This is the headline of a dumb think piece in the Post about Reality Winner, who leaked some NSA documents to the Intercept. I’m not linking to it – you can find it easily with teh Google – because I’m sick of millennial bashing for clicks.
I am usually, by far, the oldest person in the room at work meetings. Most of my colleagues are “millennials”, which is to say, they are young. Some of them, on occasion, make the same mistakes that I made when I was their age. As a group, however, they seem no worse and probably better than most generations. One indicator of them being a decent generation is that they seem to tolerate the condescending, ill-informed and even baldly stupid “what millennials don’t understand” discussions that occasionally crop up.
Young people sometimes do stupid things, not because the current generation of youngs is worse than any other, but because youth plus humanity often yields stupidity. Reality Winner had none of the encumbrances of age (family, kids, etc.), she probably had the righteousness of youth (which leads to many good things in addition to some stupid ones), and she didn’t follow directions in part (I’m guessing) to the feeling of invincibility that accompanies being young. She was also dumb enough to choose a media outlet that is apparently clueless about protecting sources. It’s a tale as old as time, not a new development plaguing the current generation of youngs.
dr. bloor
Hey, if I can’t bash millenials for the sake of bolstering my sagging self-esteem over the shitshow our generation has created, I’m just going to find an ice floe to drift away on.
aimai
The only thing that would make that headline worse is if it was “10 things that make Millenials Leak Government Secrets.”
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Another thing the rest of the world is catching up to me on. I should be I charge.
Emma
I entered my sixth decade last year. Looking back on my life it is a wonder I survived some of the stupid things I did when young.
Ray Ingles
The younger generation has always been going to hell. Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes in the 1940’s.
dr. bloor
@aimai: This. If I was a cat with nine lives, I’d be on something like my third cat at this point.
Another Scott
@aimai: Indeed.
And each one would require a separate page click….
Cheers,
Scott.
Thoroughly Pizzled
I’ve sat in meetings where old people took turns bashing millennials in-between checking their phones. It was insufferable.
Peale
If you think it’s bad now, wait until they’re old enough to be “senior pentagon officials” or “long time agents close to the investigation.”
Villago Delenda Est
Perhaps they’re seeing wrongs that need to be righted? After all, the most revealing item in Chelsea Manning’s massive leak-dump was a tape of helicopter pilots casually committing atrocities.
arielibra
I found many of the article’s structural points to be well put. Take a group largely overqualified due to the job market, give them low pay, poor or no benefits, and no remaining social contract or (two-way) loyalty understanding with their employers, and top it off with corporate doublespeak about self-motivation, ideals/passion, and accountability…and what did you expect to happen?
Spanky
@Ray Ingles: Oh hell, Aristotle was bitching about the damn kids on his lawn.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ray Ingles: Hell, Socrates was a concern troll, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spanky: Great minds, etc.
Amir Khalid
@Emma:
Your youthful folly was not entirely to blame.
Oatler.
“Why do 90 year old billionaires suck the world’s future dry and why haven’t we killed them yet?”
Wag
The FYNYT has a decent article about infrastructure funding in China. It’s also nice to see our president openly suggesting a similar corrupt public money/private profit model for our infrastructure spending
Wag
@arielibra: Excellent points
Spanky
Also too, it seems that the author of said article is a Professional Millenial.
Cheryl Rofer
@aimai: Disagree. The worst would be “Why aren’t we talking about how millennials leak government secrets”?
I saw an article (will not link) this morning that must have repeated that trope at least 50 times.
JUST. STOP.
Hunter Gathers
Sure, Russia is fucking pwning us right now, but lets focus on the leaker with the funny name.
Spanky
@Oatler.: Now that’s an article I’d like to see in the NYT.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: Socrates was the OG concern troll.
Spanky
I gotta stop procrastinating about mowing the damned grass. Not getting any cooler out there.
Hopefully I’ll run down a few of those damned kids with the tractor. It can be speedy.
Corner Stone
@Oatler.: Now that’s a hot take I can sign off on for a think piece!
Kay
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
It is insufferable. My favorite is how “they don’t know anything and have no work ethic”. This idea that the generation prior were incredibly hard-working and well-educated is just pure nonsense. I recall it a little differently. I remember a lot of shallow materialism and fads. Maybe everyone else but me was studying the Federalist Papers and practicing quadratic equations, but I don’t think so.
I worry a little about them because they don’t seem to have any sense of privacy. Everything is discussed, everything is “put out there” and given over to some kind of collective consensus. Don’t they want to keep some zone where they’re not including 100 people? It’s as if they don’t value that at all.
Emma
@Amir Khalid: In my case, not really. I got my basic schooling — all of elementary school — in Cuba. My father was amazed that my high school coursework was mostly stuff taught in 7th and 8th grade in Cuba. I zombied through high school with my misfit group, getting easy As and reading on my own. The only classes I remember clearly were (1) AP English, because the teacher threw away the book and we worked our way through the unexpurgated parts of Chaucer and acted out Shakespeare, (2) physics, because I liked it, and (3) chemistry, because my labmate once nearly set off a poisonous reaction that would have required evacuating the school.
debbie
Well, since the prefrontal cortex, the center of impulse control, sound decision-making, and weighing of consequences, isn’t fully developed until age 25 at the least, millennials aren’t pesky, they’re may not be grown up enough to handle the responsibilities handed to them.
Yes, yes, I know about the military, but there’s a lot of team structure, etc.; I’d bet there’s nothing similar in defense contracting organizations.
aimai
@Cheryl Rofer: Love your posts, by the way!
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
When I was her age (ca ’99) I was temping for a big under-the-radar financial services firm. My boss was one of the company’s lawyers, and through working for him I learned they had taken a small stake in an independent Russian energy/ media company that had been privatized after the fall of the USSR. The media company was known for being critical of the Russian government, and was now attracting its ire: offices raided, transmitters shut down for BS reasons, etc.
As luck or skill would have it, my company’s small stake (5%) kept the larger shareholders, including Gazprom the state-controlled oil company, from taking over, firing management and replacing them with patsies. Gazprom had a stake about 45% – enough to make a stink but not liquidate management. They needed our backing, which we absolutely had no interest in providing, mostly for PR reasons.
The financial firm saw the writing on the wall and decided the New Russia was not to their liking. They very quietly found a way to sell their shares and get a return, the net result of which left Gazprom as the majority shareholder, at which point Gazprom did what they wanted, and the media company’s manager/ oligarch (no saint himself) was forced into exile.
