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A Walk Down the GenX Political Memory Lane
Part I: Your Young and Stupid Years
When you were a kid, your parents were either:
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so embroiled in the bleak political and economic climate of the 70s, so busy worrying about recession, inflation, unemployment, urban blight, the oil crisis, unrest in the Middle East and its associated terrorism, the sense of national humiliation they felt watching those helicopters leaving Saigon, and proof that our government couldn't be trusted in the form of Watergate*, that they sort of gave up the pretense that everything was OK, exposing you to all of it, leaving you to grow up real fast in the days of disco (which, of course, SUCKED) |
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- OR - |
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so embroiled in the greed is good 80s, so busy climbing the Reaganomics ladder, slapping censorship labels on your music and games, sipping Chardonnay and cheating on each other while preaching 'Just Say No' and sexual abstinence as the answer for AIDS, that they didn't realize you were laughing behind their backs, listening to G&R and Gangsta Rap, having sex anyway, and thinking: Who cares? Live fast, die young, etc. and besides, Social Security will be gone by the time I get there (only now that's not so funny). |
When you were a young adult, your elders advised you to get a good entry-level job with a mega-corporation, stay there until the day you die, and reap the benefits of loyalty, just like they did.
So you tried that and you:
- knew with absolute certainty that no way would the mega-corporation show you any loyalty
when it was time to hack & slash to please the stockholders, and/or
- found yourself appalled at the incompetence and back-stabbing going on at the middle management layer above you (you got it: Boomers), and/or
- had your ideas and opinions squashed by the good old boy executives above them (McCain's
crowd), because you were female, black, latino, gay or perceived as just plain stupid because
you grew up with MTV and video games.
Since then, you have either:
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traveled from corporation to corporation, gray cube to tan cube, searching for a better deal, or fairer treatment, and, after Enron, you fear that not only will you never get your FICA taxes back, you will never reap your private retirement benefits, because the former CEO (a friend of George W.) has your cash stashed in Bermuda for when he gets out of prison. |
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- OR - |
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abandoned the corporate world to strike out on your own, thinking if those idiots can run a business, so can I, and some of you have done very well, while the rest have managed to eke out a living, but have little or no savings and are putting off that prostrate screening or mammogram because the only bogus healthcare plan you can afford doesn't cover that stuff. |
Either way, and despite all of that, you are good at what you do, take pride in your product, and are not afraid of hard work or hard decisions. You have been accountable and you have delivered – on time and within budget – despite all the bullshit going on around you and even if the rewards aren't all they were cracked up to be.
Part 2: The Boomers-in-Power Years
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Substitute Baghdad for Saigon + the Bush Administration for Watergate and there you have it:
a Current Events class syllabus for today's fifth graders.
See also: 2008: The New 1973
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