OK, Millennial: The world will change on you, too

OK, Millennial.

My first point: There should be a comma after “OK” in “OK, Boomer.” Otherwise, you’re saying Boomers are OK, which is not what I think you mean to suggest.

If I’ve got this straight, you’re trying to say we’re out of touch, that our ideals are flawed, that we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about. Right?

Fine. Now, get off my lawn!

Wait. Hold on a minute. Let’s start again.

I said “we” with a couple of caveats. First, I’m what you might call a Barely Boomer. I was born in 1963, a year before the arbitrary generational cutoff that would have sorted me (just as arbitrarily) into Generation X. I was born to late for malt shops and even for the hippie movement. But too soon for the “me” generation of the Reagan ’80s.

So, I don’t really fit into your neat little categories. And that’s the point of my second caveat: Most of us don’t. Neither do most of you, if you’re honest with yourself, because stereotypes are a crutch, and a rather poor one, at that. Some “Boomers” really are OK by your standards: We agree with you on a lot of things; and some of you probably agree with us more often than you’d care to admit.

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The wheel turns

But one thing all generations seem to have in common is the way we age. When we’re young — say in our teens to our early 30s — we soak up stuff and make it ours. Our music. Our fads. Our pop culture. Our slang. We use it to help define who we are.

Then, however, the world moves on and we feel a little less at home. That’s normal. Imagine growing up on one place, calling it home for most of your life, then moving all the way across the country in your 40s. You may appreciate your new surroundings; they may even be objectively more comfortable and better suited to your needs. But you’ll always have a certain wistfulness about where you grew up (assuming you had a halfway decent childhood).

When our fads and music and lingo and culture gives way to the next generation’s, that’s how we feel. It’s how our parents felt, and it’s how you’ll feel, too. We feel a little out of place. That’s not generational. It’s human. You’ll feel the same way when you find the next generation creating its own distinct place in the world.

My parents’ tastes

I got to thinking about all this listening to a satellite radio station today. It was playing “oldies” from different generations: I remembered some fondly from my childhood, but I remembered others just as fondly because my parents had enjoyed them and shared them with me.

Now, when I was a kid, I’d close the door to my room and crank up KISS or Aerosmith, bands my parents had no affinity for whatsoever. My dad was into the Limeliters and the Kingston Trio. My mom liked big band stuff. They both enjoyed Perry Como and Bing Crosby. I didn’t listen to that stuff in my room, but when Christmas specials came on TV featuring crooners from an earlier generation, I watched. And I enjoyed them.

Because my parents found something to like there, I may have decided, subconsciously, that it was worth at least giving it a chance. Or maybe, because I grew up in a stable, loving home, I came to associate my parents’ tastes with that feeling of stability and comfort. A lot of kids who came from broken or abusive homes probably don’t want anything to do with their parents’ culture, because to them, it represents pain and struggle. That’s understandable.

Still, it doesn’t mean you ought to dismiss that entire generation, any more than an older generation should dismiss you. It would be easy for me to hold you responsible for the “death of rock and roll” at the hands of hip-hop and boy bands, because I miss what I grew up with, what made me feel at home when I was forming my own identity.

But that doesn’t mean I get to act dismissive of your culture, to the extent that it appears, on the surface to be different than mine. Because, guess what? Each of us has just as much right to our cultural comfort level as the other. And we that has to be OK. Otherwise, we’ll ignore what we have in common: the desire to create, cultivate and celebrate our own identities – and cling to them as we grow older. You’ll do that, too.

Duets

So did my parents.

They’re gone now, unfortunately. And I miss them both. When Moon River comes on the radio these days, I don’t roll my eyes and complain about their generation’s pathetic taste in music. I think about how great it was that they could enjoy something that was uniquely theirs. It isn’t uniquely mine, but because they loved it, I can at least appreciate it. Because I loved them. I also realized I could learn something from them — and I can learn something from the younger generation, too.

