The United States of Whiners

 by Craig Willms

I know every generation of men have a modicum of disdain for the generations that follow. There are now 2 generations beyond mine that have reach adulthood. There's me, a boomer as the kids like to call us, with Gen X and Millennials now being adults. Gen Z and whatever they'll call what comes after Z are struggling with the very idea of adulthood. And so, as it is with popular culture, the tables have been turned - the teens and early 20's have a mountain of disdain for their elders.

The World War 2 generation saw the youth become hippies and war protestors; they hated them. The Baby Boomers are watching the latest generation succumb to whining. It's all whining all the time. Try listening to 2 hrs of public radio, NPR or the local MPR. Every story is a tearjerker in that the fascists are ripping constitutional rights right out from under the innocent the meek. 

I can't imagine how the young whiners of today would have reacted to life in 1926. I can't even imagine how I would have dealt with life in 1926. People were hard as nails back then. Men and women worked tough, back breaking jobs day in and day out. Today's kids can't pull their eyes from their phones for ten minutes to go outside to get some fresh air. While they're transfixed by their screens, they've become perpetual whine machines. The gripe that the boomers have robbed them of a future. But they don't get up and strive for something better in their own lives - they only whine. The adults in their lives do not chide them and demand that they get up and do something, instead they fuel the whine. These are the kids that were awarded trophies for breathing. They are children, they have nothing except what the adults in their lives feed them. We seem to feed them self-pity. It's very sad. 

I will blame the feminization of the culture to a great degree, but the men have checked out as well. Baby boomer men were the first to step back. We were involved with our kid's lives far more than the generation that preceded us, but since our wives broke out and entered the workaday world (out of necessity in many cases) we were content to let 'the culture' take over where the women would have been. Yes, I blame feminization, but not necessarily the women in our lives. Women were between a rock and a hard place. 

Fast forward a couple of generations and let the whinefest begin.

Could you call this little essay a whinefest? Yes, I guess you could. So be it. We baby boomers have raised our kids and have little to do with how the youngsters are turning out these days. Grandparents in this modern world are not involved or included in the grandkid's day to day lives. Circumstances drive much of this, the world changes, the culture changes. It is, as they say, what it is. But we don't have to like it.

We had it tough too, every single young person who has ever lived has a hard time reaching true adulthood, that's called life. Did we whine about it? I suppose we did, but there was no one to listen to it. Today we are swimming in the handwringing and the whining. There are countless podcasts and entire industries devoted to underpinning this give-up culture. It's nauseating. Do the young think the deck was not stacked against us too? Well, it was. 

I want to have hope for the future. This constant whining and me oh my mentality has got to stop. There are bright lights out there, extraordinary young people who try to impress the notion of getting off their ass and becoming someone on the rest of them. There shine so brightly because so many of their peers are so dim. To the adults out there, you are not helping the young by constantly validating the whining. Listen yes, then offer hard advice or demand that the kids actually do something other than looking at their screens and feeling sorry for themselves.