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Jenny Holland's avatar

I am absolutely loving the comments today. You guys are hilarious.

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Sara Cash's avatar

Ok, so seriously, when it became clear that Orange Man Bad was in fact gonna take it, and take it hard, I laughed out loud and said, “Gen X finally had enough.” And then had to contemplate whether that makes us The Silent Majority of our era. (Does it?🤔😵‍💫) Fuck, yeah, it does.

We were silent for too long because we can’t be bothered to give a fuck because we know it is a corrupt as shit system. We were too busy defiantly going our own ways as usual cause nobody can be bothered to pay attention to us or our wellbeing for even two seconds in a row. Then we watched as things literally went INSANE. And finally said, We’re not gonna take it!/No/We’re not gonna take it/ANYMORE!

I wonder too if any generation has been positioned as X is. I have known intimately Americans who were born in the Victorian and the Digital Age. And we are the pivot generation. We were the first ones in the new world.

It hadn’t even occurred to anyone that if mom went off to work you might wanna have somebody check on the kids. We were tossed into adolescence post Sexual Revolution, smack dab into the middle of AIDS, and noone had thought to install some brakes on that car yet. The revolting date rape party that got Kavanaugh in hot water? That was Friday night nationwide, baby. They had cut us loose from waiting till you are married and in no way prepared us for

safety in the ensuing fuckfest. (Why did they have to beg us to wear condoms?! Think about it! 🤦‍♀️Why weren’t we wearing them? Cause they wouldn’t let us buy them. Holy fuck.)

And while we were off being our badass selves, we watched while the corporations took over the globe, commodified the counterculture, and then decided that wasn’t enough. No, whoever is behind the past few years of global chaos needs to not just demand obedience but take us over down to our very thoughts.

We paid attention enough back when they still had civics at school to know totalitarianism when we see it. And we’re archaic enough to think totalitarianism is not good. The spirit of individual liberty that built this nation, good and bad, and fueled our utterly unsupervised youths was not something we were willing to surrender.

So we said Back the fuck up. We got off of our defiant asses and voted. And the scary part is when today’s kids grow up and take over, they will have grown up with every single thing controlled and decided for them. And we are literally rewiring their little brains with technology, stifling their very breath with masks, and letting them scamper unattended through the deep woods of the internet, which is populated with wolves of a darkness we could never imagine. So who is the untended generation now? They look coddled and protected while we literally sacrifice them on the altars of our whims of free internet access, gender dysphoria, and untrammeled consumer capitalism.

Here’s the thing. Those of us who survived, did so with no car seats, no bike helmets, no safe spaces, no intervention no matter if we got beat or bullied or raped. And here we are, basically functional adults. And we got to the point of telling the whiners to shut the fuck up. And the mind control fucks to fuck off. But are we fiercely guarding our offspring, like the feral creatures we are? Do we rip out the metaphorical throat of those who lie to and damage our kids with casual glee and elitist disdain, so certain they know what is best for everyone else?

Okay. Thanks for the fantastic column. And for the space to rant as GenXish as I wish

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