Posted on 08/08/2020 7:18:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
Nobody ever talks about them. Having arrived roughly between 1965 and 1980, these children seem to have slipped through the cracks of popular culture, their legacy being a few dumb movies and some aging icons, none of whom any millennial today could name. Born into households averaging 1.75 children, this tiny cohort sneaked through its small temporal window like an Army Special Ops unit. They landed on the scene just in time to rescue head-scratching parents from VCRs and DVD players, and even more miraculous, they could operate those wrist watches with the tiny buttons on the side.
And they were the first generation who at a tender and formative age were plopped down in front of a computer screen. This was not a mere toy but something they would grow up side-by-side with -- microchip to monitor -- like a childhood friend with whom they would rise inch by inch and year by year. Their plastic twelve-year-old brains stretched, absorbed, adapted. They drew in this techno evolution -- from WordStar to Windows, from Pong to Super Mario Brothers, from floppy disc to Google Docs -- like breathing air. By the time they were in college they could traverse from PC to Mac and back again as deftly as any Baby Boomer changed lovers.
They were ever more fleet and effective for having inherited no political ideology. By the time they began contemplating what democracy was, Reaganomics and Margaret Thatcher were locked in, capitalism and the free market simply the way of things. They participated in no protest picket parties, no marches on Washington, they carved out no itinerant confederacies, no Woodstock Nation, no Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
...I read an article some time ago that postulated that the so-called Greatest Generation was really the one who started the destruction of this country and its economy..think of it...which age group gave us Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, free or heavily subsidized housing, EEOC, the ADA, Affirmative Action, and all the rest of these horrible “give-away” programs....those lawmakers who were of the World War II generation, that’s who. True, the Boomers may be the ones adding gasoline to the fires, but it all started with their predecessors....
My wife fit that description, until she started dating me and we looked back at the first term of the worthless rapist President she helped elect.
Same here, born 1967. I was a senior in HS when I sat in front of a Radio Shack TRS-80 with a cassette tape drive and learned how to program BASIC
I’m a Boomer. Our music was far better than anything produced since. So there!
I agree.
Really, every 5-10 years probably makes a difference for an age group. For example, you wrote:
"My defining things seem to be Watergate, anxiety about the economy (stagflation, high interest rates, unemployment), the Space Race, and the beginning of the tech boom."
For me, in my teens, the big topics were cults (like Jim Jones), the Oil Crisis, and the Iran hostage situation. We really hated seeing our country look so weak. Of course, we all worried about the Soviet Union, communism, and a nuclear holocaust.
A lot of “Karens” are in Gen X—and they are far from quiet!
Roger that....similar vintage.
The very ones we had!
I’m a little too young (Late 83) but sure don’t feel like a “millennial”. I call myself gen y.
The article makes an interesting point...the media rarely talks about Gen X anymore, compared to when they talked about them CONSTANTLY in their 1990s heyday when they came of age. You know, MTV generation, hip and cool, tech saavy, Clinton appealed to ‘em in ‘92 when Gen X was supposedly old enough to vote for the first time (I was 11-12ish in that era). Now it’s all Baby Boomers vs. Millennials, nobody talks about Gen X anymore. I think “Gen Y” was the original name for Millennials before the whole “millennial” thing caught on in recent years. In any case, being born in the late 70s/early 80s apparently puts us in generational limbo as “ Xennials” (I bet some millennial hipster idiot came up with that term) It makes it impossible for us to identify with either group... we were too old to experience the things Millennials remember growing(That’s So Raven! for example) and too young to experience the things Gen X remembers growing up! (Schoolhouse Rock and all that)
Apparently people born around 1965ish have the same problem...demographically they are stuck between Baby Boomer and Gen X. Ditto with people born DURING World War II, like my dad’s older brother, who recently passed away, was born in ‘43...(how does that even work? The husbands were away fighting NAZIs). They are stuck between the “Greatest Generation” and the Boomers. Apparently we never had a President from that generation (we went straight from WWII vets to Boomers) but we had several VICE presidents, like Walter Mondale (too young to have served in WWII, too old to be a post-war Boomer)
Funny, I think of Mr. Reagan as THE greatest political leader of all time.
STOP, STOP!!!! You’re making me cry!
And yes, I do mean CRY -— mostly for my children and what they are heading into.... it’s nothing good!
The baby bust generation, falling between 2 baby booms. The shunned generation, “you aren’t the baby boom and you aren’t their kids”.
Bingo! No more calls, please! We have a winner! They are NOT the greatest generation. They voted for socialism, and let their spoiled Boomer bastards drive the country hard left. A lot of them died to stop the very socialism that they subsequently allowed to infest America.
It’s a tight race. I am a member of what has been called “The Silent Generation”, between the “Greatest” and the “Boomers”. I could show you some incredibly self absorbed people born between ‘65 which is the year I left active duty and ‘80 which is the year of my thirty sixth birthday. I rode to school on buses driven by sixteen and seventeen year old STUDENTS. Those who turned sixteen between ‘65 and ‘80 were mostly not to be trusted to drive a lawn mower, let alone a school bus.
Same here, born in 65, lived through the economic doldrums of the 70’s and knew what it was like to work hard and not have anything handed to us and sweet go-go 80’s and the great Reagan. My parents a boomer and member of the silent generation stayed tougher and are approaching their 60th year together, having raised five kids: a nurse, tunnel engineer, librarian, airline mechanic and nuclear waste disposal expert.
We all gather for holidays, bow heads and pray and Dad of the silent generation is the patriarch and all including grandkids and great grandchildren show proper respect out of love, not fear. The article is pretty spot on accurate for all of the five kid Xr’s, me and my siblings.
‘71 X-er here!
Me wife was born in 1965. Never saw a computer until 1982.
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