I may never love hip-hop, and you may never get Aerosmith. Still, hip-hop pioneers Run-DMC had a monster hit with a remake of an Aerosmith song called Walk This Way that actually featured members of Aerosmith. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, either. Back in the early 1970s, Bing Crosby and David Bowie sang a duet of The Little Drummer Boy. If anything, that was even more improbable.

So maybe, instead of me shouting, “Get off my lawn,” and you scoffing, “OK, Boomer,” we should try singing a metaphorical duet. Neither one of us has to give up our identity to appreciate a different perspective. And each of us might find there’s a lot more to the other than the stereotypes we’ve created in our own heads.

OK, Millennial?

We'd rather play the victim than pursue the truth

Welcome to the Victim States of America.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped judging disputes based on reason and a search for the truth, and instead started basing our decisions on who can whine the loudest – and longest.

I suppose it’s easier that way. We don’t have to think; all we have to do is grease that squeaky wheel. Except, in this case, it just makes the wheel squeak louder.  

In yet another byproduct of our increasingly polarized culture, we prize loyalty to our “tribe” over a dedication to truth, and never has it been more apparent than in the current impeachment proceedings.

Democrats announced they would be pursuing impeachment before they’d read the whistleblower complaint against Donald Trump. Then, when it did come out, Republicans dismissed it without even appearing to consider how damning its contents were.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican, hit the nail on the head. “Democrats ought not to be using the word impeach before they have the whistleblower complaint or before they read any of the transcript. Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons to say there’s no there there when there’s obviously lots that’s very troubling there. The administration ought not to be attacking the whistleblower as some talking points suggest they plan to do.”

Sasse counseled “lots of deliberation” but also acknowledge that “this place is terrible at deliberation.”

How we got here

“This place” might have meant Congress, Washington or the nation at large, and it would have been equally accurate.

There are, of course, reasons why we’ve exchanged deliberation and reason for loyalty oaths and litmus tests.

First, as mentioned above, it’s easier. You don’t have to think. You just let your tribal leaders do the thinking for you. Of course, you shouldn’t be surprised if you find they’re picking your pocket and shackling your wrists in the meantime.

Second, those tribal leaders have succeeded in making “deliberation” look like gridlock. They’ve done this in part by stonewalling the release of information, so that the process becomes so drawn out and tedious that no one has the time or patience for it. (This is especially true in an era when people often work two or three jobs to make ends meet, and those who don’t have been indoctrinated in a culture of instant gratification.)

Third, they’ve raised the bar for independent judgment so high that it’s almost impossible to reach. Anything short of absolute proof can be debunked as “doctored” or “fake news.” The upshot of this is we stop trusting ourselves to make informed decisions, so we abdicate that power to (surprise!) those same tribal leaders who thirst for it the most.

Fourth, they deflect. Instead of defending themselves, they point the finger elsewhere and say, “See, he’s doing it, too, and it’s even worse!” (One has to wonder whether the folks who do this have ever heard the saying “two wrongs don’t make a right,” or whether they did hear it and simply don’t care.) We don’t have time to weigh charges and counter-charges, so we ignore the whole thing and retreat to our own camps and, yes, those tribal leaders.

Fifth, we rushed to judgment and cried wolf so many times that no one’s listening anymore. The media, chained to their instant-update news cycle, contributes to this. So do political spin doctors eager to take the first shot. When they’re wrong, they lose credibility. And they create a vicious circle: The lack of deliberation has made us even less inclined to engage in it.

Skepticism gives way to cynicism, to the extent that everything coming out of the “other” camp can be dismissed as propaganda, no matter how much evidence there might be to back it up. We don’t have time to sift through all that, weed out the facts from the spin, and make an informed decision when we don’t even know if we have all the information we need to do so.

Is it any wonder we’ve disengaged from politics? Who wants to spend all day listening to people whine – and deciding who’s the bully and who’s the victim?

When Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh was accused of sexual harassment, his most effective argument was a self-righteous tirade about how he was the one being harassed. Clarence Thomas had done the same thing under similar circumstances a couple of decades, when he characterized allegations against him as “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

The irony is that Thomas’ argument itself didn’t involve “thinking,” but was fallacious. He was attacking the messenger by questioning motive, rather than seeking to refute the allegation itself. He made it a question of identity – prejudice against “uppity blacks” – rather than reasoned argument. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone comment on the irony of that supposed defense, but maybe it’s because we’ve become so used to people playing the victim that we barely notice it anymore.

Thomas and Kavanaugh now sit on the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the most deliberative body in the land. Its members are supposed to think, not engage in ad hominem defenses. What does it say about our society as a whole when even members of our highest court seem to rely on such flawed excuses for reasoning?

Loyalty over truth

Some people are shocked that Republicans are defending Trump in the light of what appears to be very compelling evidence against him. But they shouldn’t be, because we long ago stopped judging people based on rational argument and substituted Trump’s own standard for “truth”: blind loyalty. Trump has used this standard for his entire career, and comparisons to mob culture are entirely accurate.

But Trump recognized something he has used to his advantage: That culture was spreading. The nation was catching up – or more accurately, falling back – to the kind of tribal culture he’d exploited on a smaller scale all his life as a real estate developer. Whatever his other shortcomings, he knew how to make it work for him. And as it came to dominate American culture as a whole, newcomers accustomed to operating by more conventional political rules found themselves out of their league.

Not only does Trump know how to create blind loyalty, he also recognizes it and is able to call it out in others. He then exposes it and discredits them for the very things he himself is doing – often more flagrantly. And because that loyalty has bound so many people to him, they refuse to call him out for his hypocrisy, no matter how blatant it might be. He really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Nobody whines louder about being the victim than Trump, who laments “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT” in all caps and blames the media, the Democrats, and anyone else who dares to criticize him for all his woes. The only thing he seems to be more emphatic about is how great he (says he) is.

Who we’ve become

But this isn’t just – or even primarily – about Trump. He’s a symptom, not the condition. He could never have thrived if we hadn’t created a culture based on litmus tests and loyalty oaths long before he came along. Trump is Nixon redux, but in a time and culture far more vulnerable to Machiavellian bullshit. For this, we have only ourselves to blame. We began rushing to judgment long before Trump and others like him began using their cattle prods on us. We exchanged reason for outrage and humility for hubris. We ditched patriotism in favor of partisanship.

We’ve become so comfortable playing the victim and blaming others that it’s almost become second nature to us. We do it in government, in our personal lives, in our professional interactions. It’s become second nature.

But in exalting our own victimhood, we’ve abandoned what got us here: a spirit of determination that didn’t care what obstacles others put in our way. We didn’t waste time blaming the people who put them there; we tackled those obstacles head-on. We overcame them or died trying. It was what we used to call the American spirit. Flawed, yes. Cruel at times, to be certain. But we were not victims. Never victims.

Until now. Now we all want to do is play the victim – and in a sense, that’s what we are: victims of our own ignorance and stubborn refusal to face the truth.

And we’ll keep being victims until we’ve decided we’ve had enough.

Our addiction to outrage only empowers the bigots

One unfortunate byproduct of the internet age is the rush to judgment: the pressure to decide – and boldly declare – just how despicable an act is before we know all the facts.

But if we can’t just blame the internet, not if we want to be honest with ourselves. The internet is a tool, one we use to justify our own laziness and focus our addiction to outrage. We want to be pissed off. We want to feel superior, to believe that we are best equipped to make decisions about other people’s lives.

When we aren’t.

That’s not the worst of it. Outrage is contagious, viral, if you will. Not only are people tempted into outrage by their own egos, they’re afraid they’ll be shamed shamed – right along with the original target – if they’re not outraged. If something isn’t condemned immediately, suspicion arises.

“You must be one of them. How could you possibly side with that (racist, sexist, homophobic ... fill in the blank) so-and-so? You must be just as bad yourself!”

