a note to millennials re: gen-x not entirely freaking the fuck out over trump

jumpingjacktrash:

vastderp:

roachpatrol:

jumpingjacktrash:

it’s not that we don’t think it’s bad shit

it’s just that it’s not NEW bad shit to someone who grew up under reagan and the bushes, exactly; what’s new is how blatant and hamfisted it is, not the actual agenda

also new is the fact that people care and are horrified

also new is the fact that people have anything better to compare it to

so we’re kinda like “aw not this shit again, i thought we were past this” rather than “end of the fucking world” about it, like “welp time to dig up those old dead kennedies albums”

even the nuclear threat is like

idk babies we thought about getting nuked a LOT when i was growing up, it was just this constant cloud following us around, we made nuclear apocalypse jokes and it wasn’t even that dark because it was just life

it’s been nice not thinking about mushroom clouds for a while but it’s not exactly a shock that it’s come back up

i’m not trying to make you feel naive here, i’m just saying history is dark as fuck, and while you maybe knew that intellectually, you’ve been living in a very bright time up until now

i wish you could’ve gone your whole lives without knowing your government doesn’t have a problem with getting everyone killed for no fucking reason except to add another zero to the already absurd bank accounts of a tiny handful of elderly white men, but since shit fell out this way, i guess i just have to let you know that it isn’t something new, it’s the same battle we’ve been fighting all along

anyway, i’ve got your back

this manages to be depressing and reassuring somehow

i have to admit i’ve been feeling a little bit surprised by the anguish, and i chalked it up to my autistic emotional weirdness that makes me not feel stuff all at once, but this is very true. i grew up thinking world war III was about to start at any minute and we’d all be nuked to death. i was waiting to be on the streets for pretty much my entire childhood. i knew how fragile the safety net was, and i knew how many people wished fervently to dissolve it altogether.

powerlessness is the lot of a kid, so i dealt with it, and lived through it, and became numb to it.

 i was 21 when 9/11 happened, and i watched America bend over and look pretty for the patriot act. the libraries fought back (i was working at one) but all around me people were buying into right wing fuckery with a zeal i’d never seen before. they were terrified and they were sculpted into bigots by opportunistic fucks in the bush administration. i watched national security get scary like it is today. the TSA, the NSA, homeland security, FUCKING GUANTANAMO BAY, unprecedented pressures on civil liberties being accepted as the price for safety (because we’re so fucking into safety we’ll put ourselves in danger just to feel like we have it)

my dad and mom survived the vietnam war and the broken US welfare system. i was born into the Reagan years. i watched society grapple with the bullshit that was the 2000 election and i was scared but i expected worse any day now, and i lived like that for a long time until it felt normal.

i’m used to being afraid of the right on the rise, i’m comfortable with it

but this administration? this specific regime? fucking terrifies me.

the good news is, we can stop it, and we’re already making history with our resistance.

what’s missing this time, i think, is complacency. the obama generation that hasn’t grown up numb to constant fuckery is fucking pissed, and those of us who learned to live with the monster are starting to acknowledge just how bad it is, and how normal it ain’t.

it’s nice to be inspired, even if it’s angry inspiration. numbness is how you survive, but it’s no way to live.

well said. i feel like the people for whom this is all a fresh outrage are going to keep me from falling back into that numb despair.