“America stands
anxiously on the cusp of an unknown future,” writes Matthew Hennessey in a new
book titled Zero
Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America From Millennials.
“We are about to get swamped by a millennial wave that has already started
crashing hard into the worlds of business, politics, entertainment, religion,
dating, medicine, and education.” Considering that millennials are the
generation that seems eager to embrace socialism, limits on freedom of speech,
and Amazon’s “Big Brother” Alexa in every home, this generational passing of
the torch will have dramatic and adverse implications for the future of America
as we know it. Matthew Hennessey’s thesis is that Generation X – which emerged
between the baby boomers and millennials – must get its act together swiftly if
there is to be any hope of a collective national redemption from baby boomer
destruction and to avert the Brave New World into which millennials will usher
us.
The author defines
the parameters of the three relevant generations for the purposes of his book: “Baby
boomers are those born roughly between 1946 and 1964. Generation Xers are those
born roughly between 1965 and 1980. The millennials are those born roughly
between 1981 and 1997… [They] are already the largest American generation, and
they’re still growing due to immigration.” They are tech-obsessed, coddled by
political correctness, and indifferent to the advance of corporate and
government intrusion into every aspect of our increasingly digital lives.
Hennessey is the
Associate Editor of Editorial Features at The Wall Street Journal and
former Associate Editor at City Journal and Managing Editor at the
Manhattan Institute. I connected with him to ask a few questions about the book,
which I’ve read and strongly recommend.
Mark Tapson: In what ways has the baby boom generation
“nearly destroyed America,” as you put it? You mention that baby boomers and
millennials are “cut from the same cloth,” so what fresh hell, as Dorothy
Parker would say, are we facing with the ascendancy of the millennial
generation?
How did we get to
such a crazy place? Well, ask yourself: Who has been running the show these
last 50 years? The baby boom smashed into American history like a category 5
hurricane, leveling just about everything in its path -- and the full extent of
the damage is not yet known because the baby boomers are still hacking away at
the institutions of American life. Their attitude has always been: tradition be
damned; wisdom of the ages be damned. One drop of injustice or imperfection in
an institution was enough to justify burning the whole thing down. They did
some good, don't get me wrong, but on the whole the baby boom has been a
social, cultural and political disaster. If you walk around saying
"question everything" long enough you are going to end up with a
society that feels like it's built on not very much that's firm.
The millennials
and the baby boomers have a lot in common. They are both incredibly large
cohorts -- the millennials will ultimately be bigger, so expect them to be even
more disruptive as they mature into adulthood (if they ever do). And, because
they will be making their mark on a landscape that's already been destabilized
by 50 years of the baby boom, expect millennials ultimately to inflict even
more damage.
MT: What
have we gained and lost intellectually and culturally as we transitioned
from the “analog age” to the “digital age”?
MH: We've
certainly gained a great deal from the digital age. I don't deny that it has
made our lives easier and in many cases more enjoyable. But the cost has been
severe. We've lost our ability to concentrate. That's been documented by
researchers, but you can probably see it in your own life. I know I can. Part
of the reason I wrote this book was that I could feel my brain changing in real
time. I was becoming addicted to social media and technology in a way that I
didn't like and wanted to reverse. We are so conditioned at this point to
having everything delivered instantly to our front doors or to our phones that
waiting for something -- even if it's just the answer to a trivia question --
becomes almost intolerable.
Culturally
I think the tradeoffs have been just as severe. Some say we are living in a
golden age of television thanks to the infinite stream of binge-worthy
offerings on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the rest. But newspapers and magazines
are going extinct at the same time and people are watching movies made for the
big screen on their teeny-tiny phones. Is there a concert or a ballgame
anywhere in America where at least half the audience isn't holding up their
phones and filming? It's almost as if people are more interested in curating
their social media than they are in living in the real world. I'm not so sure
we've thought through the consequences of these shifts.
MT: How
have our submission to the internet and addiction to social media erased the
boundary between the public and private spheres and created a culture of surveillance
and censorship at the hands of Silicon Valley elites?
MH: When
I talk to millennials I don't get the sense that they are all that concerned
with the privacy issue. To them, it seems, the benefits of putting everything online
far outweigh the costs. But at this point no one can plead ignorance about the
Silicon Valley business model. Every time you go online you are being tracked
and, increasingly, we do everything online. Let me put it to you this way: If
someone was following you on the street, would it make you nervous? If a
stranger followed you into a store and appeared to be making notes as you
browsed the shelves, would you want to know who they were and what they were up
to? Of course you would. But the same thing is happening when we go online and
for some reason we just accept it.
I
find it slightly vexing how eager we've been to give these big corporations so
much incredibly personal information. I'm baffled by the popularity of things
like the Amazon Echo. Why would you let one of the biggest companies in the
world plant a bug in your living room? So you can get some toothpaste delivered
without having to turn on the computer and click a button? What is going on
with us? There was a time not that long ago when it wasn't necessary to explain
the virtues of privacy. It doesn't take much imagination to understand how the
wired-up devices of the so-called internet of things could one day be exploited
by malevolent actors, either in Silicon Valley or Washington, DC. I mean, if
really you think we are headed toward fascism, you might consider keeping Big
Brother at bay rather than letting him set up shop on your coffee table.
MT: You
write that “the 1990s revealed to Gen X that something deep and essential about
politics, crime, punishment, and justice was a mirage.” Could you elaborate on
that?
MH: Gen
X was just as idealistic as any young generation when it firsts hits the river.
In fact, we may have been more idealistic than most because we witnessed the
end of communism. Extraordinary stuff. The wall fell. The Iron Curtain came
down before our eyes. The good guys had won. It was the end of history. But a
bunch of things happened that slowly robbed us of our idealism. The Rodney King
riots helped us realize that the racial divisions in this country hadn't all
been patched up during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, contrary to the
self-mythologizing of the baby boomers. The O.J. Simpson trial showed us that
the justice system didn't always live up to its name. And the tawdry finish to
the Bill Clinton presidency taught us not to expect salvation through politics.
Leaders let you down, so don't put your faith in them.
All
of that stuff added up to make us sort of melancholy, but also sort of
practical. We don't ask for more than our share. We're willing to wait our
turn. We're not looking to cut the line. You can count on us.
MT: Why
do you consider Generation X to be “the last adult generation” and how can they
lead the way to cultural renewal?
MH: I
call us that because we were the last generation to have what are now referred
to as "free-range" childhoods. Our parents didn't view it as their
responsibility to entertain us all day long. We rode bikes without helmets and
spent hours at a time fending for ourselves. We came home to empty houses. If
we were bad at something, the adults in our lives didn't keep it from us. They
gave it to us straight. It made us resilient. It made us adaptable.
Somehow that way of raising kids has gone nearly extinct. Parents hire coaches
these days to try to instill grit in their kids. We developed it naturally, but
we were the last to have that experience. We were the last generation to
graduate high school without the aid of Google. Soon we will be the last living
Americans to remember the way things were before the internet came along.
If America is to
find its way back to a time when people zealously guarded their privacy, when
trust meant looking someone in the eye, when people signed their names to their
insults or else kept their mouths shut, and when patience was considered a
virtue, it will be Gen Xers who show the way.
From Frontpage Mag, 8/23/18
