Reply to Open Letter to Millennial Socialists (esp. of Montgomery County)

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[quote=Anonymous]Dear millennial socialists on Twitter,

I have some words for you which may sound tough on your feelings, but please realize that I was you less than ten years ago.

I'm sure you have heard this before, but it is time - in fact, long overdue - to start taking responsibility for your own destiny. Thankfully, our free-enterprise system enables you to do just that.
Yes, it sucks that you may have to shack up with roommates for longer than you had hoped. Yes, it's too bad that you have a six-figure student loan debt with a five-figure salary, and that your ability to regurgitate the words of your leftist professor of Feminist Critique of Medieval French Literature did not result in high-paying jobs falling into your lap upon graduation. Maybe it's hard enough that - participation trophies from your parents notwithstanding - you are not all destined for greatness, or even for DC, as you should have learned after your second unpaid internship didn't hire you full time. Even better would be to realize that you might have wanted to opt for a lower-tier school if you weren't competitive enough to get scholarships for your first choice school.

My wish for you is to stop whining on Twitter and start taking positive actions to better yourselves and stop using "your generation" and its "injustices" as an excuse or a status of victimhood. This may hurt to realize, but as you are whining on twitter about your loans and low salaries and high costs and "systematic oppression," many of us elder millennials and X-ennials are advancing our careers into managerial positions and quietly hitting other life milestones getting married, having children, buying houses. All of those things that you swore Baby Boomers conspired to prevent you from doing.

If you are not hitting these milestones, there may be different reasons, but they are much more related to your own decision making than they are to "the man" or "the machine" or "the system." If your arts degree landed you a $50K paper pusher job you don't like, well, this is where ingenuity, resourcefulness, risk taking, and creativity come in. Yes, it's [i]hard[/i]. Life is [i]supposed[/i] to be [i]hard[/i]. With obstacles and challenges and curveballs. This is not unique to your generation. Yes, some specific challenges are unique to those in your age range, and it may appear that your parents had it easier, but let me tell you, they didn't. Their obstacles were just different. Not unique to any generation is the need to [i]hustle.[/i]

Regarding a recent thread about "jobs that pay $100K where you can work 40 hours a week" or something along those lines. What I think some younger millennials believe is that one arrives at these jobs just by checking the boxes and staying out of trouble. No, this lifestyle is work toward, competed for, and earned. There is a reason why your 20s and 30s are one's physical prime. This is when you are supposed to put in the bulk of work to reap the benefits of in your 50s and 60s and beyond. Your 20s and 30s are not intended for brunching, Netflixing, and tweeting angrily when your boss asks you to stay late. These are the years when the hustling is done. Don't waste them complaining about the need to hustle when you are not actually doing it. The beautiful thing about capitalism is that there is nothing institutionally preventing you from doing so.

Millennial socialists using their iPhones to retweet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with rose emojis remind me of Philip Rearden from Atlas Shrugged - the wannabe social justice intellectual who finds his work is not valued and finds he has to rely on producers of industry for his own well-being while biting the hand that feeds him.

Why am I posting this in the Local Politics section of DCUM? First, I find that many DCUM users will echo my message, and might share my sentiments that intended to be of tough love, not derision. Second, that I have increasingly noticed the presence of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) types popping up around Montgomery County. 
MoCo elected two Socialists to the Maryland General Assembly and a Socialist as County Executive. 
A lot of these people, you may recognize some of their Twitter handles, are staunch supporters of Marc Elrich. If two thirds of Elrich's base are older homeowners who oppose development, a good one third of his supporters are younger millennials/post-millennial college students and Bernie Bros. These are the people I am talking about. (Mr. Elrich and his NIMBY policies have nothing in the interests of elder millennials/GenX successful professionals who are trying to buy homes and raise families) Instead of making the most of the free market system, they ask for free stuff, whine on Twitter, blame "the rich" (if you hate the rich so much, why do you live in Bethesda?) for their lack of success and look to Elrich, Bernie, and AOC to solve their problems. They virtue signal about the environment and gentrification and poverty while trying to shame those who fail their purity tests. Instead of recognizing how their lack of financial success results from their own decisions and work ethic, they'd rather cover up and/or justify their shortcomings with an "edgy" identity as a Socialist.

I'm sorry, but caring about these things does not make you a better person than me. I have a five-year-old; I also care about climate change and want her to grow up in a clean environment. But you have to understand, the reason why true progressive activism among adults is so laudable is that there are trade-offs to be made. It's one thing to march and protest and organize when you schedule it around Netflix and brunch; it's truly another when you have a young child and a demanding job and a house to take care of. And I say this, not saying that the 20-year-old liberal with a heart must become a 30-year-old conservative if he/she has a brain; I say this as a moderate Democrat who understands that there is context and there are tradeoffs to make.

So please, do us all a favor, and get off Twitter. Put your noses to the grindstone, work harder at your jobs, produce something of value, create a life for yourselves. Capitalism, unlike socialism, enables you to do so.

Signed,

a 35-year-old X-ennial who truly was this person into her late 20s. [/quote]

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