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Gen X is in charge now, and boomers are being shown the door
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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As a member of Generation X, I would say that it's not going to be much better.
Just look at, say, Elon Musk as an example of the kind of people from my generation who get to positions of influence.
Most GenX are the product of the Neoliberal era, so have interiorized the whole "lookout for numero uno" idea of how to be in society and whilst commonly aware of things like Climate Change, they're usually unwilling to inconvenience themselves for the sake of fighting against it, quite the contrary even (just look at how well SUVs sell), and similarly when it comes to Consumerism, they seem to be the most prone to wasteful consumption (the kind of people who replace their mobile phones every year or two).
In summary, Gen X generally are more well informed than Boomers but even less principled than them.
Gen X here, too.
DeSantis is younger than me.
That's all I'm going to say. Gooooooooooo Millennials and Gen Z. PLEASE.
I was born right on the border of Millennial and Gen X. Tory leader Rishi Sunak was younger than me.
Generation really doesn't matter. Greedy cunts rise to the top and always will.
Today's horrible influencers are tomorrows horrible leaders.
Once they hit our age they're be equally shit. The only thing that makes us endearing is that we are a forgotten generation for the most part. No power. No numbers. But fuck me have we got influence.
It's almost like these generational names aren't a monolith and have been divided up arbitrarily!
You could just as well replace these names of the generations with the astrological signs of the zodiac, that would be just as meaningful. It's bullshit.
I'm from the grashopper generation.
Honestly, given the money Gen X has, Gen Z would mostly probably do the same.
While some of our actions can be directed by principle, mostly it's just shrinking income.
I wish we could raise wages AND use them to embrace Buy It For Life items, all while subsidizing public transportation etc etc.
But now it's lack of money that holds Gen Z back, not principles, in my opinion.
Gen z understands that the rich are the cause of their poverty, not immigrants or libs or other poor people. That's a big step in directing action in the right direction.
Fair, though I wonder how much of it is real change and how much is our information bubble. Hopefully mostly the former, but I absolutely do hear all those "fuck immigrants" and "I'm to blame, I just gotta work harder" attitudes around.
Yeah... I guess it's more like, millennials were the first generation to have a majority get it, and Gen z is even better about getting it... But it's still not 100%
Probably a product more of age than of generational specificity.
You get used to your comforts, you probably have investments, you’re consumed by trying to get ahead enough so that you don’t have to die at your job, just in a nursing home what takes all of your money.
Gen X myself, and maybe an outlier, but I’ve probably become more radical as I’ve aged rather than the other way around. I’ve been stuck being poor for decades before finally “making it”, and that has really driven home the awareness of how fragile it all is. That, and just general omnivorous reading that includes a lot of depressing scientific literature regarding climate change. It’s terrifying.
I vote for the left (I would have happily voted for Sanders), support local measures and politicians that lean towards social policy and move towards things like green power, etc.
So yeah…not necessarily a thing you can just pin on a generation, though each generation will have some stronger proclivities than others in certain areas. The millennials will have to watch out, they’re next to fall for circling the wagons to protect whatever they might have, hate on their gen’s billion- or trillionaires.
We won't be next because no one will be. Prove me wrong. Good fucking luck. You won't acknowledge what must be done.
I was born in the 1990s and teenage me thought that the future would be awesome because people like me would be in power.
By now, people my age and younger have reported back, become politicians, celebrities, journalists or otherwise people with more power than me, and said "nah, we are pretty much the same as our parents were, some of us are awesome and some horrible".
The type of people who seek power probably won't change generation to generation... But the voters are changing rapidly as boomers die and millennials/zoomers replace them (far more progressive overall)... The voters will force the change, not the small percent that seek their own glory (ie the list you have there)
Millennials will become the largest voting bloc, and Gen Z tends to follow their lead. I predict the next decade is going to see some massive changes in governments.
The movement we see in the right, the coalition of ultra capitalists, nationalists, and evangelicals is the death throes of the GOP as we know it if they're not successful in seizing power in the way they're trying right now.
This. I was born in the 50s and we thought the same thing in our teen years with the same outcome.
Elon's an Afrikkkaner fratbro social media junky with $200B to his name. That's just not the lived experience of most Americans.
They're nostalgic for the 90s, because it was a time of relative abundance. They're not all Chicago Economics School trade globalists with a hard on for abolishing the minimum wage and privatizing social security, because none of them stand to benefit from any of that shit.
You've got a selection bias. The GenXers who fought the fiercest got crushed the hardest. Prisons are choke full of social revolutionaries who got swept up in the 90s/00s Law and Order era. Hospital wards are full of GenXers pumped full of opioids to treat work-injuries and heavy metal poisoning. Morgues are full of GenXers who died in the service sector job filling lunch orders during COVID or were wiped out in the AIDS epidemic before it was treatable.
Losing doesn't mean you weren't fighting. It just means you were outnumbered, outspent, and outmaneuvered. For every Kamala Harris or Ron DeSantis who climbed up through the bowels of the system to live in its head, there are thousands who got crushed under its feet.
The folks you're seeing are simply the ones that made themselves useful to the ruling class. One thing the GenX crowd was right about - the Revolution wasn't televised. It was a war fought and lost in the back alleys and the boiler rooms and the darkest cells of solitary confinement. If the GenX capitalist class is looking extra cynical, that may be thanks to all of their relatives and neighbors they had to stack up like cordwood to reach these heights.
Whilst I did not live in the US, I did live in 4 countries in Europe (having got involved in politics in 2 of them) and from what I've seen those GenXers who fought for a better World are not the majority, not even close.
As somebody in that cohort and hence having moved along with it over the years through school and work, the general impression I got over time is one of political apathy and consumerist self indulgence.
(Certainly I was generally the odd one out in having strong political beliefs and it's funny that even now in the political party I'm involved in, in my local area only a handful of active members are from my generation, whilst most are from the older generation and the second largest group are from the younger generation)
It really wasn't much of a fighting generation to begin with back at their teenage and young adult years (just compare it to the much more recent Climate movements of the young) and there was a lot of apathy towards the ones amongst them who were (the pinnacle in the US was maybe Occupy Wall Street, which was violently suppressed by Obama - the very same who did the shoving of trillions towards Finance in the first place - and notice how still today so many of my generation think he was a great President).
I agree with you on the outmanouvered point, though that was a lot easier to do because the will was there for a few, not for the many, so when the few got suppressed the many wouldn't lift a finger and often even agreed that those "making waves" should be stopped.