I've heard that before and every generation does actually say it about the last.
I think you meant that “every generation does actually say it about the next” generation.
But, yes, although I think that the present slicing up of the populace into smaller generational slices of vilification and entitlement is more pronounced than ever before, the generational blame game has been in play since at least the beginning of hunter-gatherer societies, or perhaps even from the beginning of humankind 6-7 million years ago.
But we all have to admit the millennials have taken the cake. They have been coddled, spoiled, given safe spaces, etc.
But that is exactly the way in which many members of both the “G.I. Generation” and the “Silent Generation” described we Baby Boomers during the 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond. They also claimed that we had “a huge sense of entitlement” (as if nearly all white people of all generations do not harbor a huge sense of entitlement); and that we were lazy, unmotivated, unappreciative, etc., etc., etc.
That has not happened with any other generation to my recollection. Not in the US anyway.
I think that your “not to my recollection” is key here, E. For, as it relates to their military service, members of the G.I. Generation as well as early members of the Silent Generation were very well cared for by, of all things, the federal government. White male WWII veterans of these two generations - known collectively as “The Greatest Generation” - received free college educations - with generous stipends, free medical care, low interest government-guaranteed home loans, and more than $9 billion worth of unemployment benefits between the years 1944 and 1949. (Technically speaking, black male and white female WWII veterans were also eligible for these programs, but they were nearly always discriminated against and thus denied said benefits.)
So the simple fact of the matter is that this “Greatest Generation” was the most heavily subsidized generation in American history.
i'm not saying all millennials. And I will say [that] much of this is propagated by the media, I am sure. And a small select few, like the Occupy Wall Street fucktards.
As a Baby Boomer who participated in both the Occupy Los Angeles encampment and the Occupy Portland (Oregon) encampment, I will argue that that uprising had been percolating since the Reagan administration fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981 (after Reagan himself lied to them by pretending to be on their side).
Then, on September 17, 2011, a group of (mostly) millennials decided to take direct action. And this action struck a raw nerve, sending a shock wave throughout the U.S., because what these millennials were doing was what tens of millions of people wished they could do. The people who had lost their jobs, their homes, their “American dream” - they cathartically cheered on this ragtag bunch of millennials who got right in the face of Wall Street and said, “We’re not leaving until you give us our country back!”
“Fucktards”? If they were, then so, too, were the participants of the Boston Tea Party “fucktards,” for to possess a contextual understanding of both events is to understand that the Boston Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street unfolded for much of the same type of reasons.