WU Political Review
The Generational Blame Game, and Why We Must Refuse to Play It Michael Powers
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f you asked me to pick the most tired political platitude of the last decade, I would have to respond with the trope of “Millennial murder.” In the mid-2010s, it was almost impossible to go a month without hearing a new story about how millennials were killing some industry —homeownership, diamonds, mayonnaise, you name it. The tale that millennials were responsible for the decline of a multitude of industries— all of which can be linked in some way with the image of American-brand capitalism—was easy to spin to a largely Generation X (1961-1981) and boomer (1946-1964) audience, ready to point fingers. In a way, the speed and ease with which the myth gripped the American public are indicative of a wider attitude held about generational differences. It implies the unfortunate existence of a strong propaganda machine, one that has successfully swindled many Americans into believing the issues that plague their society are the fault of their fellow citizens while distracting them from the real culprit: capitalism. Since 1967, Time Magazine has published twenty separate magazines with covers calling out specific age groups. "The Generation That Forgot God." "Generation Disappointment." "Generation Jihad." And perhaps most famously, plastered across the cover of a May 2013 edition, was "The Me, Me, Me Generation: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents." Yuck! The danger of these sorts of broad generalizations about certain generations is that even if they happened to be true— which, nine times out of ten, they aren't—they lack any nuance, depth, or real analysis into the conditions that might lead to some of the disadvantages people of certain age demographics face and the ways they respond to them. You don't need to be a biologist to realize that there is not some special allele that exclusively activates in people born in certain years that makes them more prone to living with their parents or not eating out every day of the week. In the case of millennials, their failure to buy houses as early as their grandparents did isn't because
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We must realize that the many problems we as a society face today are not the fault of our fellow citizens; they are merely a result of the simple fact that capitalism is an inherently unsustainable economic system. they don't want to buy houses; in fact, the 2018 Homebuyer Insights Survey by Bank of America found 72% of millennials picked "owning a home" as a top priority in life—above "traveling the world" (61%) but below "being able to retire" (80%). Yet homeownership rates are down among millennials by 8% compared to previous generations. Thanks to a combination of crushing student loan debt and their possession of a mere 3% of America's wealth (boomers at similar ages had 21%) millennials simply can't afford homeownership. The fact that this easily-debunked narrative has been entrenched into our cultural understanding of our economic struggles for so many years is quite upsetting. There are so many more pressing narratives deserving to be explored. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and breathtaking socioeconomic inequality all taint the fabric of American society. Yet, in an environment
where everything we consume is broken down to its most easily digested parts, commercialized, and commodified, discussing these issues simply isn't marketable. Instead, popular magazines, like Time, choose to sacrifice integrity in favor of accessibility. This isn't the fault of Time itself, which was owned by Meredith Corporation until it was purchased by tech billionaire Marc Benioff in 2018. Another popular publication, the Washington Post, is owned by Jeff Bezos, the richest of the rich, and perhaps the most wellknown of America's many billionaires. When corporations and billionaires fund media outlets, there will inevitably exist a tendency to produce stories that are more marketable than substantive. You can bet that someone like Bezos, whose wealth could not possibly be spent by a single person in even one thousand lifetimes, would be glad to have the public eye shift its gaze towards an arbitrary age group rather than towards the billionaires who are truly responsible for a majority of our world's woes. Of course, the “millennials are killing” fable has been dismantled countless times. But now that the cliché has run its course, and many are disillusioned with the narrative that it presents; it is important to go one step further and recognize the danger in blaming any particular generation for the troubles faced by today’s youth. Yes, it is easiest to blame the boomers. A 2019 census of billionaires shows that 90% are over the age of 50. Near the end of 2019, the "OK boomer" slogan took the internet by storm, becoming a ubiquitous expression of anger against not only the group one might think of as "old people," but also the broader band of all those who hold racist, classist views, are pro-war, bigoted, voted for Trump, or generally don't align with progressive views. However, at its core, "OK boomer" was a blanket statement that, before it was co-opted out of the hands of zoomers and millennials by the very people it was meant to disarm, was a more modern version of the "millennials are killing" myth. It served as an easily digestible, accessible way to attack a generation that was
