Don’t watch much television but spent some time watching Stranger Things with the fam over the holidays.
Poorly acted and tons of filler content, but the show is popular because it perfectly presents life in the 80s in a way that many who were around at the time can really appreciate.
Indeed, Gen X is having a moment. And its about time.
With Street Fighter coming out next year (cannot wait to drag the ladies to that one as payback for that Barbie movie disaster) along with a live-action Voltron and tons of other societal callbacks to the beautiful era of Gen X childhood an entire generation is suddenly finds itself at the peak of social awareness.
It makes sense. We’re the boss now. The grown up at the tables. We run things– and we’re doing a very nice job I must say.
We can attribute the great recession to the boomers and the relative, steady upward trajectory of all things to Gen X swinging into management positions.
But more is required than steady stewardship of our nation’s private sector.
We need Gen X leadership in government.
Now this is actually trickier than it seems because Gen X was raised, by and large, to stay out of the limelight and do our best work behind the scenes. We aren’t the selfie or social media generations. We never sought to glorify ourselves.
Indeed, we grew up in an a cold war era when patriotism and self-sacrifice for the greater good were necessary and expected. Drawing needless attention to yourself in the face of the potential for literal annihilation at the hands of the soviets–something we were very much brought up to believe was a legitimate threat– was pointless and absurd.
Plus we were constantly presented with archetypical heroes in cartoon shows that would NEVER fly today who faced real risk, and even death (e.g. Optimus Prime) in a good versus evil universe that makes the Marvel movies seem like playtime. The stakes always seemed so staggering and the risks so great that it was best to let the true heroes handle things.
So we’d go off and ride bikes in a world that seemed strangely far more dangerous and yet far safer than today’s world does, knowing that the great social battles had already been won by our predecessors even if the global war still waged beyond our control.
Stated simply, we grew up in a world that didn’t seem to need us.
And for a while the world seemed to agree.
Social media arose just as we were leaving our useful 30s and into our forgotten 40s and 50s. So social awareness seemingly skipped us entirely. The world remained dominated by the boomers with the millennials dominating social media and societal trends–who were themselves quickly forgotten for the splashier hype monsters of Gen Alpha.
And then something happened.
Joe Biden.
His rapid decline in office showed everyone that the boomers were done. Trump II came along and his decline is obvious as well.
It is, without question, time for a new generation of leadership.
And we look around, and there just wasn’t anyone out there ready to step in.
The media predictably looked to social media darlings and the hype of millennials and gen z. We see so many notes about silly AOC and Mamdani, supposed darlings of the youth. Silly.
These are grasps for so many straws.
We all know who is control now. Gen X is waking up fully aware of its new found powers and it is having a little bit of fun out of the gate.
So let Stranger Things wash over you. Then prepare for Street Fighter and Voltron before a pile of additional of Saturday Morning Cartoon remakes find their way onto the big screen.
Prepare for Swamp of Sadness memes and reminders that Goonies Never Say Die.
Some will call it cultural strip mining. Fine.
What it really is is the bugle sounding and the torch passing.
Its our time now Gen X.
The kids don’t know what they’re doing yet– and they know it.
You don’t need me to tell you that.
You need me to tell you that there’s no one coming to save us anymore.
And that the world does need us.
So you going to come play or what?
See you out there.
America Deserves to Win!
Chat soon.