- Joined
- Apr 12, 2022
Boomers got to grow up in the greatest period of economic growth and stability ever experienced by any group of humans anywhere at any time. They got to either waste their youth doing drugs and having wild sex or genuinely try and change the world in the greatest period of social change ever seen. By the time they woke up and smelled the nightmare, Reagan and his coalition of Neolibs, batshit insane religious demagogues (that jesus would have done much more than whip if he came back circa 1985), and business magnates promised another period of easy economic growth, that they could slot right into without any trouble and "get theirs." All they had to do was hand over control of society, the economy, their home life, and the environment to the big money men. Why, these big money men make so much money, and the government has so obviously ruined everything, why don't we just let the big money men run it all? Let them make the policy, let them vote with their wallet, it's only fair, they earned that blood money fair and square.
They transitioned from hippie to yuppie, and began raising a generation of latchkey kids, who actively watched their parents become "lame" and "sell out." These kids grew up to either bury themselves in consumerist nostalgia because their parents straight up failed at preparing them for adulthood, or they grew up conscious enough to hate their parents and either become euphoric atheists or the exact sort of strawman lefty college student that their parents feared and hated.
These kids, Gen X, even more consistently failed to parent their children, and at this point, we all know what millennials are like. The early ones bathed themselves in reality television and 2000s consumerism. The late ones saw the brick wall coming, and realizing the wealth their grandparents stole and their parents failed to steal back was not going to trickle down to them as was promised, became the most bitter and disenfranchised generation in American history.
So now the consequences of the 80s are rearing their ugly heads. Policies repealed in an effort to loosen the economy are now proving their worth posthumously, with banking corporations taking not even 30 years to repeat nearly the exact same mistakes that led to the great depression. The American economy survived, but not with surgery and physical therapy. No, the doctors gave it a double shot of adrenaline, a hit of morphine, and sold America on the lie that this was a fix. The economy limped along, visibly wounded, never truly recovered. The culture too, has been broken. Hard work is no longer a virtue, it is an expectation, and not with the idea that you are sacrificing your comfort for the benefit of your dependents or posterity. It is expected so that maybe you too can get a piece of the pie, fuck everyone else. Fuck having a family, it'll only slow you down. Kids can be put in daycare, hell there's a good chance the company you work for has one right in the building. Fuck leaving something for your kids, you got yours, and they'll have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps anyway.
And so now, with the ugliest cocktail of circumstance ever devised in living memory, we come upon Gen Z. The jury is still out, but judging by the fact that the last 3 generations have been all unique brands of horrible, it's not looking good. Maybe the resource wars will knock enough sense into us to save something resembling a society, but I doubt it. God help Gen Z, inheritors of a broken culture, a dying economy, and no one to look up to. The millenials are too self absorbed to care about anything, Gen X failed to rebel against their parents in any way that mattered, and the Boomers stole any generational wealth that might have survived to the Zoomers, and they're not even dead yet.
They transitioned from hippie to yuppie, and began raising a generation of latchkey kids, who actively watched their parents become "lame" and "sell out." These kids grew up to either bury themselves in consumerist nostalgia because their parents straight up failed at preparing them for adulthood, or they grew up conscious enough to hate their parents and either become euphoric atheists or the exact sort of strawman lefty college student that their parents feared and hated.
These kids, Gen X, even more consistently failed to parent their children, and at this point, we all know what millennials are like. The early ones bathed themselves in reality television and 2000s consumerism. The late ones saw the brick wall coming, and realizing the wealth their grandparents stole and their parents failed to steal back was not going to trickle down to them as was promised, became the most bitter and disenfranchised generation in American history.
So now the consequences of the 80s are rearing their ugly heads. Policies repealed in an effort to loosen the economy are now proving their worth posthumously, with banking corporations taking not even 30 years to repeat nearly the exact same mistakes that led to the great depression. The American economy survived, but not with surgery and physical therapy. No, the doctors gave it a double shot of adrenaline, a hit of morphine, and sold America on the lie that this was a fix. The economy limped along, visibly wounded, never truly recovered. The culture too, has been broken. Hard work is no longer a virtue, it is an expectation, and not with the idea that you are sacrificing your comfort for the benefit of your dependents or posterity. It is expected so that maybe you too can get a piece of the pie, fuck everyone else. Fuck having a family, it'll only slow you down. Kids can be put in daycare, hell there's a good chance the company you work for has one right in the building. Fuck leaving something for your kids, you got yours, and they'll have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps anyway.
And so now, with the ugliest cocktail of circumstance ever devised in living memory, we come upon Gen Z. The jury is still out, but judging by the fact that the last 3 generations have been all unique brands of horrible, it's not looking good. Maybe the resource wars will knock enough sense into us to save something resembling a society, but I doubt it. God help Gen Z, inheritors of a broken culture, a dying economy, and no one to look up to. The millenials are too self absorbed to care about anything, Gen X failed to rebel against their parents in any way that mattered, and the Boomers stole any generational wealth that might have survived to the Zoomers, and they're not even dead yet.