At the time, I thought about alerting the media might change things for the better. I was only a temp, the job was something I had stumbled into, it led nowhere. But I did nothing, figuring it was bound to happen and I couldn’t make a difference.
I admire Reality Winner’s courage.
Ryan
As long as no one is paying any attention to GenX.
Gelfling 545
@aimai: Number 7 will amaze you!
Kay
@debbie:
Is it possible that they have classified too much so now spend all their time protecting classified information, which won’t work anyway? Maybe they should narrow this job down – make it somehow manageable by just letting some of the categories go? Focusing on what’s really important to keep secret?
Gelfling 545
@Spanky: And as I recall my high school Latin primer had some quote about the youth of the day going to hell in a hand basket.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
The leaker with the funny name was outed on purpose so as to dissuade other potential leakers.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Doug R
The millennials showed up and knocked Theresa May down a peg.
Starting to think the Wilmer campaign was about suppressing the millennial vote. Divide and conquer.
Разделить и победить
MomSense
@aimai:
Or stop millennials from leaking with this one weird trick.
Raoul
Why Did Old People Vote to Ruin America?
Young people do make young people mistakes, and with age comes some wisdom learned of experience. But with age also comes rigidity, fear, and self-protection urges that gave us fucking Trump.
Oh, and if Millennials can Kill Applebees, as has also been reported to be their desire, I say “Go for it. Hurry, even!”
Kay
This is my own impression and may not be true- younger people can correct me- but I think younger people are less loyal to their employers because their employers are less loyal to them.
This was a deal- the idea was I would be loyal to you and you would then treat me like a human being with accrued value and work experience instead of an interchangeable part that can be outsourced at any time. The deal falls apart if one side doesn’t hold up their end. Why WOULD they be loyal, given what they have seen and experienced over the last 20 years in the workplace? What’s the benefit to them?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
Which is why I thought that the real culpable parties in the Manning case were Assange and whichever O-4 through O-6 thought it a good idea to pass that volume of accessible classified information through the hands of a 19 year old E-3.
And yeah, I know that there have been senior NCOs, warrants and field grade officers who’ve sold out, but they’ve at least had the experience of years’ worth of evaluations and security reviews to slip up on.
debbie
@Kay:
I think both your posts have merit, too much access and too little support appreciation from management.
Gelfling 545
I think it would be a grand thing if the naming of generations just stopped. I get very tired of the simplistic generalizations about the various named groups as if they were stamped out to pattern. If writers had to say “people born between the years x and y” they might see that their comment/article was not quite as catchy as they thought.
Amir Khalid
Just how many Milleninals have been leaking US Government secrets, anyway? I can think of only three: Ed Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Reality Winner. Three, mark you, out of I don’t know how many thousands with access to such secrets. Not what I’d call evidence of any trend.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
@MomSense:
I was shocked by the information available on people in my community by clicking the link!
Patricia Kayden
The Washington Post would be better served researching whether The Intercept was purposefully sloppy with the handling of the information provided to it by Reality Winner in an effort to ensure that she was easily caught by the U.S. government. Given how pro-Russian Greenwald is, that wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I would think WP and other newspapers would be okay with millennial leakers since unnamed sources provide news stories for them all the time.
Doug R
@arielibra: Yeah, this dropping of corporate responsibility wrt employees. Obviously the Boomers didn’t think through the consequences of not showing loyalty to their workers.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
I agree. Older people have built up grudges over the years and then act on them. Millennials with no experience would be susceptible to manipulation. It wouldn’t surprise me if Assange groomed them much as criminal predators.
Eural Joiner
It’s called Old Fart Disease and it’s as old as humanity – see Confucious and Socrates just to start.
Scotian
Everyone these days remembers upchain loyalty (it is all President Trump has ever known about let alone cared about which was in part which his devotion to Flynn, Putin, and Russia is so strange, even in context of Donald Trump’s usual behaviour for decades), but the downchain loyalty part? I haven’t seen that so much that anymore. This is one of the core corrupting influences of our times I would submit, and it seems to be raging in both the public and private sectors within the USA and elsewhere.
Not a good thing.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
All trends have to start at some point. ;)
Patricia Kayden
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes: That’s exactly how I see things too. Now Ms. Winner will be facing more jail time than the horrid politicians who colluded with Russia to interfere with our presidential election. Neat!!
Iowa Old Lady
I was waiting to pick up a pizza not too long ago, when a guy came in and started abusing the staff because pizza wasn’t ready. “I know you’re millennials, but surely you can do something,” etc. The guy was in his bare feet and wearing a shirt that did not stretch far enough to cover his belly. Everybody shut up and let him rant because who knows how he’d take being crossed? The staff was working as fast as they could.
My own experience is that this generation is no better or worse than previous generations, just adapting to their circumstance, which is what we all do, for better or worse.
Kay
@Scotian:
I agree. I love how “loyalty” only goes one way. That’ll work!
RepubAnon
@Cheryl Rofer: The reason we don’t see lots of leakers from “The Greatest Generation” is that they’ve long since retired. Baby Boomers have either decided to just follow orders, taken early retirement, don’t want to take the risk, or know how to avoid getting caught. Who does that leave?
Villago Delenda Est
I’m just glad that boomers are no longer be bashed for their obvious sins. See Trump, Donald.
mapaghimagsik
@aimai: Number 7 will shock you!
ETA: Damnit, too late. But still, #7 was epic!
tybee
i’m gonna leave this right here….a bit of trump and opera…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz7SfkhJe74&feature=youtu.be
Doug R
@Kay: The lack of privacy concern I think is inoculation against future revelation of secrets. They can sense the inevitable loss of privacy where EVERYTHING tracks ever little thing you do and sends it upstream for sale to the highest bidder and sometimes gets stolen. It’s not a perfect way to live, but it sure is refreshing.
mapaghimagsik
@mapaghimagsik: D
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
Yes!!!!
Baud
I judge group morals on the basis of voting habits. So black women are the best, white dudes are the worst, and millennials are in-between, but better than the older age groups.
Baud
You’ll never guess what millennials will leak next!
Kay
So I’m now completely curious about the Russian interference and my fear is everything is “classified” so we’ll never really find out what happened. I just want to know what happened. Specifically. These sort of broad hints we get don’t mean anything to me. Maybe they’re exaggerating to make their work sound more vital than it is, which people tend to do, but the Senators were all saying “the most important work of generations” and no one knows what it is they’re talking about. My fear is this will be yet another unknowable. It will become a matter of opinion if they don’t put some facts out.
