dipped for the next 10-15 years.
        
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        Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        The boomers took particular advantage of the public sector. A bunch of boomers ‘retired’ when their pensions were threatened after the dotcom bust and were immediately hired back as ‘consultants’ in the exact same position because the public ‘couldn’t afford to lose that much experience all at once’.
        
        Yeah, I know of a LOT of boomers who have double-dipped in the last 25 years, going from one government job to the next. You see this in the military quite a bit as well, as so many active-duty positions have been civilianized.
        
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        DesigNate 3 years ago
        
        My BIL and SIL are ten years older than me so they entered the “adult”workforce in the early 90’s and what Nardz said about jobs was absolutely true. But I did also notice that almost exactly what you described happened to my BIL: as he climbed the corporate ladder he hit the ceiling hard because the boomer CFO refused to retire.
        
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        goneGalt 3 years ago
        
        If we don't want to pay their SS checks I can be onboard with that. But then, we must expect them to stay on whatever job they hold.
        
        How about this... I don't want to pay boomer SS. And I also don't want to pay off millenial student loans. Both generations bought into a scam.
        
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    4. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
      
      I can certainly see your point about Gen-Xers being grinders, but that's also a major generational weakness. We make great worker bees, but because the Boomers stayed in for so long, we have a tendency to defer to more experienced people, as well as those who are more assertive, and, to be blunt, our "leadership" attitudes are stunted as a result. When Xers do get put in charge of something, they'll work like fucking mules, but administrative processes tend to not operate quite like it should because they're used to going to someone else to ask how to fix it when it breaks down. Just look how dysfunctional things are with Xers generally being in the middle to upper management tiers of the workforce now.
      
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      1. Vondy 3 years ago
        
        I'm not making value judgements, just general observations. From my perspective the main issue Gen X needs to fix in itself is the "cynic" and "loner" aspect of its experience. You can only do so much on your own. You have to become a part of things, meaning teams and communities and families, if you want to really excel and succeed. No generation is perfect (GenX) or to blame for everything (Boomers and Millennials). Nor are individuals within those generations all of a piece. We can only address generalities and trends. That's not a great basis for "hate." As a Gen Xer who has (finally) progressed into upper management as boomers 10-years past normal retirement age finally stepped aside, I'm the one who turned a dysfunctional department into a functional one, doubled its productivity, improved staff retention, and brought us into the black.
        
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        Ken Shultz 3 years ago
        
        There are a lot of problems in the world. An overcommitment to individualism isn't one of them, and that's what I read when you use the word "loner". A loner is someone who wants to be free of parasites.
        
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8. BigT 3 years ago
  
  Their conformity is one of the worst things about millennials, too.
  
  They get tattoos to be individuals……just like everyone else!!
  
  You forgot the assassination of a President and MLK, and riots in the cities.
  
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  1. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
    
    "They get tattoos to be individuals……just like everyone else!!"
    
    Dropped that nugget on my sister-in-law. After the initial "Reeeeeee!!!", the light bulb did come on for her. Eventually.
    
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9. Fats of Fury 3 years ago
  
  1) Growing up in society that would force them to join the military, against their will, and fight their parents’ and grandparents’ war.
  
  One quibble, it was only half the boomers that faced the draft. The other half burned their bras, complained about the unfairness they faced, demanded free stuff AND got it.
  
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  1. goneGalt 3 years ago
    
    Hmmmm... Good point. Glad you reminded us of that.
    
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10. Nardz 3 years ago
  
  LOL.
  Gen X is running the totalitarian, corporatist shitshow now, asshole.
  
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  1. 5.56 3 years ago
    
    There's some hope in my generation (Z). Think what you want about Jordan Peterson, but he realized that there is a huge demand in my generation for values and ideals that stem from substance and fundamentals instead of misguided re-definition of language in a futile attempt to change the reality that said language refers to.
    
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  2. Vondy 3 years ago
    
    Does verbally assaulting people and calling them names for having a different opinion make you feel like a man? What are you compensating for?
    
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    1. 5.56 3 years ago
      
      It's dominance. By turning "white" into something that can be used as a derogatory term in a socially acceptable way, the left keeps reminding us of their tribal dominance. They do it because they can. Nardz does it because he can. I do it because I can, fuckstain.
      
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    2. 5.56 3 years ago
      
      (Oh and before you try to play that card, I don't think Nardz is white, but I don't know for sure)
      
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11. ThomasD 3 years ago
  
  "he millennials aren’t a reaction to the boomers. The millennials ARE the boomers! And they’re the boomers for the same reasons the boomers were boomers, too."
  
  No, nobody will ever be the boomers, mainly because the social and cultural environment that created them will never again exist (at least not in this civilization.)
  
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  1. goneGalt 3 years ago
    
    History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme!
    
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NOYB2 3 years ago

What are the long-term psychological effects of growing up in a world where ...

Cry me a f*cking river. Millennials and Zoomers live in the most prosperous, safest America ever. They are greedy, entitled, ignorant, and selfish, in large part because that's how their doting parents and their progressive educational system raised them to be. This isn't just leftists, even younger "libertarians" have these kinds of attitudes.

But fear not: a country full of young people like this will decline economically, politically, and socially. It's a self-limiting problem. More deserving nations will pick up the torch of liberty and reap the rewards.

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1. raspberrydinners 3 years ago
  
  Compared to the boomers houses cost 30% more (and rising) while real wages are 20% lower. They've endured 2 huge recessions now.
  
  You can shove your "entitled" bullshit. This is the most educated generation ever (as it should be, if we're trying to continually evolve) and they're getting fucked by asshats like you.
  
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  1. NOYB2 3 years ago
    
    Compared to the boomers houses cost 30% more (and rising)
    
    Compared to boomers, homes are also more than 30% larger. You're greedy.
    
    while real wages are 20% lower
    
    Compared to boomers, those wages include massive government benefits and entitlements, crap that you voted for.
    
    This is the most educated generation ever (as it should be, if we’re trying to continually evolve)
    
    Educated and indoctrinated by a broken public education system. That is why you keep failing.
    
    and they’re getting fucked by asshats like you.
    
    How? I'm an immigrant; since I've moved to the US, I have paid more in taxes every year than the average millennial earns. For most of that time, I had no political power at all.
    
    You are f*cking yourself. And you deserve to reap the consequences.
    
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    1. Gaear Grimsrud 3 years ago
      
      kudos. Liked your rant there.
      
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    2. JimboJr 3 years ago
      
      ^ completely spot on
      
      Also lets not forget the massive amount of millennials that want to live in areas that are highly desirable and think they deserve a sweet condo and a good living wage with their bar tending job and degree in gender studies. They wont compromise and live in the *gasp* lame suburbs, so they complain because they cant have everything in the world.
      
