Millennials: The Source Of All Evil?
Millennials are the absolute worst! Amirite?
I wasn't certain of this fact until I looked around the web. It turns out that there is no shortage of Baby Boomers who can prove beyond a doubt that millennials are lazy, entitled brats.
Allow me to list a sampling.
Millennials are killing the beer industry
Apparently, Millennials Are Also Destroying The Official Means Of Legal Communication
Millennials only have a 5-second attention span for ads, says comScore CEO
Here's the Brutal Truth About Why Everybody Else Resents Millennials
Millennials in the Workforce, A Generation of Weakness
Millennials, This Is Why You Haven't Been Promoted
Harvard report: Millennials not interested in casual sex
Argh! Not even beer and casual sex!?!
What the Hell is wrong with kids these days?
This sort of stuff makes me want to tell those kids to get off my lawn. If I had a lawn.
And it just keeps getting worse.
Last year, the Economist claimed that millennials were killing the diamond industry. Other pieces made similar claims about the golf industry, movie theaters, Home Depot — true mainstays of American culture. Each offered its own explanation: caring about the ethics of diamond mining, not liking golf, or refusing to stay off Twitter. But all agreed that millennial selfishness is hurting everyone else.
The arguments are hardly consistent. “Millennials are driving the rise of the work martyr, employees so driven that vacation days go unused in order to impress the boss — or simply to avoid being replaced.” says Joshua Rhett Miller. Millennials are apparently so lazy that they’re . . . working too hard, thus ruining others’ vacations.
Then I found a couple other articles that are more revealing.
This one mistake can cost millennials millions
Fearing the market, millennials are putting their money in savings accounts. And the potential loss of future earnings is huge, like $3.3 million huge, according to new analysis by NerdWallet.
80% of millennials say they want to buy a home—but most have less than $1,000 saved
Gee, why aren't millennials buying stocks and houses?
Is it because of all that avocado toast?
Is avocado toast all that's standing between millennials and their first homes?
An Australian millionaire thinks so. Not everyone is convinced.
Tim Gurner, a 35-year-old developer, called out his generation on Australia's version of "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
"When I was trying to buy my first home I wasn't buying smashed avocados for 19 bucks and four coffees at $4 each," he said.
Gurner, who's worth an estimated $460 million according to the Australian Financial Review, said wasteful spending is preventing young people from becoming homeowners.
"We are coming into a new reality ... and a lot of people won't own a house in their lifetime," he said.
There you have it.
Millennials are responsible for all the problems they encounter in the world, and will soon be responsible for all the world's problems.
And it's all because of their avocado toast addictions!
Except I also found this article.
More groceries, less travel: Millennials spend more on necessities than older generations
Not avocado toast and vacations, but actual necessities (and student loans).
Maybe, just maybe, the same generation that is pointing fingers are the ones responsible for screwing up the world for millennials, not the other way around.
According to this narrative, not only has millennials’ terrible behavior produced a string of societal problems, but millennials themselves are actually responsible for all they face — unemployment, low and stagnant wages, civic unrest, the withering of democracy.
This is absurd. Postsecondary education has become a gatekeeper for getting a decent-paying job, but millions of young people cannot take on the debt required to get a degree. Those who do find that their degree no longer opens the door to a good job.
Today’s young people work hard only to get paid very little. Saddled with student debt, they take multiple jobs, compete for unpaid internships, and sometimes move back in with their parents to make ends meet. For those who have stable jobs, the jobs they have may not be in the field that they went to college for. Wages have also remained stagnant. The average college graduate is making about $18.53 an hour, a number that has remained virtually unchanged since 2000.
All of this Blame The Millennials looks an awful lot like "punching down" to me.
Comments
Msm is made up of older people
At the top. Who are convinced that they are still young and vibrant and deserving of all the praise in the world for their selfless goodness and ability to stop solely through their peaceful protests and media attention the most evil man and war in the history of mankind.
I of course mean nixon and vietnam.
Anything after that is the fault of those lazy spoiled millenials and their horrible parents who we do not speak of, since they were such a disappointment to their parents.
/snark
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
We can always head over to Daily Kos
where millionaire will tell you to "check your privilege" (whatever that means) and accuse millennials of wanting "free stuff." I don't know their age demographic but they do tend to skew older.
That said, early Boomers tend more towards the left and later Boomers ("generation Jones," which includes early GenX-ers as well) tend more toward voting for D'ump. It makes it hard to generalize over cohorts.
