Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[Eric the Green]

(05-03-2019, 11:00 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-03-2019, 10:53 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: I agree with Eric here. 9/11 was not *that* important. Obviously it was a nightmare for people who died and for their families. It was a shock for everyone. But I remember a New Yorker (my cousin's friend) saying in retrospect it was less devastating than hurricane Sandy in 2012. The financial recession of 2008 was definitely more important for people's daily lives. As for the Internet, there is colossal difference between early and late 2000s. I was born in '86, so I remember the websites of 2001. When MySpace went mainstream in 2006, it made a huge difference.

Coming of age doesn't really mean 18, in the modern context extended adolescence is the norm, so people are more likely to start living an adult life around the age of 22. Using age 22 as a proxy for coming of age works well:
1968 for boomers
1986 for Xers
2006 for millennials
2025 for new Artists born in 2003

9/11 was far more impactful than Hurricane Sandy. 9/11 is when the mentality started to shift towards "Give up your freedoms in the name of society and security. Authority good." The war in Iraq resulting from this also resulted in the deficit that caused the 2008 crash. It's all related. Your coming of age is when your innocence is shattered. For Boomers, it was 1963 when JFK got assassinated. For Millennials it was 2001 or 2008. 2006 was not very significant at all IMO.

The deficit was not a result of the Iraq War, and the deficit did not cause the crash. The deficit is an ongoing condition since Reagan; the wars just made it worse. Also since then are the neo-liberal (free market uber alles, trickle-down economics, hatred of welfare and taxes, etc.) policies dominant since his presidency, including during Bush and Clinton years, that deregulated Wall Street and other predatory companies and created gross inequality and lack of opportunity for many people. The real estate bubble was the basic cause of the 2008 crash, magnified greatly by all the loans and financial instruments based on their phony value.

9-11 did cause passage of threats to freedom, but it did not cause a crisis mood. The nation was not summoned to meet a threat. Instead, the US sent some planes to bomb the Afghans, and then started an un-related but falsely-linked preventive war that divided the nation. The 2008 did create a crisis mood at least for a while, and much of the nation was impacted through financial loss, loss of home, loss of jobs, etc. 

The 4T has dragged on without resolving much of the original problems. Neo-liberalism is still in power, while resistance is growing, and the climate change that caused Sandy and Katrina continues to threaten civilization ever more strongly. Our society is in a cold civil war. Our 4T is a literal seasonal winter which could last well into the next seaculum, but at least if the 4T mood ramps up again as a result of Trump and the resistance, and a strongly-supported Democratic regime takes over at some point during the 4T's remaining years, then progress will restart and will begin to resolve these problems and put the USA on the path toward a middle class free society in a livable climate again.