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Gen X was the first generation to be royally fucked, but they were also whiny defeatist shitheads who insisted voting doesn't matter and chose to allow boomers to continue destroying society.
That's a pretty ignorant assessment. We were apathetic, but we hardly rolled over for the boomers.
GenX did the whole "vote or die" thing. GenX was credited with getting Clinton into office. GenX would have also been the ones to get Gore into office if it wasn't for the Florida fuckery. Imagine how different things would have gone under President Gore.
I still think about this on occasion, what life would be like with the rightfully elected Gore taking office instead of W Bush. The idea that we couldn’t take enough time for FL recounts because the damn corporate media had already called the elections is still infuriating!
As a GenXer, I'm sure you know what Judge Judy says about couldas, wouldas, and shouldas. I understand your frustration, but apathy is rolling over for the boomers and "vote or die" just makes the voter turnout figures worse.
"Chose".... how is being outnumbered at the polls a choice?
Gen X is one of the last generations still slanting to the right as they age. Complain all you want, but in general, gen X has been a wet fart in response to the rise of fascism.
Give it time, I bet other generations slant to the right as they age, too. Though I haven't seen the data that Gen X has done this, I would believe it.
Nah, most people don't openly regress more than they stop progressing.
Gen X stopped progressing at a time when it was only tacitly OK to support LGBT+ people, and capitalism was an unblemished gem. That is why they trend back toward conservative: Many haven't even thought through issues until they're now watching their 401k's slip. That leaves quite a few OK with measures that younger people are against on principle.
It makes total sense. Millennials WILL similarly stop progressing, but it's going to be with a much greater understanding of other perspectives and after getting fucked harder by corporations. Hopefully Z and younger DO embarass millennials some day, because, frankly, I've met too many millennial idiots for my taste. Many who managed to buy a house early after 2008 seem to be in that blissfully ignorant state where they'll surely reveal their narrow perspective later despite their young generation.
Every millennial I personally know that isn't left leaning either comes from a wealthy family, and doesn't understand how much privilege they have (and how that colors their political perspectives), or has never voted and doesn't know the first thing about how the government works. Just that the government and corporations are screwing them somehow.
We'll see. Many people thought the boomers were going to be much different, too. Including the generation older than boomers.
That is how democracy works though. You vote and the majority chooses how the country is run.
Or how it should work, anyway. We end up rules by a minority party pretty often because our system is broken.
We voted. We protested. We just didn't understand what was happening. And we are a tiny generation. There will never be a GenX president.
A lot of us also bought into the conservative bullshit our parents taught us. Not all of us, but too many. Paul Ryan is a perfect example of that.
Well, we were mostly ignored since there is not as many of us, so not only did marketing mostly ignore us, the politicians mostly did, too. It's why you hear about Gen Y and boomers.
Not just Gen X. 5 years or so ago (would likely have been younger millennials or older gen z participants) or so I posted a comment to a thread on Reddit saying that everyone should vote and participate. I was voted down to the negative triple digits with dozens of responses about how voting doesn't work and is unimportant.
To your point, I'm Xillenial myself and definitely recall that defeatist bullshit when I was in high school.
It's true, that happens to our generation as well and it's beyond shameful. You should know, though, that a lot of the voting apathy online is from the 50 Yuan Army and the RIDF.
I also think that older generations who weren't wealthy just accepted that life sucked and there was nothing they could do to make it better. I believe that Millenials to an extent (depends on age) and pretty much all Gen Z have determined that life sucking isn't a good thing and they are going to fix it.
So. Just like millennials then?
Or are you forgetting about the idiotic waste of political capital that was occupy Wall Street?
Was it a waste of capital? A whole generation of people had their opinions altered.
Are you expecting me to say millennials were appreciably better? We are, but going over the bar isn't difficult when you'd have to dig up dinosaur bones to go under it.
Hey look - it's "gen whine" to tell everyone else it's their fault.
The saddest thing of all? The idea of "generations" is 100% bullshit. It's just one more way that the elitists can divide up the country and set people at each other's throats, just like all the culture war stuff they whip up.
They know if people join up across generations and across artificial cultural/racial divides, the elitists are going to be under a microscope.
https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ
Not gonna lie - I was with you in the first sentence... But if you honestly think "they" are purposefully manipulating "the people" on a grand scale then you're in the same conspiracy crazy pot as MAGA.
Oh, I don't think there is one unified "they"; I think one part is marketers constantly trying to co-opt what is "cool" and then sell it back to people. If giving people a sense that "my generation" spends money on these goods and services and "that generation" does this, it serves the purposes of marketing, not the targets of that marketing.
And pols use code-switching in much the same way. I think elitists are going to keep this going - a populace that is atomized as much as possible is going to be easier to keep pitching the worst aspects of capitalism to, and if they think "that generation" is the source of their ills, (rather than taking a close look at who wields all the power and the money) so much the better.
#7thgradedeep