Guest Post by The Tumbleweed
Up to a few years ago I thought the Millennials would turn out to be the “Hero” Generation described by Strauss & Howe. Around 2014 I realized this would not happen; they are indeed a zero generation instead.
Their work ethic is a joke. They show up late, want to leave early, check their cellphone at every opportunity, socialize constantly, and want to take days off every other week. They believe personal crises like their kid needing to be picked up from daycare or needing to run to the bank is the employer’s problem. They don’t like their jobs, but don’t realize that the nature of a “job” is to not like it. That’s why you get paid in exchange for doing something you don’t like to do. If you totally loved it, it would be called a hobby. Their guidance counselors never revealed this basic fact to them.
Their finances are in disarray. They are in debt with no chance to pay it off, yet they lease new cars every two or three years. They pay their rent on the 5th of the month, or have a friend do it for them on the morning of the 6th. Once they make their rent, they blow the rest of the money on toys. “Saving” for a rainy day is a foreign concept. They don’t really know anything about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, gold, silver, or any alternative form of investment. Rental or passive income is never discussed among millennials. When they need more money, they default to “finding a better (i.e. higher paying, but easier) job” or “going back to school” (i.e. taking another break from adulthood).
Their relationships are a joke. Women’s poor behavior has been subsidized by the government in every way. Child support allows single motherhood with no stigma permitted by P.C. culture. Food stamps and EBT are geared mainly for women and optimized for single mothers. Colleges accept women simply because of their X chromosomes and employers hire them to avoid lawsuits. As such, they don’t need a man anymore, and don’t want the little hassles that go along with relationships. They either pop out a bastard with the local drug dealer, biker, or immigrant, and have their mother raise it while they go clubbing or become old maids, clinging to their career in HR. Meanwhile, the “men” stay at home, getting E.D. from watching so much pornography and playing video games. They don’t pursue women, most of them are too nice, but occasionally they text and send a few Tinder messages. They know they don’t have enough money for a relationship or marriage anyway.
Their addiction to technology is sickening. They cannot put down their phones, not while driving, not in a movie theater, not on a roller coaster. The things they do with the phones are giant wastes of time. Funny videos, childish memes, posting their salad and constant keeping up with the Joneses on Facebook. Let’s not even get into Pokemon GO, a revamped child’s game from the 90s that has turned them into literal street walking zombies.
Their ignorance is astounding. Despite the internet and access to every bit of knowledge known to man, they still turned out for Bernie Sanders and his failed message of communism.
They are nothing but Lost Boys; they will still be in the same position 20 and 30 years from now. They will be in their 50s searching for their soul mates, and their dream jobs. They will be backpacking through Europe in their 60s trying to “find themselves.” They will not save for retirement, or the inevitable health problems of old age, even as they enter old age. They will only become more engrossed with technology, more narcissistic, more demanding. They will still be spouting New Age bullshit about saving the world as they lay on their couches waiting on the drone delivery of their latest Amazon order while Snapchatting their takeout on Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, and Tumblr.
Look ahead, tumbleweed. You are entirely correct. Save this piece, and bring it back in a year. It will seem hopelessly dated. November 8th is a fork in the road like we haven’t seen in 35 years. It is going to be astonishing how fast change can occur. The country is so ready. The millenials are about to learn what work is all about. They will go kicking and screaming, but hunger has a way of motivating people.
star, keep a copy of your comment as well. Smart money is not on your side.
IS, I wrote a series of articles last year on politics and economics going forward. So far, they are dead on. Time will tell. Be glad to link them for you anytime in the future
Sad but true; too many zombies. This will eventually be corrected, painfully.
I wish it was not true, but I have 2 of them. Neither are now married. One of each kind that are continually on their phone and taking selfies from the toilet to the bed from morning till night. Yes they both are home with me and mom, as they are both divorced and she has a child we take care of daily. Our nights and weekend days are filled watching each of them, mostly the female, talk, text, shoot pictures and videos to hundreds of her friends and sitting in the back yard. He on the other hand only calls, sends selfies, and sends texts to his buds, while drinking mine. Both are supposedly looking for work, but can’t find anything that fits their money desired level or their interest. Both are on unemployment for now, and I dread the thought of what happens when they run out of checks. I am told that most nights and later hours are spent out with friends, who knows where, while grandma baby sits. Both talk about going back for a masters which is obviously needed in this working world. They do not want to listen to DAD, and MOM is constantly defending them. (Ever heard of the power of the P?) I am happy to go to my hard earned managerial accounting job, and being able to spend multiple long hours working late away from home. I spend a lot of time thinking about what if, and have now no hope of retirement until a solution to the self centered children move on. I hear you admin. LOUD AND CLEAR!!!
