Calling All White People, Part 68
TODAY’S EPISODE: Gen X’ers are finding their power…in the worst possible way
Maybe you don’t pay attention to the names behind our current slide away from democracy. The people behind the scenes and sometimes very publically in front of them who are dictating policies and plans that are now undoing decades of progress in terms of social change and protections, demonizing immigrants in ways I’ve never before seen, and undermining the checks and balances in our government that would normally prevent a president from seizing authoritarian power like Trump seems very close to achieving.
Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin. Just to name a few.
What links them aside from evil designs and lack of moral centers? They are all Gen X.
The most notable exception among some of the worst names attached to the current administration is Stephen Miller, who is a Millennial. As I noted in my last Average White Guy post (here), Millennials are still holding the line mostly voting against Republicans but Gen X veered sharply right this last election. You can revisit that post from the link above if you want my thoughts and insights about that, but today’s post is a bit more personal as well as focusing on some other issues I didn’t seize upon last time.
It’s not that I believe in all the hype we’ve gassed ourselves up with within our Gex X circle. There’s truth in the “latchkey kids” nature of how we grew up and we were kind of left to fend for ourselves. And certainly we are often overlooked, ignored, misunderstood, underestimated, and unfairly judged in a lot of matters of social commentary and generational discourse. But as a collective, we are not especially tolerant in terms of race or sexual orientation. We are not especially rebellious.
And, I realize that not all Gen X’ers are the same. Politically, ideologically or whatever else. I also realize that Elon Musk is a special case—he’s not homegrown American and he was raised privileged in apartheid South Africa, so of course it was likely he’d turn out awful.
But still, having gone through what we went through, it’s jarring and heartbreaking to see Gen X’ers at the lead of not just moving progress back a little but actually trying to regress it fully to something like what our grandparents and their ancestors before them lived in. I just wouldn’t have expected so many people in Gen X to be so invested in created a techno-christo-fascist state of all things.
I get that on the one hand, it was inevitable. No generation is a monolith. And despite how long the Baby Boomers kept Gen X out of so many positions of advancement, influence, authority, and power, they were bound to get old enough to die and retire, and who else was going to step up to do the evil? Plus, with Gen X being such a small generation, seeing Millennials do this dirty work too was also inevitable. So, yes, of course we were going to see examples of Gex X gone bad. But with so many of us having voted for that tangerine turd—that narcissistic nitwit—this past election…literally co-signing the decline of this country and the elevation of cruelty…on top of seeing Gen X’ers leading the charge inside the government and the halls of business…
It’s a bit overwhelming.
I consider it sometimes, whether I was ever in danger of becoming like them. I don’t consider myself some exceptionally moral or strong person. Yes, I am both things, but I don’t assume I’m incorruptible or immovable, especially over my lifespan before a lot of my compassion and empathy really settled into stone. How many moments in my life were there that I was just one encounter or two—a couple or a few friends—away from being swayed toward the dark side? Yeah, all my friends and acquaintances are more or less in line with my feelings of social justice and equity and embracing difference, but what if other people had taken me in, made me feel welcome, filled my ears with honeyed words that covered the poison of bigotry and hate?
There but for the grace of God go I, as they say.
I mean, I could still turn to the dark side. They’d welcome me. They’d make me feel special and proud of my decision. I won’t, but I could. Being white and male in particular means I would be just drowned in feelings of welcome.
But here’s the thing: What the fuck do I want with the love of people who base their beliefs on hatred, bullying, and control? They aren’t going to fix my life or make me more financially secure or healthier. They’re working against that. So, it disappoints me even more in my Gen X brothers and sisters who fell for the scam. The pyramid scheme. Who think those few Gen X’ers in power will let them be powerful too.
It’s also interesting, as Shay/BGIM pointed out to me recently, how Gen X was the first generation to really grow up with integration. We were the ones who did our schooling and our work lives within settings that were distinctly not all white, even if they weren’t truly representative at times of the overall population. We also grew up, and many of use backed, the move toward protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people, especially over the past decade or two. So, what went wrong?
I think it’s the same story as so much progress made in the 20th and 21st centuries so far. The laws and policies and such were put in place, and some embraced the spirit and heart of the changes as well, but we never attacked the roots. Gen X kids were still raised by Boomers, many of whom rode the hippy-to-stockbroker pipeline and embraced Ronald Reagan and everything that came after and gleefully took away from their kids and grandkids all the benefits they got. Gen X’ers were still raised to feel some kind of way about people who were “different” and we didn’t attack that rot and that hate well enough.
So, when things get a little rough—or people like the Republicans lie about how rough things are or purposefully make shit go wrong—it’s easy to blame those “others” for our problems. Because, in the end, we were never truly educated in the history of non-white people and what they endured. We were never truly made to understand how important immigrants are to our economy and society even when they’re undocumented. We were never illuminated as to how ubiquitous gay and lesbian and bi and queer and trans people always have been—and how their mere existence doesn’t harm anyone.
We made the rules, but we didn’t change the hearts.
It’s a message Shay/BGIM often points to. I admit that I don’t have a lot of hope of hearts truly changing anytime soon if ever. I see too many people set in their way and comfortable in being cruel. I still try, which is why I write this stuff, but I’m not good at that face-to-face change thing, so maybe I’m just jaded. And I still worry that Millennials will fall to the same slide into conservative nastiness that so many in Gen X did. I hope not, but then we have Gen Z men flocking to the bigotry and oppression the conservatives offer them—again, because we didn’t build a strong enough foundation of education and compassion and a moral compass that actually considers full humanity instead of patriarchal norms, heteronormativity, religious precepts, and other narrow viewpoints.
Hope is not lost, but getting back to democracy and to compassion and to inclusion is going to first require that those of us who believe in those things hold to those things within us—firmly. Yes, we will have anger and even hate sometimes, but at least let’s remember who to aim it at instead of picking easy and innocent victims. Kicking the dog when you come home from a hard day won’t fix your life, so why would attacking marginalized people do it either?
If your belief in community and love and mutual health and prosperity for all is strong, don’t let anyone make you doubt those beliefs. Don’t let the guilt you into joining them just because they were once friends, or are family, or anything else.
Gen X failed, but it has not completely fallen. No matter how ignored we might be at times. No matter how mocked at times. No matter what…we need to make sure we are loud enough with our support of social justice that we don’t let the Gen X’ers like Musk, Vought, Thiel, Yarvin, etc. be what defines our generational legacy. [To find other installments of “Calling All White People,” click here]
