Boomered

You all know about Ok Boomer, in which Millennials, Gen-Z and now Gen-X join forces to combat Baby Boomerism. What is Baby Boomerism? Baby Boomerism is the Baby Boomer belief that life, the universe, and everything is about Baby Boomers, their wants, their needs. 

Not quite understanding generational delineations, last night our oldest called us 'boomer'. We replied, 'Don't...call me Boomer,' and added,  'I hate Boomers.' Our oldest asked us why. We told her why.

Think we're too tough on Boomers? We give you the Boomer Buggy.

Only a goddamn Baby Boomer would expect someone to design a mini-car for them. Only a goddamn Baby Boomer would think they have the right to drive the !@#$ thing on the sidewalk. 'Stand aside! Here comes a Boomer!'

By the many arms of Vishnu, if I see one of those things coming toward me I'll tip the goddamn thing over.

Gen-X to Millennials: I'm Sorry

Sometimes I wonder if Generation X has let down the Millennials.

Let me explain.

The Millennials are in a rather interesting position generationally speaking, in that they are the Baby Boomers' second wave of kids.

Generation X are the Boomers' first wave of kids, that makes us the Millennials' big brothers.

So on behalf of big brother Generation X, let me apologize to little brother Millennial.

Look, mom and dad got divorced when we were eight. Dad left mom with us and a big house to keep up. Mom went to work and we were something of a latchkey kid. Childhood really was different back then, little brother. We went outside till the lights came on or the moon came out. No one really cared what we did.

We didn't really see Dad much, he was off exploring himself and marrying your mom. Back then she was a young, aggressive go-getter at dad's office.

By the time you showed up, Millennials, we were a teenager. As you know you and I were never really that close, I mean how often did we really see each other, like once a month maybe? And by the time you could have used a big brother we were getting our own start in life. Our own mom confessed to being glad we were out of the house and Dad, well, he had a lot of regrets about not being there for us. 

To be honest, and I'm not really sure if I should tell you this, you were Dad's idea, your mom wasn't really that into having kids, but Dad insisted. Later when you came along, your mom felt guilty about that and all the effort she used to put into her career she put into you.

So Dad and your mom smothered you, helicoptered you. By then we were in our 20s. We saw how every second of your day was planned, from soccer, to piano lessons to playdates. We had playdates, little brother, it was called going outside and finding your friends. Once or twice we said something to Dad about it, pointing out how much fun we had out in the street or in the woods,  even with the scrapes, bruises and broken bones. We should have been more forceful, but were never sure if it was our place. To be honest, your mom always resented us. She felt the money dad paid on our college should have been spent on you.

We could have been a comfort to you, little brother. When Dad belittled you, criticized you, slammed you for not trying to be like him, for having your own culture -tv shows, music, god the music, we could have put an arm around you and said, 'Don't worry, he did the same thing to us.'

By the time you could have used a big brother we had a life of our own, mortgages, kids, careers, the whole bag.

We could have shown you some old TV shows, some old tunes; not in the condescending Boomer 'this is real music' kind of way either. Rather, 'Hey you like Taylor Swift? Have you ever listened to Shania Twain?' I guess there's a hundred things like that but I'll spare you a full reckoning.

Instead let me just say to you, little brother Millennial, Generation-X is here for you now.

80's Guide for Millennials

Talking to a Millennial friend last week, he remarked how envious he was of Gen-X's 80s childhood.

It's all true, Millennials. We did what we wanted and stayed out till the lights came on.

Summer times we were outside till 10, bikes, kickball, and then flashlight tag.

The 80's were oddly pessimistic, though, and it took a while for Reagan's  Morning in America to set in. 

There was always talk of losing the peace to Japan and of course, nuclear war.

Anyway, for those interested, here's a pretty good representation of what the 80's felt like, at least from a Network News stand point.

So what do we see in this video?

Ethiopia (ah, We are the World)

Homelessness (that was a big one)

South Africa (everyone loved Tutu and Mandela)

Econ distress (closing factories and farms)

Vietnam (still an open scar in 1985)

Assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK, also still an open scar) 

Polish Solidarity (Lech Walesa was always in the news)

Korean protests (also always in the news)

Lebanon and terrorism (Beirut, hostages, high-jackings)

Would the last Balding Boomer just Die Already?

This SNL skit is brilliant, funny, and absolutely spot on:

It's Millennials vs Boomers with the Gen-X host as ref, 'I'm Gen-X. I just sit back and watch the world burn.'

SNL really nailed the Boomer caricatures; the generation that refuses to die.* The Generation that is entitled to everything it wants and hates everyone and everything that is not Baby Boomer. 'Wow, now this is music!'

Don't feel too bad Millennials. They hated us too.