Are you shitting me? Can’t you see you are the enabler? Kick their asses out of YOUR home and make them fend for themselves! You work…you eat. The wife can eat too, if she stays.
You must be over 60 years old. The only people that get kicked out since he 1960s are dads by one sided liberal restraining orders; it’s the dad who has to get a second job to support the bums.
Big Dicks kids are fledged adults who’ve returned home to roost! It’s Big Dick that needs to file a couple of eviction notices like last week!
I shit you not, my father would, my brother did and I damn sure would lay down the law if I was BD giving the parasites two weeks to vacate the premises! On said date I’d let them venture out on their late night forays as per usual and change the locks. I’d post a public notice in the paper giving them 30 days to return for their possessions before placing them on the curb free for the taking.
One of my favorite stories, I loved to hear him tell it, my buddy said his step-dad warned him to get a job when he turned 18 or leave home. He blew him off and went out to celebrate his birthday. When he got home his dad had changed the locks. He slept under the truck and signed up at the recruiter’s in the morning.
I/S
I’m betting that Big Dick is footing the bill for those cell phones his offspring play on and send selfies from all day instead of getting themselves a job.
BD you need a good ass whooping for letting this happen…..YES YOU.
Heavy D daid:
“They do not want to listen to DAD, and MOM is constantly defending them. (Ever heard of the power of the P?)”
Someone should introduce you to Mary and her four sisters!
I know a guy who got sick of asking his wife for sex one evening only to be repeatedly rebuffed. Eventually he got up from the couch and returned with a wine glass, a bottle of wine and a blanket which he spread on the living room floor. He poured a glass of wine and laid down on the blanket. His wife snarled that she had said no! He looked at her and said “I don’t need you! I’m gonna lay here and jack off!”.
Come to think of it Dick, that could be your “solution” to your self centered chirren too! Post a notice that as long as YOUR name appears on the deed to the house you shall be getting intimate with Mary and her four sisters in any room of the house at any time until further notice!
Personally, I’d buy each of them a tent for Christmas. If that didn’t work I’d drop them them off at the local mission then change the locks!
Big Dick,
Lookit, I’ve been where you are. What most of these mooks don’t understand is that you want to hold on to your marriage, and in order to do that, you feel that you must accommodate the kids.
What you must understand is that the wife has ALREADY chosen the kids over you and will, at her earliest convenience, drop you like a hot rock.
Proceed with caution BD. I know that from which I speak.
Oh I get it ace. Dicks biggest mistake, based on available info, was letting the cretins back in. If mom is going to choose the deadbeat children over the life and home they share together then mom can find a bed at the mission too!
Sadly you are probably right though. BD and mom probably made some mistakes along the way and failed to instill in the children how tough it is to survive in the world if you’re lazy and not looking out for numero uno. Perhaps BD should beat the rush and file for deevorce himself forcing the sale of said domicile and leaving them to it. Fuck, anything would be better IMO than having the peace of your own home stolen out from under you!
I think getting intimate with Mary & friends anytime they’re in a room would do the trick though. Plus it would relieve his stress and aid with prostate health!
Points well taken, IS. But know this- I freely gave up my homestead to an entirely ungrateful ex-wife. My own attorney called me a chump.
But here’s the thing:
We have three children, and I don’t ever want to look into their eyes and explain my part in booting their mother from her home.
It’ll probably happen anyway, but I don’t want a hand in it.
“We have three children, and I don’t ever want to look into their eyes and explain my part in booting their mother from her home.”
It might be a good life lesson for them in the long run.
I’m certain it’s a lowdown dirty mess to be involved in such scenarios. My low tolerance for bullshit has yet to encounter a device than can measure it. My father raised his three sons in a very even handed and consistent manner. Some of my earliest memories are of my father telling me how my life was going to progress under his roof and that once I turned 18 I was expected to stand on my own two feet. He would have been happy to have me as a neighbor but he raised me to fledge and that was that. He was 100% consistent in this and never wavered a millimeter.
It may sound harsh but there was no harshness to it at all in my or my brothers minds. They were became facts of life before we hit puberty. Although I was in no hurry to leave my family, my eagerness to start my life was overwhelming and I looked forward to it eagerly. Having to move back home was never an option and that was a pretty good motivator to succeed.
