Saturday, January 21, 2012

An Open Letter From Generation X to Generation X on the Occupy Movement

There’s been some pixels slung, purportedly from GenX (though how anyone can claim to speak for a generation as diverse, divisive, and individualistic as GenX is beyond me) to the Millenials, on the Occupy Movement its aims, etc. Most of it’s been kinda embarrassing to read.

Listen, going on and on about, “in my day, by gawd, we knew we had to earn what we wanted” sounds like so much BS. If you find yourself saying anything like that, stop and listen to yourself. Cast your mind back to those heady days of yesteryear, just out of college, when our elders were lecturing us about corporate loyalty. “In our day,” they’d tell us, “you had to earn a nice benefits and retirement package through many years of loyal service to a big company!”

But we knew the score. We’d seen the layoffs, seen Grandfather’s pension get cut or even cancelled. Corporate loyalty was dead, and we weren’t the ones who’d killed it. So we hopped from company to company and were better off for it.

These kids these days, they ain’t dumb. They look around, and they can see what’s happening. Doesn’t matter if the guys in Washington wear red or blue, Bush or Obama, it’s the Age of the Plundering. Bailouts, TARP, rent seeking, all of that. They see the CEO of GE being lauded by POTUS even as his company, awash in cash, pays nothing in federal income tax. They see the Wall Street bailouts, the way the bondholders got screwed in the GM deal, and they know what SOPA’s really about. They can see how much money Hollywood pumps into DC, money that isn’t going to making movies or developing the next generation of entertainment tech, and they know the folks calling the shots in Tinsel Town ain’t stupid.

Like us, the Millenials know the score. They know there’s going to be another round at the trough, and they’re just trying to elbow their way in for a few mouthfulls with the big hogs. They want a piece of the action and they know that government largess is the biggest game in town.

Now, they’re a bit behind the curve in thinking that marches and rallies and sit-ins are going to change much. They can be forgiven for thinking otherwise; after all, the story they’ve heard is how the Civil Rights Movement won through marches and rallies and sit-ins (with short shrift being given to President Eisenhower and the 101st Airborne). They’re starting to wake up as they see how the Dems are content to ignore them on SOPA and PIPA, the same way the Dems ignored marches and rallies and polls on the Affordable Care Act. Sure, POTUS will throw them some sops (promise to veto SOPA, and probably some sort of “aid” on college debt), but his past performance (failure to close Gitmo, lack of much actual aid for folks in underwater mortgages) implies they shouldn’t really expect much.

Have they had enough of Hope-n-Change? Or will they rally to Obama in the hopes of being tossed a few crumbs from the next great plundering? The media may have abandoned the Occupy Movement, but it ain’t dead yet. Like the Tea Party, they’re licking their wounds and looking for a new tactic to achieve their goals. Yeah, I too would prefer to see them building new enterprises or devoting their energies and imaginations to new creations that will make the world a better place. But when you see the direction the winds are blowing, can you blame them for wanting a taste of that big, oozing government pie?