Gen X message to Baby Boomers and Gen Y'ers.

I really am enjoying the volleyball match between you two. Really. I'm seated here on the bleachers with a huge tub of popcorn, and I'm wondering who will finally win this game. So far, all I see are a few bruised foreheads.

Whether Barack Obama (yeah, youth!) or Hillary Clinton (Hey, it's a lay-deh!) gets the nod, I'm sure you all will find some common ground. Really. I mean, think about what you have in common: One of you is the former generation who thought they could change the world, did, then squandered it all. The other one is the current generation who thinks they can change the world, will, but will squander it all when they get older.

And us Gen X'ers? We're just sitting on the sideline, jaded, cynical, incredibly disaffected by it all. Yeah, we had our little counter-cultural heyday back during the Kurt Cobain years, but otherwise we're pretty much taking a backseat to this entire "thing." Some of us got rich during the 1990's, anyway, so we're sitting back, sipping our imported beer with our two year-olds in tow, waiting this whole thing out.

So I hope you don't mind if I sit and enjoy the game. I'm sure you'll find a common ground again. And if you need a bag of ice or something to soothe your aching heads, just yell, okay?

Yours,

~Writer the Slacker~

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2480875&mesg_id=2480875">Giving Gens X and Y a Bad Name: Or, Waiting for the World to Change

Well, if in this case, I am LITERALLY waiting for the world to change.

... and I have to confess that my younger brother had the Democratic Party zeitgeist pegged better this go-around.

- Dave

EDIT: So far. Experience still counts for something, and I know how to help my candidate more effectively. He's pretty green still. :evilgrin:

with you for your inspection Writer the Slacker.

You darned Baby Boomer.

;)

(I kid! I kid!)

~Writer, the Life's Work Imprimatur~

I am a holy shrine baby boomer with a free money inheritance to bestow on the deserving.... and right now I'm guessing that your generation is going to find that mommy and daddy money dropped in the box of the not for profit enterprises. You know, last good deed and all that.

Lunchlines for poor kids versus Caribbean vacations?

(I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding)

You are likable tho' Writer. Wise up.

They were both born in 1940, wedged between the WW2 and Boomer generations.

I don't intend on inheriting a lot of money from either of them.

And they're pretty jaded, too. :P

there is space between youthful ebullience and a state of being jaded. Called caution, careful, considerate caution. We've learned it and earned it, know it and respect it. I know your life, I've lived it. In every late hour, lost love, final page and new beginning, I've lived it. I'm still living it.

I just don't adore it anymore. Enjoy your youth, its the best love affair you'll ever know.

I was in that midway state in 2004, when at 28 I led the local Clark group and block-walked for Kerry until my feet hurt.

Now I'm just sitting here, glad as hell that the son-of-a-bitch narcissist will leave the White House soon.

Good riddance, asshole, I say.

~Writer the Dudette~

King George is almost out of Air Force I once and for all!!!!!!!!

:toast:

Are you up for a little party planning? I'd paint the Rockies red if it meant I could give Bush a gigantic "fuck you" when he leaves office.

Seriously though, what are we going to do when we don't have the asshole to kick around anymore? And the primary in-fighting...we need to keep reminding people to plan their 'fuck you asshole' parties. We could have best party awards, photos, Youtube videos,

I think I would like to have it in New Orleans...a big, big party in New Orleans. You don't happen to know any useless millionaires looking to fund a sort of total transgender appearing tribute in Lousiana do you? We could have an Air Force I float, a Condi Float, the Cheney float of course, the Laura Bush boring clothing contest,

the list is endless...

I don't know about putting together a float, but I'm sure we could put together one hell of a party.

I love the "Fuck you, Asshole!" party idea. We should set up a website. What day is it - Jan. 23rd?

The primary talk is seeping into my brain.

I have never been to Louisiana but I love the culture, the stories and writers from there are wonderful. Bit hot for my taste.

You seem to have a good following on this board Writer, how about you check in with some of the other bigge posters. Maybe they would have some ideas. How can we possibly ignore the legacy!

Baby boomers were in a drugged up mental coma, thinking rock music and VD would save the universe.

Gen-Y (Britney, Rose Tyler, Paris, and the rest of the whiners who make and grace the headlines are the ones people will emulate)

All we are doing is observing what was, and what - Lord forbid - will become.

Maybe ICBM's? Hand grenades? I dunno.

Where's my beer and my flannel?

Whatever you have to say about "rioting" that is what made California go from red to blue.