What's interesting is the Millennial parenting trope is a Baby Boomer. Surely some of them were born to 70's era kids, and even Gen-X. But it's the Boomer that matters.

Millennials youth came at a bad time, the 2000s and 2000-teens. War, recession, etc...

God, the 80's were a great time to grow up.

*[Ummmm-Ed] Yeah I know.

There will be no Blue Wave

In the Autumn of 1992 we were a college Freshman at Wesley College and very excited about the upcoming election. We were a Conservative Democrat back then and enthusiastically supported Clinton/Gore. No, we don't regret doing so. It was just time.

To gin up interest in the campaign among the otherwise apathetic student body, Wesley's  administration put up cloth banners upon which one could write campaign slogans. Our dorm RA, a 21 year old senior presumed to be wise wrote, 'When you grow up, you'll vote Republican'.

We took great offense at the RA saying Dems were immature, but that's not really what she meant, was it? We know now, and we bet so does the reader.

As one grows older, one's priorities change. With mortgages, children, careers, sound fiscal policy seems like a pretty good idea. Libertinism, well, on the other side of 30 it gets increasingly hard to stay up past 11.

Well low and behold Millennials are getting older and making the transformation. Reuters tells us that:

Enthusiasm for the Democratic Party is waning among millennials as its candidates head into the crucial midterm congressional elections, according to the Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll.

The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.

One should keep in mind that the only other presidents this generation remembers are W and Barry. They've never seen political success or an economy like this.

We've always known that the 'Emerging Democratic Majority' prognostication was fatally flawed. It assumed stasis, Young people become middle aged, and the youth of Aquarius delivered a landslide for Ronald Reagan. 

We have long argued that most of the problems with Millennials are due to youth and will straighten themselves out. There's nothing like a mortgage to focus one's mind.  We wonder if there's data out there showing Millennials switching from posting SJW memes to pics of the kids for grandma and grandpa to see. 

As Millennials grow up, they become Republican. It's called gravity people.

There will be no Blue Wave.

It was 73 Years Ago

Supreme Dark Lord Vox Day, as he often does, makes a great point about Holocaust remembrance:

If I were a Jew, I wouldn't worry about the events of 73 years ago. Instead, I'd worry about the fact that, based on the historical pattern, the West is considerably closer to the next pogrom than the previous one. Given the way in which Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly called on the diasporans to return to Israel and the Learned Elders of Wye have been discussing when to jump ship for over a decade, I am confident that I am far from the only one who recognizes the pattern.

Vox Day was actually talking about a survey of Millennials that showed 22% of them have never heard of the Holocaust.

He's quite right.

When the frauds at the SPLC and the shysters at the ADL talk about dramatic spikes in judenhaus in America and Europe they're neglecting to mention this spike is entirely due to Muslim immigration, especially in Germany, and France, and Sweden...

Let's quote Vox Day again, 'If I were a Jew, I wouldn't worry about the events of 73 years ago...' I am a Jew and I'm not worried about the events of 73 years ago or the last hundred of so Nazi wannabes that marched in Charlotte last year.

Remember, the British Labour Party is led by a Jew-hating Trotskyite. The party faithful knew this about Corbyn and selected him anyway. Which is far more troubling than anything Millennials don't remember.

Wither Millennials?

Via Market Watch a report that not all Millennials are a bunch of immature snowflakes:

Just over 35% of people ages 18 to 35 own a home, according to data from the Census Bureau, compared to nearly four in 10 who did just six years ago. That’s a big reason the home ownership rate for all ages hit its lowest level since 1965 last year, and has only ticked up slightly since. 

But in four cities in America, the majority of millennials are bucking that trend, according to a study released Tuesday by financial firm SmartAsset. Using Census Bureau data, the firm looked at home ownership rates in households headed by someone under 35 in the 200 largest cities in America. 

The 4 cities where more than half of millennials own a home
1. Elk Grove, Calif. 61%
2. Gilbert, Ariz. 57%
3. Frisco, Texas 55%
4. Port St. Lucie, Fla. 54%

Of course, Mrs. Stroock and I didn't own a home until 2005.

Anyhoo, we have argued here before that the snowflake phenomenon is concentrated in the elite Millennials like these people:

I was fired from my internship for writing a proposal for a more flexible dress code...

Do read the whole thing, but basically this girl was an intern who'd never held a job before and thought she could get all the other Millennial interns together to force a dress-code change. When you think you should go to college for $50,000 a year, you think you should change a corporation's dress code.

Of course, we once got fired from an internship, but that was for general stupidity, sloth, lethargy and Gen-X slackerdom.