      Entitled little pricks that are getting what they deserve
      
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      1. BigT 3 years ago
        
        they deserve a sweet condo and a good living wage with their bar tending job and degree in gender studies
        
        Or maybe a seat in Congress?
        
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    3. DesigNate 3 years ago
      
      Yeah, it was totally Millenials voting in all the boomer fucks like Schumer and Pelosi for the last twenty years.
      
      Obama is probably a fair cop though.
      
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      1. NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        Millennials voted in Democrats. And bad as Schumer and Permission are, AOC and Tlaib are even worse.
        
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        DesigNate 3 years ago
        
        I’m pretty sure the largest voting block until last year wasn’t Millenials.
        
        But yeah, fuck anyone (boomer or millenial) who voted for those horrible humans.
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        I’m pretty sure the largest voting block until last year wasn’t Millenials.
        
        If millennials voted like older generations, Biden and Democrats wouldn't have been elected. They are necessary for Democrats to win.
        
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    4. CLM1227 3 years ago
      
      Compared to boomers, homes are also more than 30% larger. You’re greedy.
      
      I know I’m an outlier, but seriously, I don’t need a master suite the size of a living room half as much as I need kid’s bedrooms to contain multiple kids and their shit.
      
      Your “bigger house” made certain things functionally off. Yeay, my living quarters are huge! But I don’t need the space where it was put, I need it in rooms that serve as storage.
      
      And I would need so much clutter if my kids could ride their bikes to the park and show up at friends’ houses without organized play dates.
      
      You over-estimate the desire for STUFF.
      
      If I could have afforded land and built my own house, the dimensions would have been very different.
      
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      1. NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        You over-estimate the desire for STUFF.
        
        No, I simply compare what Americans actually choose and get to what people in other nations choose and get.
        
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  2. NOYB2 3 years ago
    
    Mind you, I don't think American boomers are much better than you. The problem in the US isn't boomers vs millennials, it's the greed, ignorance, and entitlement of all post-WWII generations.
    
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    1. CLM1227 3 years ago
      
      I think the problem is technology. It’s odd looking at history and seeing massive trends take place over a couple hundred years (and that being fast). The entire 20th century looks like a toddler on speed. The massive changes we crammed into 100 years are dizzying and to think we modern humans could handle it was wishful thinking. Some of these trends should have taken longer to play out. Not been tried in one generation’s lifetime.
      
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  3. CE 3 years ago
    
    I keep hearing "real wages" are way lower than they used to be, but everyone seems much wealthier (better cars, TVs, computers, cell phones, money to spend on entertainment) than ever before.
    
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    1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      CE, takes 2 incomes now for most households.
      
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      1. NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        It takes two incomes if you have a worthless college degree, are paying back your student loans, and are buying a McMansion.
        
        It doesn't take two incomes if you're happy to live the way people used to live.
        
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        Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        NOYB, most people don't have the college degree, so I don't know how real your world is, but if they do, there average lifetime income is way above those who don't, as is there unemployment rate.. $61k to $37k a year.
        
        https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/average-salary-with-college-degree-vs-without
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        Yes, thank you for demonstrating your financial ignorance, starting with the fact that you think that “average lifetime income” is the right metric to look at.
        
        In any case, my point remains: if you want to live like your parents did, on a single income, you can do so easily and with less work than your parents.
        
        The problem with American millennials is that their expectations of wealth and privilege have become absurd, and that’s why they are making choices that are self destructive and destructive to the country.
        
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        Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        NYOB, you obviously don't know how working class Americans live, and your assumption that we all, or mostly, have college degrees belies that fact.
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        I didn't make a statement about "working class Americans"; you tried to turn this into an idiotic class warfare discussion.
        
        The fact is that Americans today are wealthy beyond belief compared to their counterparts 70 years ago, across all classes. Whatever your class is, you don't need two incomes to support the lifestyle that someone in your class would have had 70 years ago.
        
        For the past 70 years, Americans have also been wealthy beyond belief compared to their counterparts in other countries, across all classes. Initially, the reason was that Americans were free and productrive; these days, it's all based on debt, military, and political power.
        
        Both college educated and working class Americans have absurd expectations of what life ought to be like and how much they need to work for it. There is no economic reason why an American family should be any better off than their white/blue collar counterpart in South America, or Eastern Europe, or China; those families live in smaller homes, have far worse healthcare and retirement, and usually have two parents working. That's the reality that Americans are in denial about.
        
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        Sevo 3 years ago
        
        Fuck off and die, Joe.
        
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        The Encogitationer 3 years ago
        
        I am a Gen-Xer and on this I agree. People do not need "McMansions" to have a great place to live. There is no dishonor in either renting a home or an apartment or in RV living or in owning a tiny house with some rural land to garden and homestead. Presently, I rent an apartment in a nice, quiet unit of older people and transitory career types, but have rented a home before and have fantasized about the other options, and may do them yet as I get older. They are all good either for people just starting out or for multi-millionaires or billionaires.
        
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        Fats of Fury 3 years ago
        
        I didn't buy a house until I was 50, I've regretted it ever since. My monthly layouts for taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc is not much lower than the rent I was paying.
        
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        goneGalt 3 years ago
        
        It doesn’t take two incomes if you’re happy to live the way people used to live.
        
        I have to stick up for NOYB2 here.
        
        Back in 1985 there was a magazine article citing a study that if we were simply content to live as our families did in the late 40s, we could all work part time. Of course that meant, for me, living on the second floor of a three family house. Having one landline phone mounted on the kitchen wall. A radio in the living room and in the bedroom. And taking the bus to work.
        
        I wanted an answering machine, two phones, a color TV, cable television, a VCR, and weekly rentals from Blockbuster. Oh yeah, I also wanted a car so I did not need to wait for a bus. So I worked full time.
        
        But I could have worked half as much if I was willing to live as my grandfathers did in the 40s.
        
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      2. Gaear Grimsrud 3 years ago
        
        Women were told back in the seventies that they could never be "fulfilled" if they didn't get some crappy job and put their children in the care of strangers. My wife of 40 years has been working since I met her.
        
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      3. Chumby 3 years ago
        
        Because of lifestyle.
        
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  4. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
    
    They’ve endured 2 huge recessions now.
    
    Haha, no. The dotcom bust and Great Recession were tough, but nowhere near as bad as the 70s.
    
    This is the most educated generation ever
    
    No, they got a certificate, but they're hardly educated. Ask these twerps something that they can't look up on their smartphone, and they get stun-locked because they haven't read any books other than pop shit and young adult fiction about teenage wizards.
    
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    1. BigT 3 years ago
      
      We were thrilled to get a home loan for a meager 9.98% interest and 20% down when the going rate was 12% in 1983. With the Fed throwing money out of helicopters, every barista and yoga teacher can afford a 4 BR house.
      
