Dear Generic Conservative,
Please stop calling my generation lazy, dumb, and useless.
Thanks,
The Future Management
I felt the need to write this letter to the interchangeable talking heads that populate our newspapers, TV channels, and radio stations as a response to this article by Ruben Navarrette. This link is to demonstrate that people are still calling the youth of our nation lazy, dumb, and useless, not to encourage you to read this article. If you’ve been paying attention over the past five years, you already know what it says.
An article that appeared several weeks ago in USA Today made clear how much harm some well-meaning baby boomer parents are doing to their college-educated 20-something kids by coddling them, enabling them and – in many cases – supporting them financially as they wander through the post-college wilderness deciding what to do with their lives.
To me, when I hear that people are supporting their children after they graduate, it means people are doing well enough financially to support their children in pursuing their passions. However, like every other commentator who feels it’s necessary to denigrate my age group, Navarrette sees things differently.
These kids are often long on education and degrees, but just as often short on passion and drive. It turns out it's hard to be hungry when you spend your time visiting buffets. Who knew?
Ah, this of course is the problem. Navarrette deftly shows himself to be an original and independent thinker by saying the youth these days isn’t dumb, lazy, and useless; the youth these days is just lazy and useless. Bravo Ruben, I’m not offended at all. The crux of the arguments is that parents, when they offer the benefits of being middle to upper middle class to their children, ruin them forever.
This article does not address the plight of millions of kids living in poverty whose parents have no opportunities to hand them, or the slim percentage of children born into wealth who will have everything handed to them through their entire life, all it does is say, "You middle class folk who are working to support your children, you’re raising a generation of unappreciative lay-abouts who are somehow representative of American youth as a whole."
I’m 22 and I personally find this bland, hashed out tripe, well, bland and hashed out. The underlying nugget of truth, that sometimes parents need to say "no" to their children, has been inflated into a monstrous failure of American families that has nothing to do with the actual reality of the situation. As someone who is financially independent, pursuing a career I am passionate about, politically active and pushing myself to excel in a variety of fields, I find it insulting to read that I am so flawed.
Beyond my personal insult, I’m insulted for the thousands of young people across the nation who are trying to make a difference. Time and time again, Barack Obama’s victories are attributed to the "short on passion and drive" youth vote. If only their parents has raised them right, they would vote Republican! Are these the "failure to launch" stories the pundits love to harp on? The students who organize, canvas, caucus, and vote? Who do these windbags think they’re going to convince of anything?
I don’t have time to go down the list of successful young people right now, as I must return to work, so I’ll close with this: if we are so "short on passion and drive" as Navarrette claims, then isn’t what we need inspiration, not an ill conceived lecture? After all, the pundits have been lecturing us about this for years and it doesn’t seem to have "fixed" the "problem".