Back in our professorial days, our Millennials were mostly middle-class kids, many were coming to class from jobs, many were at our community college to save money. None of them seemed entitled. They were nice kids and we liked them.

Don't get us wrong, we can think of all kinds of reasons why Millennials suck. But that's just because we're middle aged and they're young. These whippersnappers...

Noah Rothman's Generation Unready

Over at Commentary, Noah Rothman talks about coming of age as a Millennial:

Perhaps most troubling, the next generation is generally unacquainted with great power politics and the zero-sum game that has typified adversarial dynamics and alliance structures since the Peloponnesian Wars. This would be a happy tale of societal evolution if it were a permanent figure of human existence, but it probably isn’t. Prohibitive American hegemony ain’t what it used to be. We saw the old ways reassert themselves in microcosm in the Middle East amid the Obama administration’s effort to extricate the United States from this thorny region. Amid Iran’s resurgence, alliances shifted as part of a predictable balancing act. Remarkably, the Sunni states have found common cause with Israel. Egypt and the U.A.E. are projecting power outside their borders with little concern for American objections. The United States is actively deterring its “ally” Turkey from securing a buffer zone through military deployments in Syria.

Of course totalitarian dictators were the fundamental fact of the 20th century. They even became celebrities in a way. One could buy 'Khaddafy Duck' and 'Ayatollah-Assahola' shirts, we did.

Back in our old professorial days we taught the kids all about the Cold War, even going so far as to explain MAD and nuclear weapons. We liked to open with this scene.

Of course the Cold War meant stasis. The dictators were always there. So were the grand armies and navies and of course the nuclear weapons. Every child on both sides feared nuclear war. We always debated whether or not it was better to live inside or outside the zone of destruction. On a clear day from our town one could see down the Hudson into NYC.

Even our cartoons had a sense of impending doom. The Smurfs were always watching out for Gargamel after all and GI battles Cobra.

But in our youth we never had anything like the shock of 9/11. We would think that alone would scare strait a Millennial raised on Barney and the Teletubies.

WTF 2000's

By 2000's I mean Millennials.

Look, folks, I've defended them in this space before, and I still maintain that most of the bad press they're getting; 1-only applies to the hyper-educated elite, and 2-is coming from Balding Boomers pissed off that they're old.

That said, when I read this I thought it was a joke:

I don’t know how to do a lot of basic shit. I can only barely use a cordless power drill, and most baked goods I attempt come out with a texture somewhere between sand and the compressed wood chip material inside an IKEA end table. I still struggle with understanding a lot of financial concepts, and the minor repairs I’ve made on tears in my clothing end up looking like an offensive hobo Halloween costume. I’ve literally missed out on packages I was excited about being delivered because I was too lazy to go to the post office in another borough. I’m bad at a lot of stuff, and a lot of basic elements of being a ~functional adult~ still escape me, and I know that.

I should note for record that author Chelsea Fagan is cute enough.

[Now why does that matter?-Ed]. What you have some other criteria for how I should judge women?

Like I said, I thought it was a joke, some kind of performance art. Then I saw this:

Get your car's oil changed? That's adulting. Cook dinner instead of order takeout? That's adulting.

And now a new school in Maine, called the Adulting School, is dedicated to teaching skills like these to fledgling adults so they can become successful grown-ups.

I first read that and thought, 'Well I don't do any work on my car and....' then I read it closer. They're not teaching these dolts how to change their oil, they're teaching them how to pay someone to change their oil.

One day I'll write about what I was like in the 90's and how I transformed [did you just come out -Ed] Shut the fuck up, Ed,...how I transformed in the 2000's and became the man who is writing this blog post. I've always been pretty tough on the 1995-2000 Will. He was a pretty shiftless young man, lazy, unmotivated. Mostly he was a college dropout and was just confused as all hell.

For quick reference I was more or less the Seth Rogan character in the masterpiece, The 40 Year Old Virgin [Masterpiece? Seriously? -Ed] and Knocked Up.

Reading these articles gives me great pause. I may have been an idiot pool lifeguard in 1997 ($6:15 an hour), but I paid my bills. I could change a tire. I replaced the batteries in my smoke alarm. I may have eaten crap for dinner every night but at least I made it myself...etc. etc.

Perhaps I'm too rough on young Will?

Anyway, my advice to Chelsea [Did she ask you, motherfucker? -Ed] is to stop regarding Amy Schummer and Sarah Silverman as role models (you're Irish for the love of god), ask your mom for a few simple recipes, and never, ever sleep past 7 AM, even on the weekends.

You got a lot going for you, young lady. Smart, pretty [there you go again -Ed], yeah, because women hate being told they're pretty...let's make this happen.

