Oh, wait.

These young whippersnappers have no respect for their elders!

Ah, screw it. This is giving me an identity crisis. Where’s my therapist?

Boomers:
1> Got suckered into fighting Vietnam
2> Piled Enormous unpayable debts onto my generation
3> Provided NO oversight of government yet trusted it to expand and regulate
4> Saved all their money for retirement but were to myopic to realize the system was unsustainable and now they are screwed.
5> Promoted the culture of lawsuits and victimhood which is draging the USA down
6> Trusted Social Security
7> They are allowing 8 trillion dollar bailouts for crooks

Now they want me to pay for them????
When this country seriously hits the wall, they will be the first to suffer because they are to old to do anything about it. I for one will have zero sympathy for them.

Boomers are leaving the country bankrupt because they are greedy stupid sheeple.
And some boomers have the audacity to call gen X dumb?

The cynicism of Gen X is well deserved, they follow a generation of crooks
And our institutions are untrustworthy and run by criminals
I am cynical to and for good reasons. I am getting my future stolen from me.

I was born in 1981 FYI

But, I guess I should be sanguine about it. I think this generational cohort stuff is largely crap. It would be more accurate to call it “Broad Generalizations About People Born In The Same Time Period Or Era Who May Or May Not Have Had Similar Experiences In Their Upbringing And Education And Experience, But Largely Discounting Individual, Class, Racial, Ethnic, Religious, Regional, Economic Differences”. I mean, are Boomers only US citizens, or do we count all of humanity in these generational cohorts? My brother was born in Germany in ‘64, Does he figure into the math? What if you spent a large part of your youth in another country; are you counted? Do you really find the same generational differences in people born in Alaska during a particular period as you do with those from NYC, LA and Salinas, KS? Meta-Statistics, taking lots of inconclusive statistical crap and bundling it together to form one, warm wet pile…

They are probably so burned out from all that dope and acid they dropped that they don’t know what is going on outside.

They are the perfect symbol of frauds. Like America’s claims to be the light of Freedom.

Here is why my generation seems so dumb to our privileged predecessors:
1. We graduated into the poverty induced by Reaganomics. Any kid who graduated in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic region in the early 1980s entered a society that was collapsing. Unions were busted, the rust-belt closed for business and we were the first generation to have to leave our homes to secure substandard employment since those who came of age in the Great Depression.

2. Reagan cut all college grants and aid to families making over $12,000/year which contributed to the low rates of college attendance. We were also the first generation to return to school as “non-traditional” students en masse to make up for our earlier inability to secure degrees.

3. Self-righteous, materialistic, sell out boomers who were hired and promoted at a rapid clip in the 1980s did not hire or mentor the next generation to take over. They were buying McMansions and taking buy outs during the last three recessions while we on the lower rungs of serfdom had to “reinvent” our careers and change tracks two or three times just to stay employed.

4. We have survived four horrific recessions during our adult lives that have racked our ability to earn during our peak years or provide any sort of financial stability for our kids. Many of us are entrepreneurs out of necessity because our regions have not produced living wage employment in over 30 years.

5. With regards to education; drop out rates are higher for millenials than for our generation and we were the victims of early Boomers who wanted to experiment with our lives in their classrooms. Our education consisted of political indoctrination and no rigor, even for the scholarly.

6. Our parents, who were displaced during the destruction of manufacturing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, also had low levels of education and many of us were the first generation in our families to go to college. Our fathers were canon fodder in Korea and came home to work 20 or so years in industry only to find themselves unemployed and undereducated in their 50s. They never made enough money to send us to college.

As a consequence we do not trust social institutions, the “man” or anyone else who seems like an establishment type. We are content to live simply because we’ve been offered no opportunities to integrate into the great Boomer companies that are supposedly so progressive. We want better things for our children because our adult lives have been nothing but misery and struggle.

In fact, the only thing that I can think that would qualify as “dumber” than any of the other generations would be the amazing number of X-ers who became Republicans and Limbaugh fans, given that Reaganomics and trickle down theory destroyed the economy throughout our working lives. Are we embarrassed by Sarah Palin? Yes. We’ll see how our man, President-elect Obama, does fixing the mess the so-called Boomer elites have left us….!

The result, sadly, is that their passionate helicoptering is producing more or less the opposite of what they really want and need.

Unless I’m missing the context, isn’t it a GOOD thing that parents are demanding that educational institutions live up to certain expectations?

