I'm not convinced it is nihilism: it's a sort of solipsistic optimism. I think the Boomers, in their heads, are still living in the post-war period of the 50s and 60s, when you could walk out of high school and into a lifetime job with no qualifications that would buy you a house and a car and put your kids through college. When the space race was at its peak, but the cold war hadn't become the cynical power-play that it later turned into, at least not in the public consciousness.

It's hard for us to imagine the unbelievable optimism of those two decades, before the Vietnam War and the recession of the 1970s brought everybody down to Earth. If you watch media from that period, whether it's movies, TV shows or even just news broadcasts, it's clear that everyone was being indoctrinated with the notion that they really were living the end of history: convinced that the Ultimate Evil, the final boss, had been defeated and that we would be living on Mars by the 21st century and things could only possibly get better. The pie-in-the-sky futurism was almost cult-like in its pervasiveness.

Even now that everything's gone to shit, the Boomers still haven't shaken that programming. When you hear them say things like, "well, war with Russia might be bad, but I'll be dead by then," what we hear is "fuck you I've got mine." What's actually going through their heads is "They'll be fine. How bad could it possibly be?"

That's the maxim that's guided their entire lives, informed every decision they've ever made, every vote they've ever cast: We've already won. We're already on top. We can ride out any hardship because the good times are never that far out of reach. We have enough to share with everyone. They've lived their entire lives in a world without consequences, and so they make decisions based on the belief that consequences don't exist.

I'm not convinced it is nihilism: it's a sort of solipsistic optimism. I think the Boomers, in their heads, are still living in the post-war period of the 50s and 60s, when you could walk out of high school and into a lifetime job with no qualifications that would buy you a house and a car and put your kids through college. When the space race was at its peak, but the cold war hadn't become the cynical power-play that it later turned into, at least not in the public consciousness.

It's hard for us to imagine the unbelievable optimism of those two decades, before the Vietnam War and the recession of the 1970s brought everybody down to Earth. If you watch media from that period, whether it's movies, TV shows or even just news broadcasts, it's clear that everyone was being indoctrinated with the notion that they really were living the end of history: convinced that the Ultimate Evil, the final boss, had been defeated and that we would be living on Mars by the 21st century and things could only possibly get better. The pie-in-the-sky futurism was almost cult-like in its pervasiveness.

Even now that everything's gone to shit, the Boomers still haven't shaken that programming. When you hear them say things like, "well, war with Russia might be bad, but I'll be dead by then," what we hear is "fuck you I've got mine." What's actually going through their heads is "They'll be fine. How bad could it possibly be?"

That's the maxim that's guided their entire lives, informed every decision they've ever made, every vote they've ever cast: we've already won. We're already on top. We can ride out any hardship because the good times are never that far out of reach. They've lived their entire lives in a world without consequences, and so they make decisions based on the belief that consequences don't exist.

I'm not convinced it is nihilism: it's a sort of solipsistic optimism. I think the Boomers, in their heads, are still living in the post-war period of the 50s and 60s, when you could walk out of high school and into a lifetime job with no qualifications that would buy you a house and a car and put your kids through college. When the space race was at its peak, but the cold war hadn't become the cynical power-play that it later turned into, at least not in the public consciousness.

It's hard for us to imagine the unbelievable optimism of those two decades, before the Vietnam War and the recession of the 1970s brought everybody down to Earth. If you watch media from that period, whether it's movies, TV shows or even just news broadcasts, it's clear that everyone was being indoctrinated with the notion that they really were living the end of history: convinced that the Ultimate Evil, the final boss, had been defeated and that we would be living on Mars by the 21st century and things could only possibly get better. The pie-in-the-sky futurism was almost cult-like in its pervasiveness.

Even now that everything's gone to shit, the Boomers still haven't shaken that programming. When you hear them say things like, "well, war with Russia might be bad, but I'll be dead by then," what we hear is "fuck you I've got mine." What's actually going through their heads is "How bad could it possibly be?"

That's the maxim that's guided their entire lives, informed every decision they've ever made, every vote they've ever cast: we've already won. We're already on top. We can ride out any hardship because the good times are never that far out of reach. They've lived their entire lives in a world without consequences, and so they make decisions based on the belief that consequences don't exist.