An Open Letter to the Occupy Movement

To my younger American countrymen living in tent cities across the nation,

On behalf of my fellow Generation X-ers, I’d like to apologize to you for making you think that you were somehow too good for or should be ashamed to take on a manual labor or entry level job.  I am sorry that you somehow feel your sense of entitlement is warranted.  I am apologizing for this because I feel somewhat responsible.

The Gen X-ers and the Baby Boomers before us will chastise you for being too lazy to take on a low paying job, for protesting and shutting down communities so that we’ll collectively pay for your college education or guarantee you some high paying job that currently doesn’t exist instead of just being happy to be flipping burgers or sacking groceries.  The problem here is that is complete hypocrisy.

You see, my generation was raised in the 1980s where the only real fear we had was turning into the cold, unfeeling grownup who works too hard.  We were told that the worst possible thing in life would be the sudden realization in your waning years that you dithered away life… you worked too hard and lost your soul.  In the end, we thought that the only way to enjoy life is to loosen up and live out your inner child’s fantasies.

By the 1990s, slackers were our heroes – people who knew that life was about having fun.  We knew that “growing up” was a one way ticket to becoming Principal Rooney from Ferris Bueller.  So we worked our way into flipping burgers and were content with not turning into our evil, lifeless parents.  Of course, it was an easy thing to do given that our evil, lifeless parents were busy working their rear ends off to afford providing us money for rent every month.

Now that we’ve become adults and have mortgages and children of our own to provide for, we’ve come to realize that we’ve steered you wrong.  It’s OK to take on menial, entry level jobs because there’s not much money to be made in wearing checkered Vans and quoting lines from Clerks.  We’ve learned our lesson.  But those fast food and janitorial jobs stayed locked in the back of our minds, driving us onto bigger and better things.  And I tell my kids that all the time… don’t be ashamed to pick up a broom or to wait tables.  And just because you’ll grow up and get a great college education and still can’t find that elusive job in your field of study, that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t start off flipping burgers to survive.

You should know that those “fat-cats” of Wallstreet will continue to make millions regardless of how long you crap in a hole dug in a field next to your tent community.  But also understand that you’re making a fundamental mistake.  You’re making a spectacle that’s good for entertainment purposes only.  You seem to think that by crowding thousands of young people in a street blocking businesses, painting placards calling for Wallstreet to be burned, creating environments full of beatings, rapings and disease – you think this accentuates your cause, when it only shows the banality of it.  Your protests only make the decline of our civilization that much louder.

It may seem right now that you’ll never get your way.  But that’s called life… and capitalism.  Not everyone will make millions.  Not everyone is able to make millions.  It’s called equality of opportunity… not equality of results. 

That’s what you are failing to grasp.  Yes, it may be partially the older generation’s fault that you’re choosing to live in tents and grow bacteria in your armpits.  But now it’s time to look in the smart part of your brain and realize that the folks on Wallstreet…and your parents – are not out to get you.  It’s just called life.  It’s time to close the curtain on the buttcrack of your version of progress… no one wants to see that.