All of the world’s problems began the day we started handing fat kids participation trophies for wheezing into last place.
Promised, I can attest, a totemic mound of salty fries and enough Coke to slake Death Valley, we Millennials of the more globulus persuasion marshaled our heaving bundles across the finish line, valiantly resisting en route, bovine urges to chew the grass.
“You’re a winner, too!” my teachers would gleam as I sacked the 100m line just seconds before twilight.
They meant well. But that’s the problem. I and my fellow Millennials were weaned on self-esteem, ready for a Brave New World in which the lotteries of nature and nurture were seemingly redundant. Our most fervent detractors, the oh-so-faultless Boomer generation, forget: they raised us.
It is because of them that you can’t call a kid “fat” anymore. That’s a microaggression. Same as manspreading, mansplaining, and stare rape. A “pregnant woman”? No. Anyone can bear children. Men especially.
You shouldn’t call someone “kid,” either. Science, like most things, is inherently white-maled. Age, race, and gender are all social constructs borne of oppression and patriarchy.
To accuse someone of being as old in years as the number of years they’ve happened to spend alive is grossly retrograde and against all that we hold so dear.
You see, free speech isn’t really free. Someone, somewhere, could be offended or hurt by such outmoded presumptions of noting age, gender, or natural ability. All must have prizes—especially if they’re likely to vote for Democrats.
So, for a generation force-fed equality of outcome, is it really surprising that large numbers think Chairman Mao was pretty cool, and socialism—with all its false and gaudy promises—isn’t all that bad?
After all, compare those spangling promises to what we are set to inherit: a disastrous trillion-dollar middle-eastern hellscape; an economy rigged and wrapped by and for Wall Street; a social fabric frayed beyond meaningful repair. Socialism can’t be that bad. We millennials should be grateful, it seems, for we are the only generation in U.S. history to do worse than our parents.
From Boomers to Buzzfeed Bolsheviks
Yes, our parents. That lank-haired tie-dyed glut of dasypygal feminists and strung-out reprobates who counted Charles Manson as a kooky, yet charming avatar of their age of rebellion against the iniquities of America’s golden age. You say you’ve got the world’s highest living standards? We say we want a Revolution. Burn it all down.
Except they didn’t. They didn’t tune in, turn on, and just drop out, did they? No. The Boomers were not content with a little adolescent cultural rendering before eventually signing on to the very culture they so despised. They went for the kill.
After marching through the institutions, baby boomers now bestride their demented total victory first filtered through their addled brains in the sclerotic sixties. Take a look at any college campus, the real radicals have dentures; and tenure.
But what do their children, the Buzzfeed Bolsheviks, really want? Aside from the involuntary celibates of the worrisomely urine-focused Antifa rabble, Millennials of more tepid stripes are surprisingly cognizant.
After all, the Bernie Bro phenomenon was no mere trifle. And, admit it, Bernie Sanders and President Trump, are—or were at least—kindred spirits on the tectonic political shift which now asks whether one is a globalist, or nationally minded.
Before Hillary Clinton’s consiglieres got to old wispy Sanders, he had the good sense to suggest that open border immigration is a tool of the Davoisie to keep wages low. The Brooklyn bloviator’s spittle-sodden railings against Wall Street jackals and insensate trade deals were Bannon-esque, and by design—Trumpian.
The jabberer may call himself a socialist. And he probably is. But Millennial support for Bernie’s millstoned campaign wasn’t a demand to brick up some gulags and festoon Wall Street with the swinging cadavers of hedge-fund meat.
No, it was a tickle more temperate than that.
A Glimmer or Two of Hope
Here’s a clue: nothing on the menu at Establishment del Republicano is palatable to recession-worn Millennial palates, or indeed, as we know, to most of the Republican base. That’s a good thing.
Neither are Millennials agitating for a Marxist utopia helmed by the ever-more-infuriating Michael Moore.
We are also forgetting that a third of Millennials voted for President Trump; that populist movements convulsing across a migrant-beleaguered Europe are driven by sensate youths, and that the noisome GOP establishment is being evicted from Capitol Hill.
Perhaps a lot of Millennials are mentally derelict, and as a reluctant member of the tribe, I’d agree. But we didn’t set the Mideast on fire, and the great recession was on the Boomers’ watch. Just saying.
So, if you want a real vision of the future, imagine an angsty Millennial mentally unliking a slightly disagreeable Facebook post—forever.
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