(And maybe the context I’m missing is that “ultra-demanding” could mean either (1) “You had damn well better make sure the next generation, my children included, emerges from high school equipped to deal with the myriad of challenges the human race is going to face in the early- to mid- 21st centure,” or (2) “You had damn well better make sure that my boy Jonny makes varsity starting lineup and that he gets good grades (whether he actually understands the material or not) so that he stands a chance of edging out all the other Janes and Jonnies who are benefitting from similar grade-inflation elsewhere when it comes to college application time…”, and I’m supposing what you’re witness and cringing about is more along the lines of #2 than #1?)

I’ve always thought my own satirical analysis of Gen-X is better than all fo the scholarship combined I’ve read ont he subject:

http://www.geocities.com/ihategenx

bvasically, Gen-X embraced bulgarity and cynicism as a psoture

I skimmed it but didn’t really see the point.

Back to my video game!

But let me say this…if it is time for Gen X to put up or shut up, then it is well past time for the boomers to shut up and get the hell out of the way. I know a good number of solid boomers personally, but as a generation they’ve seriously screwed up this country and i cannot think of a single, actual result from all the big talk of their youth. Maybe i’m the wrong guy to ask about it, having been born at the tail end of 73 and thoroughly indoctrinated with the ideals of the late 60’s/early 70’s. I don’t see much greatness in my generation either. And other than the Obama hero worship, i haven’t seen much from Gen Y to suggest that great things are just around the corner.

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train…

I see a continuum here (regardless of our collective desire to place blame). America has been getting stupider and more self-absorbed for a long time now. And let’s face it, we’re all teets on the same sow, are we not?

If you have a chance, read the comments on the Washinton Post site responding to this op-ed yesterday and today; I was happy to see lots of people defending Generation Jones. Here’s one of my favorite comments, from ‘CultureAndPeople’…

“As someone who has studied generations for years, I must say that I’m very surprised that Neil Howe would go this far when it comes to attacking GenJones. It’s well-known to many of us in the field that he has felt very threatened by the whole GenJones thing, but you’ve got to get over it, Neil! Generations are getting shorter, there is a Generation Jones. Instead of embarrassing yourself trying to diss it, just figure out a way to adapt your theory to include the shortening of generations. Your theories can co-exist with GenJones; figure it out.

This article takes the cake when it comes to your attempts to diss GenJones. Using ridiculously bad science to try to position GenJones as “The Dumbest Generation”?! Wow. Feels over the top to me.

First, Neil, framing this generation as “dumb”?! As you know, dumbness is another way of saying “low intelligence”. What evidence do you have that Jonesers are less intelligent?! If Jonesers were the “victims” of ineffective educational experiments, less attentive parents, a souring national mood toward youth, etc., etc., etc., on what basis does that make them less intelligent? You might more plausibly say that they are, for example, less knowledgeable (although I believe that would also be untrue), but to characterize them as “dumb”?

You might also frame this in a positive light; for example, showing how Jonesers have overcome these enormous obstacles to get where they’ve gotten (e.g. wealthiest generation in the country). But instead, framing them as the dumbest generation?!

And the evidence you use to try to make this case makes my jaw drop. Take the SAT comparison you make as one example; how could you write this with a straight face? I find it hard to believe that you are not aware that: students now do all kinds of SAT prep that they didn’t do in the 70s/80s, that SAT scores were re-normed in the 1990s which significantly inflated the scores, making any comparisons obvious apples to oranges, the relevant varying admission standards (including the 1970s admissions de-emphasis of SAT’s) affecting SAT scores, the fact that it was the ACT, rather than the SAT, that “smart” teens took in the 70s/80s, and all the other reasons why your SAT comparisons are completely absurd.

In addition to your faulty SAT comparison, this article is filled with similarly ridiculous “evidence”. Are you so desperate to diss Generation Jones lest it hurt your business, that it’s worth cheapening your name this way?

And given the dire situation our nation now finds itself in, and given that it is primarily GenJones, starting with Obama and most of his main appointments, who we are looking to lead us through these difficulties, do you really need to use the platform which you’ve built to try to position this new generation of leadership as the Dumbest Generation? Couldn’t you at least wait until they are sworn in and have a little time to try to lead before you launch this kind of attack?

With all respect, Neil, it feels to me like you are putting your own selfish personal goals ahead of the country’s interests at a dangerous moment in our national history. William Strauss deserved better than this, Neil.”