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      1. DesigNate 3 years ago
        
        No, they can’t actually afford that home, that’s why 2008 happened.
        
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    2. Nardz 3 years ago
      
      "No, they got a certificate, but they’re hardly educated"
      
      This is what annoys me about modern people, of all generations: the assumption that people are getting smarter.
      No, the exact opposite is true. People are getting dumber. Cavemen were smarter than we are, we just have more information.
      
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    3. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      2008 was worse than the 70s. Americans on average lost 1/3 of their accumulated wealth virtually overnight and economic activity bottomed out and stayed there for almost 2 years.
      
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      1. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        2008 was worse than the 70s.
        
        LOL, no. The Great Recession's worst period was in late 2008-mid 2010. The 70s malaise lasted from the oil embargo all the way up into Reagan's first term, before things finally started turning around in mid-late 1983.
        
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  5. JimboJr 3 years ago
    
    "You can shove your “entitled” bullshit."
    
    Unfortunately for you, you are the one who has to deal with your "entitled bullshit". You aren't going to get your life handed to you for free, thats how it is. You can cry that everything is unfair and if only the socialists were in charge and gave me all the things I need to survive. Or you can sack the fuck up and make it happen for yourself.
    
    Unfortunately for you, you and your ilk have the problem that you are entitled, whiney, lazy pieces of trash. And the solution you have come up with is to whine harder and hope the govt makes things right for you, while doing nothing to improve your own lot in life, other than going to college and majoring in PC leftist groupthink drivel. You have many rude awakenings coming, and you deserve every one of them.
    
    Get a real job, or get some training to acquire one.
    
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2. DesigNate 3 years ago
  
  Oh fuck off. The oldest Millenials are 40 and just trying to raise their families and run their businesses.
  
  There is nothing entitled in expecting that the older generations won’t actively pull up the ladder behind them and then piss on your head just because.
  
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  1. Nardz 3 years ago
    
    ^this
    
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NOYB2 3 years ago

In an era of mounting generational hostility, Vermeulen is an essential mediator between older and younger Americans

I want no more "mediation" with millennials than I want with Nazis or communists (that's what millennials have largely become anyway).

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Ken Shultz 3 years ago

You could write California Uber Alles about millennials today.

Now it is 1984
Knock-knock at your front door
It's the suede denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece
Come quietly to the camp
You'd look nice as a drawstring lamp
Don't you worry, it's only a shower
For your clothes, here's a pretty flower
Die on organic poison gas
Serpent's egg's already hatched
You will croak, you little clown
When you mess with President Brown

----California Über Alles

When you played this for the boomers back in the early 1980s, they had no idea how we could possibly see them that way. They absurdly saw themselves and hippies as the agents of liberation. It's the same way with millennial progressives today. They imagine their conformist oppression is the new age of liberation and change, too. Now that the millennials are in their white flight suburbanite stage (like their boomer parents and grandparents), maybe they'll start mellowing out and become yuppies.

We can only hope they become more selfish. Both generations are the most dangerous when they're justifying their atrocities in terms of liberating other people. From the boomer drug war to the invasion of Iraq and from the millennial war on free speech to their radical expansion of the entitlement state, is there anything more destructive than boomers and millennials when they're trying to help people? Instead of "giving back" whey don't they learn to take care of themselves?

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1. raspberrydinners 3 years ago
  
  Because they don't have the money to take care of themselves. I think that's pretty damn evident Ken.
  
  See above- "Compared to the boomers houses cost 30% more (and rising) while real wages are 20% lower. They’ve endured 2 huge recessions now. "
  
  Funny how it's always the libertarians with the "fuck you, got mine" attitude that can afford to take care of themselves and don't really care if anyone else can.
  
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  1. Catch33 3 years ago
    
    Don't worry, Biden will save the poor. After his butt's been wiped....
    
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    1. 5.56 3 years ago
      
      Why did that make me laugh way more than it should?
      
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  2. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    "Because they don’t have the money to take care of themselves".
    
    Are you a government employee?
    
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  3. NOYB2 3 years ago
    
    See above- “Compared to the boomers houses cost 30% more (and rising) while real wages are 20% lower. They’ve endured 2 huge recessions now. ”
    
    See above: houses are also much bigger, and real wages went down because Americans voted themselves massive government benefits, entitlements, and handouts.
    
    Funny how it’s always the libertarians with the “fuck you, got mine” attitude that can afford to take care of themselves and don’t really care if anyone else can.
    
    Practice self-reliance and stop looking to politics and other people to improve your life. What you call "fuck you, got mine" is exactly the kind of attitude that allows people to take care of themselves.
    
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  4. Joe Friday 3 years ago
    
    raspberry, Libertarians are mostly college educated solid middle to upper class types who lack historic or cultural perspective. At the same time they tend to be math or computer types who like a unified theory of everything - a simple unbending principle to explain everything, as if that is more logical. Yeah, in a simple world. Living beings aren't simple and societies consisting of millions of members not at all.
    
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    1. NOYB2 3 years ago
      
      Libertarians are mostly college educated solid middle to upper class types who lack historic or cultural perspective.
      
      So are progressives.
      
      So are you.
      
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    2. BigT 3 years ago
      
      Libertarians live by the motto: Do not to others as you would not have done to yourself. I.e. leave everyone the fuck alone. And that means you, government ass-kissers.
      
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    3. Chumby 3 years ago
      
      I’ll mind my business and you mind yours. And my business is not your business. Thanks.
      
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    4. rudehost 3 years ago
      
      “ Living beings aren’t simple and societies consisting of millions of members not at all”
      
      Which is why it makes totes sense that we should pick 535 of the most venal sociopathic corrupt yahoo’s money can buy to manage all of that. It’s all so simple that even 535 sociopaths picked based on a popularity contest can manage it.
      
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      1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        You got a better idea rude? Do you imagine you can live peacefully with 350 million others and always get your way?
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        You need to look up subsidiarity and federalism.
        
        There is no need to agree with 350 million people on much of anything other than not to attack each other.
        
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        Ken Shultz 3 years ago
        
        If they don't really understand (or believe in) specialization and exchange, how can they understand (or believe in) evolution?
        
        "I’ve called my lecture “Adam Darwin” to stress how congruent the philosophies of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin are. The common theme, of course, is emergence — the idea that order and complexity can be bottom-up phenomena; both economies and ecosystems emerge . . . .
        
        In the American red states, where Smith’s emergent decentralized philosophy is all the rage, Darwin is often reviled for his contradiction of dirigiste creationism. In the average British university by contrast, you will find fervent believers in the emergent decentralized properties of genomes and ecosystems, who nonetheless demand dirigiste policy to bring order to the economy and society. Yet, if the market needs no central planner, why should life need an intelligent designer, or vice versa?
        
