Time magazine=Millennials Are Lazy, Entitled Narcissists Who Still Live With Their Parents

[DonCoquixote]

171. A gen X response

OK, first, let me fire off the standard disclaimers. I do admire a lot of what the Boomers have done. I listen to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Pink Floyd. However, most myths, even those with a lot of hard facts behind them, have a very toxic byproduct; a layer of bullshit that can kill.

It is true that the generations after you did not make as much of an impact as you did. There were far less of us than you, and while you came in enjoying the economy and power that the "greatest generation" had handed you, we Xers were around when the tab for the Reagan years was coming due. Granted, many of us would have voted against Reagan if we could, but we did not have the chance to keep him out of office, unlike YOUR generation did. Despite that, we soldiered on, even making a former cold war project called the internet a major part of the economy. Yes, there were companies that went bust, but the fact that you are reading this message showed that what we started did not become a passing fad, to say nothing of the fact that even many boomers have Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

However, you still called us "slackers", even though many of us were working on jobs your greatest gen moms and ads would have never let you work at, much less work two of them. Never mind the fact our college degrees not only became worthless, but an actual burden that kept many of us in debt. Never mind that, especially in the case of the Milennials, they never knew anything but an economy that was wrecked, and a nation always in some war. The world the later generations grew up in was a lot more dangerous than your world, and we were always a lot more disposable, especially since a bunch of Boomer execs feel in love with outsourcing, you know, that industry that put a whole generation of technicians and Blue collar workers out of work:

Here is a Boomer talking about how much she loves outsourcing. She might be familiar, especially to those starting the mere that she should be our next president:

Aw, but but, she woulda fought harder for our jobs, right?

They were not handed the keys, hell, even in pop culture, the same guys that wanted to send their parents off the Ice Floe were ruthless about defending what they got. People mentioned Jay Leno. Jay Leno was handed the Tonight Show, which at that time was an American institution, thanks to Johnny Carson. His manager, Helen Mushnick, kept telling NBC they get to get rid of Johnny, that he was too old, never mind the fact everyone knew him. Well Jay got the job, and Carson was so bitter at NBC he told David Letterman to screw NBC before they screwed him. Fats forward a few years, where Jay Leno gets old. He backs off his publicly stated promise to turn the show over to the Gen X (and popular with Milennials) Conan O' Brien. You see, Carson was old, but he was special. I use this to show an example of the behavior some Boomers have shown, and why those younger than them roll their eyes when they try to enforce their cult of the best generation ever.

I know the post cold war era was supposed to be all about peace dividends, but funny how, even when Bill Clinton, the very embodiment of your generation's hopes, the one that made Doonesbury say "I have waited all my life for this administration", funny, when he came along, all that peace dividend stuff went out in Cigar smoke. Part of the reason the Russians supp rt Putin is that they remember how, after Gorbachev, the US came in and tried to pick the Russian's corpse clean, making it safe for "capitalism."

So, my point is not to say All Boomers are bad, indeed, there are many of you that, to quote Neil Young, "keep on Rocking in the Free World", they keep on making clear, principled, uncompromising stands.Heaven knows I may even butt heads with them, but I know when things go down, they are mentors and comrades. We even did our own little protest called OWS, which failed for many reasons, but part of which is that many rich Boomer Yuppies decided to fling Bullshit at the kids, or were at least silent when the media did. Of course, for the 15th time,we will vote Hillary for 2016 if she wins the primary, that same primary many people are trying to smother in the crib as we speak. Yes we are prepared for the inevitable media which will say she was better than anyone else, ever, because the Boomers will not want their two presidencies to be defined by Bill and W. Bill was someone who could have been great, but he wanted his money, his cigars, and his women. He wagged his finger and lied, and therefore became known as someone you might like, but never trust, especially when he supports the Keystone pipeline. As far as W. goes, really, do we need to got THERE? He was living proof that not all Boomers were principled peace love dope types. This country will be digging out of his mess for decades, and since China is rising (thanks to Bill giving it WTO status) our chances of ever seeing a generation of Americans as wealthy as the Boomers is very likely as dead as the Dodo. Of course, who would want to have that as a legacy, Let Hillary in there, give the Boomers eight more years of running the country to prove they can do things right, or not.

In short, we do not hate you, but some of you frankly are still coasting off of what the Greatest generation gave you. There are Boomers acts like Neil Young, or Eric Clapton, who always try to listen to their times, and be relevant for those times, even if it pisses some of their old fans off who want just want them to play only the old songs. Then, there are the nostalgia acts, the Paul McCartneys that have not written a decent tune since 1980, yet still fill stadiums because fans are hoping he will play "Yesterday."