@SancheLlewellyn GenX is a transitional
GenX is a transitional generation. We run from age 37 to 52. Put that together with the split in American politics as it manifested last year, where people 45 and under were powerfully for Bernie, whereas both Trump and Clinton's bases tended to be over 55, and you'll get a pretty good picture of how it goes. GenXers around my age (late 40s early 50s) are more likely to be supporters of either Trump or Clinton. Younger GenXer (late 30s early 40s) not so much, at all.
Like a lot of Boomers and Silents around here, I'm an exception to the rule.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Oh yea, young GenX-ers do trend more to the left
than older GenX-ers. I believe the "Generation Jones" (keep up with the Joneses!) spans from birthyear 1955 - 1974 or thereabouts. Younger voters came of age after the Reagan "Revolution" and its attendant stagnant wages, disappearing health care, and out of control student loan debt. Hence, the appeal of Bernie Sanders.
@detroitmechworks You selfish,
You selfish, materialistic, cynical GenX-er.
A regular Alex Keaton.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The sacrifice
Obama and the Democrats made a trade. It was a deal and a deal with the Devil at that. They made this trade very shortly after Obama assumed office.
A conscious decision was made to sacrifice an entire generation of Americans in order to appease the Lords of Wall Street. These bastards were given a knife, they sharpened it, and plunged it deep into the backs of America's young. This they did with a smile on their faces. That smile is still there and they're still cashing their checks from Satan. Those checks are signed with the blood of our young adults.
child sacrifice
Actually, I believe it's Moloch, not Satan, who demanded burnt sacrifice of the young....
We're still talking serious evil, though.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides It's Crom Cruach. But
It's Crom Cruach. But where is the good harvest we're supposed to get in exchange?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm wondering, what legislation are you
referring to that resulted in
(I'm discounting the lack of a real or decent homeowner's bailout program, since the number of millennials affected was relatively low compared to other generational cohorts.)
Unfortunately, my memory's not what it used to be!
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and, therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
The SOSD Fantastic Four
Available For Adoption, Save Our Street Dogs, SOSD
Taro
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Unintended consequences
No, don't discount that at all. Our Millennials are the collateral damage of the bailout of the TBTF banks and the dastardly abandonment of Main Street America. It's more than that, of course. Many of the reasons Trump is now the president were seeds planted by the response of Obama to the Great Recession. It isn't one piece of legislation, it isn't even one political party doing the damage. For many, but especially for the Millennial generation, the Great Recession is still full on.
Thanks for the clarification. Since hearing the C-Span
forum of Business Writers/Policy Hacks, I almost always avoid discussions of issues that pit one generation, against another--and probably should have in this case.
Seriously, the forum participants were quite blunt--their writing, and much of that by the majority of business writers today, is purposely geared toward moving public will and/or opinion to vilify Boomers, in hopes of facilitating the bipartisan political establishment's efforts to strike a 'Grand Bargain'--eviscerating Social Security and Medicare. IOW, their goal is to help our Political Elites implement 'austerity' measures. (They were budget hawks.)
Mollie
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."--Lao Tzu
"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures--they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive."--Gilda Radner
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
And now they're coming for the rest of us too.
This is just one more pathetic attempt at divide and conquer. If they can get millenials to blame Boomers, voila - its that selfish son of a bitch who wants that SS he or she paid into for 20 years or so, and one of those groups MUST be sacrificed. I'll also just mention that Boomers were indeed encouraged to take out debt, use credit cards or whatever to make sure their millennial children had all the fun stuff, shoes, phones, computers, etc, in an endless stream of consumption. And then there's grandma, who's about to be thrown out of that Skilled Nursing facility once her Medicaid is gone. That'll be real pretty for both the selfish Boomer and the millennial who get to take care of her, 24/7, unless she just goes on ahead and dies quickly, as she is supposed to do.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
That's a great point, lizzyh7! I meant to mention
that a forum on C-Span spoke to the corporatist neoliberal plan to drive a wedge between generations, in order to build support for dismantling our (already weak) social safety net for seniors.
Gotta run an errand, but I'll try to post some of the tactics and programs geared toward this, later.
(Hint: Dem Party guru Jacob Hacker, among others, hatched some of the ideas behind this so-called philosophy.)
Lastly, the proposal to voucherize Medicare is included in the recently proposed House Budget according to Chairperson Diane Black (TN).
Here's what GWB's Director of CMS had to say about 'Traditional Medicare,'
This appears to be in keeping with what is transpiring, even as we blog. Obviously, this kind of 'reform' would affect today's youth, as well.
