I rejected the Gen X label when it was first thrown at me. That’s actually a trademark of the Gen X ethos: I don’t want your stinking labels. Anyway, I’m going to use it now because I don’t want to reveal exactly how old I am. So without further ado, if you’re Gen X, you got to live in a very unique moment in American history. Without realizing it, you were the first generation of Americans to come of age in what most modern humans would consider an actual Democracy. Thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1965, America had never come closer to realizing its tagline, that all men (persons?) were created equal and that everyone had a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Other generations had been told that we lived in that America, but Gen X was the first to come of age in something that might have actually met the criteria. Well, we may also be the generation that watches it slip away, because, as usual, that America is under attack, and for the first time in decades, it’s trending in the wrong direction.
Every generation is doomed to watch the world they grew up in disappear; that’s the curse, or maybe the blessing, of modern civilization. But we grew up in a time of relative peace and prosperity that was quite unique in our history, especially given that the promise of America included more of its population than at any other time. And with it came the promise that more and more openness was on its way. Over our lifetime, we saw it in every corner of our society to the point where patriarchy and white supremacy were something we could casually make fun of on prime-time television. Where black families could be upper-class and wear dorky sweaters, and men could be high-powered attorneys but have queer-platonic relationships, the kind previously only available to female characters. Where a President could openly chastise religious zealots and women could sleep around with wild abandon and not be considered any different than their male counterparts. But, as we are seeing, all of this has proved to be too much for the fragile white male. Yes, I went there, I said the scary word out loud, white fragility is real, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say it. Hear that, Pete Hegseth? You’re weak, you’re a weak, fragile man with racist tattoos.
So here we are in the backlash, and what a backlash it is. But let’s keep it straight, the backlash started immediately after the Voting Rights Act. As pointed out in Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, America immediately set out to disenfranchise black voters by setting up new, draconian drug laws and establishing the prison-industrial complex. But still, as much as they tried, it seemed like the arc of more freedom was on the rise. To the point where we were actually talking about dismantling many of those suppressive practices in the past few years. To the point where we got marriage equality much sooner than we thought possible. Where we elected a black President. And where we were on the cusp of electing a woman to the highest office in the land. We really thought the days of the “old boys’ club” were finally dying on the vine. And it still might be, but let’s be clear, under a Trump regime, that world has come back with a vengeance.
We now live in a time where the suppressive forces that we used to casually make fun of as kids are fully in charge of our government and are quickly using authoritarian tactics—that we haven’t seen in our country in generations—to rewrite history and erase the gains that Gen X saw develop in our lifetime. And yes, it’s social engineering on a level and at a pace practically unheard of in the United States. We’ve lost ground before, most notably during reconstruction after the Civil War, when, after a few years of legal protections, Jim Crow was quickly established to subjugate the black population in the South. Or as I already mentioned before, the creation of the prison industrial complex and felony laws to weed millions of black men off of the voter rolls after passing the Voting Rights Act. But what’s happening now is everywhere and all at once against every gain we’ve made in the 20th century.
In just the past few years, Roe was repealed, the Voting Rights Act has been largely repealed and may fall completely in the coming year or so. DEI has been demonized to the point where incapable white men like Pete Hegseth are being implanted while highly trained and capable black women are being fired left and right. Companies that are already lopsided with male control are abandoning efforts to diversify. Young white men are feeling empowered to openly support the piggish language and mannerisms of Trump in a way that our generation never would have been allowed to do openly. We grew up with Alan Alda on M*A*S*H, and sure, if you were a woman, he’d want to get into your pants and would probably inappropriately chase you around with a stethoscope or something, but at least he was nice about it. I’m kidding, of course, but at least the general vibe was, we’re gonna fix this and work toward equality. And we’re all going to be aware that we have a lot to learn about making this a world where everyone is welcome and safe.
But now, instead of a promise of a more open America, we are witnessing the dismantling of protections and the erasure of non-white-male history. The whole idea of diversity being our nation’s primary strength, which my generation was raised to believe, is now being demonized. Now we have to hear about how supposedly macho men don’t want to be told about white male fragility because, well, I don’t know actually, it doesn’t really bother me, but maybe it just hurts too hard for guys like Pete Hegseth. Or we now have the term ‘Trad Wife’ in our lexicon, and I gotta say, I don’t think a trad wife is going to take out a xenomorph and save the frickin cat like Sigourney Weaver did in Alien. In today’s America, we have to listen to the idea of preserving Confederate statues. Or how slavery wasn’t really as bad as people make it out to be, and how we shouldn’t focus on the negative anyway. Yeah, that’s just another way of saying let’s not talk about it and don’t worry, it’ll all be fine if everyone just knows what their place is.
Well, that’s not the America I grew up in, and frankly, all of that sounds un-American to me. We’ll never know for certain what Jefferson intended when he wrote that all men are created equal. We know he owned human beings when he wrote it, so he probably meant what we all suspect he meant. But it doesn’t matter. Sometimes people put ideas out into the world and they take on a life of their own; they cease to be owned by any one individual and become part of our collective understanding of what is right and what is just. And our collective understanding, for most of us anyway, is this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among its populace, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I changed two words, swapping out men for people and populace respectively, because we own this now. Not the un-American traitors who have captured our country. They’re the ones we were warned to look out for. They will claim til their blue in the face that they are in the right and that we are the traitors, as Stephen Miller so cartoonishly does day in and day out on their fascist propaganda machine. But they’re wrong, and we’re gonna need trials. Lots and lots of trials. We’re going to have trials either way, you caught that, right? They’ve already started with their sham investigations that shatter everything that our constitution stands for. Making a mockery of due process and the rule of law while they wrap themselves in our flag. Those of us alive today are the first to live in the realized version of America that captured the world’s attention with a pretty great idea almost 250 years ago. We’ve made plenty of mistakes. Let’s not let our last mistake be allowing the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness be destroyed by a bunch of weak-minded buffoons who are trying to fool us into thinking that they’re the real Americans. The real Americans are the ones who will fight for the idea that we are all created equal. That’s ours now; we are the inheritors of that idea. It was given to us by those who fought for us to have it, and it’s up to us to keep fighting to preserve it.