I love my wife and wouldn’t trade her for anything but if she served me divorce papers I’d sign them, pack a medium sized gym bag and disappear before the ink was dry. Of course I don’t have kids so that’s not a factor. Peace of mind is preferable to any stuff.
Limp Dick – You need to toss their sorry asses out. If your wife does not like it, too bad. Man up. You are killing your own kids’ future by lowing this shit.
That said, that sucks.
Man up.
Big Dick bares his soul, and gets kicked in the nuts.
Yep, that is TBP way.
Big Dick – don’t take it personal.
Ain’t it the truth!
The kick in the nuts welcome technique culls the weak early.
Absolutely. Snowflakes don’t make heroes. In these days of politically correct newspeak, let’s not lose sight of what being a hero actually entails..
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More often that not, most people branded as heroes were simply tired of the bullshit situation they were in at the time and they simply snapped………..and survived. I’ve heard this from numerous WWII veterans.
THat is a bad ass picture! Any backstory to it?
That was the latest escape attempt by El Chapo, he and his bodyguard fled in an old pickup and when his body guard got shot and the truck rolled, he picked up his ‘guarura’ and tried to flee on foot. You can see they had them both, covered in mud, in the back of the cop car.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/americas/el-chapo-captured-mexico/
I double down on the picture being bad ass… would love to know the story too.
You’re Walt666? WTF, are you a satanist?
Overall, I’m pickin’ up what your layin’ down there Tumbleweed. I definitely see it with my own eyes.
However, there are some kids out there who ARE currently living the words from “The Script”:
“When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been struggling to make things right
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
Every day, every hour, turning pain into power”
I don’t want to brag here, but my own chidren’s are kickin’ ass and takin’ names. They are working full time this summer prior to going back to school this month.
One completes an internship with an international company located in the Twin Cities this week where she made $24 bucks an hour + she has been getting time and a half overtime because her supervisors love her and keep assigning her various projects designed to keep her challenged. She runs half-marathons and likes to go skydiving when possible.
My other one just received a sizable college scholarship from one of the largest ag equipment companies in the world and currently maintains a perfect grade-point average. She also volunteers several hours a week at various places and helps her Grandma raise and sell produce all in addition to working full time.
I know, I may be partial, but I am proud of them and have the utmost confidence in them doing the right thing now, AND in the future.
They may not be the norm today, but their friends are all burgeoning heroes too.
I always told my kids this: “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”.
We’re not doomed yet and “yet” may be just a matter of time. But for now, hope is enough for me.
It’s all true.
Signed,
Just Another Anonymous and Unnamed Nomad
Tumbleweed , you may be a little to pessimistic .
Unbiased , I see young people like your children at the FedEx terminals I go to.Especially in office management positions .Not so much on the road.
Big Dick ,don’t listen to these fools who say throw you kids out in the cold.There are other options. If it makes you feel any better I to will probably be working the rest of my life.No retirement for me either.
I think it is too early to give up and this generation. The economic crisis has not hit. It is still 1928. Life is easy. Hard choices are still about five years away. I really think that deep down in their collective gut the 20 somethings know they are on borrowed time. I could be wrong but it seems from what I have read that back in 20’s all the old timers were saying pretty much the same thing.
I often think about this picture below. The story. More then likely she was always a dirt poor Okie. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she lived life large when times were good.
I do think it is disengenuous to complain about kids whilst enabling their behaviour by letting them live at home. This current generation was raised getting medals for participation. A passing grade for showing up for class. It was not these kids that decided this was a good idea. It was the parents.
Heroes won’t emerge unless there is a crisis and a choice that needs to be made. As long as society extends and pretends the delusion shall persist.
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Zero Generation = Hero Generation.
These Millennials are going to prove Strauss and Howe wrong.
They ain’t worth shit.
Rob, that pic screams one thing to me:
Birth control.
Every time I see your moniker, one of the five voices in my head thinks you should shorten it to Chubbles. I have no idea why.
I’m leaning toward bubblehead.
CB,
The name of the woman in that picture is Florence Owens Thompson. The image has become iconic of the Depression/Dust bowl era of that time. Yeah, so she bore ten children during her life.
The picture is dated 1936. She died in 1983.
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Florence Thompson interviewed in 1979, just five years before her death.
“Thompson was quoted in 1978 as saying: ‘I wish she [Lange] hadn’t taken my picture. I can’t get a penny out of it. She didn’t ask my name. She said she wouldn’t sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.'”
Lange was funded by the federal government when she took the picture, so the image was in the public domain and Lange never directly received any royalties. However, the picture did help make Lange a celebrity and earned her “respect from her colleagues”.