However, today's 50 and 60 year olds have had their taxes raised significantly (on average) for almost four decades--having been promised that their parents' Medicare program would be intact for them, if they did their part by paying more into the system. Obviously, that promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
Schumer and the Democratic Party Leadership
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Well, I guess those of us stuck in that
middle ground know what we're supposed to do - die quickly and ask for no Medicare or SS. Just be glad we could pay in for others, including our own parents, but hey, do NOT expect that will be done for you, you selfish middle aged fucker.
Sorry, but I do not like these narratives that frame it all as one or another generations "fault" when we all know good and damned well who really is at fault - all those idiot politicians we voted for, dutifully, who've sold us out for the almighty buck. The American Way.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
@lizzyh7 Of course it's the
Of course it's the Cartel's fault (the cartel whose faces tend to be Bushes and Clintons).
However, it's undeniable that there was a serious age split in the electorate last year, and that, unfortunately, people 45 and older were much likelier to buy into the establishment bullshit, one manifestation of which was supporting Hillary or Trump (or supporting Bernie and then shrugging and saying "Oh well that was too bad" and supporting Hillary anyway).
For that reason, the establishment press has decided to turn its guns on the millenials, and people understandably resent it.
Put it like this: there were a lot fewer people my age and older who, as we say in Dungeons and Dragons, "made their saving throw" against the illusions being fed them. I've always thought that was because of the difference in where the different age groups tend to get their news. Older people who get their news on the internet, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, tend to resist propaganda and view establishment assumptions critically just as much as their younger counterparts.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@lizzyh7 Oh hell. Not response to lizzy, but to Centaurea
The Boomers got the good life. The subsequent two generations have had it worse and worse on every level and have never gotten to taste that good life.
Then people who were lucky enough to have at least some decades of the good life--or at least to live in a society where such a thing was possible--lit into the people who had never had a chance.
That's the other part of it--apart from the different relations the generations tend to have to the shitty corporate press.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Having a young Millenial, 'lounging around the house'
discoursing on all manner of things, I can see why the 'Golf Industry' is having problems.
Golf really isn't on the radar. Real life is.
(I don't play Golf either... silly game.)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Funny, we're working harder than ever.
Yet that'll never be enough for the execs who keep adding to the already ridiculous job requirements so no one gets hired or promoted and they can abuse guest worker programs even more.
Not enough trained people in 'Murica's workforce? My ass. More like not enough people in 'Murica who will suck dick for money and pay for the privilege.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
If they can find a job
I have a struggling 21 yo grandson. HS grad, not the college type, pizza delivery, and can't even get a job in a warehouse.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Sounds about right.
I finished college 5 years ago and to this day I still can't find a job for anything in my field. A lot of places want several years experience and a drivers' license before anyone will ever be considered. The inability to get a license puts me out of the running.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Remember...
They are in their mom's basement hacking for Russia.
And avocado toast ... what's not to love?
I want a Pony!
I like avocados
and I like toast.
Does that make me a Closet Millennial/Russian hacker?
Yes you are gjohn
I always knew that about you...and Steven D too.
As for those damn Millenials... The old saying from back in the day... 'Don't trust anyone under 30' . or something like that. Damn kids.
I want a Pony!
@gjohnsit Yes. Like voting for
Yes. Like voting for Bernie makes you a sexist white male under 30.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Tim Gurner Born On Third Base
Thinks he hit a triple. A quick Google search revealed:
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/avo-shamer-tim-gurner-de...
Pulling himself out of the gutter by his own bootstraps and $180k from his employer? There is something seriously wrong with this picture.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I Clicked Through Bunches of Links
Timmy apparently got the $34k loan from his grandfather when he was 19. Nothing about his grandfather's inheritance, but how many grampas can loan their teenage grandchildren $34k?
Nothing showed up about his father or family or the employer who loaned him $180k. Hmmmm.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
@Meteor Man Sometimes when I hear a
Sometimes when I hear a wealthy kid I know or would hear in the news like this say they got a "loan" I sometimes question it.
I just wonder if they like to say they got a loan instead of well a free check, makes them feel better kind of thing.
I don't know, pure speculation on my part there.
I think you're more right than not.
I'm not an expert, but I had a peak into that world for a while. There are loans, and there are "loans". The later of which are usually off the books or already written off as gifts, have little or no interest, no repayment structure and an implied or even stated "pay me back whenever you can" attitude. When someone in my strata says they had to take out a loan, I know which kind they're talking about. When I was around the other kind, it always had a face saving vibe to it.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
Baby Boomers?
