Sloppy seconds for Y and Z
OK all you Generation Y and Z’rs, we cop. Guilty as charged. We Baby Boomers and Gen X’rs were having so much fun conspicuously consuming the planet that we left you with a whole bunch of debt and a lifestyle that’s crap.
How much debt? Well, around nine trillion dollars, or maybe its 12. Anyhow, it’s more than you or your kids will ever be able to pay, so do what we did and don’t worry about it. Yeah, we kind of thought toward the end that you would start to realize that we had raided your piggy banks a little too often, but we were actually really surprised that you never caught on just how badly we mortgaged your futures so we could continue to live the dream.
What? What do you mean, “how could we?” Hey, just hold on a minute! We were only following what the guys in charge were telling us was OK to do. I mean, we had all these presidents and experts who kept telling us everything was fundamentally sound, which felt really reassuring because we wondered when a few hundred thousand people all of a sudden lost there homes and they hadn’t really planned for it. Or when we had those natural disasters and the government couldn’t figure out a way to pay to fix everything for years; and all this time, the guys on TV were telling us that we had to get this or that right away to get girls to like us or men to chase after us. I mean, do you know how many different types of alcohol, cars, clothes, watches, cologne, razors, cosmetics, surgeries and just tons of stuff we had to have to meet our dream silicone enhanced or penile extended mates?
Hey, none of that “how gullible are you?” stuff. We were raised to believe that we were the greatest nation on earth, and well, we believed it. Y’know if everyone is saying it, it must be true right? We really didn’t think that we could ever not be number one.
It’s complicated, but it seems that while we were going all over the place trying to get everyone else to believe we were number one, and getting into fights with anyone who thought different, the Asians, Russians, and Arabs were learning how to do all the productive stuff our country didn’t want to do anymore, and every time we needed money to buy more stuff to fight, they would lend us the money and we had to write IOU’s. Until one day they just said, “No more IOU’s for you guys, we want our money back.” I mean, one day all those guys just called in their chits or bonds or whatever they’re called, but we didn’t have any money to pay them, and we couldn’t print anymore money, because then our money would be worth even less, so we had to give them cool stuff like Manhattan and places like Alaska and Hawaii and most of the Midwest, but really it isn’t so bad because most of you can’t afford to travel anyway and you can’t really walk to Hawaii. And since Canada stopped talking to us just because we declared a little war on them, you can’t go to Alaska anyway. The best thing is that we dumped all of our toxic waste there before we gave it to them, so they’re not so smart either.
Now there’s no more gas, so you have to walk, and there’s no more credit, so you have to take your vacations at the Mctentmansion and live at a level slightly below basic.
At least you won’t have to worry about being overweight because we pretty much depleted all the animal stocks, and the droughts took care of the grain stocks. But one meal a day isn’t too bad once you get used to it, and those little meal in a pill things taste just like chicken. But hey, the climate changes have melted everything, so there are no more winters, and since the summer the UV rays are so intense and you have to stay inside, you can play all the computer games you want now. What’s the new one that’s so gory they call it “Holocaust?” They say it’s the most reality-based game ever, except, it’s not very entertaining because everyone loses at the end.
Hey, OK, we know we screwed up, and we’re sorry, but if you were so smart, where were you when things started really going south? You all had the chance to vote and didn’t. What do you mean voting is lame? Oh, that’s going to be your story; just because we didn’t, you didn’t think it was that important? Oh, fine, go ahead and blame us for that, too. You never refused all those video games and cars and coffee-chai-latte-nonfat-blender-soy-concentrated caffeine drinks you spent your allowances and wages on and saved the money instead. Only a few of you got politically and socially active, but you never used the Internet to begin mass movements for change that could span the globe. How’d you miss the power of that tool, smarties?
I mean you had those places such as FaceSpace or MyBook, and you didn’t do much more than try to get dates and gossip and watch stupid videos about dancing dogs.
That’s funny, because you always said, “I’m not going to be like my parents when I grow up.” Yes, of course we heard you say that, and our parents heard us say it, and theirs heard the same thing. Guess you’re not so smart after all.
Well, we’re all safely and cozily dead now, so you can hoot and holler all you want, but the bottom line is, you missed your chance because you were too busy thinking about your lives, and not about your world.