I think the brutality of World War II mind fucked the subsequent generations into being tolerant to the point of near extermination.
The GI generation really wasn't that tolerant. They were to a degree- but your issue is more the boomers and gen Xers. I hate to always reference Chris Chan, but this is his site and the people youre talking about are the equivalent of Bob. They wern't ultra racist, but they
did not tolerate 90% of the general nonsense you see today- and it actually worked. I think things started to go more downhill after the 70s, when the boomers really took over and after the boomers moved on from their 60s teenage and early 20s flower power time to actually become the prominent adult demographic. You could see some of the tug of war in the mid 60s, but by the start of the 70s, demographics dictated that the GI generation had lost out.
I would say that it was actually the boomers got mind fucked by unprecedented prosperity, and thought it would always be this way. They still champion real estate rising astronomically, and are deluded enough to think that, even if youre left out of the rise in property prices- you can still pull yourself up by your bootstraps. They also had the indignity to rebel against the greatest generation, and
not plan for a good future for their kids- assuming that regardless of what they did, things would be fine.
Super, entitled. Things might be kind of fine if it was just that- but Id also mention:
Gen Xers- aka Trudeau, Freeland, etc,
who are on the tail end and took this mentality, but amplified it and added in
the current day culture war issues. To be sure, they existed in the 80s, the 90s, and so forth, but you at least had some remnants of the greatest generation holding on, some of the institutions were still good, and it probably took 10-20 years for our prosperity to really die out after the boomers became the prominent force in politics. Now the boomers are becoming less powerful, and youre seeing the Gen Xers really taking the reigns.
If you have a culture war issue, it was championed by a Gen Xer. Half the 'punk' bands, Green day for example, are Gen Xers. Of course, the boomers were gracious enough to listen to the Gen Xers, as long as it didnt interfere with their mortgage, right?
Millineals, if I had to guess, are a mixed bag on cultural issues, but my hope is that well be like the 'greatest generation' and find a way to fix things. Maybe not, Im not going to get into too much detail here specifically either way, as Im bad at analyzing my own generation. I think if there is one thing which may have an effect, its the 2007-08 crash, another crash around covid, and now another potential recession (all once in a lifetime, right?) that may have as much of a psychological effect on us as the world wars had on the GIs.
Maybe the same way the world wars mind fucked the GIs into actually trying to contain conflicts, being reluctant to engage in world wars, and taking international conflict more seriously (note, they didnt avoid it
entirely, but they did tend to avoid many of the mistakes that destroyed entire generations of men. You could even look at how Bush Sr handled the dissolution of the USSR and how a potential war was avoided there, but Id digress).
I think in some sense, and perhaps this is why socialism is popular amongst millennials- our generation, if in power, is going to take economic issues a lot more seriously, and its really going to be forever entrenched in our mind that recessions and depressions are bad, we need to do whatever we can to avoid them, and should try to ensure, left or right, that people can at least get jobs.
Its partially why the anti-cooley sentiment against the Indians may be catching steam. People want jobs, they dont want to be replaced by scabs and they don't want to see economic recession. Left or right, the reasoning may differ, but this seems to be pretty common for this generation, as far as I can see.
From the Americans, far more are in favour of tariffs, if they bring back American jobs, for example (the on and off again tariffs, and exceptions for the auto industry, however- will not accomplish this and are seen as largely universally stupid). People may be willing to take economic safety
above enriching the rich and young people having no future except amazon or winning it lucky and getting a tech job.
Seriously, thousands of people competing for the same white collar job, and 1/10 people actually getting in is more a
casino than a successful economy, and its showing.
Will we put cultural issues above
that as a generation, however? I think were gaslit enough by the Gen Xers and Green Day politics to do so, so Im a bit bummed by that. But I do see
potential for something to change generationally. If there will be much left to inherit afterwards though, thats another issue.