James Powell
@Raoul:
#NotAllOldPeople
sigaba
We can entertain debates about wether or not Millenials are superficial, addicted to their Facebook, etc. but we should never lwt it distract from the basic fact that Boomers have utterly destroyed this country and we’re all living through their personal paychodrama because the world didn’t turn out like Walter Cronkite promised it would.
Oldgold
When you are confused as to where the stamp goes on email, like me, it is tough to be a high-tech leaker.
James Powell
@Kay:
Agree, but this was reality years before the millennials were born.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes: I agree with you. GG is a Russian stooge. He hand delivered Snowden to Putin. Who is funding the Intercept, is what I want to know.
Amir Khalid
@Oldgold:
The stamp goes on the envelope, same as with regular mail — or as Kids Today call it, “snail” mail.
tybee
Leahy goes after Jeff
SessionsSecessionist via twitter:“you can’t run forever”
http://www.mediaite.com/online/sen-leahy-goes-after-sessions-on-twitter-you-cant-run-forever/
Immanentize
@Cheryl Rofer:
Cheryl,. I love your stuff, in part because of my teaching interest in the NNPT. So I am sorta up on the subject….
BUT I read your tweet series yesterday and I have to freely admit it blew my mind! I know you said it was just speculation, but what a fucked up future you conjured in my mind. Scares me but seems so plausible as it fits all the facts. Thanks.
I guess?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tybee: how un-collegial? whither comity in the Senate? Think of his wife!
schrodingers_cat
@sigaba: Most of the people who use Facebook religiously are much older than the millennial cohort. FB may have started as a social media platform for college students but now it is overwhelmingly populated by grandmas and grandpas.
The people who keep sending me walls of text on What’sapp are retirement age.
Villago Delenda Est
@tybee: Need to find an apple tree sour enough to suit the Confederate motherfucker.
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
Well the printer would’ve given her away too but I absolutely think GG is notnto he trusted. He didn’t try to protect her.
Felonius Monk
@Baud:
Maybe not. But you can sure guess what us oldsters are likely to leak and it doesn’t have a pleasant odor. :)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@tybee:
The senior Senator from Vermont is doing his job.
Immanentize
@Kay: I think they are waiting until the 2016 election cannot be overturned or reversed. Like Bush v. Gore — “for the good of the country.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Spanky:
Plato was bitching about the peach-shaped butt prints of boys on his lawn tempting older men to sin. Also complaining about why people thought Greeks were gay.
@Doug R:
I don’t THINK it was deliberate, but it couldn’t have been better crafted for the purpose of it was. Promise the moon, then lay the blame for not getting it on corruption in the Democratic Party.
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: How is the Mrs?
Corner Stone
@Oldgold: I had to actually buy stamps for something the other day. I had no idea what I was doing.
sukabi
@Oatler.: that would be the counterpoint.
Cheryl Rofer
@aimai: Thanks! Another one coming, maybe this afternoon!
Camembert
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yep, this has been the fifteen minutes in which Leahy is actually admirable. Now follows the 2 years of Leahy being a hidebound GOP enabler. Clockwork.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think parody twitter, with few exceptions, is becoming the “Not!” of 2017, but this fake-Kushner makes a good point
Some reporter is gonna ask the head of the Executive branch according to what law he is just askin’ whether what Comey did is totally illegal, right?
Miss Bianca
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: I was temping around the same age (25-27) at a large evil PR firm in Chicago that was involved in covering up/glossing over some pretty skeevy stuff on the international level. (It’s been so long ago now that I don’t even remember what it was that set off my alarm bells). It’s amazing what they’ll let the temps photocopy. I, too, thought about squirreling some of this stuff away and then leaking it in some public forum or other, but I didn’t. “Moral cowardice or responsibilty to her employers? YOU be the judge!”
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat: OK. Kinda rough cycle this time. Exhaustion mostly which really hits her sense of self worth. This is so very hard on her — on all of us although the teenager is a bit oblivious? She starts cycle four of five next friday.
Thanks for checking in….
ruemara
@Kay: That’s true and it’s not just young people.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
Kinda agree.
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: Yes the successive cycles get harder. Is she neutropenic too? {{ }}
MomSense
Are the Republicans really pushing the defense that trump isn’t really corrupt, he’s just incompetent???
They are craven, disgusting, traitorous psychopaths.
Baud
@ruemara:
Yep. “We’re a family” when they want something from you and “It’s just business” when they want to screw you.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Is she getting some massage therapy or something else that might help a bit?
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat: not yet but those effects lasted a week this time (instead of just a couple of days before). She says she felt like her hands were claws.
Baud
@MomSense: Lots and lots incompetent people in prison.
Cheryl Rofer
@RepubAnon: Here’s a report about espionage between 1947 and 2007. Hoocoodanode that so many Boomers and Silents would have done such things!
Immanentize
@Baud: So True!
In both senses of the term “incompetent.”. The myth of the criminal mastermind is one of the most pernicious ever.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Pierre Omidyar. Here is Wikipedia profile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Omidyar
Here’s a link to another article specifically about Omidyar’s activities in India. I’m not sure how accurate the details of this article are but even if you don’t agree with opinions/conclusions expressed you’ll at least get idea of what Omidyar has done there. You may already know all of this but wanted to share in case you didn’t.
https://pando.com/2014/05/31/ebay-shrugged-pierre-omidyar-believes-there-should-be-no-philanthropy-without-profit/
Oldgold
@Amir Khalid:
This means I could give up my gardening hobby, as I am growing sick and tired of so much winning, and become an e-stamp philatelist.
Villago Delenda Est
@Immanentize: Good thing Bond villains always fuck up.
Kathleen
@Immanentize: My prayers to you and your family.
D58826
@Ray Ingles: Didn’t aristolte/Socrates have thge same complaint about the young-ins in Athens?
Booger
@Amir Khalid: Yes, previous generations–e.g., THE GREATEST GENERATION comprised leakers like Robert Hansen, Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard, who simply leaked truly meaningful information to our enemies for revenge, cash, sex or some combination of the above. You know, traditional merkin values. Not this dumb hippie stuff like seeing that we walk the talk.
Scotian
@Kay:
I tend to think the end of the Cold War also essentially ended even lip service to the idea of downchain loyalty needing to happen. I have watched it corrode for almost three decades now in ways I find terrifying, and it is one of the few things that helps make me able to come to terms with being unable to have the children I so wanted in my own youth. Global Warming and humanity’s idiocy in some sectors about it being another. One of the core reasons that Celts dd/do so well for so long, including in the more modern eras, is because that clan loyalty and the honour concepts that come with it are so ingrained, almost feudal even, You can see similar in Tongs, many Asian societies, but even there it seems like it is being eaten away at too.