        ----Matt Ridley
        
        "What Darwin Owes Adam Smith"
        
        https://fee.org/articles/what-charles-darwin-owes-adam-smith/
        
        I maintain that creationism makes more sense than progressive ideas about economic growth and social progress. The idea that Joe Biden and his merry band of experts can make choices for 325 million Americans--better than 325 million individuals can for themselves, from their own perspectives, through markets--is simply dumber than creationism.
        
        Creationism assumes the universe is so immense and complex that it must have been initiated by a supreme intelligence. Progressive ideas about economic growth and social progress, on the other hand, assume that Biden and his merry band of experts have the supreme intelligence necessary to make choices for 325 million individuals --better than each of them can for themselves--despite our conflicting goals, resources, and qualitative preferences.
        
        Arguing with progressives about why and how economies grow is like arguing with creationists who don't know anything about the fossil record or genetic drift. They need to learn to count to ten before we can start teaching them how to take derivatives and integrate. Progressives have this gigantic hole in their knowledge, and it makes them argue about the economy like they're the kind of six day creationists who know nothing about the science beyond what their minister said about Genesis. And they think they're teaching us something--that we're the ones who are ignorant!
        
        If fear of God isn't the beginning of all wisdom, being honest with ourselves about what we don't know probably is. They can't learn what they missed if they're unwilling to take an honest look at themselves and their ignorance. Socrates searching Athens for someone wiser than him--and concluding he's the wisest man in the city because he's the only one who knows what he doesn't know--is apt. You can't know what Adam Smith showed us about the world and believe what progressives believe.
        
        Incidentally, Smith is the only father of a major discipline I can think of who hasn't been debunked. I don't think anyone in psychology calls themselves "Freudians" anymore. Even Darwin was wrong about some really big stuff. Genetic drift has a larger influence on evolution than survival of the fittest, but there's no way Darwin could have known about genetic drift. The structure of DNA wasn't discovered until the 1950s. Meanwhile, Adam Smith's basic observations have withstood a tremendous amount of scrutiny and are still standing today, in terms of their validity and importance, much as they were in 1776.
        
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        5.56 3 years ago
        
        Shit, for a moment I thought you were Joe Fuckday (because you responded to a response to him), and then I was wondering why you were suddenly making so much sense.
        
        Log in to Reply
        
        BigT 3 years ago
        
        Einstein hasn’t been debunked.
        
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    5. The Encogitationer 3 years ago
      
      Well, if life isn't that simple, isn't it all the more pressing that individuals be free to find their own peaceful solutions to life's problems without government taxing away their income and otherwise getting in the way?
      
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2. Catch33 3 years ago
  
  I love that song. I read something where that song was described as saying that Brown was a "fascist in liberal's clothing". True about most liberals I think, obviously especially about today's brand of far left progressive wackos.....
  
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  1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
    
    The hippies were just like the progressives today, especially in San Francisco, at the time, where Biafra and company were. Progressives millennials today are every bit like the way Jello was ridiculing the ex-hippy liberals of his era, and it was shocking to the boomers at the time to see themselves described that way. At the time, the "honest liberal" was still a real thing--and that's how hippies saw themselves.
    
    Holiday in Cambodia was in the same vein, only targeted at fashionably leftist communist sympathizers of the era. The Khmer Rouge's killing fields had just become public knowledge, and Jello Biafra was rubbing their faces in it. It's really about progressives who are so full of fight for the little people they supposedly care about--while being hopelessly out of touch with the suffering they can and would cause them if their wishes came true.
    
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    1. Dillinger 3 years ago
      
      so, you've been to school for a year or two and you know you've seen it all ...
      
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      1. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
        
        Now you can go where they get things done!
        
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    2. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      Ok, Ken is wrong here. I was in SF in 67 and hippies there and then weren't into political activism, they were into self realization and in a short time into bank to the land. Golden Gate Park Be ins weren't about civil rights or even the war, they were into getting high.
      
      Also, lame acts like Biafra were degenerate posing and minimalism. Like Rap, punk was no talent posing, pretending to be working class 3 chord garage bands while rap ruined black pop music which was rich and beautiful, funky and ethereal, southern soul and urban doo wop.
      
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      1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        PS I'm sure all 100 of the hippies who even heard of Biafra were upset by him.
        
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3. Diane Reynolds (Paul.) 3 years ago
  
  When fascism came to America, it was waving a rainbow flag.
  
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  1. Mother's Lament 3 years ago
    
    And screaming about bullying.
    
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  2. Joe Friday 3 years ago
    
    Diane, fascism hasn't come to America. Can you skip playing the drama queen?
    
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    1. Mother's Lament 3 years ago
      
      Jawohl, Herr Friday!
      
      Just ignore the Jan 6 Reichstag Fire and people imprisoned without charges for months, the barbed wire and soldiers surrounding the capitol, the Milley's stand-down purge of the military, labeling PTA parents as terrorists for opposing crazy, racist racial theories, and demanding companies fire employees for refusing impositions on their own bodies...
      
      Fucking Nazi.
      
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      1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
        
        Another perpetually outraged suburbanite with no understanding of history or proportion. Aren't you afraid of that knock on the door later tonight for so bravely standing up in this missive? The worst thing that will happen to you in the morning is your daily croissant will be put in the bag at the drive through without a napkin.
        
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        5.56 3 years ago
        
        Careful with the above commenter. The agenda-driven, amoral socialist shill is trying to make you feel like everything is rosy and fine and there is no potential for things to get worse rapidly, despite a rather dire state of division in the minds of the people, which likely exceeds formerly known degrees of division, even though the reasons that bring it about may not exactly be the same as the old man knows from when he was not old. Such as riots or burning buildings as he says, even though we have seen exactly those at an alarming rate of increasing frequency in the last two years, which the most dangerous difference that the media is not condemning but instead downplaying or quietly endorsing them.
        
        The bereft-of-common-sense, partisan machine known as Joe Friday WILL make you think that everything is awesome and your actions barely have any consequences, as it is crucial to keep you in a passive, seemingly unaffected state, because in that state you pass your power over your individual life on to authorities above you, which Joe Friday gets his viagra-driven boner from.
        
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        5.56 3 years ago
        
        *WITH the most dangerous difference
        Memo to future self: Proofread or die.
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        Another perpetually outraged suburbanite with no understanding of history or proportion.
        
        That's what you are, isn't it?
        
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  3. DesigNate 3 years ago
    
    FDR flew rainbow flags?
    
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  4. The Encogitationer 3 years ago
    
    There are Rainbow Flags with the Gadsden "Don't Tread On Me!" slogan and snake and the even more Libertarian "Don't Tread On Anyone" slogan and snake.
    
