Generation GOP: Dust In The Wind
by Melisande Luna
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2004



 

As a Gen Xer raised by a Boomer I was constantly fed rhetoric about how great the summer of love was, man, and how the people stood together against the man, man, and it was groovy, man. Of course, our parents were never home, man, because they were off looking for truth or Zen or some platform shoes or some such seventies pap that preceded the Yucky Yuppie era when they apparently found themselves (oh, there I am, man!) and discovered that ideology was a shit sandwich without a BMW and a nice big house in a gated community on the white side of town to wash it down with.

Groovy. Summer of love, peace, man, tune in, turn on and drop out; you were always a bunch of followers and will always be nothing but followers. My only curiosity now is what were you idiots smoking that made you all think that you were so originally profound and where can I get some? Or explain to me, if you will, why a group of people who said they didn't trust anyone over 30 is suddenly espousing how great it is to be 50, and why suddenly, they can't seem to hear anyone under 30 (or 40), or even let us voice our concerns in a legitimate venue.

God forbid that we aspire to career-track jobs while laboring under an opportunistic boomer who'll gladly use (read: steal) our creative outputs to bolster their flagging intellectual facilities, then toss us away faster than a BIC lighter at a crackhead's house. This is a generation that is so busy protecting their own self interests that they've never hesitated to annihilate anyone from the ranks who represented a threat to their continued existence on the top of their respective dunghills.

Generation "Me" brought us divorce; plastic surgery; air pollution; water shortages; Michael Jackson; rampant narcissism; pop music; drugs and wars on drugs; latchkey children; AIDS; herpes; Pac-man, prison culture; corporate logos on our clothes; savings and loan scandals; bad movies; worse TV; political correctness; Prozac; sobered-up soccer moms; SUVs; declining SAT scores; media blowjobs; Bill Clinton; a "C" student president who -- quite frankly -- has the IQ of a bush; cornball nostalgia; youth worship; and a flip-flop hypocrisy so blatant we are left with no doubt that Senator Kerry is, indeed, a boomer. This is a generation that bridged the gap between Beat Intellectuals and Beavis and Butthead. Good going, man. Oh yeah, boomers were cool, still are. Like Joe Cool or James Dean. Imagine a whole generation that was so intent on looking cool they forgot how to be cool. Far out, man. Why don't you all go to a reunion rally and spit on some veterans for old times' sake, eh?

And then there's the youth who, having narrowly escaped Amerikkka's draconian prison culture and, while in between shifts at McDonald's, get our widdle heads patted by patronizing boomers like we were still their kids, like THEY aren't the most immature, egocentric, greedy, self-indulgent generation on the planet, like this bunch of Peter Pan I-won't-grow-up Fairies have the right to pat anyone on the head, and say, "Oh, isn't the angry little X generation funny? They wanna be like us."

No, we don't want to be like you. You're a bunch of GOP voting, tax cut grubbing, narcissistic, self-interested, whining, immature, hypocritical, deficit-driving SUV whores. We want your fat, old, thieving asses to retire already; or better yet, grow up, and stop perpetuating the lies of a pathetic culture that facilitates your arthritic last clutch at our purses. And don't even think about sending our little brothers off to a war that your fucking president started, we already have to pay for it for the rest of our lives. I guess we should thank you, since at the ripe old age of 35 many of us are still allowed to live with you, our parents, because you priced the home market out of our reach with your interest-only loans and 30-year second mortgages that your grandchildren will be left to pay off; we have no health insurance; no job prospects because we still have to compete with your tired, incompetent, stoned asses; and we're making a dollar or two over minimum wage (which you so generously raised all the way up to still below poverty level).

To add insult to injury, school was virtually free for you, and now that you're in charge we can't fucking afford college (because our Pell grants paid for your tax cuts), yet you want to tout how much more educated your generation is than everyone else. Big fucking deal, most of you went to college to avoid the draft anyway. We're a significantly smaller generation than you; why can't we have free community college? Oh, that's right, it's because you were done with college, so, obviously, nobody else needed any education. I hope you're making a boatload of money off of our overpriced textbooks, you parasites. And while I'm on the subject, you've made really lousy mentors to us too. Thanks for nothing.

And now you want our social security? Well, do I have a surprise for you, just because you're in hoc up to your nipped and tucked, Botox paralyzed jowls to pay for your extravagant Escalades, Barbie-Doll boobies, hair transplants, Viagra copays, coke parties, American Express fees and overpriced condominiums, yet somehow can't manage to save any retirement money, doesn't mean you can have ours, try to take it and you just might find our collective army-navy surplus steel-toe boots lodged up your leaking anuses.

Even our fresh, young art has been forced into subservience to your antiquated crap. Carlos Santana whores out shoes at Nordstrom's, from somewhere beyond the stratosphere Jerry Garcia's corpse pimps his primitive prints on upscale neckwear (as if he shopped at Weinstock's in the first place), and if I see one more overhyped reunion tour of way-over-the-hill rockers dressed in tight leather pants gyrating their mummified scrotums around on my TV screen -- when I'm done vomiting -- I'm going to take matters into my own hands and embalm Keith Richards. He's starting to draw flies.

Revenge will come my Boomer friends, think "poorly funded state hospice institutions," and "paupers' graves." And then finally we'll be free of pseudo idealism, Classic rock radio stations, sugar-frosted nostalgia, instant gratification, Jane Fonda, feminist backlash, bellbottoms, macrame shit, lip service, Elton John, hip-hip-hippie-hypocrisy, Robert Plant solo efforts, spiraling deficits, smarmy balding assholes with ponytails and the rest of the gross corpulence that defines the trough-gorging gluttony that is your generation's neofascist gift to the world. But have no fear, my little hypocritical piggies, you'll leave a legacy: a big old pile of silicone titties and hair plugs moldering in every grave.

Oh, yeah, it's great to be old. Lie to me, baby, just quit lying to yourselves.

tick . . . tick . . . tick

Melisande Luna is an essayist and poet living in Central California. She may be contacted at melisande_luna@yahoo.com.

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