This is a problem in my books, and not an easy one to deal with nor solve in practice, even if in words it is simple enough, remember the value and need (as in self interest) for it for all to gain. That it is a very serious underlying problem though, THAT i am sadly quite convinced of.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
(Joy Reid, please stop giving this pathetic GOP automaton from South Carolina so much air time)
ruemara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you.
Capri
@aimai: You forgot the rest of the headline: ““10 things that make Millenials Leak Government Secrets: number 6 is amazing.”
D58826
@MomSense: The GOP is in full cover up mode. Sen. Lee on TV this morning said he has seen nothing criminal therefore time to move on.
The entire thing is just exhausting. So many scandals, so many tweets. Don jr saying that the old man did say to Comey he hoped he would drop the investigation. While the old man is claiming the conversation never happened.
I said this yesterday and will repeat it again. Comey in a way is a side show. It is a minor thread in the larger Russia story. Therefore the D’s should offer the R’s a trade – 1. thge D’s and Mueller will drop the investigations into Der Fuhrer’s personal conduct in exchange for a full no hold bared investigation/independent commission into what the Russia did in 2016 and how to prevent it from happen in 2018 and the future.
In reality with free and fair elections Trump will pass. If the elections are not free and fair due to Russian meddling there is no way to know whither any of our elected officials are working for the US or the Russians. And that strikes at the heart of our democracy.
frosty
@Doug R: Yay, it’s the Boomers’ fault again. How about shifting the blame to, say, the MBAs. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I’m a Boomer and working is a business transaction. Loyalty goes to people, not companies. I’ve had bosses who wanted to dump me and others who had my back when that happens, because they were thinking more long therm. I’ll be loyal to those people and I’ll watch myself with the others.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@Miss Bianca: seems like the right call. The fact that despots use PR firm like everybody else isn’t exactly hot news (Lanny Davis), and you surely would have been fired/ blackballed / sued / ruined.
And it is amazing what they let the temps photocopy. I think that’s how some of the more successful union organizers work these days.
Frankensteinbeck
@frosty:
MBAs specifically are the Boomers’ fault, and that is not a joke. Boomers embraced Reagan, whose regulation changes shifted the financial incentive for companies to short term and monopolistic thinking. They voted – enthusiastically and passionately – for policies to destroy the working class to ensure blacks couldn’t join it. We are living in the ashes of that campaign, now.
Suzanne
@sigaba:
YES. I know, #notallboomers, but FUCK. Y’all benefitted from some stars aligning just so in terms of secretly and economics, sucked all the benefits out for yourselves, then left a smaller generation after you to support your entitled asses, all while voting to tear down the structure that made your success possible. And now y’all bitch about “participation trophies”. The subsidized, affordable college education was the ultimate participation trophy. F Boomers.
Tim C.
Fucking hell yes. Everyone likes to talk shit about the 20somethings and century after century it’s always bullshit.
Singular
I’ve only been following this story vaguely, but when I read Reality’s potted history, my first thought was “fucking hell, she’s achieved quite a bit, for someone that age”. Obviously got some issues, but a wee bit impressive. YMMV.
frosty
@Frankensteinbeck:
Not all of them, pal. The ones I see who worship Reagan? Gen X, ’cause they grew up with him. (I knew we could get a slam in on them somewhere!)
Really, blaming generations is pretty tiresome.
Camembert
@D58826: I for one absoultely trust the GOP to keep their end of that bargain. There is no possibility of regretting yet another deal where we pay up front and try to collect later.
Baud
@frosty: Yeah, we really should be blaming white people.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Thanks, I took a quick look, its dense. Who publishes Pando, I had never heard of it before.
The exposition about BJP and RSS was tedious. I did not like the gratuitous swipes against Sam Power. Microfinance does not work. They charge usury level interest rates. Farmers in India are agitating in 4 states as we speak. Tech millionaires are not any better than the rail road barons.
ETA: Most American outlets cover India poorly, not everything revolves around the United States and its billionaire class. BBC does a far superior job.
Baud
@Camembert: I agree with your comment, which I assume I correctly read as snark.
Frankensteinbeck
@frosty:
Gen X, oddly enough, did not vote for Reagan. I’m sure we’ll figure out why, some day.
frosty
@Suzanne:
Also “benefitted” from a huge cohort all trying to get jobs at the same time. Sort of like the millenials, as a matter of fact.
I agree on the ridiculous price of college now. Doesn’t seem like it’s tied to any market reality, the administrations seem to act like they’ve got a monopoly and can gold-plate everything and charge what they want.
frosty
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s definitely a puzzle!
Iowa Old Lady
OT, but I see on twitter that Trump’s UK visit has been postponed. I’ll bet May couldn’t get on the phone fast enough to disinvite him.
frosty
KTHX it’s been fun but I gotta go get the kids off my lawn so I can try to get the grass to grow.
Baud
FWIW, I did a little sleuthing and the author of this piece, Malcolm Harris, is himself a millennial. He has a book coming out!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He is the J D Vance of the Millennial Elegy!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Ha. Good analogy.
So all the fighting in this thread was for nothing.
ETA: I bet mistermix is a Boomer. They are always causing trouble.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Dare I ask for a link?
Another Scott
@sigaba: This trope of beating up on Boomers is incredibly tiring.
Obama is a Boomer.
Hillary is a Boomer.
Rumsfeld is a “Silent Generation”
Cheney is a “Silent Generation”
Scalia was a “Silent Generation”
Reagan was a “GI/Greatest Generation”
Rhenquist was a “GI/Greatest Generation”
Phil Gramm was a “Silent Generation”
Schlafly was a “GI/Greatest Generation”
Falwell was a “Silent Generation”
etc.
You get the idea.
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@Frankensteinbeck:
Let’s get real. It’s not about generations at all. It’s about white people. Specifically, it’s about white men. A lot of white women, too, but mostly white men.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: I am not great with Twitter links, But this is the link to Cheryls’ Twitter speculation
Baud
@Immanentize: First tweet.
I think we’ll be ok.
Immanentize
@MomSense: Not yet — I don’t think that will help the problem — and Mrs. Imm HATES massages! Weird, I know (I love them).
Amir Khalid
@Iowa Old Lady:
I was considering the optics of POTUS coming to London and being cold-shouldered by the Mayor, while Londoners took to the streets to denounce him for showing his face in their city and May for inviting him. It might not be the best thing to raise Trump’s spirits.