WTF? You wrote "there is no shortage of Baby Boomers who can prove beyond a doubt that millennials are lazy, entitled brats". But clicking those links you listed and checking the authors and quoted subjects shows that nearly all of them are Millenials or GenXers. The only Baby Boomer in the articles I checked is Comscore's CEO.
So why the hell did you frame this POS essay with an attack on Baby Boomers? WTF, dude or dudette?
And in fact,
And in fact, several of the articles cited are pro-Millennial.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
@edg I've read some of those
I've read some of those articles, but the issue I guess isn't so much the individual authors. Overall, being a millennial myself, I do see the venom coming from the older crowds.
You see attacks from say the Fox crowd, various older anchors who would talk about lazy millennials who feel entitled. You would hear from older Democrats who would attack millennials for being purists or wanting "unicorns" or apparently being too young and stupid to understand the reality of politics. Older Democrats especially would attack millennials for not being obedient and following in lockstep to vote Clinton, saying they were being easily misled by Sanders.
However...
Nancy Pelosi is not a Boomer. John Lewis is not a Boomer. Barbara Boxer is not a Boomer. Dianne Feinstein is not a Boomer. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not a Boomer. Keith Ellison is not a Boomer. George Soros is not a Boomer. Dick Durbin is not a Boomer. Etc. Etc.
@edg Nancy Pelosi is a
Nancy Pelosi is a Silent. John Lewis is a Silent. Barbara Boxer is a Silent. Diane Feinstein is a Silent. DWS is a Gen-Xer (1966--she just barely made it in). Keith Ellison, like Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and George and Jeb Bush, is a Boomer (the first two are late Boomers; the last five, early ones). George Soros is a Silent. Durbin is a Silent.
So, really what we're seeing here is Silents and Boomers moving together, just as in the 60s we saw the Greatest Generation and the Boomers moving together. But of course these are large brush-strokes and additional data is needed to really see the picture.
What is undeniable is that there is a sharp split between those in the country under 45 and those over 55 (those of us in the middle can go either direction). People under 45 are likely to see an entirely different political reality than those over 55. People under 45 are less likely to agree with establishment narratives.
This doesn't preclude there being people over 55 who know where it's at and people under 45 who are corrupt little shits or total nimrods, of course. Again, these are large brush-strokes and there are people who buck these trends. But the trends exist. I read enough polls last year to see the pattern.
I don't think it has anything much to do with generational character, though. I tend to think the difference is in where people get their news. It would be interesting to do a study on that.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@edg Edg, you must know that a
Edg, you must know that a certain portion of the Boomers and Silents have been hurling insults at the millenials since about late February/early March 2016. As soon as they thought their chosen heir to the American throne, I mean candidate for the presidency, might have problems with her coronation, excuse me, election. The abuse started then and didn't let up, as it did for many other groups. Being a millenial was sort of like being one of the nations on Bush's "Axis of Evil." Millenials, working-class white people, independents, third party advocates.
You're right to call out the fact that Boomers didn't write those articles. But that doesn't mean that a lot of Boomers and Silents haven't been showering the younger generations with abuse over this last year and a half. And it's not stopping since the campaign.
It's not the fault of Boomers who are honest, decent people that a portion of their generation has decided to act like Joe McCarthy. But neither is it fair to pretend that that isn't happening.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Of course it's happening.
But see my response to Strife Delivery. Most of the ringleaders of the anti-Sanders gang are not Baby Boomers. I'm not excusing my generation; there's assholes among us. But blaming Boomers for everything is just not factually accurate.
I thought I was at TOP
I guess a simple I disagree with this essay would have been to easy.
Yes.
I'd like to go back
to the part where we agreed that these generational differences are just another piece of the "keep em divided" strategy of TPTB. No different than racial, sexual, red v blue stuff.
Which to me means we should be neither offensive nor defensive in these matters, but attempt indifference and or boredom with the subject.
Normally, I agree with you.
However, when the essayist writes "there is no shortage of Baby Boomers who can prove beyond a doubt that millennials are lazy, entitled brats. Allow me to list a sampling" and that sampling contains almost no Baby Boomers, I cannot sit idly by. Lies are lies, and lies must be called out rather than ignored.
Sigh.
Welcome to the Punching Bag Club, folks under 30.
I've been a member since roughly 1980.
Odd how in the 80s, suddenly members of the Boomer and Silent generations felt the need to rip GenX up one side and down the other for being conservative, selfish, materialistic, and superficial.