It’s not hard to recognize the same kind of dynamic that led to communist purges in the McCarthy era. Supposed “sympathizers” were as bad the alleged communists. This isn’t far removed from grade-school scandbox mentality. Growing up in the 1970s, before advances in LGBT rights, kids on the playground were routinely shamed as “gay” if they failed to measure up to some social norm. And anyone who dared defend them was called “gay,” too.

The labels have changed, but the principle remains the same. The process has merely accelerated in the age of social media.

Mob ‘justice’

Mob mentalities weren’t built in a day. They were built in the amount of time it takes to film a video and post it on Twitter. It’s the psychological equivalent of arson: Drop a match by the side of the road and watch it incinerate everything in sight.

Case in point: CNN recently ran a story about Dominique Moran. I mention her name because it’s important, I think, to realize that people affected by our addiction to outrage are real people with real lives that can be turned to shit in the blink of an eye by nothing more than an accusation.

Moran is a 23-year-old woman of Mexican-American heritage, but according to the outrage culture, she was branded as “white” because it’s more convenient to be outraged at white people these days. We wouldn’t want to complicate the narrative, now, would we?

According to CNN, she was working at Chipotle when a group of black customers entered the store. Moran had seen video footage of the men “dining and dashing” in the past when a credit card was declined, so she required them to pay for their meal in advance. One of the men responded by accusing her of racism, then began shooting a video and later posted it online.

It went viral, complete with nasty name-calling and calls for her to be blackballed (“I hope you never get another job”) in the comment field. and She wound up being fired because, you know, outrage demanded it.

The outrage had taken on a life of its own.

Perfect storm

Modern outrage is the product of a perfect storm. On the one hand, you have a media culture built on the constantly shifting foundation of instant gratification. Social media enables it, and the news media perpetuates it. When you’re chained to a 24-hour news cycle, the pressure to be “first” in reporting accusations is immense – especially if it’s already trending on Twitter. If you’re out there “ahead of the story,” you’ll get more clicks, more viewers ... and more advertising revenue. The pressure inherent in “breaking the news” makes an earlier era’s rush to hit the newsstands first look like a walk in the park. And it makes mistakes all but inevitable. (For more on this dynamic, see my book Media Meltdown.)

On the other hand, there’s an understandable frustration with our legal system. When monied elites can run out the clock on justice by filing endless appeals, or use their resources to make legitimate accusations “go away,” is it any wonder mob justice becomes attractive? There’s a lot of truth to the old saw that justice delayed is justice denied, so it’s natural for social justice vigilantes to take matters into their own hands.

There’s just one problem. It doesn’t work. You wind up “winning” a battle with a straw man and losing the war against the monster.

At what cost?

The cost goes of our rush to judgment goes far deeper than Dominque Moran’s anxiety and lost job, or the other highly personal costs born by any individual who’s falsely accused. Because whenever we sacrifice an innocent victim on the altar of our outrage, it gives real racists, sexists and homophobes ammunition to argue that they’re being set up and persecuted. It uses real victims like Moran as an excuse to promote the kind of false victim mentality that attracts people to racist and sexist groups in droves.

If you’re a member of the outrage culture lamenting the rise in white supremacy, you might be part of the problem. When you point that finger to scapegoat Dominique Moran or some other person you’ve never even met, four others are pointed straight back at you. And if you refuse to admit it, the problem only gets worse – which will further fuel your outrage. And that of the racists on the other side. Vicious circle doesn’t begin to describe the damage.

In our rush to judgment against the Dominique Morans of the world, we give the real enemy – white supremacists, neo-Nazis, homophobes and their ilk – an excuse to dismiss credible accusations as merely another “left-wing conspiracy.” Worse, we give people on the fence an excuse to believe them. We can’t afford to do this.

The antidote to “justice delayed” is not “injustice imposed,” which is exactly what the outrage culture – fueled by media pressures and social media access – promotes. Our judicial system may be imperfect, and at times unjust or even corrupt. Still, that doesn’t mean we should turn the gavel over to social media vigilantes fueled by sanctimony, prejudice and their own fear of being demonized.

But that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Heaven help us.