Dmbeaster
This type of alleged “think” piece is as predictable and perennial as the “10 new exciting sex positions” article is in Cosmo.
Or to look at it another way about young bashing, I gifted my teenage son a complete set of Led Zeppelin music about a decade ago, explained that it was alleged “devil music” in my time, and now it sells Cadillacs.
Immanentize
@Another Scott: I agree — There are just so many Boomers that, like dirt, they fall on both sides of the plow. Good and bad. Altruistic and venal. Boomers did stop the Vietnam war and had a hand in getting rid of Nixon (and Fuck LBJ!)
Immanentize
@Baud: HA!
ETA — I think the fear is that the only ‘strategy’ that he is capable of holding onto is the one where he divides up the world.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
LIKE EVERY GENERATION THAT HAS EVER WALKED GOD’S GREEN EARTH.
These discussions are incredibly tiresome.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: It sounds to me like you are describing the generation that went before the boomers, or at least painting with way too broad a brush.
In my experience, a lot of the middle-aged women who worked their butts of to put President Obama in office and who are organizing and resisting the current travesty of an administration are boomers. (I may or may not resemble that remark.)
WaterGirl
@Baud:
By that definition, we are all Boomers now.
D58826
@Camembert: I know. But you wouild have to build some GOP upfront deliverables into the process. Legislation would make Mueller dropping (or maybe not releasing) his investigation contingent upon independent commission being set up and real honest/Independent folks named to it, a multi-year budget and staff.
Otherwise the he-said vs he-said and what really is a leak drama will continue and the real threat to our system, i.e. Russian hacking, will simply fade away. Now maybe if the Russian hack the 2020 election and get a D elected to WH then the GOP will get religion on the topic.
Immanentize
@Baud: Also, considering the whole Trump attitude toward NATO (and NAFTA, TTP, etc.) is that they really should be viewed as protection rackets, I see her point. It is easy to imagine a limited bi-polar person imagining a bi-polar world. Cat’s Cradle? Man in the High Tower? Pre-Chinese atomic age? The whole NNPT is premised on a nuclear world with two powers (the US and the USSR) controlling their client states…. So Cheryl’s speculation is also quaint and old fashioned. Perfectly suited for our President.
ETA Clarity
WaterGirl
@Immanentize:Thanks, I am off to read it now.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: I agree that it is like every generation — that was my point, sort of, but I have to admit that I can’t muster any all-caps outrage over the discussion. It is an opportunity to review the issue like Another Scott did….
Sphex
Wrt how corrupt Sessions et al. are, and how fantastic Bhahara, Yates, and Comey are, I found this twitter thread both terrifying and enlightening. Would be curious to hear what others think.
I’m going to start this Official Game Theory Thread™ in a way few will expect – a story of me crying on the floor of my living room.
(Apologies in advance if I muck up the linking: first time and on my phone)
D58826
@Iowa Old Lady: Actually I think the report was that it came from the WH. Der Fuhrer doesn’t want hostile crowds and has his heart set on riding thru London with the Queen in her open golden carriage drawn by 6 white horses. Neither of which is going to happen any time soon. If Der Fuhrer lives long enough he might get to ride horse back besides George when he becomes King.
J R in WV
@Immanentize:
I’m sorry to hear she’s not bright and chipper. To be expected, still would prefer the opposite. I hope it’s doing a lot of good, understand it will be weeks or months before you can know how well it worked.
Best of luck!!!
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck: Concur.
Villago Delenda Est
@Immanentize: We must remember that Obama is a boomer. A late one, to be sure, but a boomer nevertheless.
raven
@Immanentize: ding
Immanentize
@Sphex: That is a place I am just unwilling yet to travel. Which is probably what everyone thinks which is why it can work….
PS (Mistermix?!) Your link is open through your reply button….
mai naem mobile
I work with millenials as well. The older millenials are okay. They’re actually a tough group. They seem to be frugal and have a functioning brain. The younger millenials are dumber than a box of rocks. I don’t know if its because of the participation trophies for everybody or charter school education. They’re just dumb. My sister who is a manager and has several employees says the same thing. She says they are stupidly confident of stuff that they are not in any way skilled at. It’s like their parents kept on telling them they were awesome so that they wouldn’t have poor self esteem.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Aww well she needs all the things she does like then.
Omnes Omnibus
They way we are defining generation is idiotic. I was born in what is defined as the last year of the boomers. As a result, a shitload of things that were cultural touchstone for “my generation” either happened before I was born (Sputnik, the Cuban missile crisis, JFK’s assassination) or before I was old enough for them to have meaning at the time (MLK’s and RFK’s assassinations, Woodstock, the moon landing, Watergate). I have much more in common culturally with the people born in the next couple of years after me than I do with my aunt who was born in 1946.
ETA: Like a number of people have said, bitching about kids these days is probably as old as humanity itself. And, in any case, I don’t have a lawn.
Cheryl Rofer
@Immanentize: I hope to have another post up this afternoon or tomorrow about Trump’s Russia love. Not gonna shed a lot of light on it, but something I thought needed to run down. And roughly consistent with that tweet speculation.
@Sphex: I take Eric Garland with a grain of salt. That thread in particular contains A LOT of speculation, which is why I label my speculation threads as such. If I were going to make his argument, I would look at all the polls, or at least start with someone like 538 looking at all the polls, to be sure that they were indeed all off in the way Garland implies. I suspect that the case would not be as simple as he makes it.
I’ve also been a pollworker in New Mexico and can say that hacking the polls themselves, at least in the states that use a system like New Mexico’s would be very difficult indeed, perhaps impossible. Control is in the counties, and there are many different kinds of machines, not connected to the internet. There are intermediate points, like transmission of results, where hacking could occur, but we have paper ballots that are saved, and random audits are performed after the election.
Another Scott
@Sphex: Agree it’s worrying, but if you believe the analysis of people like Sam Wang, it’s not necessary for there to have been hackery of the actual voting machines and results to explain the outcome.
I have no doubt that Russia did everything possible to sway the outcome via social engineering and releasing propaganda and hacked e-mails, etc., etc. And trying to get people thrown off the voting rolls. But I have not seen any serious discussion that the actual voting totals were changed or that machines (or their software) was tampered with to change the outcome.
And it’s clear that Trump and his organization is and has been joined at the hip to Russia (“Russia should hack her and release the stuff to the press”), and there must be lots and lots of shady money changing hands. It all stinks to high heaven.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
My college education would have been paid for by my parents, but I was drafted out of the middle of Sophomore year. So then, years later, the GI Bill helped fund my college education. My parents kicked in for books and fees, but my big cost was commuting 90 minutes each way using an F-250 that got 15 miles a gallon the first two years.
