First, they came for the experts, then they went for each other and now they've come for us. As if saddling us with extortionate higher education debt, degrading the environment and facilitating the rise of fascism on the globe wasn't enough; the generations that keep on giving have baptised us with a new name - 'Generation Snowflake'. The Baby boomers and generation x, people born before 1980, whose hair was higher than the heavens and education cheaper than a Freddo, have the audacity to criticise us of narcissism, privilege, and feebleness.
We're 'too easily offended' they claim and fear that they will have to walk on eggshells around us. This is the same generation that thought it acceptable to call anyone that wasn't a heterosexual, old, white guy by a derogatory slur and laughed when Mickey Rooney played a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany's. In our defence, it's easier to find offence in seemingly 'harmless jokes' when you're more educated about the implications that it has for people, both historically and now. It's no secret that 'generation snowflake' is more educated than previous generations. We're also more culturally aware because of the globalising effect of social media; we're more connected and engage with people other than just next-door-Neil. Which may also be why we don't view our fellow Europeans as suspicious, dangerous or as a 'benefit-scrounging job thieves'.
It's also interesting to note who the ones decrying the rise of 'microaggressions' and generation snowflake happen to be. "Urgh, my free speech has been curtailed now that I can't make casually racist/sexist/homophobic jokes. Damn these snowflakes!".
The disdain shown to us by these generations seem a little more than the usual inter-generational rift though. Perhaps it is they who are the real snowflakes. They don't like being called out on their casual racism and sexism because it makes them 'uncomfortable'. The world is their safe space where their antiquated views are not to be challenged and Brexit was a call to barricade themselves from anyone who may look, speak, or think differently to them. They fear the day where our political correctness and regard for others will suppress their distasteful jokes.
Apparently, they also don't like how we do politics, rather, they don't like that we do politics. The protesting of millennials across America following the trump election was criticised by these generations. We were chastised for being unable to 'handle rejection' and using the protests as a 'display of narcissism and moral piety' . What they forgot in their moral crusade was that protesting, petitioning, and displaying contempt for an elected government is part of the democratic process. It appears that they don't like their world view, that democracy is something that is done every 4 years and the other three spent on the couch, being challenged.
We can't tolerate opinions we don't like and think based on 'feelings' instead of 'cold, hard and uncompromising facts based on empiricism ' they claim. 'F*** your feelings!' , they hurl at us. This is rich coming from the generations that rejected experts in their deluded view that everyone's opinion, including the layman's, is just as valid. They are righteous in their crusade to condemn us of being feeble and weak-minded but can't bear to stand that the opinions of others may hold more weight than their own. It was their narcissistic, "everyone's' opinion is valid" and "we're all special snowflakes" mentality that got us Brexit and Trump. But perhaps the latter doesn't bother them. As a baby boomer, Trump is, after all, one of their own. And he bears their traits as an uneducated, narcissistic, casually racist, climate change denying misogynist who thinks he knows best.
But everyone's opinions are valid, right? And all opinions deserve platforms - even in The White House as leader of the Free World.