EDITORIAL – CULTURE
BABY BOOMERS: A Rant of Doom
by Nick Hernandez
The Palmetto Patriot
SEATTLE – I am f***ing sick and tired of whiny, stupid, self-important baby-boomers. My entire generation has been living under the shadow of these mindless sellout f***s our whole lives and I have had it.
I’ve had it with every fucking detail of my life frustrated by everyone’s obsession with appealing to a generation who’s only real claim to superiority is that their parents were the last generation that didn’t have any birth control.
$14.98 of every paycheck of mine goes to Medicare, a program that Baby Boomers will bankrupt. I will never see a dime of that money. $64.05 goes to Social Security, also destined to be ruined by these assholes. I will never see this money again.
Not just that, all of popular culture is in this state of shallow, listless decay because the target audience gets older and older and refuses to relinquish the reins of civilization until they destroy Art forever. American Idol – need I say more?
They’re destroying our planet with their SUVs, they don’t know how to use their computers, and the Internet is polluted with spam and viruses targeted at these people. Whatever happened to the Sexual Revolution? Women’s Suffrage? Civil Rights? The War to end all War?
For no good reason at all, gay people still can’t get married. You still can’t see a naked breast on television: why? Who gets hurt by boobs? Black people are still disenfranchised, and we still haven’t had a woman president. People are still tortured and murdered all over the world, by our own government no less.
Where are all those stupid hippie sh**heads now when we need them? What happened to the throngs of teenage protesters I see in all those old films from the 60s? Where’s Easy Rider now? I don’t see Jane f***ing Fonda hopping a chartered plane to Syria and hobnobbing with Bashar al Assad!
We used to look up to you guys. I’m sure alot of people thought that when you took control from the “greatest generation” that you’d put us on a one-way supersonic flight to world peace. Instead, we’re on the verge of Armageddon.
Sadly, I am part of the Smallest Generation. Our whole lives will be spent cleaning up after you. You call us lazy and selfish but it’s you that are the most selfish. I hope you enjoy your retirement. I hope you like the warm weather we’re having. All that great TV and all those fantastic, classic works of art you aren’t producing. Too bad that you ‘ll be dead before the consequences come.
I bet you laugh to yourselves at night, knowing that you’re sticking your children with the check. I’m too afraid to have children because of you.
MORE VENOM FOR BOOMERS
So I finished my finals today for summer quarter. I get a few weeks vacation before fall and I’m excited to take it easy for a bit. I was casually (read: Obsessively) reading the news today and I caught an article in my reading that reminded me of my previous Blog Post:
This mother daughter team did a survey of professionals born between 1964 and 1977 and found some major differences in the priorities when compared the their bloated, greedy elders:
“The top three things they want in a job, we found, are positive relationships with colleagues, interesting work, and continuous opportunities for learning,”
So, we want to get along with people we work with and we don’t want to do anything boring or stupid…. makes sense….
“Recognition scored very low, and power and prestige ranked dead last. Salary, a major preoccupation for boomers, came in third from the bottom.”
I see…Money, power and status are at the very bottom…. that seems rather idealistic, don’t you think? The more I look at my work now, the more I realize that this is true though. I don’t get paid alot for what I do. In fact, I’m among the lowest paid employess in the entire company. Right down there with Janitors and Cafeteria workers. I don’t have any power at all and minimal prestige. But I love my job. Sure I bitch and moan about it sometimes but considering the jobs I’ve had in the past, only working at a Comic Shop was a better gig and I got paid even LESS there.
The article goes on to frame Baby Boomers as greedy, power-hungry and bent on the politics of seniority. The language isn’t as harsh as mine but the message is there between the lines. Ideas like prestation (paying your ‘dues’) and workaholism are promoted (and often required) by most companies since the majority of the workforce are part of this materialistic group. Over the next decade though… things might change…In some industries (like video Game devlopment) things have already changed.
That whole “dot com” debacle was the younger generation getting their first crack at doing things our way. In many ways it failed, but there were successes and our idealism has tempered itself as we are drifting into middle age. I hope that, as Boomers retire, more and more companies will introduce ideas like Flex time and telecommuting. But considering that there won’t be enough of us around to do all that work…It might not matter.
Quality of life, we have discovered, has less to do with the size of your bank account or how many cars you own and more to do with being honest with yourself and living how you want to live. When we make sacrifices, they are not for the good of the company, they are for us or our families or whatever greater goals we have.
Compare and contrast:
Enron’s Jeff Skilling—- going to Prison for destroying the lives of his employees to make a buck. Created a highly competitive work environment that encouraged Back stabbing and manipulation. He had employes reviewing each other quarterly and automatically firing those who got bad peer reviews. Like a bad season of Survivor. His company, Enron is now bankrupt (financially and morally)
Microsoft’s Bill Gates—- Spending billions (with a B) on AIDS prevention and treatment in the third world. His company is also number 42 on the list of 100 best companies to work for in Fortune 500. Though probably one of the worst companies to compete against. Microsoft is still the largest software company in the world.
Enron will come to be known as the great legend that tells of the hubris of our elders. So obsessed with building their great tower of money, power and status that they abandoned all humanity and decency. In the end it crumbled under the weight of their own lies.