At the same time that a lot of Boomers and Silents abandoned their left-wing values for Reagan.
The Boomers and Silents here are good folks. But some of their contemporaries absolutely require a scapegoat. This is now the second generation of that scapegoating.
At least you're not alone!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal We tend to forget that
We tend to forget that there were a lot of Boomers who weren't out in the streets protesting for a good cause in the 60s. The lefties and the hippies back then were not their entire generation--there were plenty of people their age that were on the other side, or no side at all. The young people who advocated for civil rights or protested against Vietnam or invented new social forms or new ways of building houses or growing food or harnessing energy for humankind's use, the ones who created beautiful art and music and acted with such good will toward humanity are remembered because they were the best of their generation--not the whole of it.
And, of course, there were some even among that "best" who sold out in the eighties because they saw which way the wind was blowing.
Those who stayed true are the best of the best. But the mainstream narrative is that, because a portion of this generation did great things in its youth, Boomers therefore have moral authority to judge and criticize others for the rest of their lives, and no Boomer is ever to blame for anything bad in politics or culture or world events. So somebody else has to be to blame. It used to be my generation; now it's the millenials.
Welcome aboard, son, to the good ship HMS Shitty Narrative.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Intra-generational war between young v older
really got to rolling during the Vietnam era. Look at the platform and policies of the Democratic Party back in 1968. I know you remember Kent State. Anyone coming of age during that time understands what I mean. It put the torch to the old and immoral 'patriotic' slogan that demanded tthat we support this country regardless of whether it's actions were right or wrong. That was a big turning point in this country.
Establishment Dims could NOT get it through their heads that the cries of "THE COMMIES ARE COMING TO GET US NEXT!!!" and the constant appeals to 'patriotism' and American exceptionalism just couldn't convince those young wretches into dying in an unwinnable war.
1968 was a line drawn in the sand and the young crossed it by being willing to fight our own government rather than support an immoral and unwinnable war. That threw a spanner in the old war machine and demonstrated that the young have a right to influence politics in America. Each generation gets the same 'sit own, shut up, and get with the program' that we got and they have had to fight the old and entrenched who only care about protecting them and theirs.
An example for today that we're all very familiar with is the last 'election'and TOP. What happened to everyone who refused to toe the official DNC/Clintonista party line? C99 and Jackpine Radicals and the Reddit site for Bernie Sanders supporters broke off to continue the fight after they were told to go away. And go away they (we) did.
Some thins never change. Unfortunately.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Generation Gap (& Psy-Ops)
Remember, the phrase "generation gap" was invented specifically to describe the relationship between the Boomers and their parents.
The "inter-generational conflict" thing has probably existed since the beginning of the human race, in one form or another. Older folks complaining about those young whippersnappers who think they know everything but actually don't know anything, and younger folks who think their parents are just a bunch of old-fashioned fuddy-duddies who don't realize the world is changing and who don't know anything.
Maybe the conflict is more in-our-face now, because the Internet has brought us all so much closer. Maybe the pressures are greater because the stakes are higher now, and we have a bigger venue in which to express it.
In the '70s, the Greatests surely knew that their kids, the Boomers, were coming up noisily and assertively behind them. They heard about it from mass media as a cultural phenomenon, but on the personal level, they (the parents) only experienced push-back from a limited number of people, those in their immediate circle. Nowadays, heck, I can go online and experience thousands of people -- total strangers -- carrying on about how "I hate those stupid, useless Boomers! I can't wait until they all hurry up and DIE!"
I've been hearing Boomers complaining about Millennials for a long time now. It didn't start with the 2016 election. But I've also heard plenty of Boomer-bashing, and it's likewise been going on a long time. As others have mentioned in their comments here, it seems that the entire dynamic has been co-opted by the oligarchy-establishment crowd in an attempt to divide and conquer.
It's hard to know how much of the conflict is due specifically to these particular groups of people (maybe the Boomers are indeed the worst generation ever, and maybe the Millennials are indeed a bunch of lazy entitled bums who are happy to live in their parents' basements), and how much it's just "this is how humans are". Humans tend to be resistant to change, even though change is the only constant in life. Younger folks are impatient, wanting their turn at bat. And so on.
It's a fascinating subject, and I'm sure that if the human species manages to survive, plenty will be analyzed and written about this time in history. But I really hate to see this used as a tool for the oligarchy's psy-ops. I don't like seeing us playing into their game by grabbing at the bait. (That's not aimed at the OP or anyone here at c99. I mean it as a comment in general, about the American people in general.)
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone