i am looking for someone to tell me what i have done, other than just happening to have been born in 1956, to have made life hell on earth for Gen X'ers. i am 48 years old, i pay a crapload of taxes, my husband (born in 1954) and i send our kids to Catholic schools, and have never gotten dime one from the gov't for anything. oh and i was a virgin til age 25, so count me out of the free love crap too. so how have i adversely affected anyone, i am waiting to hear why i am so despised.
I have read on these threads that we're all selfish and that we're greedy......and, most importantly, we've left them with so much debt.
Like OUR parents didn't leave us with any.
Read '13th Gen' by Howe and Strauss, and then you'll understand. I don't agree with all of their conclusions, but they do a pretty good job of getting into the X-ers heads. Xers have been shaped by sweeping changes happening in the world during their childhood.
If you want to know, what is going on here is a severe case of second-child-itis . Believe me, I'm a (marginal) x-er and a second child. The problem is the MEDIA's fascination with the boomers. Our (X-ers) whole lives, we're wondered When the heck are they going to talk about US? When we were babies, the world was worshiping the youthful boomers. When we became young adults, The media stopped focusing on youth and along came 'Thirtysomething'. When we turned 30, the focus of the media had moved to 'The boomers turn 40' . You get the picture.
After a while, it gets maddening (if you're not a boomer). Like I said, we're the second (or middle) child acting out. It's wrong to blame the non-hippy boomers (and downright stupid if you ask me), but instead of getting mad at our parents (the media) for ignoring us, we blame the older sibling.
It's basic psychology.
Anyway, don't play the same game. Not ALL people born after 1960 blame you for their problems.
One only needs look at the pinnacle of Boomer power, Bill Clinton, current voting trends and the institutions run by boomers in the '90's up to today.
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You are despised because the whiners who are trying to co-opt Reagan (as if they had anything to do with getting him elected) are behaving like democrats....all childish rage, no ideas.
As for myself, as a Boomer, I can say that I never attended a demonstration until the 2000 election fiasco, was an Air Force wife, never collected welfare or unemployment, didn't join a commune, free love church, or environmental group. I didn't smoke dope. I worked hard, honored my parents, raised my children the best way I knew, and have been married for over 25 years.
There a lot of us Boomers who are being tarred with the liberal brush because of the media.