Writer's Note: When I say Baby Boomers, you know who you are are: Middle class and rich white liberals and conservatives. The ones we ALWAYS hear about. If you are a baby boomer who is a member of some oppressed group, I ain't talkin' about you.

Dear Baby Boomers,

Just when you thought hating on you was only a pastime for Generation X, it turns out those of us in "Generation Y" aren't impressed with you either. As I am sitting here finishing the last papers of my college career, I reflect on what I have to look forward to in my adult life on account of your megalomania.

You had absolutely everything. Your parents grew up in the Great Depression, selling apples on the street and being sent to live with relatives because their parents couldn't afford to feed them. They grew up in families with record amounts of domestic violence, suicide, and divorce due to economic crisis they were enduring. Just when they became young adults, and were thinking, "shit, how am I going to survive, and support a family?", the US entered World War II, and the men went off to kill Nazis while the women stayed on the Home Front and became the first generation of women from all economic classes who worked outside the home. (Women of color and and poor women have always worked) When the war ended, your parents created the greatest and most widely enjoyed prosperity this country has ever seen. Of course, there were a lot of problems. Segregation and other forms of racism being a notable example.

This is where you think you come in. You love love love to wax poetic about how you were the vanguards of all the liberation movements that ever came to fruition in the 20th century, particularly the black civil rights movement. Except that the civil rights movement that we all know and love started in the 1950's, when you were still kidlings. Furthermore, white baby boomers were a minority in the civil rights movement. Basically all the liberation movements were spearheaded by the people who were actually being oppressed. The only movement that REALLY got you riled up was the anti-war movement, when you realized that the draft meant that being blown apart by shrapnel was not JUST for working class guys and men of color anymore. You dabbled in all these movements, railed against the soulessness of your parents' America, but at the end of it, you left all of your former comrades to become the Me generation.

So you left the black people, gays and lesbians, Chicanos, and American Indians to fend for themselves in the 1970's while you descended into hedonistic decadence. Then came the 1980's. You proclaimed that greed is good and bought McMansions in the suburbs that would have made your parents in Levittown blush. You voted for Reagan, who, among other evil deeds, did nothing while the worst plague in human history decimated gay men, and other marginalized groups you are supposedly "cool with".

And while you were off being a yuppie, you neglected to pay off your very cheap and highly subssidized student loans. Because of this, Generation X and Y have had to sign on to expensive and draconian loans costing us tens of thousands of dollars in interest in order to go to college, all at a time when college tuition was skyrocketing.

You created lifestylism. And in the 1990's Clinton Era, it only got better! You bought bigger houses, told single mothers to go fuck themselves with welfare reform, and my personal favorite, bought and drove SUV's, because you know, you needed the cargo room for your chocolate lab and hermes luggage.

Nowadays, you complain about "kids today". They don't care about anything. Not like you did when you were their age. I'm sorry, going to a total of five protests between acid drops and all night birth control enabled fuck fests does not an activist make. It never crosses your mind that "kids today" are in fact YOUR kids. You raised them. You were the ones who made them helpless by attending to their every need, getting rid of recess because they might "hurt" themselves, and creating a market for anti-bacterial hand sanitizer.

Furthermore, many of us are actually pretty rad. We are putting ourselves through school, and getting involved in many issues, ranging from climate change, the Iraq war, and globalization. Not that you've noticed. You lament that we don't "care". Look, I know you've now traded in your SUV for a Prius, and smugly look down on those of us who are still so selfish that we won't drive a hybrid, but let me put it to you straight. I CAN'T AFFORD A FUCKING HYBRID. IF YOUR GENERATION WASN'T SO BUSY TRYING TO MAKE A FUCKING FAT PROFIT OFF OF EVERY GREEN TECHNOLOGY THAT HITS THE MARKET, I COULD PROBABLY AFFORD TO BUY ONE.

You allowed the government to raid social security for years and years and years, and are only concerned now that your checks are coming due. If you hadn't abandoned the many movements for social change in the 1960's, we might actually have a security net in this country. You were the first generation to throw you parents into nursing homes en masse because you needed to "live your own life", and engaged in rampant ageism in 1980's (my grandfather being one of your casualties), but now that you're gettin' old, long term life and care issues are suddenly important again.

So thanks, Baby Boomers! I will NEVER have the prosperity you've enjoyed and that your parents (who you've since allowed to be euthanized in a stinking substandard nursing home) laid the foundation for. If I ever own a home, it probably won't be until I'm in my forties; I'm so shackled with debt. And my grandparents (whom you have to thank for your prosperity) and my mother (one of those single mothers your "invisible hand" decided to fingerbang into submission) will have two feet in the grave before they have any great-grand or grandchilden, because I won't be able to afford to raise children until I'm 50.

Also, even though YOU popularized sex outside of marriage and liberalized sexual mores, you won't let me get married, cuz I'm a dude who likes other dudes. Your favorite and first Baby Boomer president, Bill Clinton, closed that door for me with DOMA. He sure wanted my community's votes, and campaign contributions though. Then the second baby boomer president, George W. Bush, thought it'd be a great idea to take Billy's idea a step further. But then, just in time, you decided that it was just a ruse to get our minds off the war. Phew.

You're not all bad, though. Some of you never left your ideals behind, and are not showering in organic champagne in your Kohler totally sustainable but nevertheless $50,000 showpiece bathroom. Some of you have devoted your lives working with special needs kids. Some of you raised three kids and then went back to school to become a third grade teacher. Some of you are college professors who put up with and even encourage students like me. And some of you are like that woman that the editors of this fine site wrote about:

Moving through the square, we next encountered a middle-aged woman holding a large Barak Obama sign. She was drawn to Obama for his youthful energy and ability to unite people. She said that one reason she did not support Clinton was generational. She felt that her and Clinton's generation had failed; that they "HAD EVERYTHING AND THREW IT ALL AWAY." Finally, a boomer with some self-awareness.

Sincerely,

Garden "two generations and still in the shadow of the boom" Gnome