    Also there's a hilarious one with the Confederate Flag pattern overlaying the Rainbow and the stars replaced with all the religious symbols in the "COEXIST" bumper sticker plus the Atheist "A" and the slogan is "Let's Offend Everybody At Once!" Love it! 🙂
    
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4. Dillinger 3 years ago
  
  first of all I love DK but I've said that before
  
  >>They absurdly saw themselves and hippies as the agents of liberation.
  
  the Family Ties parents were the tv illustration of this real-life idea ... most of my teachers were just like them.
  
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Catch33 3 years ago

1:17 We don't have a picture of resentment, so here's a picture of some teeth.....

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Jerry B. 3 years ago

Millennials and Gen X might have to practice hiding under their desks behind a locked door to survive a school shooting, but did they ever have to practice hiding under their desks to survive a nuclear war?

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1. Mother's Lament 3 years ago
  
  Gen X did to some extent. Maybe not literally, but the same implications were present.
  
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  1. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
    
    I did. Doubled as earthquake drills too.
    
    Soviet nuclear order of battle was far nastier during the late 70's-80's period---the period I was in elementary/junior high---than anything the Boomers fearfully ducked and covered for. For shits and giggles, go look at the comparative forces of the Soviet Union and US during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Think the BAS had an article a decade or so ago on it. One big reason Khrushchev folded (besides Kennedy getting to read his cards) was he had very little to threaten the US with. No SLBMs, a few Bears that would be SAGE-bait, and a few fairly slow-to-launch ICBMs. Vs SAC, which by itself was far more capable. That shit changed in the late 70s.
    
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  2. Vondy 3 years ago
    
    Gen Xer here: we had dual purpose earthquake and nuclear war drills when I was in elementary. The Berlin Wall came down in my senior year of high school. We do remember the Cold War.
    
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2. Carl Cameron 3 years ago
  
  Only "Silent Generation" school kids got killed by nuclear weapons.
  
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3. DesigNate 3 years ago
  
  Yes. I think twice in elementary school, but that’s it.
  
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4. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
  
  Practically every hardcore band had a song about nuclear war, was anti-Reagan, or both.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EdGUEbnlvQ
  
  Early 80s, most of us assumed the world would eventually be destroyed in a nuclear war.
  
  When the Soviet Union fell, it felt like we'd been liberated from certain doom.
  
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5. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
  
  I show pity on the human race
  On the ignorant plenty who devote their lives
  To an icon that they've never known
  I show pity on eons past
  When early man started the first civilization
  And human aggression was born
  I show pity on the future to come
  When the government system will be omnipotent
  And we'll be worse off... than we are now!
  Pity, pity, on the billions of ignorant people
  Pity, pity, on the masses of aggression
  Pity, pity, on the future centuries to come
  On the billions of ignorant people
  On the future centuries to come
  On the masses of aggression
  It's all a matter of looking at the past
  It's all a question, are we gonna last?
  If we endure the aggression that's inside all of us
  We'll wipe out our own species and thus... the world!
  
  ----Bad Religion 1982
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrk8uJRKUMk
  
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6. Ken Shultz 3 years ago
  
  Someone should mention Fishbone's Party at Ground Zero.
  
  Battalion of Saints doing Doomed World.
  
  Why do the officials want to ruin the world?
  What will it prove to whom and to what?
  
  It's a doomed world that we all live in
  It's a doomed world and we best get wise
  
  Their egos will be blown to a million bits
  When there's no land to rule and no one to forsake
  
  It's a doomed doomed world that we all live in
  It's a doomed doomed world and we best get wise.
  
  The rotting corpses that litter the land
  The future's dead, no riches to be had
  
  Why is our future in such feeble hands?
  The end is coming
  No thanks to these men
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faQZOKGW5eA
  
  GenX was practically obsessed with nuclear war. Pop culture was full of it, too. Terminator, Mad Max, every post apocalyptic film franchise has its roots in the era.
  
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Jagare 3 years ago

When will Nick, and the rest of the Reason crowd stop spreading the BS line that there is such a thing a cohort generations? There is no emperical evidence for such a construct. It is stereotyping and condescending. Nick seems to be to the worse offender on the podcasts, but you should all give it up. There is no such thing as a generational cohort. Talk of age groups, but not generations. You should be better than this.

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1. Mother's Lament 3 years ago
  
  Generations are largely a pigeonhole technique for the left, but the post-Soviet youth really are niave.
  
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2. Bubba Jones 3 years ago
  
  Ok Boomer.
  
  It's shorthand for a shared cultural experience, even if we react in different ways.
  
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3. 68W58 3 years ago
  
  I think that's mostly true. You can make a good argument that the boomers were a thing for a few years after WWII because most of the dads had been off fighting the war which prevented family formation until 1946ish. Then those kids were the first to have TVs and there was the desegregation issue as they got older and then Vietnam, but most of the rest of these cohorts seem to be made up out of whole cloth.
  
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4. Diane Reynolds (Paul.) 3 years ago
  
  This. Everyone knows we're all just neutral blobs of carbon floating through the ether, randomly bumping into one thing or another.
  
  Take your social constructs somewhere else, Nick.
  
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Bubba Jones 3 years ago

If the world is ending, then I don't need to worry about my career or retirement.

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Carl Cameron 3 years ago

The millennials and Zoomers should be complaining that their heroin is poisoned. Even some of the cocaine is poisoned and even the good stuff is still likely cut with hog wormer Jimmy Carter poisoned our weed but we could always smoke Colombian American, Jamaican and "concentrates" via Lebanon and just avoid that Mexican stuff. The dangers of paraquat were overblown but at the time we got to worry about something other than just nuclear war.

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1. Dillinger 3 years ago
  
  my s.o. watches all the murder shows & one dude put at least three wives in the ground with paraquat. took them 30+ years to figure out it was him
  
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Dillinger 3 years ago

gen. X.

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GioCon 3 years ago

Can't be worse than living with the threat of nuclear annihilation on a daily basis -- and having to practice "duck & cover" drills just to keep you on your toes.

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Benitacanova 3 years ago

Naming generations was dumb to begin with, but playing schoolyard who hates who games with the groups, each of which number 50 million plus people, really takes the cake in generalizing.

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Johnny Alamo 3 years ago

Poor Gen Disaster, never knew what it was like to do duck and cover drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis at school. When Daddy was looking into what it would take to build a fallout shelter in the backyard. Yeah, you guys got it tough

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Randy Von Friedman 3 years ago

Boomer here. The video was a pretty good treatment overall, but neglected the first named generation, "The Greatest Generation", my parents and the people that started this shitshow. Their (over) reactions to the Great Depression and Post WWII communism started this snow ball of paranoia that was foisted on their off spring and future generations.

As GloCon before me noted, we had "duck and cover" in the 50's but when it was seen to be silly and pointless it was abandoned, thus saving most of us boomers from a lifetime of irrational fear. This can't be said of the post 9/11 generations who have been fed a constant diet of fear, some rational, most irrational, the longest being Climate Catastrophe and the latest being Covidmania. I see teens and pre-teens truly scared that they're going to die from threats that border on non-existent.