Fortunately I made good friends who let me crash on their couches when I had night classes followed by 8am classes the next morning, freeing up 3 hours of study time I wouldn’t have had otherwise. That was also a big subsidy, and I still am close to all those people today, 35 years later.
ETA: Not to say that voting for Demented Reagan twice didn’t help destroy the American way of life. But don’t point that finger of doom at me, I never voted for a Republican (demented or not) in my life!! Yellow-dog Democrat speaking here, since 1974.
Doug R
@Another Scott: Obama’s a late boomer early Gen X.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
This is very good news! Can’t wait for the tweetstorm in 3, 2, …
Mike in DC
I blame Generation Omega for time traveling back and screwing up the timeline for shits and giggles.
Mike in Pasadena
@Kay: what I have seen from Paris to Lisbon to Amsterdam to Pasadena, CA is very hard working mills in restaurants, stores, construction sites, tour guides, etc. Most have better attitudes than my generation had in their teens,twenties, and thirties. Bad mouthing the younger generations has always been a joke.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Supposedly, Donald was concerned that people might rush to the streets and express their displeasure with him. It would be unseemly for Donald to be seen as anything but the most popular visitor ever to the Sceptered Isle.
Perhaps the “Show your rump to Trump” movement is catching fire.
Another Scott
@Doug R: 1961 is a Boomer.
The usual definition of a “generation” is the average female reproduction time, or ~ 20 years. The “baby boom” started in 1942. 1942+20 = 1962.
Redefining the intervals doesn’t make the case more compelling.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who is also a Boomer.”)
D58826
@Cheryl Rofer:
Not an expert but here goes. The Russians will have access to the same polling/demographic data that Wang/538/etc use. Sp hack into the board of election data bases in key locations and delete some number of voter registration records. When the voter shows up to vote he/she will have to file a provisional ballot. Since many folks won’t make the effort or have the time to then show up to re-register and have the provisional ballot counted, it gets tossed. Since I’m originally from Penna and am somewhat familiar with the voting patterns I’ll us that as an example. The joke is that Philly/Pittsburgh are blue and the middle of the sate might as well be Alabama. The D’s always depend on getting big numbers out of those two areas to offset the rest of the red votes. If by hacking the registration rolls you can reduce that vote total by 10-15% it might be just enough to flip[ the state red. If done right it would be done in small enough samples so as not to be obvious. And given the margins in PA/MI/WI it would not take that much. More people show up at Happy Valley for a Penn State football game than the total difference in the three states.
At the presidential level they would not have to hack every state. No offense but in the normal EC battle NM usually doesn’t count for a lot, so hack just the big swing states. Each state would probably require a different approach. It would be expensive and labor intensive but that would not be an issue with a state actor like Russia.
Hacking Congressional/state/local elections might be more difficult but given the resources probably not impossible.
Uncle Cosmo
@D58826:
And the Brits will only need to provide him the front half of the horse, since his own horse’s arse is with him wherever he is…
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Here’s a link to Wikipedia about Pando:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PandoDaily
Omidyar has gotten some bad press about his lending policies in India. And I am very ashamed to say I don’t understand enough about India’s history or current events to discern any analysis about its issues in the media. I rely on your comments! I’m not proud of my ignorance about India or many other countries/histories, including Ireland, where my grandfather was born.
Doug R
@Another Scott:
Wikipedia article on Generation X
Mel
@Emma: @Kay:
I agree. In my experience, young people now are no better and no worse than young people were a few decades ago, or a century ago, etc.
The biggest difference I see is the one that Kay mentions: the overwhelming interconnectedness and lack of privacy in the digital age, plus the not-fully developed social skill sets and brains of teens and early twenty-somethings can turn what would have been a non-issue for previous generations into a lifelong albatross for kids now.
I don’t think kids are more shallow or less motivated. Their learning curves and growing pains are just much more on display. One of my friends remembers protesting Nancy Reagan’s visit to / promotion of those horrifying “teen challenge” type centers* when we were in our teens. A year or so ago, she told her (very online) kids that she wouldn’t give a damn if everybody in her current adult life saw a photo of her flipping off the cavalcade with one hand and waving her sign with the other – she stood by her beliefs then and does now. She told them she would be mortified by the fact that she was dressed in early 80s Madonna-esque fashion, complete with “BoyToy” belt buckle, bad home perm, and hundreds of cheap rubber bracelets (that gave her an arm full of reactive eczema) while protesting. A gentle but pointed reminder to just think before they post.
So, yeah… kids today? Same as all the other yesterdays, to a large extent, emotionally and intellectually. Just way more visible and with a crapton more readily available info to try and make sense of every day.
*A horrifying, for-profit byproduct of the “Just Say No” era. Pseudo “treatment centers” that did most kids far more hatm than good.
D58826
@Another Scott: Hmm I thought the boomers started in 1946 with the returning veterans. Among the kids I grew up with who were born in 1946-1947 you could pretty much guess when Dad got home from the war – birthday minus 9 months
Doug R
@D58826: Don’t forget the thousands of Presidential undervotes in Detroit and Flint. Just a few deletions and there you go.
? Martin
@Mike in Pasadena: Yep. My experience is that this upcoming generation is one of our finest. They are hard working and thoughtful. They forgo dating and driving to save money and focus on school and their career. They are considerate of others in a way that my generation definitely wasn’t.
But their elders salted their fields and ate their seed corn. We’re fucking up their environment, destroying their safety net, undermining their ability to buy a house and live the kind of life we did. And it’s even more clear to them just how ill-equipped this system of government has become to addressing these issues, and how little authority and respect is given to voting citizens. So, they’re responding in the same way the neo-Confederates who voted for Trump did. They wanted to shake up the system, well, that’s what the whistleblowers and antifa and other groups are doing as well. I may not be an effective solution – that’s the consequence of youth, but they are taking charge.
D58826
@Mel:
Yep our boomer version of sextexting was getting naked in the basement when Mom and Dad were out of the house or a bit later exchanging candid Polaroids. But nothing that would follow you the rest of your life, even if Mom and Dad came home unexpectedly.
J R in WV
I have no doubt that Mr Eric Garner is right that Russia/Republicans worked on their election twisting plan for years, and that it unfolded to their advantage.
I don’t know enough about the voting procedures in PA, OH, WI, MI etc to agree that actual voting totals were hacked, although as a 30 year IT software professional I AM sure that some facets of polling and election management could be hacked, even if actual voting machines or tabulating machines (totally different devices with varying technology and connectivity) were not all hacked.