Generation This

Almost every word in this article about Generation X is true:

Headline:

In the war between millennials and baby boomers we have forgotten about the work-hard, play-hard Generation X

Generation X has the benefit of possessing the best characteristics of both – with none of the downsides

And then:

The boomers don’t like the millennials because they think the younger generation are feckless, whiny snowflakes who are scared of hard graft and obsessed by status, more interested in posting a selfie to social media than doing anything useful.

The millennials, on the other hand, see the boomers as a rapacious generation that’s pretty much ruined everything for them.

This is so true:

Generation X was breast-fed punk and invented indie, and grunge, and techno, and any bloody musical genre of worth that you care to name. We transformed the Eighties and we owned the Nineties. We had alcopops and ecstasy and we were fearless and stupid and happy, but we still got up for work on Monday morning, no matter how bad we felt.

This is even so truer:

Boomers live in the past and have ransomed the future. Millennials fear the future and are ignorant of the past.

This is the truest thing of all:

Boomers were old by the time they were 40; millennials have yet to hit that milestone. Generation X is pushing back the envelope of old age, through attitude and health, like never before.

God were Boomers ever old and hopelessly out of touch.

By the mid-80's the Balding Boomers were a bunch of burnt-out, middle-aged complainers who were coming to the realization that they'd just wasted the last 15 years. Their teen and college years were peace and love, but their twenties and early thirties were polyester and disco and those were the last important cultural things the Boomers did. Starsky and Hutch, there's a legacy for you.

The Boomers were already bald, with bags under their eyes and pot bellies billowing over their belts. They were actually aging worse than their parents who never obsessed about staying young or growing old. I guess after seeing your buddies' face turned into mush by a Jap MG, losing one's hair doesn't seem like such a big deal. When your greatest event is Woodstock, well you can never leave, can you? As the waistline expanded and the hair came out the Balding Boomers started living in the past, as the article's author says, and couldn't shut the hell up about it. For all the talk of youth and the age of Aquarius, they could never break out of it. I mean, these people looked at MTV and just didn't get it.

Now in its 40s and pushing 50, Generation X has managed to maintain some youthful exuberance without looking like idiots trying to stay cool and relevant to the kids, man. I myself usually walk around in a T-shirt and jeans, but when teaching it was usually jacket and tie I adorned. As far as their music goes, its for them, not me. Your typical Generation Xer will take out the 80's a have a look but doesn't feel compelled to live there. Be sixteen or even 21 again? No thank you.

You can almost hear the Balding Boomers, can't you? 'But...but...the war, man....Kennedy, man. You weren't there, man.'

Generation Xers faced the same things Balding Boomers faced.

Lets see...

President Shot...                          ✓                

Threat of nuclear annihilation... ✓
Social discord...                          ✓
The man vs your music...           ✓
Sexual revolution...                    ✓
War...                                          ✓

You get the idea. The difference is we moved on, Balding Boomer. Metal was awesome and I still like an AC/DC concert now and again. Grunge was cool. Some like the Nu Metal, and others techno. But I gotta tell you, there's a big project due at the end of the week and I don't have time for this.

As far as the kids today, I'm not interested in taking swings at the Millennials. As noted before I think most criticisms apply only to the elites. Besides, they're still coming on, and taking a swing feels like punching down. And if they are ignorant of the past, it isn't really their fault, is it? After all, the Balding Boomers always told us how awful we were.

We know better.

My Sweet Summer Millennial

On Friday we took the Stroocklettes to Mrs. Stroock's company Christmas extravaganza. There was breakfast in which your author got himself a steaming cardboard plate of sausage and bacon [aren't you Jewish-ed], shut the fuck up, ed. [yes, sir-Ed], clowns, balloons, face painting, Santa, etc etc.

This being a northern New Jersey big-pharma company there was a long line of Indian kids waiting to get their pic with Santa and I thought, 'Hey, you're Hindu!' [again, aren't you Jewish-Ed] I said shut the fuck up, Ed. Itwas a lot of fun actually.

Interestingly, I saw these three Millennials. They were right out of central casting. Mid 20's. The girl was cute enough, red jeans, boots, white sweater. She was being followed/stalked by two young men. One was tall and lanky in the Millennial style with brown pants, a polo shirt and a light weight hooded jacket and scraggly beard. The other was of average height, dumpy, glasses, a not-a-beard face unshaven for perhaps two weeks, white and blue checkered shirt with jeans and a big belt.

Like I said, this trio was right out of central casting. If I were this pretty enough young woman, I wouldn't want to be sleeping next to either one of these guys if I thought someone was breaking into the house. Do a quick Google search for 'Pajama Boy'. There you go. That's what I was looking at.

Today the Electoral College meets and finalizes everything. We'll get an Alpha Male back in the White House.

He can't get there fast enough.