#they know the rich boomers suck. you should know rich gen z and millennials suck too. they're not your friends

[jorjin]

I am once again reminding people you have more in common with a poor boomer than you do a rich gen z

[scrapscribbles]

tw politics and radicalism and a couple curse words but i’m a child and hate the system i’m being raised in and want adults to help me because i don’t know what to do

Not to get political, but I’m about to get incredibly political.

I’ve been slowly but surely more and more radicalized, and you know what I think? I think it’s dumb as hell! It is so unfair that expecting universal healthcare, food and water, and basic human rights is seen as radical. There is a major difference between listening to two sides of an argument and weighing out the options and listening to two groups, one of which is against the health and safety of marginalized groups and one that just... thinks people should be chill and supported... like compassionate human beings???

Like, yeah, I realize that I am so incredibly far left, but holy damn. People are just allowed to say “Y’know, maybe LGBTQ+/POC/people in poverty SHOULDN’T have rights.” Like.... Why is it radical to say, “NO! People deserve to have public bathrooms, marriage rights, financial support, education, and health resource.”

I know that this part is really radical compared to like, “normal” people. What are the rich doing with all of that money? Why should people be able to purchase their tenth golden yacht while people under their company name bring home barely enough to feed their kids, let alone themselves. Capitalism worked for the boomers and genxers, but that’s when the rich were taxed and the minimum wage was a living wage. But the boomers hold the money, millennials are struggling, and I’ll have to go into a workforce that was built to keep the rich wealthy and keep the poor struggling.

I’m fifteen, I’m gen z, I’m young, but I live in a world where my identity as a queer person could get me fired from a job that I might not even get the chance to have because of how screwed this system is. I don’t know if I have a future. I didn’t even expect to live this long. But I’m in a much better place than so many people.

My parents have an income. I am white. I have good grades.

But I’m still queer. I’m female. I’m young. I don’t even know if I’m actually a girl anymore. I’m mentally ill.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m just angry at this system created by old white men, getting run by old white me, in support for old white men. 

I want a fucking revolution. I don’t want a war, but I want rapid change and I want it now.

So what I’m radical? I’ve got compassion. Right-wing and reactionaries don’t care about anybody except for themselves and their money.

I can’t vote now, but I’ll be able to vote in the next presidential election. I don’t know what to expect and I’m scared and angry. This system sucks. I’m fifteen years old and I’m already tired.

[entireconfection]

Sucks To Be Us

So us Millennials certainly got a shit deal, didn’t we?

If you’re in that unlucky group, depending on where in the range you fall (roughly 1983-1996), you either never knew a pre-9/11 world, or had barely entered adulthood when that day changed everything.

Let’s face it, nothing was the same after that. I know there’s been horrible shit throughout human history. I know it’s easy to romanticize the pre-2001 world, especially for a white guy. But still, I think it’s a mostly true statement. 

Nothing has been easy or carefree since then. Our lives have been in constant turmoil, careening from one awful tragedy or shitty development to another. With the exception of one shining moment, the election of Barack Obama. And that hope was snuffed out almost immediately as America showed its true colors, racist pieces of shit took over the Republican party, impotent Democrats pissed away their power almost as soon as they won it, and Obama’s 2 terms became a series of disappointments and what-could-have-been’s.

From the to the grueling disaster of Iraq to the normalization of mass shootings and school lockdowns to the meta, from epic financial collapse that destroyed millions of lives while the rich fucks who caused it waltzed away scott free with fat bonuses, from the cataclysmic election of a lunatic bent on destroying our democracy from within to the meta-catastrophe of climate change bearing down on us more and more with each passing year...it seems we inherited a world of perpetual chaos and grief. Just horrible thing upon horrible thing, happening over and over, none of which we can do anything about. All amplified to an unbearable degree by the social media, always-on, constantly-connected hell we’ve constructed for ourselves.

And now, to top it all off, we have a global pandemic that shattered whatever sense of normalcy was left, and put fun on indefinite hiatus. We can’t even fucking get close to our fellow human beings anymore. So now, not only do we have all the horrible things from before, not only is the world still fucked and falling apart, all the things that at least provided a sliver of fun and temporary distraction are either gone, or transformed into a shitty, fun-free new version that only reminds us how weird and fucked-up this whole situation is.

