An Open Letter from Generation X

I like to go to the movies and I particularly like getting their early so I can watch the trailers. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget 2008, the year I saw two trailers that would later become Academy Award nominees. Both trailers were historical films set in the tumultuous era of the Baby Boomers and their crusade against that evil generation before them. The films were Frost / Nixon and Milk. When the trailers flashed across the screen, the audience moaned—and it had absolutely nothing to do with the homosexuality in Milk.


A friend beside me leaned over and whispered, “Man, those guys still haven’t gotten over it, have they?” He’s right. They haven’t “gotten over it.” Furthermore, they think the rest of us don’t “get it.” Far too narcissistic and self-absorbed to put their crusades aside, this is the generation that will forever be remembered as being too selfish to stay married, too drugged to be productive, and too religious to be just. This will be the generation that we remember as being so focused on their parent’s shortcomings that they never got around to looking at their own.


I’d like to thank the Academy for continuing to bloat their egos. Sure, these are important movies about important times in our history, we get it. We got it last time you brought it up. Like a bad dinner date, life with the aging Boomer population is all about having the same conversations over and over. We know about your generation of world-changers. We also know that you upped and joined the system when your marriages got stale, when free love got old, and when raising kids started cutting into your down time. We get it, and the statistics don’t lie.


Refusing to believe their revolution is over, this generation looks back to a time when they were making a difference… a time before Enron and Wall Street scandals, before Monica Lewinski, before State-sanctioned torture in Guantanamo Bay. And as if to keep father time from pointing out their revolution is over, this generation invented the likes of Botox and new techniques of pulling skin away from their aging faces. Plastic surgery is the ultimate manifestation of a plastic war, where the Boomer’s righteous ideologies killed and maimed the generation behind them with a morally bankrupt reality.


I’m not just writing about about the Boomer Left in this country... the truth is the Boomer Right did no better for us as a nation. By forming a group of Religious Fundamentalists to combat the Boomer Socialists, we watched an entire generation devour itself. The Right built shiny new churches, multi-million dollar ministries, “Christian” television networks, and then proceeded to invite the likes of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker to run a good show for us, with a few hookers dancing behind the curtain. No, Boomer Right. You didn’t do the nation any favors by getting drawn into the culture war. You gave the devil his due.


While the schizophrenic Boomer generation fought each other, government and greedy executives robbed us all blind. Now with empty pockets, they’ve dared to get angry again. Good for them. Only it is 20 years too late, my world-changing friends. We’ve had four terms, that’s 16 years of Boomer leadership in the White House. The Boomers really made good on their word—they did change the world. They wrapped their chubby religious hands and marijuana blackened fingers around the throat of my generation.


Don’t worry; we’ll scrub the place down. We’ll mop it all up for you. It won’t be easy, but we’ll do it. We’re going to take your Frost / Nixon and your Milk because we do value their significance. We’re going to thank you for paving the way for us to question our government. We’ll take your Jesus out from under your religion, and we’ll take your gospel out from under the stage lights. None of your lessons will be lost on us.


But we’re tearing up the credit cards. We’re saving money and paying off our debts. We’re going to stay focused on our families, with or without Dobson ranting in the background. We’re going to build better churches, better banks, and better corporations. We don’t feel the need to check our morals at the door anymore, because grandma and grandpa had a few things right about both God and country. We see that pretty clearly now. God isn’t a four-letter word and when we’re done, homo won’t be either. What we’re bringing to the table is a morality that isn’t at war with itself and world that’s more likely to pick up a Walt Whitman book than a Bill Ayers leaflet or a leftover Ted Haggard pamphlet.


When we’re finished there won’t be a child in America born without adequate health insurance or an elderly veteran freezing to death in his own home because his power got shut off. We won’t be taxing the wealthy and pretending we can free lunch our way to social justice or prosperity. We won’t see rich as the enemy, nor will we immortalize the poor with empty rhetoric.


We’re going to dig you out of this and if you can wait long enough, there might something left for you to retire on, but we’re not making any promises. That’s because Boomer bankruptcy runs so much deeper than AIG or Citigroup. It’s a deeper poison running through our systems and our souls. Even so, I think I can find a generation of Americans willing to put the hemlock merchants out of business.