It’s Not Supposed To Be Like This

Whippersnapper: Noun: A young and inexperienced person considered to be presumptuous or overconfident.

Pull up a stool, my young friend. I’m four snifters into the evening and we need to have a chat. 

I’m worried about your dark outlook, not that there isn’t reason to be concerned, there is. But, all of this you see today? It’s not supposed to be like this. Mistakes were made. But a correction is coming and we are going to need you. By “we,” I mean the Gen Xers, which gets to the bone I need to pick with you.

I’ll cut straight to the chase – it would do you well to be aware that the smugness and the unearned claims to wisdom and insight into the ways of the world your generation so confidently throws around are really not being taken seriously by those still in charge of things. It’s just the way it is. We’re all whippersnappers until we aren’t. You’ll have your chance in a few decades. And yes, it really is going to take that long before it’s your turn. Your generation is going to be late middle-aged before you get to keep the keys. 

What constitutes a generation you ask? Well, biologically it’s the time it takes for children to be born, grow up and have children of their own. But what really determines our sense of what a generation is has to do with those few years when people come of age and have shared cultural experiences with their peers. The music, art, big events, shifts in morals, great men of the day, etc. all of these things taking place during that narrow window of time transitioning from child to adult, these are the things that imprint on the young person and forever frame their outlook and taste. 

In The Long Shadow of The Boomer

The age of Boomer power (those born 1946-1964) will still be felt for more than a decade. I know plenty of 75 year-olds still fit and engaged with both time and money to spend on causes, as well as, grand kids. The younger Boomers have plenty of fuel left in the tank. Jeff Bezos and Kamala Harris were born in 1964. These people will be around for a long time. 

Next in line is going to be the older Gen Xers (1965-1980). The bad news is they are far more similar to the Boomers than their younger cohort peers born in the 1970s, so expect the Boomer ethos and the status quo to persist years after the Boomers are truly retired and gone. It’s guys like Elon Musk (1971) who are a better indicator of what Gen X has in store. 

After that? Millennials are not looking so good, to be honest. It might not be fair to throw Logan Paul (1995) and Kim Kardashian (1980) in your face, but it is what it is.  

But I digress and want to get back to the point of this fraternal correction. On behalf of the Gen Xers who are next in line, I ask that you have a little more trust in what we’re up to and where we are coming from. We don’t relate as a cohort to the Boomers and have little patience for the general Millennial ethos, with notable exceptions of course. 

We want what you want. My young Gen Z friend, Gen Xers are your natural allies.

You Were Robbed

You need to know that the younger Millennials and all of you in Gen Z were robbed of experiencing the last gasp of full frontal America, F@# Yeah! bravado, swagger, and, dare I say, innocence, before things went into Boomer-charged turbo decline. For that, I’m sorry for you. Really. You missed a pretty amazing moment in the Empire. And no matter how many reruns of That ’80s Show you watch, or how big your vinyl collection gets, or how many 3 /4 sleeve length retro concert tees you buy on eBay, it won’t allow you to share in that experience any more than I can pretend I knew what Woodstock was like. 

When Gen X was coming of age, we half-heartedly raged against The Man, but didn’t really have a beef with him. My heart would beat strong when I’d see the flag, college actually was a smart next step, jobs were competitive but available, the real thought of being nuked was in the rearview mirror with the Cold War we saw end, the races were for the most part politely co-existing, women were not angry, and tattoos were mostly things you saw on felons and sailors. The outlook for a young man was pretty damn good. 

In hindsight, sure, the script was still the script, but I politely need to ask you to suspend your cynicism and not chastise us for not “seeing the truth.” The politics, culture, and the pace itself were more different than you can possibly appreciate. The magnitude of the change was also off the charts. 

Consider One Year: 1990-1991

The Soviet Union collapsed and just stopped being a thing over Christmas break. The Berlin Wall had fallen the year before, no normal person knew the name Clinton, and Operation Desert Storm (Kuwait) seemed like a good idea.  

Jeffery Dahmer was arrested, Rodney King being beaten famous was captured on Sony’s new camcorder, the terrifying Mike Tyson was charged with raping Miss Black America, and Freddy Mercury died. Every bit of these stories were hyper controlled by the three legacy networks, CNN was struggling to be taken seriously (Desert Storm would launch them). Rush Limbaugh was just starting to become influential and Howard Stern commanded just as much attention.   

The Hubble Telescope launched, promising to reveal The Truth! Maybe even find aliens. Cell phones were just beginning to slim down into an elegant brick sized device, Super Nintendo was just released in America (there was no gaming culture), and porn required finding a gas station that sold magazines.

Die Hard 2, Predator 2, Back to the Future 3, Home Alone, Total Recall, and Silence of the Lambs dominated pop culture providing an entire lexicon of one-liners for every-day conversation. 

Like it or not, music changed forever in that year with bands that were underground not only hitting the mainstream, but crossing genres. Metallica (Black Album), Soundgarden (Badmotorfinger), U2 (Achtung Baby), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik), Nirvana (Nevermind), Pearl Jam (Ten), Garth Brooks (Ropin’ the Wind), with plenty more released just that year and that are still in regular rotation today.

Jared Taylor’s first issue of American Renaissance was published, Peter Brimelow was still an editor at Forbes, David Duke lost his gubernatorial race, Storm Front and the League of the South didn’t exist, and Al Sharpton’s grift for that year was the Crown Heights race riots with blacks attacking Jews after a Chabad leader ran over two immigrant kids from Guyana in Brooklyn.

It would be several more years (roughly 1995) before basic dial-up internet was available, let alone common in homes. 

The 1980s and early 1990s were what they were because the tech revolution hadn’t begun. Everything changed after that. The speed at which that change happened was incredibly destabilizing, and for those of us who remember life before then, we’d go back in a heartbeat. Life now is shitty by comparison. 

We Want the Same Things

I repeat, life is not supposed to be like this. It truly was better when we were your age. Gen X is the generation that remembers what it was like as young people and a great many of us would like to greatly reset the whole show. And from what I see of you twenty somethings, a great many of you want the same thing: a simpler life with less diversity, less complexity, less decadence, less government, and a lot more hope for the future. 

Here’s some parting advice from someone who “was there” and has had the opportunity to be around real wealth, real poverty, stomach-turning heartache, and unbridled joy: don’t participate in the system that never has cared for you and never will. Ignore it. Learn to be useful and don’t worry about things which you can’t directly control or influence (which turns out to be very little…and other people not at all). 

Find God on a mountain top. Start a family, make dear friends, leave the city, plant a garden, raise a few animals. Take an hour to write down the things you’d die for, tape that list on your refrigerator, then lose your screens and go live your life unmolested.