Generation 9/11 vs. Generation Worthless

Well, it's actually Groundhog Day today. The big joke for us staff weenies is that everyday is Groundhog Day, since nothing ever changes. The same powerpoints, the same reports, the same emails, the same food...the same. I frequently hear people humming the Sonny and Bono tune "I got you Babe" in reference to the hilarious Bill Murray movie. I feel comfortable in my T-walled off existence and shouldn't be bitching, since sometimes things staying the same can be good. Converse to this, change can be bad and I would like to voice my complaints about something that has changed for the worse.

Recently, there was an article in Time magazine entitled "The Year of the Youth Vote", which discussed the relation of college students to our current political diatribe and ultimately the future of the country. This reminded me of a similar article I read many years ago in Newsweek, which was published shortly after 9/11, called "Generation 9/11".

The Newsweek article from 2001 focused on the unification of students of all ideologies to confront the specter of world-wide extremism. Grad student Juan Epstein summarizes our resolve at the time:

We had no crisis, no Vietnam, no Martin Luther King, no JFK. We've got it now. When we have kids and grandkids, we'll tell them that we lived through the roaring '90s, when all we cared about was the No. 1 movie or how many copies an album sold. This is where it changes.

I recall seeing this on a newsrack at a Ralph's in Los Angeles when I was a senior in college. It inspired me because I knew that I was going into the service and that I would be doing so as part of a united front with my peers. Not that the Long War requires everyone to be in the military, but rather everyone had a similar calling to step out of their shells of self-indulgence and meet the threat with fortitude.

In the words of Fight Club author, Chuck Palahniuk, that's how dumb I was.

Looking at that Time article published this week reveals a generation of self-serving adolescents hiding under the illusion of righteousness. They are so ecstatic that they have turned Facebook sites and text messaging into a way to encourage voter participation that they don't even realize their voting patterns are centered around the theme of "What's in it for me!"

I am a believer that change can happen," says Patricia Griffin, 25, a student at St. Louis Community College. "So-called Washington experience has given us an unjustified war, an economy slipping, the dollar losing its value, health care impossible to afford. I'm telling my friends they can make a difference this time. They can vote."

Yeah, good for you young lady. Because the most important thing right now is for the federal government to hand out free health benefits and for you to get that "totally sweet" high-paying job in the city.

This is an abomination. Is our generation supposed to pat ourselves on the back for taking 10 minutes out of our "busy schedules" of partying and shopping to go to the polling station to vote? Seriously, it's the least you can do. Where's the sacrifice that generations in the past have made to ensure our country didn't become extinct? Us military folk are deployed like a bunch of assholes because we were "dumb enough" to sign up in these people's mind. Don't feel sorry for us! In reality, the people in my age bracket are playing the proverbial fiddle while Rome burns to the ground. I'm starting to envision how history will remember our naive and self-indulgent generation and I don't want to go down without a fight. What the hell happened between 2001 and 2008, I must've been asleep at the switch. This cultural paradigm of obsession with one's own wants and desires needs to end, today.

From a generation united in 2001...

...to some douche wearing a man-pack in 2008!