Kill All Millennials
In the New York Times this weekend, Sam Tanenhaus, a scholar of the conservative movement, tried to make sense of the millennial generation. From reading his article one can only conclude that Tanenhaus wants all millennials to die.
"Suddenly, as you may have noticed, millennials are everywhere," Tanenhaus, a public intellectual, observed. Well, yes. According to his own definition of the cohort, millennials are those born after 1980 and before 2000, so that is a fuckload of people.
Millennials, he writes, are "coddled and helicoptered, catered to by 24-hour TV cable networks, fussed over by marketers and college recruiters, dissected by psychologists, demographers and trend-spotters." They are narcissists, fans of "the breathlessly updated Facebook profile, the cascade of selfies, the Kardashians." (Has Tanenhaus ever met anyone under 50?) They would rather earn $40,000 at a cool job than $100,000 at a lame job.
Most egregiously, millennials, with their nose rings and Basquiat tattoos, are nice. They are the nicest. They have empathy! They want to succeed in life, but realize they might fail because babby boomers like those in Tanenhaus's generation have kind of fucked up the country a little bit:
Another pointed out that while he was nursed on the traditional American dream — "this idea that if you worked hard and got good grades and did all the right stuff you would succeed" — he has developed a more pragmatic version of it suited to the economic realities of the 21st century.
Millennials are a threat to the American project. They do not want to earn a lot of money in a boring job and spend it on having babies and Disney World and cocaine and Club Med and mini vans and super PACS for George W. Bush.
Yep, America is going to shit. And it's all because of millennials.