This is the only reasonable way to frame any of W’s little insights.
Damn, the media fuckin loves W. Part of it was that they really hated the Clintons, but even in the 2000’s they still had these glowing portraits of him cosplaying as a cowboy roughneck when everyone knew he was a coddled Ivy League failson. They all just really like the guy and we have to suffer for it.
I am 100% GenX, but millennial-scolding is some of the most tired shit out there.
It all goes back to the boomers, truly the WOAT.
Boomer bashing is just about as off the mark as millenial scolding. There are larger forces at work, and we are surely capable of analyzing the systemic issues, and being precise in our criticisms. Assigning blame based on date of birth is tired, whether we do it or an OpEd writer does it.
Yeah I just strongly disagree with that, there are common attitudes and behaviors that distinguish boomers. They are uniquely awful.
It takes a special kind of asshole to continually support policies that leave your children struggling.
I agree that it does, and if someone wants to call out the people that do that, fine. Last I checked though, boomers weren’t a monolithic group who all act and think in the same way. Precision in our criticisms is possible. Sort by DOB and paint with a broad brush is imprecise and unfair.
I’m sorry sir, this is a shit posting message board.
#NotAllBoomers
And not all white people are personally racist, but a lot of the ones who don’t think they’re racist also support and fight for the system that maintains their privilege relative to other people. It’s not really just about personal attitudes. It’s about the entrenched wealth and power disparity that they are going to maintain until their deaths.
I definitely agree with you that entrenched wealth, and the power that stems from it, is the issue. In fact that’s what all the boomer bashing and millenial mocking is designed to do–distract us from that issue. That’s precisely what makes shitting on all boomers(or all millenials) so silly.
We can choose to point out who actually has the overwhelming preponderance of that wealth, and critique how that power is used in our class based system. Or we can paint all boomers(POC & boomers with 0 net worth are boomers too!) as the problem. We can make an overly generalized and imprecise complaint, or we can make thoughtful analysis.
We should ask ourselves: Who benefits from boomer bashing and millenial mocking, while ignoring or downplaying the actual wealth and power issues? Hint: It’s the class of people who own the Chicago Tribune, and the rest of corporate media. They hire people to push out agit-prop that pits people against each other: age cohorts, or racial and ethnic groups, etc. Anything but what is actually going on–the wealthy fucking over the working class.
This distracts from reality and gets everyday people who are in the same class and face similar challenges pointing fingers at each other. We all have more in common with the average boomer than we do with any billionaires.
This type of article is subtly destructive. It is not mentioned anywhere in the article, but I guarantee behind every millennial quitting a good job to paint pictures or start a meditation camp or whatever, there is family money, at least enough to know they’ll never starve. The ability to take risks isn’t about courage, its about financial freedom that our generation has been systematically prevented from achieving.
Maybe they just work harder than you, did you ever think of that?!?!
Sure, the fight against billionaires is a bigger one, but the fight for housing is right in our faces. Home ownership is a pipe dream for millenials around median income, even up through double the median income, in many if not most urban centers. That’s not just a billionaire’s issue. A ton of that has to do with the votes and actions of entrenched boomers who bought into the idea that a home should be an appreciating asset and locked anyone else out of getting one if it did anything to diminish the real or perceived value of theirs.
The last people who got pensions are the same ones making the decisions to put others on 401ks. The last people with cheap college voted to cut state subsidies.
Dividing the world into billionaires and everyone else is useful in some contexts, but there’s a huge amount of wealth and security dividing the median baby boomer and the median millenial, or even between millennials and baby boomers when they were our age.
It’s not just billionaire media moguls doing the millennial bashing. It’s our own parents and their friends telling us how they put themselves through college working a part time minimum wage job, so if we can’t, it’s our own personal failing. How they were able to buy a house after getting a job after high school, and now that we can’t, it’s our fault. It’s tiring.
I appreciate your response, and I hear your frustration. The media moguls are pushing out inter-generational agit-prop so that everyday people will repeat it as if it’s received knowledge. If you’re parents are telling you that it’s your fault, damn, that’s not right. My parents don’t do that, so that may be influencing our perspectives a bit.
I push back on people slagging millenials constantly. It’s inaccurate and unhelpful. Same applies when we apply that broad brush to boomers.
The median White boomer has ~$330k in wealth. That’s my parents. They own a townhome in the suburbs of Minneapolis and have minimal savings. My mom on her own initiative started a free after school program for under-served children in her community. She found the space, recruited the volunteers(most of whom were boomers!), created everything from scratch. Hundreds of millenials lives are better today because she did what she did. I can’t imagine telling her boomers WOAT.
What would I admonish my mom for…being raised in a working class family? doing her level best for her family and community? Sorry mom, I can’t blame the wealthy for hoarding the wealth and enforcing a system that puts the rest of into debt peonage in order to access education and housing…you were born between 46-64 so you’re WOAT.
Should we tell the median Black boomer they are WOAT? They have less wealth than the median White millenial. And we have posters who I consider knowledgeable and intelligent wailing away on boomers. smdh.
I think boomer bashing is as off target and unproductive as millenial scolding. The negative things you describe in your post are outcomes of class warfare. The average boomer has voted for horrible politicians that instituted bad policies. So, have all of us. Those are the options on the ballot.
Let’s take 2016 as an example. ~45% of voters aged 50+ voted for Clinton, not Trump. I’m not saying that voting blue automatically makes you a good person, but why would we mock and attack all of those boomers? Meanwhile one of the highest correlations of voting for Trump(62%) is being a white male. Funny that the posters ITF who are most adamant about bashing boomers happen to be part of an even worse cohort. Yet, they aren’t deriding all white males with that same fervor. I would disagree with bashing all white males though, for the same reason that I’m against bashing all boomers.
Voting stats link.
wealth by demographic group link.
Don’t take boomer hate personally. Your mom sounds awesome. Her generation has elected and empowered monsters.
I’m not taking it personally. I’m just smdh at how off target it is. And attempting to change minds in order that we aim our vitriol at the actual people with power.
White boomer males clearly WOAT.
Glad to hear George is doing well that transition is rough you spend your whole life trying to be president and you have millions of fans and one day poof it’s all over and gone. I’ve heard something like 80% of presidents go broke within 5 years of leaving the White House.