Stephen McCallum
8/27/2016
Last night, on Coast to Coast AM (an AM Radio show, for the younger people amongst us), an elderly man continued the second part of a rant he began a few nights ago comparing “The Greatest Generation” (our parents) against “The Millennials” (our grandchildren). He was moderately eloquent in his praise for the Greatest Generation, their grand achievements in the face of their massive trials and tribulations; as well, he was equally eloquent with his disregard and disgust with the royal failures of The Millennial Generation. However, for all of his linguistic eloquence and literary ecstasy, he failed, utterly, to identify and place the blame squarely where it belongs... on us “The Baby Boom Generation” (also known as the Love and Peace Generation).
The truth and facts are that the failures and waste of the millennial generation is the our fault. The greatest generation did achieve great things, even in the face of horrendous challenges. Why? To give us the blessings of a life better than theirs. And, we accepted that life, ate it up, and then spit it out in the face of our parents. We are the love generation, with the vow of “turn on, tune in, and drop out”, and we did it very well. We railed at our elders for creating the Vietnam War, and for sending us to fight it. But, we, then, turn our own backs on those coming back, who required help... because it interfered with our precious playtime. Then, when the government created new wars, we didn’t raise a fuss; but, we cried our eyes out when our children came home broken. Not because we couldn’t help, but we felt cheated that our toys were broken and others should be responsible to fix them. Just like Christmas morning, in our own childhoods, when we whined and cried to get very special, and expensive, toys... then broke them, then whined and cried because somebody else should fix our mistakes.
Our parents raised us with the single goal of knowing we could take care of ourselves. They taught us to respect others, regardless of their race, religion or social status. They taught us to accept work as a daily responsibility, for ourselves and to care for our families. But, how did we raise our children, to be children, to ignore chores, and not have responsibilities. During a generation where being politically correct became more important than reality, we feared being embarrassed by social media; so, our kids learned that they didn’t have to respect any adults -- all they had to do was cry “Public Shame”, and they could get away with anything. We raised these kids to be children, until their eighteen; then, we expect to kick them out of the house, unprepared to care for themselves; then, we’re shocked, dismayed, and socially depressed because they have to move home, for us to care for them, again.
We have spent decades trying to hang on to our “love generation” romantic past, but the real world took advantage of our easily created distractions. We sold even our organic, recreational drugs to the massive pharmaceutical companies, for their chemically synthetized, and genetically modified garbage. And, we let them sell it to us at outrageous prices (just see Mylan for EpiPens).
We were the generation which could have done anything! We could have turned the world healthy with green energy; we could have spread our love generation all over the world (almost did with the Beatles playing in Russia); we could have changed, improved, and evaluated the world of politics, by electing only those qualified to be good representatives. But, we didn’t. We sat on our couches, passing roaches, and whining about how hard the real world is.
Now, we sit around and whine and cry because our grandchildren are not better than us, instead they have learned from us. Screw it! Let someone else worry about fixing stuff, it’s not “my responsibility.”
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