The Court Jester Holds a Rally, Rally, Baby

I'm a total Gen Xer.  After looking on Wiki to define what they believe a GenXer is, I saw this:

In the 1991 book Generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe call this generation the "13th Generation" and define the birth years as 1961 to 1981.  According to the authors, Generation X is "the 13th generation" to be familiar with the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin Franklin). The label was also chosen because, according to their generational theory, it is considered a "Reactive" or "Nomad" generation, composed of those who were children during a spiritual awakening.  Older generations generally have negative perceptions of Reactive generations—whose members tend to be pragmatic and perceptive, savvy but amoral, more focused on money than on art. 

Hmmm...let's look up "Nomad Generation:"
Nomad generations are born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. Nomads grow up as under-protected children during this Awakening, come of age as alienated, post-Awakening adults, become pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and age into resilient post-Crisis elders. Due to this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their fast-paced, alienated rising-adult years and their midlife years of pragmatic leadership. They are shrewd realists who preferred individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems.

 We grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, came home from school to the news that Ronald Reagan had been shot, that the Berlin Wall had fallen, that we were running out of oil, that the bankers were running amok with our money (the early 1980's recession and Black Monday in1987), and the savings and loan crisis, instilling "a sense of economic uncertainty and reduced expectation of long-term fidelity between employers and employees."  I was in my 7th grade science class when I saw on TV, over and over, The Space Shuttle exploding into a million pieces.

We started college having to do our research papers using the Dewey Decimal system in the library, wrote our papers on typewriters (double-spaced, please).  I was pleased as punch and felt smugly superior when my parents were the first on the block to have both a VHS players AND cable TV, and happily made fun of everyone listening to Bon Jovi and Motley Crue while I was snug in my room kissing posters of Michael Jackson, whose posters were replaced by Billy Idol, Robert Smith, U2, and Duran Duran.  I traded in my peg-legged pants and side ponytails for Doc Martens and flannel shirts as the Duran Duran posters came down and I swapped out my Sinead O'Connor tapes for Pearl Jam CDs.  I actively hated rap music, Vanilla Ice, and made fun of anyone who wore Guess or Girbaud jeans and braided belts (although I secretly wanted a braided belt).  I remember MTV when they played actual videos.


"Compared with previous generations, Generation X represents a more heterogeneous generation, exhibiting great variety. They are diverse in such aspects as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.  Often the children of divorced parents, change is more the rule for the people of Generation X than the exception.
 

^{No wonder Tea Partiers hate us.} 


Tea Party supporters are mainly white and slightly more likely to be male, married, older than 45, more conservative than the general population, and likely to be more wealthy and have more education.  Polls have shown that they are significantly more likely to be registered Republican, have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party and an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party. The Bloomberg News poll showed that 40% are 55 or older, 79% are white, 61% are men and 44% identify as "born-again Christians."

Hmmm....so if they're over 45 they are most likely Baby Boomers...and this is what Wiki has to say about that (this has been edited by me, btw, so judge away, although I am really trying to be even-handed):

In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence^.  As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.  One of the features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before them.  The Boomers also tend to view the world through the lense of "traditional values."  The term can also refer to an intention to preserve ancient or traditional customs and values against anything deemed "innovation."   It is generally fair to say that usually traditional values tend, by definition, toward conservativism and that they often, but not always, accept some form of patriarchy as normative.  The usage of "traditional values" can in some cases imply that said values, in being traditional, are better than values that are non-traditional.  However, in other cases "traditional values" can simply imply a matter of identity ("it's who we are") without seeking or addressing any notion of absolute values of "good" or "bad". 

As I think about who I was standing shoulder to shoulder with at the rally,  I would have to say that it included at least one lesbian couple, an older woman in her 70's, a mom with her teenage son, another mom with an extremely well-behaved child in a stroller, a bunch of college kids, and some young men dressed up like the Village People.  But I would also say that the majority of the people there were GenXers like me.


So, this Glenn Beck Tea Party stuff and this Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally is really, at its end point, just a fight between parents and their kids.  They want us, their kids, to get a good job, find a nice mate, settle down, have babies, and get that gold watch when we retire.  Problem is, that no longer exists.  And we're mad at you, Mom and Dad, for getting divorced then telling us how to run our lives.  So screw you, dudes, we say, and we put on our Walkman headphones and tune you out because unlike us, you challenge leaders with an intent to replace them, whereas we, Generation Xers, tend to ignore leaders.

 When I was growing up in CA, my mom sang with a patriotic singing group called The Grandland Singers.  She was their #1 soprano and sang for President Nixon.  God, family, and country were a very big deal in my growing-up experience.  I used to sing to all of their records and are the number one reason I can sing the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble, and know all of my 50 states in alphabetical order.  Anyway, patriotism has always been big in my family, and I have to say that I never felt terribly patriotic about anything until I stood at the Washington Mall, sardined in with about 215,000 other people.  Some troops came out to sing the National Anthem, and I put my hand over my heart and just felt grateful that I lived here, despite its many terrible flaws and injustices, that I, a single woman, can move about freely, that I have an education, that I can get on a plane, a train, a bus, see my friends, do my work, enjoy my life, and share ideas with people who are unafraid.  That felt really good.  It may not be my family's brand of patriotism, but it is mine.

That's why this rally was so heartening, so surprisingly moving, so naive and encouraging, so engaging.  We are standing together listening to COMEDIANS.  "In literature, the jester is symbolic of common sense and of honesty, notably in King Lear, the court jester is a character used for insight and advice on the part of the monarch, taking advantage of his license to mock and speak freely to dispense frank observations and highlight the folly of his monarch.  Only as the lowliest member of the court can the jester be the monarch's most useful adviser."

We are the jesters.  We are your disenchanted kids.  We see that the world is changing and we are okay with that.  As seminal Gen X band REM said, "It's the end of the world as we know it.  And I feel fine."