To a Butthurt Boomer

Dear Baby Boomer,

You whine, cry, and kick up a fuss EVERY SINGLE TIME anyone says anything negative about the Boomers. You get defensive EVERY SINGLE TIME, which would be amusing if it wasn’t so annoying

You really must learn to control your reactive Boomer defensiveness. Because it is no business of yours if the younger generations hate your g-g-generation, which has never stopped talking incessantly about itself. We have the right to feel as we do, just as you Boomers had the right to feel so infinitely superior to your unforgivably square parents.

Look, while I can’t speak for younger generations, I can say that on the average, Generation X HATES and DESPISES your generation. That’s just a fact. We hate your stupid music. We hate your narcissism. We despise the way so many of you have neither the time nor the inclination to love our children the way our grandparents loved us. We hate what a pain in the ass you are now that you’re starting to require caretaking but are still determined to live where and how you want to live. We hate the way so many of you are actually hoping to leave nothing to your kids and grandkids and “die with the most toys”. Decades ago, we actually used to joke that your generation would be babbling about “70 is SEXY” when it got old, and then you guys actually WENT AND DID it.

It’s not about the Boomers failing to deliver Utopia. No one ever has. It’s not about the perfection of past generations, some of whom collectively made incredibly bad decisions that have resonated down through the decades. But the fact is that your g-g-generation actually DID do a number of things differently than their predecessors, things of which they were proud, things that “changed the world”, and they are the first U.S. generation to leave its successors materially worse off than they were.

I’m not saying it’s your fault. Obviously it’s not. I’m not saying you are personally responsible. You couldn’t be. We’re talking about macro, not micro here. But your constant defensiveness whenever the subject arises tends to indicate that you at least share somewhat in your generation’s weird, self-obsessed collective consciousness.

Love,
Generation X