However, my biggest disappointment is in my boomer brethren, who 50 years ago were chanting "question authority" and today in their over-medicated, overweight existence hang on every word of our so-called "medical professionals" and "government leaders" hoping to add another 15 minutes to their mostly meaningless lives.

Gotta go. My wine glass is empy.

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1. Diane Reynolds (Paul.) 3 years ago
  
  I believe the first named generation was The Lost Generation, people who were young adults during WWI.
  
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  1. Randy Von Friedman 3 years ago
    
    Thanks Diane. Even at my advanced age, I'm willing to learn - it just takes longer...
    
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2. creech 3 years ago
  
  And it was the parents of the "Greatest Generation" that locked up patriotic American citizens of Japanese descent, and wasted countless man hours and resources on air raid wardens in Kansas and such places when there was absolutely no chance of Jap or Nazi bombers showing up.
  
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  1. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
    
    Go read about the Niihau Incident. The Nisei got completely fucked over by the US Government---and it was perfectly legal!---but Roosevelt et al didn't come up with that shit out of thin air. First opportunity to really choose loyalties, and those geniuses tried to help an IJN pilot instead...
    
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Winston in Wonderland 3 years ago

My experiences differ substantially from the premise of this article/video. I'm a gray haired, bearded old guy who is getting pretty close to retirement, and I work with lots of millenials and Gen Zs. To be quite honest, most of them are a delight to work with.

To be sure, there are a few folks who seem to embody all of the negative stereotypes of Gen Z/millenials, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

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Chumby 3 years ago

Clump of Cells Boomers

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Weigel's Cock Ring 3 years ago

The most terrifying Hollyween costume in existence for Millennials: a job application:

https://twitter.com/ASoftstar/status/1446485969469771777/photo/1

Get up off your fat, lazy asses, get out of mom's basement, and get in the damn game and make yourselves useful for a change, you sorry little shits.

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Chumby 3 years ago

Degeneration X

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rudehost 3 years ago

The only reason millennials are misclassified as weak lazy and entitled is that you forgot to include stupid. Anytime you miss a defining characteristic you have misclassified.

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Otis R. Needleman 3 years ago

Jesus...fight, fight, fight. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I'm a "boomer". So what? Worked for everything I have. Served defending the country for everyone, regardless of generational cohort.

Judge members of each cohort as individuals. Got lots of millennials who died fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan. Got lots of millennials who are firefighters/police/doctors/nurses/EMTs.

EVERY generation has their own unique opportunities and challenges. That's life. No need for a bunch of self-pity. Everyone has the seeds of greatness within them. All you have to do is want to do it and put out the effort. And don't blame any other generation should you not be willing to make an effort in life. America is the land of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth chances. As long as you, of any generation, don't quit, you can succeed.

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Major7 3 years ago

Followup story. Why Boomers feel sad for haters.

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LostGenXer 3 years ago

Back in college I read the book: "13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" by Neil Howe and William Strauss. There is one statement that struck me all of these years later. They compared the boomers to the Vandals that sacked Rome. Over the course of a generation they pillaged the empire to satisfy their selfish desires and left its material and spiritual institutions in ruins.

BTW 13th gen is GenX.

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1. Sevo 3 years ago
  
  Yeah, I've only added many millions to the wealth of mankind; just like the vandals.
  Care to tell us your contributions?
  
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  1. Tony 3 years ago
    
    How do you measure that, exactly?
    
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    1. LostGenXer 3 years ago
      
      deflection, classic response of a narcissist
      
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      1. LostGenXer 3 years ago
        
        Glibness aside, along with the Democrats and the Republicans, Libertarians let themselves get drawn into a secular version of the "Gospel of Prosperity." America's wealth is not its material possessions, it is in its desire to preserve Liberty. The institutions that have been ransacked are those meant to preserve and nourish our freedoms.
        
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      2. Sevo 3 years ago
        
        "deflection, classic response of a narcissist"
        
        Stupidity; classic response of assholes.
        
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    2. Sevo 3 years ago
      
      It's called "arithmetic' shitstain, perhaps you might learn it someday.
      
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  2. DesigNate 3 years ago
    
    I’m sure you’ve done more than your fair share Sevo, but the fact remains that my (and other Millenials) boomer parents have been voting for at least 45 years, electing other boomers to positions of power, and generally fucking shit up.
    
    At the end of the day, breaking people up into generational groups is fucking stupid though and everyone should be taken as an individual.
    
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Inigo Montoya 3 years ago

Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m proud to be Gen X.
Or, for the ladies, Gen XXX, if you know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

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Sevo 3 years ago

Joe Friday
October.13.2021 at 6:05 pm
Flag Comment Mute User
"raspberry, Libertarians are mostly college educated solid middle to upper class types who lack historic or cultural perspective. At the same time they tend to be math or computer types who like a unified theory of everything – a simple unbending principle to explain everything, as if that is more logical. Yeah, in a simple world. Living beings aren’t simple and societies consisting of millions of members not at all."

It is possible to write a response to bullshit from lefty shitbags in the third person, such that another reader might be informed.
But it's amazing that anyone would engage such idiocy directly. This is the same tired, self-important, assholish bullshit we get from Tony, and most of us have learned that the proper response is:
Fuck off and die.
Like pointing out that turd lies, Joe Asshole is due no more.

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TD 3 3 years ago

The millennials are the boomers’ kids. Not sure about the Zs. However, from what I can see the boomers and millennials get along pretty well. If they don’t, well, then ok boomer, go ahead and spend their inheritance.

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Tony 3 years ago

Eh, someday soon we will look back on "generation disaster" and have a good chuckle at what they considered a disaster.

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1. 5.56 3 years ago
  
  You mean when civil war has killed all of the mollycoddled misfits? Can't wait to have my chuckle. 😀
  
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DesigNate 3 years ago

I just turned 41. Not sure if that makes me a super young GenX or really old Millennial (I like the Oregon Trail moniker cause I grew up in both worlds). Anyways, my adult life has been one ridiculous “crisis” after another: dot com bust, Y2K, 9/11, Great Recession, and then covid. (Some of those were definitely more real than others, and none really like worrying about the Russians blowing us to kingdom come.)

At every turn, the people in power making things worse or outright cynically using it to further their grip on power, has been from one particular generation. And they were the same people that were telling their kids “just go to college and major in anything, it doesn’t really matter”. Well it did matter.

Look, I don’t want a handout. I don’t feel like I’m entitled to anything, except for maybe Just getting out of the goddamn way and letting me try to grow my business, or get a fucking license without jumping through a million hoops that you didn’t have to even think about. Just don’t use the government to protect yourselves, for the love of science!

