Projection Rejection

Millennial-bashing seems to be a sport on social media.

Or as a few point out, every generation gets bashed, and we're just the first to have it happen on social media. Either way, the rhetoric is always the same: that we're lazy, entitled, irresponsible narcissists.

Usually I'd focus just on that last one and link you with this again, because it's one of my favourite articles ever and worth another read. But then I came across this on Frankly Curious.

There's really only one group that worries about Sharia law in the US: fundamentalist Christians.

Not surprisingly, it is a matter of projection. You know how it goes. Ever since Watergate, the Republicans have been obsessed with fake scandals involving Democrats because they just know the Democrats must be up to the same things they are. Or look at organized voter fraud. Every time an actual case comes up, it turns out to be Republicans. This is why Republicans know there is widespread voter fraud: because they're doing it! And when it comes to worries about Sharia law, it comes from the Christian nationalists — because they want nothing so much as to force Biblical law onto our nation.

That made me wonder, what if Millennial-bashing is a matter of projection too? Those four major themes – laziness, entitlement, irresponsibility and narcissism – don't they all apply equally to the Baby Boomer generation? These guys were molly-coddled by their parents before it was legal to coddle with Molly; the only reason we didn't call them helicopter parents was because helicopters had only just been invented; to a generation that had spent their childhood in the Depression and their adulthood amidst the carnage of WWII, these kids must've seemed the duck's guts.

You didn't suffer during the war, because you weren't born yet. Instead, you enjoy all the benefits of the war being over – a nice home, good schools, and so forth. But most important, your parents treasure you. They had waited until after the war to have you, and they want you to be the happiest child in the world. They shower you with attention, and they satisfy your every whim. You get used to getting your way. – Basics of Generational Dynamics

The only problem is they've carried that attitude all the way through their lives; they were the only generation that never grew out of it. And they really don't like anyone spoiling their rosy opinion of themselves. So could it be when they call us lazy they're trying to justify holding 58% of the wealth and shutting us out of the housing market? That when Joe Hockey cut back on the Dole and said, "The age of entitlement is over," it was the dying embers of a moral conscience trying to square with sponging $365,868* p.a. in government money? That when they call us irresponsible, they're hoping we don't ask why they've wrecked the environment and made sure they're the last generation to collect a pension? That when they call us narcissistic, they're trying to put aside that last botox injection?

As the noted sage Bernard Black said: "I've never seen such projecting. It's in CinemaScope with Dolby surround!" Bernard is my personal patron saint, if you wanted to know; I can tell you exactly who should be patron saint of the Boomers.

* That was just his parliamentary salary, that's to say, that's just what you, personally, were paying him; that was supplemented by his lucrative property investments and, presumably, whatever bribes the just-about-to-panic coal industry sent his way**. I'm sure he'd tell me he earned every cent of it, and who am I to disagree? A man who can bend spacetime far enough to apparently work 300 hours a week*** is clearly a genius who deserves everything he gets.

** Now he's ambassador to the U.S., that figure's gone up to $450,000, or just 150,000 middies.
*** Calculated using my hourly wage as a rough guide. If you really want to see what I'm taking home, go ahead.