My (war baby, also out of the fight) Dad called me at 7 AM to tell me not to go to the Parker Center... Somehow he knew I'd been planning to.

Damn The Man. Always keeping us down.

I don't know if you've seen the movie "Jarhead," but the scene where the cargo plane flies over the privates digging in the burning oil field is a really funny one.

As the plane flew over it played "Break on Through" by The Doors on its PA system.


"That's Vietnam music," says Swofford. "Why can't we have our OWN music?"

I enjoyed the book and the movie.

I protested that bitch--lived outside for the whole war. Came in useful later when I was homeless during the Clinton "boom."

Just because he told me, doesn't mean...

:evilgrin:

"Your National Guard ain't hard
You had to get Rodney on tv to stop me"

-Ice Cube

Others never quite got the Clinton prosperity confetti raining down on us, or at least not enough to last very long. Some of us are still hurting from the way the economy was when we got out of college, during the FIRST Bush regime. We might have started to get a little bit of a leg up in the late 90s, but that rug got yanked out from under us again pretty quick.

We learned to keep our expectations and our overheads low. I don't have any kids or a house or a car, but I actually do like my little 1BR apartment and my two low-paying but mostly enjoyable jobs in the arts/media field, and I have great friends and hobbies that keep me sane.

So I agree, I'm a little bit on the sidelines here. I'm neither a "senior" nor "youth." I'm working, but I'm not a "working family." Nobody's really courting my vote, but nobody's really bothering to dis me either.

(I always thought Nirvana was overrated. I was a bigger Sonic Youth and Swans fan.)

I think we were always distrustful of utopianism. Someone else's utopia is my dystopia, and vice versa. And my generation belives so strongly that power corrupts, few of us ever really wanted it.

Even down to the Sonic Youth/Swans vs. Nirvana reference (Daydream Nation is in my 10 desert island discs) :toast:

I am 38 years old, divorced with no kids, and live alone. I graduated college in 1991, right into the First Bush Recession™

I, too, struggled through the 90s with a series of low-paying service sector jobs for which I was mostly overqualified for. I finally started getting ahead in 1999, after I had spent two years teaching myself a new "trade".

Gen X learned early not to trust the government, or trust big business, trust our parents' dream-- and not to believe what we were told. We were born cynical. And unfortunately, politics has largely proved us right.

There is a big difference between the older X'ers and the younger X'ers. I graduated from college in 1997 when the US was experiencing 3% unemployment. I had a steady job in my industry in two months. My husband had a high paying job before he graduated.

But then we ALL had to deal with the losses of the crash at the end of the Millennium. We barely kept ahead of the layoff cycles from my husband's company until Dec. 2006 (he's a tech geek). Luckily he found a new job in a few months, but we are straddled with a lot of debt.

Let me tell you - I don't think we've EVER trusted the institutions of this country, which is why I think we angled toward working 80 hours a week for start-ups instead of slaving away in the corporate morass. But I think the younger group does, and I think they believe they can somehow "change" the corporate world. I think they believe in the system a bit more than we do.

I can't tell if I should be on the field on in the stands?

=0 I made it to Generation Y , yay!

This Gen X'er is fighting until the bitter bloody end with anybody and everybody it takes to try to save this country...from itself.

You have ENERGY!

Fight the good fight!

(In truth, I've been very active in both 2004 and this year. :))

But I must maintain my Slacker Image! Where's my destructive stash of LSD, booze, and bad Denny's coffee?

Fucking shit up is my specialty, so I must always fuck shit up to keep up my reputation as a good Slacker too.

((sips her beer))

Hey - do you like Funyuns? I can't get enough of 'em. Want some?

((BURP!))

It's nice to have a second course with my :popcorn: sometimes. :P

Sorry.

:(

I mean the cost in Iraqi two-year-olds alone is staggering.

Keep On Slackin' ... Dude.

~Generation Joneser~

---

Born in the last year of Generation X...

Is supporting Obama! I'm sort of sitting and watching... I have to, I'm in the UK! :-)

Pass the popcorn, please. :popcorn:

:donut:

It's difficult but I'm almost there. I might even work myself up to make a donation to someone. :hi:

Waaaaaaaaaay.

:popcorn:

I could not figure out why I have sat back so long in this process. You make perfect sense to me.

:patriot: Class of '88 at your service! ;)

this is just another way of dividing us. stop it.

None of what you wrote describes me or my Gen-X friends.