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1. Tony 3 years ago
  
  Well, those were all real except Y2K, which is also the only one that was predicted rather than observed.
  
  I'm far too young to remember the Cold War, but Gen Z has climate change, and that's no less existential but much more complex. The Cold War stimulated an arms race response in many ways, including with arms.
  
  I don't know if that was the best approach, but I understand that it may have been inevitable. Unfortunately, nature doesn't have an ideology to work people up in opposition to, and we seem to be less motivated to spend half our GDP to contend with that type of threat.
  
  Gen Z's attitude may be similar and different to Cold Warriors in subtle ways. But they're going to know a lot more about science than what makes stuff go boom.
  
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  1. JimboJr 3 years ago
    
    "Well, those were all real except Y2K"
    "I’m far too young to remember the Cold War, but Gen Z has climate change"
    
    LMAO
    
    The only event he mentioned that has commonality with climate change is Y2K. What could be more perfect than a crisis people freaked out about, warned us about incessantly, and the supposed end of the world and catastrophe didnt come to pass the way it was supposed to? And the world just continued on, laughing at the doomsayers.
    
    I guess the difference between Y2K and climate change is at least with Y2K people quickly realized it was absurd and we laugh about those doomsayers as the ignorant superstitious yokels they were. Somehow we have had to endure 10 (15?) "the world will end and we will be underwater in 10 years!" predictions over the last several decades that never come to pass yet we still have a bunch of losers fainting on couches over it. Remember when all of your predictions for all of time about climate change were wrong?
    
    Just in case you need some other "totally real" but actually completely bullshit intangible problems that the solution must be: more govt control, more govt spending, with a conveniently never achievable goal that will always just require more spending of others money, you could add these:
    
    Potential Gen Z "problems" to deal with:
    
    climate change
    systemic racism
    the "wage gap"
    how to make you feel safe without your blankie
    misinformation
    
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    1. Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
      
      The only event he mentioned that has commonality with climate change is Y2K. What could be more perfect than a crisis people freaked out about, warned us about incessantly, and the supposed end of the world and catastrophe didnt come to pass the way it was supposed to? And the world just continued on, laughing at the doomsayers.
      
      Yeah, they were predicting back in 1989 that if we didn't get Globull Worming under control right away, whole coastlines would be under water by 2000. I'm still waiting for Miami, San Diego, Seattle, and New York City to go the way of ancient Alexandria.
      
      They're crying that all the drought in the American West is due entirely to man-made causes, even though that region has been vulnerable droughts for millennia, and caused population migrations and declines for hundreds of years before the first IC engine ever fired up.
      
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      1. Tony 3 years ago
        
        You are so deliberately stupid it's painful.
        
        We should burn the First Amendment before you morons kill us all.
        
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        Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        LOL, literally nothing I wrote there is false.
        
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        Red Rocks White Privilege 3 years ago
        
        Pick up some books on the Hohokam or Pueblo migrations sometime. You know what's missing from "Cadillac Desert," Marc Reisner's seminal work on the arid West? Any mention of man-made Globull Warmin'.
        
        You don't know shit from shinola about this, goofy. You live in a fucking state that lost thousands of people to the Dust Bowl, and you act like drought is some magical force that just popped up in the region 20 years ago.
        
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  2. NOYB2 3 years ago
    
    Only fools believe that any of those threats were existential.
    
    Humanity hasn't had an existing threat in terms of thousands of years.
    
    Western Civilization is facing an existential threat only in socialism.
    
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    1. Joe Friday 3 years ago
      
      No doubt the tens of thousands of scientists who confirm the reality of climate change are part of a secret conspiracy to get mre research funding. One only has to look at the failure of science in every other realm of human knowledge to discount their warnings.
      
      Hey four eyes! Let us know when you can invent a plane that flies, medicine that can extend our lives, 60" flat screens that cost less a $bazillion (what? $500 you say!), and computers more powerful than a 1970s mainframe that will fit in my pocket!
      
      Yeah! Didn't think so, alarmist sceintists!
      
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      1. Claptrap 3 years ago
        
        Hey four eyes! Let us know when you can invent a plane that flies, medicine that can extend our lives, 60″ flat screens that cost less a $bazillion (what? $500 you say!), and computers more powerful than a 1970s mainframe that will fit in my pocket!
        
        Shit like this is why you got such a rude welcome. These aren't science; they're engineering. And engineering that's done in service of the profit motive, driven by a billion incremental improvements over decades, each one increasing efficiency and decreasing waste. You didn't even know you wanted any of these until they existed.
        
        Contrast that with the solutions put forth for climate change: trillions for government-directed boondoggles under the guise that a series of big bang solutions by a small subset of the global population is just going to fix a multifaceted problem. And that's before we even getting into the tradeoffs.
        
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        Claptrap 3 years ago
        
        Famously, Science! can't even agree on why the plane (or a bumblebee) flies at all. As someone else put it:
        
        it’s worth pointing out that Orville and Wilbur Wright were not “scientists” in any way that would be recognized today. They were high-school dropouts — literate, adventuresome, and inventive, but not scientists. The engineering of gliders was something they mastered by trying over and over again. In fact, it took months and, in many places, years for the public to accept the Wright brothers’ claim to have invented and piloted a machine that flies humans. Why? The scientific consensus said it couldn’t be done, especially by bicycle-makers like those guys.
        
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        DesigNate 3 years ago
        
        It’s hilarious to me that Joe and To y simp for the one percenters and then expect anyone to take them seriously when they tail against them.
        
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        Tony 3 years ago
        
        Engineering relying in huge part not only on scientific research, but research done by scientists on government grants or working directly for the government.
        
        Oh why bother. You actually just dismissed science as a waste of time. You people are all in on some elaborate joke, aren't you?
        
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      2. NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        No doubt the tens of thousands of scientists who confirm the reality of climate change are part of a secret conspiracy to get mre research funding
        
        Climate change is real. But it is not an existential threat: it neither threatens the survival of the human species nor even our civilization. Science is absolutely clear on this point.
        
        Hey four eyes! Let us know when you can invent a plane that flies, medicine that can extend our lives, 60″ flat screens that cost less a $bazillion (what? $500 you say!), and computers more powerful than a 1970s mainframe that will fit in my pocket!
        
        If people like you and the climate alarmists had had their say, we would have none of those things.
        
        That's the problem with you and people like you: you are vehemently anti-science.
        
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        Tony 3 years ago
        
        Citation needed for this "absolutely clear" business. I thought the models were untrustworthy? Surely you never said that.
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        I thought the models were untrustworthy?
        
        They are biased, but they represent what progressives like to call "the science", and even those models don't predict an existential threat.
        
        Another reason we know there is no existential threat is because our primate ancestors thrived in a world with more than 1000 ppm of CO2, much more than what humans are capable of emitting.
        