Really, tabulating machines would be the preferable target, and you only need a small percentage of those to turn enough votes in a close election. Until late in the cycle I was expecting a wave election for Hillary, but the Comey e-mail nonsense gave me an unpleasant start.
The phoning I was doing into Ohio for Hillary also didn’t go that well, many people I called had been called already, repeatedly, which the software is supposed to prevent, but did not. That would be an easy hack, and productive – piss off her best voters? Oh, yeah, boss, that’s a great idea!
One person I called was actually an employee of the campaign… how does that happen??? It shouldn’t EVER!!! So I think DNC’s software tools were hacked badly. Hard to win under those circumstances.
So by election day, after we voted, I was surfing the web and running the Broadcast TV application on my laptop, how we watch TV here, and by 10 pm I was done, went to bed depressed and certain the Trumpstain was on the verge of winning a slim majority. Turned out he didn’t, but was elected president of the Electoral College. Damm!
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
Good. At some level, I’m glad he’s acknowledged the world’s unhappiness with him. I hope it eats him alive.
Another Scott
@D58826: Yes, the real “boom” didn’t start until the vast majority of the GIs got home, but the ending point is clearly after 1961.
This site lists the Boomers as 1943 – 1964.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
D58826
@J R in WV: Just to follow up a bit on that. Putin had/has the time/money/talent to launch a multifaceted attack on the election process. He can customize it by state, candidate, issues, etc. He isn’t limited to a one trick pony approach. Now I don’t mean to imply that the Russians walk on water but they are in a position to try many different things. Some will work and some won’t. in 2016 if Hillary had still come out on top, she would have been sufficiently damaged as to help achieve Russian goals/. And the willing idiots in the GOP with their talk of impeachment on day would would have helped it along. Trump winning was just icing on the cake for Putin. And now with the scandals and the opposing sides tearing each other to pieces, Putin gets two scoops of ice cream on that piece of cake.
Splitting Image
@Frankensteinbeck:
Slight correction: This is actually from Aristophanes’ The Clouds. Plato was only about 5 years old when it was written. That said, Aristophanes had his finger on the pulse of Athenian thought, and was almost certainly making fun of a real attitude in the Sophist community.
D58826
@Another Scott: And it was a ‘boom’ esp. between 1946 and 1950. We were stacked up like cord wood in overcrowded maternity wards, schools, etc. Each graduating class for kids born in those years was larger than all previous classes..
Another Scott
@Doug R: Meh. Every generation is like that. People born in 1924 probably didn’t feel like they had much in common with people born in 1901, either. Of course, some experiences were shared, but some were being born in a time with airplanes, ubiquitous radio, cheap cars, etc., while others were born when there was none of that.
My main point, though, is that if one accepts that named generations have meaning, then it doesn’t follow that one generation somehow has a monopoly on evil or a monopoly on virtue. Boomers didn’t destroy America any more than Millennials are doing so now. Generations don’t decide policy – individual people in power do.
Cheers,
Scott.
sphex
@Immanentize:
@Cheryl Rofer:
@Another Scott:
Thank you all for your take on this. My read of it (admittedly in the context of some of the other things he’s said) is that it wasn’t necessary to actually manipulate votes… because people (and voting districts) were being manipulated so well.
So much of it seems to have been set in place by Russia, then aided and abetted by the gullibility (and racism and misogyny and aversion to science and facts) of our fellow citizens. But there appears to be *some* hope that we, as a nation, will survive this. I was happy to read that.
sdhays
@Omnes Omnibus: I absolutely agree with this. As I understand it, I’m technically a Millenial, just about as old as you can be and still be one, and the people like me who went to high school in the Clinton years grew up in a very different world from the people who went to high school during the W years.
The first time I experienced the internet was on GopherNet at a summer school in the nearby university; we got a demo of NCSA Mosaic on a single Mac the professor had. Buying books on the internet was revolutionary; I remember having to use a card catalogue at the local library, but people just a few years younger than me probably never saw one. Social media didn’t really exist much beyond AOL Instant Messenger. Heck, we didn’t even have a decent search engine until 1998/99. I don’t remember exactly when MySpace became a thing, but no one I know ever had a MySpace account (at least not one they chose to share with me). YouTube didn’t exist.
The only cell phone my family owned while I was in school was a Trackfone that was just for emergencies in the car. In the 90’s, at least in my town, cell phones were expensive luxuries; some people had them, but they were just phones you could take in your car rather than a source of constant updates from your friends, at least for many of us. I didn’t own a cell phone until 2002, and that was because I was in Asia and you just had to have one. When I came back to North America, I went back to the land line because cell phones were still expensive luxuries here.
And I was officially an adult when 9/11 happened. And America rapidly declined socially and economically after I graduated high school. Not long after I graduated, my hometown went off the cliff it had been sliding toward since the late 70’s and it’s a hollow shadow of what it was when I was growing up there. My hometown was not the only one to experience that during the W years, I think.
The point being, people who went through high school just a few years after me and who are in “my generation” had a hugely different experience in terms of the way people communicate with each other andthe norms of how their society functions. Wrapping us all up in the same generation doesn’t particularly provide us with any useful insights.
But it IS useful for griping about people who don’t appreciate the joys of rotary-style phone dialers…
Cheryl Rofer
@D58826: Something like what you describe is a concern, particularly since the Russians hacked into the voting rolls in a few states. But that is not the same as hacking the voting machines themselves. If voting officials in other states are as careful as they are in New Mexico, an increase in the need for provisional ballots will be noticed, possibly even during the election itself and will raise a flag.
I’m not discounting this on a technicality, only trying to be careful in what part of the voting process we’re talking about. And yes, voting officials and the process in other states are not up to New Mexico’s standards. Nor is New Mexico ever likely to make the difference in a presidential election.
Cheryl Rofer
@sphex: Yes. The social engineering part of the Russian hack was the most of it. We need to be thinking about how to deal with that.
D58826
@Cheryl Rofer:
True and from what I’ve read there are so many different end-point means of voting even the Russians would run out of money. But hacking at the voter registration level would seem a lot easier. And, if as you say, the bump in provisional ballots was noticed and something was done, what have the Russians lost? Assume for the sake of the argument that the 80k votes in PA/MI/WI were the results of a Russian hack and that was discovered on election day. Hillary wins but in a contested election, Trump screams voter fraud (which he is doing anyway), and people lose even more faith in the system. Putin is playing a long game here. He isn’t acting like a CEO who has to worry about quarterly results. In this case even a 1/4 loaf of confusion and anger is a win for him. And maybe next time, with lessons learned, he will get 1/2 of the loaf.