In November 2002, Dorothea Lange’s personal print of Migrant Mother sold at Christie’s New York for $141,500
Life’s funny, ain’t it?
You are an idiot bubblehead. That photo is a masterpiece.
The day after I turned 18 my mom said it’s going to be very difficult for you to pay rent without a job. All the adults in this house pay their own way. So off I went, out into the big world thinking I knew it all. Six months later I was in basic training learning how to be a man.
I thank my mom often for giving me a quick dose of reality.
Our children know that they have until August 30th of the year that they graduate from High School to be moved out of our house. Our two oldest children both joined the Army. The oldest served 2 tours in Iraq; and is now out of the Army and she is attending Veterinary School in Colorado. My second oldest did 2 tours in Afghanistan and is currently a Drill Sergeant at Ft. Leonard Wood in MO. She plans to make a career out of the military. Our son will be visiting the Army recruiter in the coming weeks to set himself up for the delayed entry program. He wants to go into the Medical Field and then eventually become a P.A. or a Pharmacist. The only thing that we could have given them if they would have stayed here is junior college and maybe eventually a university. What they have today is so much more than we could have offered them. The great thing is that they stepped up to the challenge and have succeeded through their own merits. I am proud of them. They still play with their phones and gadgets; but they pay for them and that is their business. I don’t like some the things they do or some of the choices they have made; but again that is their business. We have 2 younger children as well. The fourth one we are going to try and steer her to a Military Academy. Our fifth is Autistic and will probably never leave our home. That is okay. There are some in this millennial generation that have stepped up and do things right. I am fortunate enough to say that my children are some of them.
Join the Army. Kill Mzzies. Maybe die. That is some fucked up plan right there, pathfinder.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you that you not only allow it but encourage it?
Thanks for your muddled opinion.
Pathfinder – I guess you missed my point.
You are one dumb son of a bitch. You send your kids off to the military to go fight and kill Muslims – including tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocents. You intentionally put your kids at risk of violent death in order to “benefit them”. You are too stupid to understand the evil the Uas war machine is perpetrating.
You actively encourage these actions. You are an imbecile for doing that. How would you go if one of them had been killed? Or if the next sacrificial lamb is killed?
What you are doing is both stupid and evil in my book. You are meant to protect your kids, not send them off to fight in foreign lands where they should never be.
How is that? Did that clarify things for you?
Again, thanks for your muddled opinion.
pathfinder, I grew up in flatland farm country in southeast Missouri and the military is almost the only way out of the drudgery if your father isn’t one of the big corporate farmers absorbing all the government subsidy money.
I don’t want a military life for my own son (he is too stubborn and opinionated to survive basic training much less a war zone) but only because I brought him up with bigger goals BECAUSE of my own military life.
My son is in his final year of study at Rolla, where Missouri Science and Technology University is sprawled. Since we are retired military, I drive the extra 40 miles to Ft. Leonardwood to shop at the commissary and BX when I am visiting him. I was literally ASTOUNDED by how freaking polite and helpful every army soldier on that base acts when I’m there. At Tinker AFB in Oklahoma, where 20,000 civilian employees are sucking at the union cushioned tit of government largesse, there is NONE of that civility to visitors. The instructors at Ft. Leonardwood are obviously doing a great job while they are lost in the woods.
Please don’t make the assumption that we did not have bigger goals for our children. The military is a means to an end. My wife and I are former Military; Army/Marines and we would not have the life we have(such as it is) without the military. My children had a military life long before they put on their uniforms. My oldest child will be graduating from Veterinary School, paid for by herself and without massive student loan debt. My second oldest has an Associates Degree in Geospacial Engineering and plans to pursue an Engineering Degree once she finishes her 20 years. Her education will be paid for through her own efforts without student loan debt. My children are respectful, driven, goal oriented and successful. If these are the wages of beginning their adult lives in the military, then I will gladly accept them.
Funny thread. My oldest is out there on his own, making a good living @ 19 and all I can think about is how much we’d love to have him back here working with us. His employer called me a couple of weeks ago just to tell me what great job his mother and I had done raising a young man like him, how hard he worked, how cheerful he was and good with people and that if I were ever to come out his way I’d be a welcome guest. How often does that kind of thing happen? I know more than a few millennials through our Son and I’d say 75% of them are the cream of the crop- sincere, healthy, hardworking, solid people with bright futures. The worst habit they seem to have is that hand held gadget fetish, but my generation had TV, my parents cigarettes and alcohol- everyone has a crutch, I suppose.
