It’s Generational.

Thomas Day, a 31 year old Iraq War veteran wrote a guest column yesterday in the Washington Post’s On Faith section. Mr. Day is also a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, an acquaintance of the monster Jerry Sandusky and a product of the now notorious Second Mile foundation. The point of his column to express what I think is a common theme running my and Mr. Day’s generation, and also the youth movement that has been behind both the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and also the Occupy Movement this year:

[I] have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation. […]

I was one of the lucky ones. My experience with Second Mile was a good one. I should feel fortunate, blessed even, that I was never harmed. Yet instead this week has left me deeply shaken, wondering what will come of the foundation, the university, and the community that made me into a man.

One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.

They have failed us, over and over and over again. […] They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us — at the orders of our leader — to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping. […]

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. […]
Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration this week of our leaderless culture came with the riots in State College that followed Paterno’s dismissal. The display resembled Lord of the Flies. Without revered figures from the older generation to lead them, thousands of students at one of the country’s best state universities acted like children home alone.

Generational definitions are hard to come by and subject to much debate. But generally, you have the Greatest Generation, those born in the 1910’s and 1920’s, who fought World War II. The Baby Boomer Generation are the children of the Greatest Generation, and were born in the late 40’s and 50’s, that much is certain. Where the debate comes in concerns the parameters of what constitutes the next two generations after the Baby Boomers. There is Generation X (those born in the mid 60’s and 70’s) and Generation Y (those born in the 80’s and early 90’s). Mr. Day speaks of the generation that is in their 20’s and 30’s today, which would cover both GenX and GenY.

Regardless, it is the collective XY generations are who are in conflict with the Baby Boomers. Fittingly, President Obama is really not encamped in either generation. He is really not a Baby Boomer, obviously, having been born in 1961, although some generational timelines have the Baby Boom generation lasting until 1964. But Bill and Hillary and George W. are Baby Boomers. Barack is not. Barack is also not really a GenX-er, having been born too early. No, he is a child of the Silent Generation, those who were born between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. But I am really digressing.

What we are experiencing right now is a generational battle. The younger generations have lost all faith in their elders, and are fighting back.