Just read some of the comment threads on pro_trump sites about Comey and his testimony. We have ‘respectable’ voices saying this is a tempest in a teapot. Sen Lee says its time to move on. Allen Deshowitz is arguing that Trump can pretty much do what ever he wants. Rudy, James Kallistrom and the NY FBI office leaked like sieves to damage Hillary last fall. And Kallistrom is now ripping Comey for not have the backbone to stand up to Trump.
At this point Putin will probably want 3 scoops and a cherry on his cake.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Thanks Kathleen, I am no expert on India, just an interested observer. India will complete 70 th year of independence in August. I am thinking of doing a series for my blog.
D58826
three addition observations:
1.
on slate by Dahlia Lithwick
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/fear-of-the-first-amendment-in-time-of-violent-protests.html
2. there is a tweet referencing a comment made by Der Fuhrer’s lawyer that Trump firing Mueller is a possibilty
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/11/trump-mueller-special-counsel-239396
3. Totally flying under the radar because of Trump/Comey is the ME and the situation involving KSA. Qatar, and the Daesh attack in Tehran. Der Fuhrer keeps defending KSA which is actually the home base of the Wahhabi inspired jihadists and the major funder of terrorism in the world today. Not to mention the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. But try and find any extended discussion of this. I’m not saying Trump/Comey/Russia isn’t important but so is the ME and we all are suffering from information overload
OGLiberal
@frosty: I’m a Gen’xer. My parents and in-laws are Boomers and assholes. In-laws bought the Reagan schtick. My parents decidedly did not but were still selfish assholes. Almost all the folks I grew up with in my heavy Democratic working class town are Trump loving wingnuts, even those who are cops and teachers who enjoy strong union protection and nice public sector employee benefits. They worship at the throne of free markets and “hard work” though they’ll never be rich and know that they’ll never be rich. I think they mostly long to be accepted by the “right people” so they join in hating on the “wrong people” even though they will never be accepted by the “right people” and have more in common with the “wrong people”.
Gen’xers takeaway from the film “Wall Street” was that Gordon Gekko was a sympathetic character. Boomers have their issues and many forgot the things they fought for in their youth. But Gen’xers never fought for anything. Reagan kids, for the most part, suck…and they won’t change. My hope is in the Millenials. Gen’xers got screwed pretty bad as well, over the long term…but they don’t realize it, refuse to realize it, and haven’t learned any lessons. Millenials know they’ve been screwed and know who screwed them. I only hope that turns into action because my generation doesn’t give a fuck and the good Boomers –
and there are many (even my asshole parents always voted Dem and were never racist) – aren’t getting any younger.
Immanentize
@D58826:
I believe Mueller was hired under the civil service rules — something he specifically required. Therefore, he can only de fired for cause. Of course, “cause” is a very slippery concept.
wuzzat
For the most part, millennials aren’t any better or worse than any other generation. Many of them have a lot of potential and a lot of compassion and drive, but that’s a pretty solid description of twenty-somethings throughout the ages. A fair chunk of American millennials specifically were majorly screwed over by “No Child Left Behind,” and a lot of common gripes that managers have about them have a lot more to do with that than with “participation trophies” or whatever bullshit the olds spout this week to make themselves feel less responsible for fucking up public education in this country. You want to spend 12 years teaching a kid to pass standardized tests? Fine, but don’t turn around and rag on them as young adults when they have trouble thinking outside the box and stress out without constant evaluation. They’re getting there, but they started out at a disadvantage because their school administrators couldn’t “waste time” developing critical thinking skills when teaching to the test was a more reliable way to keep their federal funding.
Berto
“They have no work ethic” = “They are not interested in working long hours for the shitty pay we are offering them for their labor.”
Millenials are America’s Greatest Generation.
brettvk
@Doug R: Speaking as a Boomer, I’ve never worked for any company that I could trust to be “loyal” to me. Maybe executives can rely on corporate loyalty but peons can’t and would be foolish to do so. I think this is a class perception, not a generational one.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I look forward to that.
sharl
Bless you for this post, Mistermix.
While there is no doubt the attitude you describe is held by a lot of old, cranky “regular folks”, it is the punditocracy – especially those who assign and pay for such think pieces and “hot takes” – who deserve the lion’s share of the blame. I do wonder about the nature of the business case for the regular posting of such nonsense, and whether those behind it are realizing any return on their small investment, whatever “return” means in their world. I have a feeling I will find the answer to that question personally irksome at best, and at worst very troubling.
PIGL
They reprinted this piece of shit in the National Pest, Canada’s near-bankrupt authoritarian rag. A bunch of your less presentable venture capitalists own it, and most other Canadian newspapers as well. I’d appreciate if you would just shoot them for us.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: Most of us were itching to vote for Reagan the moment we got old enough. I wasn’t, but I remember how stupid all my classmates thought I was for supporting Mondale.
Matt McIrvin
@OGLiberal: I’m worried about the kids my daughter’s age, about 10-12 years old right now. They’re growing up in a world where the President is a bully and was elected by a bully movement, and they have not escaped notice of that. Many of the white kids are positively reveling in it, spewing hate speech at their browner classmates and using Trump as justification. When they grow up they’re gonna be little death-camp guards.
sharl
I knew the author of the subject piece had a vaguely familiar ring! A couple of his fellow NYC Millennial authors thought he was sufficiently worthy of mocking to create a parody twitter account – long-abandoned, alas – that seemed to capture his pretentiousness quite well.
Retweeting and/or fav’ing/liking a few of Marshall Harford III’s tweets presumably earned me a block by the real deal, lol.
Gvg
Hmm, the different generations are not definitively good or bad. The real significance of the boomers was the size. The Great Depression caused lower birth rates because people couldn’t afford kids or marriage and starvation actually was happening. Then the WWII separated the sexes by sending the men off to war. So there was a long period of low birth rate followed by the men coming home and a big prosperity boom. People got married and had kids about the same time all over the world almost. It caused a lot of things both good and bad and government and news casters and academics needed to talk about them so they named them for conveinence. They needed to be taken into account for planning social security and building roads and schools and they were a huge target of advertising because everyone wanted their money or their parents. Then they became voters and they did have similar interests at similar ages so that meant things shaped themselves around them. After them I think it’s more that society got in the habit of coining cutesy names for “generations” of around 20 years but I don’t think the other cohorts mean as much.