Us Gen X-ers have been struggling against the Boomers for decades. If the kids want to join the fray, who are we to object?
It won’t be easy, though. As Soviet and Chinese dissidents discovered, it’s almost impossible to start a revolution against an establishment that’s convinced* they’re* the revolutionaries.
Nah, we got a lot of things started, half assed it and got Reagan years comfortable while never noticing the dismantling of the world all around us. We got tired and a lot of that was due to intentional tactics to keep us distracted and we fell for it like the dog looking at your finger instead of what you’re pointing at. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of us still here who’re still pissed off over having our generation’s energy dissipated into mindless consumerism and pointless greed. If the younguns can find their voice and energy and get this party started I’m not gonna get all pissy because the “wrong” people accomplished the feat–the important thing is that shit gets fixed and I have no problem with those who have to live with the fallout being the ones who decide how they want things to go. That’s fair.
(still mystified by why ‘Sooner’ is a clever reply)
I guess we GenX’s get to go hey lets you and him fight???
Is “Boomer Sooner” some new Millennial meme? Google just links me to this jivey Albanian song.
It is just another faddy phrase. An ultimate ad hominem, shorthand for “you are old and therefore your opinion can be discounted”, a handy catch-all to avoid having to defend what you actually say or do. It does have a use in that it identifies the user as the type of person who would use such a phrase. That’s handy to know.
Ok, boomer.
The origin story I read had it more likely to be wielded against millennials by the younger generation.
It is handy isn’t it? I can understand the attraction.
Boomers are responsible for President Trump. That in and of itself should be “‘nuff said.”
Not so fast. Among White male voters aged 18-49 (14% of the electorate) 34% voted for Clinton, 55% voted for Trump. (Among white women in the same age cohort, the percentages are almost exactly reversed!)
Would you like that stat better with a narrower age cohort than 18-49? Don’t blame me: this is what you get after going to the bother of downloading Pew Report’s “DetailedTables.zip.”
(While at that site, I also downloaded 8-9-2018-Validated-voters-release-with-10-2-19-and-10-17-18-corrections.pdf and learned that only 6% of Trump voters had warm views of him in April 2016 but cold or neutral views in March 2018.)
Oh good, a new catch-phrase to promote divisiveness, anger and hostility. Because we don’t fight among ourselves enough these days.
I wonder if Mr. Esiason’s kids say it to him.
This. After a decade of watching Boomers dismissing the younger generation’s campaigns to fight global warming, promote gun control, etc with “Hur hur they all eat Tide pods”, frankly I consider a few similarly puerile and dismissive shots in the other direction well-deserved.
But then I’m a Gen-Xer so it’s not my ox being gored either way.
Yeppers.
Being gen x is weird. Boomers call us “millennials,” millennials call us “boomers.” So we get to fling crap at everyone.
Over here I see Brexit as a huge big “fuck you” from the old to the young. Add in the issues with climate change and I have no problem at all with young people finally starting to realise that their “elders and betters” aren’t going to help them.
I’m nearly in my forties and those Gen X/Boomers terms never really applied over here anyway but the principles are all the same. I suspect “respect your elders” is starting to be replaced by “gee, they really fucked us over didn’t they”.
It was the NY Post, mind, but the funniest one was when they published “Millennials Are Killing the Manhattan Power Lunch.”
And of course the boomers were able to point at the generation before them for fucking them over regarding the cold war, the wartime generation did the same for their predecessors for dragging them into WW2, the generation before that for WW1 and the great depression and so on and so on. Each generation conveniently ignoring the technological, medical and political miracles brought about by their particular figures of hate.
The perception is that the world has gone to hell. I don’t think it has. The world is a pretty good place right now. Could be better but unfortunately the myriad bad shit that has always happened can now be played instantly, at a higher volume to a bigger audience.
There you go, dismiss everything and then wonder why kids are turning away.
'twas ever thus. I’m not saying they are wrong, just that they are no more right than any other previous generation was at their age.