My folks did the old “hope life is good to you” speech after high school and that was the end of living at home. They’d share meals whenever I visited, always supportive and positive, but I was thought of as an adult and treated as one and for that I will always be grateful. There’s nothing wrong with standing on your own two feet.
IS and Maggie asked for more info on the soldier carrying a soldier pic…
I was curious too, as I’d never seen it before, a couple of items didn’t look correct for WW2. So then I thought perhaps it was Korea vintage.
Nope, it’s dolls, kid you not.
Here is the creator: Mark Hogancamp
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ahaha…….Dolls. They’ll hate you forever, Grog.
I have two Millennial daughters. Both are married & have kids. One has a $70K a year Manager job which she got promoted to after starting off as a Temp employee 17 years ago. The other one is a “Home Maker” wife (Yeah, screw your Politically Correct Feminazi’s) married to a professional Pipefitter. They were raised in the 80’s & 90’s in the Army and as a result got to see a whole bunch of the world, interacted with different cultures & made friends from all over the world.
One of the consistent points I always made to them was that they were on their own after they hit 18. I told them that I didn’t have any legal, moral, or ethical obligation to do anything for them from that point onward. They had better get their heads out of their asses real quick & figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. I joined the Army at 17 and didn’t look back for one minute.
The point is, they wound up being responsible adults rather than a couple of losers. Yes, they have made some huge mistakes in their lives, but nothing that a good ass chewing from Dad & a couple bucks didn’t correct.
I have been watching this latest generation & I absolutely fear for their safety. They are going to be so utterly mentally, physically & psychologically overwhelmed by the soon to be economic shitstorm that they will not have any idea what to do. This will make them an easy mark for every con artist, grifter & hoodlum in the area. They are going to get their collective asses kicked.
Let’s see what happens.
The reason for all the NAMALT (Not All Millennials Are Like That!) chatter on this thread is because the people attracted to TBP are the type of people likely to raise their children correctly in the first place. Mainly they are INTJs and rebels against the normal decadence of society. You are outliers. Of course TBP parents are likely to buck the trend. But please don’t take your own micro success as hope for the macro. That ship sails a little further toward the abyss every day. The reason is simple: the older you get, the less likely you are to change. And with the older Millennials now pushing 35 they are simply running out of time to get their act together.
The reason I am so tough on this group is because I am one. Born in the 80’s instead of my younger compatriots from in the 90’s, I still remember a time before the internet, smartphones, and non-stop feel good propaganda. That is partially the reason I think I am able to see the generational forest through the trees. But I also struggle with many of the same issues I rail against. I can tell you the participation trophies were real, so was attaining high honors in school by simply cramming for tests, and whining to the teacher. Although my parents did provide for my every physical need and many of my wants, my father never taught me anything about tools, sports, firearms, or life in general. In the educational system, there was constant talk of being special and doing anything you want to do. It’s hard to undo the programming, and it gets harder the older you get.
It’s just a weird generation forged in the dark fires of political correctness, naivety, and general weakness that was then hammered with the knockout punch of the Great Recession. The gutting of meaningful employment through NAFTA and other nefarious schemes began with our births and boiled over around the time most of us were getting into or out of college. Maybe a generation that had suffered earlier in life or at least was taught the definitions of sacrifice or discipline could have risen to the occasion. But for all the NAMALT talk on here I still believe you all are going to be sorely disappointed.
” attaining high honors in school by simply cramming for tests, and whining to the teacher.”
Shit, that dodge was popular in the ’60s. My father was a radio engineer, self taught. He spent much of his time at work correcting screwups made by the college graduates in charge of the departments where he worked, so that dodge was probably also popular in the ’30s and ’40s.
Humans haven’t changed much in my lifetime and from reading a lot of history, I’ve come to suspect that humans have always been pretty much the same animals that we see today. Some people learn and adjust once they get in the weeds. Some never do. It has always been that way. Don’t count too heavily on your idea of what young people are made of being correct. Time has a way of showing us all just how fuckin wrong our thinking has been.
To play the devils advocate. I am a manager for a large retail corporation and I see what you are talking about every day. The best workers I have are the 40 and older bunch. I am of the opinion that most of the millennial generation will not survive a crisis of national survival. The people left standing will be the ones who were taught as children to thrive in any situation. It is coming soon.
Lots of truth but here is the problem. The Tribe which dominates “our” society wants it this way.
If you want the full truth, read The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The current situation is no accident. It is being planned and executed by the Tribe to bring about world communism.