        Therefore: no existential threat according to both science and "the science".
        
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        Tony 3 years ago
        
        Our primate ancestors? Our prokaryotic ancestors also lived in a different climate. We must therefore be invincible.
        
        The entire conservative movement is beclowning the concept of conservatism with this parodically exaggerated ignorance.
        
        Our primate ancestors. Jesus fucking Christ.
        
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        NOYB2 3 years ago
        
        The fact remains that even 1000 ppm results in a mild climate across the globe, with more arable land than we have now.
        
        The fact remains that the scientific consensus among climate scientists is that climate change is not an existential threat.
        
        I'm sorry you are so completely unfamiliar with biology and paleontology. But as a leftist, it is not surprising that (1) you don't know science, and (2) you don't know that you don't know science.
        
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  3. Vondy 3 years ago
    
    Puh-leeeze! For real? Is that what you believe? Science is what makes things go boom. The arms race was all about science and contributed to our scientific and technological understanding and advances in ways that must be respected. The very internet we are discussing these issues on started as a defense department research project. Even today the arms race (it never ended) is pushing computing, communications, engineering, and energy research forward. Don't be surprised if military-led projects produce critical breakthroughs that have direct benefits vis-a-vis finding climate change solutions. GenZ won't know more about science, they will just research different topics and apply it in different ways.
    
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    1. Tony 3 years ago
      
      I believe I said all that.
      
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Social Justice is neither 3 years ago

I read that list of issues and laughed, not one mention of being instantaneously incinerated in a nuclear holocaust. Sorry bitch, I'd be more sympathetic if millenials and gen Z weren't the most vocal advocates for most of the "disasters" listed or their root causes.

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ckfred 3 years ago

I was born at the tail end of the Baby Boom, and my wife is either a Boomer or Gen X, depending on which date you use for the end of the Baby Boom.

Honestly, we behave more like the Greatest Generation, because my parents were born in the 1920s, and my in-laws were born in the 1930s.

I laughed, when Bill Clinton called the recession of the early 1990s the worst economy since the Depression, because the recession that Paul Volker created purposefully in the early 1980s was worse, and the 1970s was basically a lost decade in terms of economic growth.

I also laughed, when the financial collapse of 2008 was referred to as the Great Recession. Again, it was not as bad as what we went through in the early 1980s, when my annual college tuition increases were 18%, 15%, and 13%.

What is worse is that my parents bought a new Buick in 1973. It stickered for $4,995. The same model, with a smaller V-8, less sheet metal (it was a foot shorter), and a slightly nicer interior, stickered for $9,200 in 1979. That's a price increase of 84% over 6 years, or an annual price increase of 14%.

We having see pricing insanity like that in more than nearly 40 years.

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1. Echospinner 3 years ago
  
  We do have much better cars though. They last longer, safer, more efficient, and better performance. They don’t rust out like the old ones.
  
  Actually thinking about one of those new eMustangs at some point.
  0-60 in 3.8 seconds. That sounds like fun.
  
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ThomasD 3 years ago

Newsflash: Gen X isn't too high on Boomers either.

Nobody really is.

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ThomasD 3 years ago

Boomers were a perfect storm of

A disproportionate population cohort
A rise in disposable income among youth
The arrival of mass media/mass marketing

No matter what they objectively were the combination was going to be self-reinforcing and self congratulating

Boomers themselves should have seen through this, but getting high on your own ego is one powerful drug. Incredibly addictive too.

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1. Echospinner 3 years ago
  
  I attribute what you are talking about is just what goes with age. Older people have seen and experienced more. It looks like they have all of the loot and better jobs which causes resentment. Those who have made it feel like they earned it now it is your turn. They get more set in their ways. They are more aware that their time is limited. I already feel like a dinosaur compared to younger people in my field.
  
  When you are young you feel invincible. You feel you have all the time in the world to conquer it. Older people were young once. They know.
  
  Went to a memorial service last week. My best friend who I met in the 6th grade. He died of cancer after a long fight. Brought back a lot of memories. No regrets. I actually have gotten more from life than I thought possible for me and I ain’t done yet.
  
  Same thing will happen as the next generation moves on.
  
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  1. ThomasD 3 years ago
    
    "I attribute what you are talking about is just what goes with age."
    
    Then I didn't make the point clear.
    
    When the boomer generation was in their teens and early twenties they were not only a massive cohort, they were also in control of (relative to earlier generations) a crapload of disposable income.
    
    Meaning the markets were both vast and vastly catered to their every vanity. Radio, and then television quickly realized this, and capitalized upon it in almost every way imaginable.
    
    Every generation since has been in competition with that same sort of attention, so nobody subsequent got quite what they got in those highly formative years.
    
    And it shows.
    
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    1. ThomasD 3 years ago
      
      Also consider that the concept of teenager as something distinct from children, or adults, is largely due to the same generation.
      
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2. Gray_Jay 3 years ago
  
  Social Security and Medicare. End those two programs this second, and a lot of the hate goes away. We still have to deal with the perversion of the free market over the last fifty years, to ensure the stock market and housing prices never have to go down, and Boomers thereby don't have to belt-tighten, but killing those two programs outright would be a gigantic start.
  
  Never will happen, of course, until it's made to happen by everything else breaking as well.
  
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Echospinner 3 years ago

I don’t go much for this gen whatever stuff. In general younger people have their issues with older people and Vice versa.

Trends and values change over time. Culture changes. Also our history and the economic experiences changes how we see things. As I get older, not retirement age yet but I’ve been around, I don’t have any bad perceptions about the younger generations. This is going to be their world. They have a lot to deal with so good luck kiddos.

I plan to spend my later years at the beach bar drinking rum and watching all of the pretty scenery walking by. The rest of you get back to work dammit.

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1. mad.casual 3 years ago
  
  This is going to be their world.
  
  Not if they're under the age of 12, er, *checks calendar*, sorry, 10.
  
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Gregdn 3 years ago

Every generation has something to be frightened of. My parents had WWII and the Depression. We had stuff like the Cuban Missile crisis. IMO, the difference is that we got over the fear, but young people seem to revel in it.
And yeah, get off my lawn.

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squid_hunt 3 years ago

I'm betting no one picked "shut up and sit down" as a solution?

Boomers...

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Dariush 3 years ago

•Why Millennials and Gen Z Hate Boomers, and What To Do About It.•

“Off with their heads!”

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lifeasible 3 years ago

Analytical Reference Standards
https://www.lifeasible.com/category/products/analytical-reference-standards-and-controls/
CAS Number: 21293-29-8. Empirical Formula: C15H20O4. Optical Activity is [α]/D 415±10°, c = 0.1 in ethanol.

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Why Millennials and Gen Z Hate Boomers, and What To Do About It.

Karla Vermeulen's Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 is a starting place to mend the new generation gap.

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