And we’re supposed to just plow through this, after every other kick in the balls our generation has taken? We’re supposed to just stay obedient little worker ants, feeding the capitalist machine, deprived of everything we used to love?

To be clear, I am NOT one of these morons running around without a mask and ranting about how COVID is a hoax. I hate those people. I understand that the restrictions we’ve put in place are there to try to keep millions more from dying. All of us should follow the guidelines. If you don’t, you’re a fucking asshole.

I’m just asking how much people can take. How many earth-shattering calamities can we endure before we crack? How long can people watch the world fall apart before they just give up completely? At least (some) earlier generations had some periods of stability and hope. At least they didn’t live with the constant dread that our planet will soon become uninhabitable, and even worse, most people don’t seem to care. 

I saw a clip of Greta Thunberg addressing older folks, saying something like “How dare you look to young people for hope.” Exactly. You Boomers and Gen X-ers had your fun and fucked up the planet long before we ever got here. And we’re supposed to fix it when the deck is this stacked against us? Fuck you.

I suppose I should note that Gen Z got a raw deal too, since even the oldest of them never knew a world before 9/11. But actually, that may be a blessing for them. It was so cruel to briefly live in a world where prosperity and security seemed guaranteed, where things were hopeful and exciting and actually getting better, only to have it all ripped away, and to watch the world get crueler and uglier with each passing year, as those memories of better days get further and further in the rearview and you start to wonder if it was all a dream.

I apologize to anyone reading this, as I know this shit-cake of negativity is the last thing you need right now. But I don’t know what else to do, so I have to get it out somehow. I take some comfort in the fact that no one knows me, this blog is brand new and I’ve added no tags, so the number of people who read this will likely be close to nil. But if you have....sorry to be such a Debbie downer. 

It’s just hard to want to go on these days. To quote an Avett Brothers song, “I don’t wanna live / but I sure don’t wanna die.” I don’t want to give up. But it seems lately like there’s no hope. Human beings will always hope, because we developed that skill in order to survive. But it has become almost impossible to back up that hope with any rationality. Any reasonable person who looks at the state of the world, and where it is going, will be hard-pressed to look you in the eye and tell you there is good reason to be hopeful. Whatever hope we have now has become a blind, last-ditch kind of hope. The kind of thing you turn to when you have nothing else left.

When the things that used to give you relief are gone, when your hopes for the future now seem impossible, when humanity seems like a lost cause that is coming closer and closer to destroying itself....what are you supposed to do? Why even get out of bed? Why get up to face another day of sadness and disappointment?

When I talked to my shrink and expressed my fear that life on Earth is going to be permanently shitty, he said something like, “Even if that’s true, yes life will be a lot harder, but it will still be worth living. Our human connections are what’s most important.”

Sorry, doc, I’m not buying it. I don’t want to spent the next 50 years talking to people over fucking Zoom. I don’t want to live in a world where there will never be another ball game, or convention, or concert. I don’t want to live in a world where if I want to go on a date, we have to be 6 feet apart or risk death. That’s not a life worth living. That’s a shitty, brutish, bare-bones, survival kind of life. I’d rather die.

The sad truth is that, even if we’re able to discover a treatment for COVID and resume “normal” life, we’re still fucked. It’s 100 fucking degrees in the Arctic. America is run by a mad king who could very well be re-elected. Democracies around the world are dying. The planet is severely overpopulated and will only become more so. It’s hard not to see how my life, how the life of everyone in my generation, is going to be one of disruption and desperation. I sort of envy my mom and her boyfriend. At least they won’t be around for the worst of it. (Hard to imagine a “worse” than this, but if there’s one thing we all should have learned by now, it’s that things can always get worse)

By all means, prove me wrong. Give me some tangible evidence that things aren’t this bad, that there’s some reason, any reason, to be at all hopeful. And don’t give me a poll showing Biden ahead. That’s garbage, and anyone who remembers 2016 is being an idiot if they're falling for that shit again.

Well.....till next time....ta ta.