The Forgotten Generation

No agency or just plain apathy?

Much has been written about my generation, Generation X. We are the generation that grew up in the shadow of the baby boomers. Our generation was the first to see our mothers enter the workforce en masse. Subsequently, we have often been called the most unparented generation. We followed in the footsteps of the previous generation's sexual liberation. They had all the fun and exploration. We got all the fall out, from AIDs to the psychosis of meaningless sex. Politics appeased the baby boomers’ whims and desires while completely ignoring the burden placed on Gen X. We are the forgotten generation.

Gen X was forgotten by multiple facets. Good blue-collar and mid-level white-collar jobs that provided our parents with a decent standard of living diminished as my generation entered the workforce. On top of that, excessive middle-class taxation at the federal, state, and local levels all but assured that Gen X couples would both have to work to make ends meet. If one had the wherewithal to calculate all the avenues the government uses to extract tax revenues from middle class families, they would conclude that one parent works to support the family while the other works to support our ravenous government apparatus. Finally, the forgotten generation witnessed the deterioration of our religious and social institutions. Once proud churches and civic organizations that were pillars of local communities were shuttered from neglect. Like all that the baby boomer generation inherited, if an organization did not satisfy their self-centered needs, if it could not be molded into a political means into an end, it had no utility to the baby boomer generation. The offshoring of jobs, heavy taxation, and an underlying sense of not belonging, left the forgotten generation in their late 40’s and 50s with no agency.

At least that is what we Gen X’ers would like to think. To say we have no agency is to soothe the sting of the truth. Yes, we have spent our lifetime overshadowed by the bold and obnoxious baby boomers. We stood by seemingly helpless as the first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton, saxophoned and “fiddled” his way into the White House. We watched the levers of media, academia and government circle the wagons to protect the Clinton apparatchik as they whittled the Constitution away from subsequent generations – only after first using every protection in that document to secure the upper echelons of power in our most cherished institutions. But the truth is, my generation, Generation X did not lack agency, we were simply apathic to what our “Big Brother” was doing to us. We never mastered the use of the word, NO!

When we sat in our church’s pews listening to our hip pastors, direct out of secular seminary school, preach DNC marching orders, we did not stand up and say, “NO!” Sure, we may have protested with our feet by simply walking away from our church, but that was at best an apathic stern look on our way out the door. If Gen X’ers stayed in the church, they convinced themselves and their children that they were doing good work by sending the youth on Gucci Mission trips to far-flung locations instead of feeding the homeless person on the adjacent freeway exit. When our khaki wearing pastor organized the church for a march on the capital in favor of “pro-choice” rights, we may have feigned an eye roll but never stood our ground to say, “NO, not in my church!” Its not just the Rolling Stones that have “Sympathy for the Devil.” Our hip seminarians cannot find a commandment to uphold but can preach fire and brimstone from the pulpit about any number of relative social issues. And yet, crickets from the Gen X’ers in the pews.

When our banking and corporate institutions started pushing ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) policies that absolutely take organizational eyes off their entire reason for existing, do we stand up in the board meeting and say, “NO, not on my watch?” Not a chance, we Gen X’ers have folded time and again, whether it be in our churches, our places of employment or our choice of politician. And because of continued apathic responses, Gen X has become a lapdog to conservative media, commentators and politicians. They know we will watch their shows, buy their books, and return them to their elective offices with 96% efficiency. These baby boomer power brokers know that when they put forth some bat crap crazy initiative that generation X will not say. “NO!” They will simply roll over and buy another Bill O’Reilly book about killing something. We Gen x’ers have been doing it our entire lives, why should they expect it to change now?

Oh sure, Donald Trump pulled on the heartstrings of the forgotten generation, and it propelled him to the White House in 2016. And, he has a large and loyal following of the forgotten generation to this day. However, is it large enough to drag him across the finish line in 2024? The uni-party of Repubacrats has zero interest in the forgotten generation beyond their fractured and dysfunctional voting block. By the time this generation reaches retirement age, the Social Security and Medicare taxes they paid their entire lives will be entirely spent, and their promised benefits will vanish faster than a name in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book. Unlike the protesters taking to the streets in France because of that country's two-year age increase in retirement benefits, Gen X will do nothing. They will retreat to their bottles, their pills, and to their suburban homes, now too big to sell and time consuming to maintain for the upcoming Z generation.

The answer is not more books, not electing the right president, not supporting the right congressman, the answer is, what it always should have been, the answer is God. The forgotten generation themselves forgot about God. It is important to note, we are not forgotten by God, it is our generation the has forgotten God. We forgot God when our tongues failed to say, NO!, NO to government looting of the treasury, NO to secular church activism, and NO to corporate ESG standards.

In times like this, one tends to compare the United States to the late stage era of the Roman republic. There is no doubt the comparison of scheming senators using the state to fuel their klepto-fiefdoms is uncanny. However, I think a better compassion on the perils we face is a little older than Rome circa 49 B.C. I believe the collapse coming our way is more Biblical, 6^th century B.C. Biblical.

Persian King, Nebuchadnezzar first bargained with a greatly weakened Judah, extracting economic concessions as carrying away 10,000 captives to Babylon. I am sure that King Jehoiachin thought taxing his subjects to fund extravagance as well as a military machine would have saved his kingdom. Jehoiachin did, after all, surrender himself to Nebuchadnezzar to save his people. This ushered in the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, apart from the obvious age difference with our current leader, Zedekiah became a puppet to his Persian overlord. Ultimately, Zedekiah broke his oath to the king on Babylon and ignored Jeremiah’s pleas to repent and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Jerusalem to smash it, along with the temple, to tiny bits.

It was the Gen X of ancient Judah, just like our modern counterparts, who failed to say NO to the kings. NO to tuning away from God, NO to the perversions of the dark lord Baal and NO to worshiping of false idols. For it was the young that was carried away to Babylon for 70 years of captivity. It was Gen X of Judah that remained in the burning heap that was Jerusalem. It was the Gen X of Jerusalem that fills the book of Lamentations. And so too will be the fate of our current baby boomer followers if we do not kill that cat that’s got our tongue and learn how to say, “NO!”

We must say NO or get comfortable with the “man of wealth and taste.”