Photo: Flickr

Historically, American fathers dreamed that their sons would grow up to be greater men than they were. That was before the dreaded “millennial” generation.

Today, cold hard science proves that the “millennial” male is a weak and tepid creature with the handshake of a wilted lettuce leaf. A disgraceful new study finds that today’s young men, weaned on a diet of “Play Station,” who fancy themselves baseball experts by virtue of pushing buttons rather than ever wielding the mighty lumber on a dirt field, are unable to muster anything close to the grip strength of men 30 years ago. Specifically, the Washington Post reports, the average millennial male could produce a scant 98 pounds of grip strength, versus 117 pounds of grip strength that their 1985 counterparts could produce.

Understanding as we do that grip strength is the unsung hero of the functional strength chain, we are forced to conclude that the average millennial male could not pull his way out of a cotton candy straitjacket if his life depended on it.

Perhaps if “millennials” did not busy themselves so much with “curating” their “Spotify” and tried making friends not with a sex chat “bot” but with a Captains of Crush Gripper, we would not be in this situation. I dare say that the young men of Russia and China who will make up the armies of our rivals in World War Four are equipped with strong gripping and pinching powers cultivated through hard work, while we, the richest nation on earth, will be forced to turn to legions of young men whose willowy fingers, withered from years of doing nothing more strenuous than “swiping right” and pointing to purely imaginary “Pokemons” situated on public streets, lack the strength to pull a machine gun trigger.

Millennials wouldn’t know a weighted pull-up if it bit them right in the “Insta.” As pathetic and unpatriotic a generation as I’ve ever “meme.”