The Crappiest Generation: We're All We Have

Much has been made of our good-for-nothing collective lump of a useless generation; we're too obsessed with our selves/facebook/clothes/drugs/hip hop/wii to do anything significant on either side of the political fence. It's funny that the very people blaming us for sucking are the ones who caused our uselessness in the first place: our parents worked hard so we wouldn't have to. They voted for money, bought our vacations and SUVs and lack of responsibility toward anything other than ourselves. Meanwhile, they're handing us a world that's less than perfect. And by that, I mean a world in which everyone's miserable. Fifty million people don't have health care because rich people have tax breaks. A sixth of the world's population lives in poverty, and we have the audacity to consider the fact that we all can't afford $600 purses anymore cause for concern. Everyone's depressed. Two and a Half men is on TV.
While our generation was being fed a grand narrative of Manifest Destiny, capitalism and conspicuous consumption, we were also living on a steady diet of that other side of modern culture: the artists and activists who have poked holes in the (fragile) system, which counts for at least some of the hot air that's currently leaking from this over-inflated mess. Meanwhile, we're all hoping to be the next Che Dylan; someone has to liberate the masses, and good god we will not sit in a cubicle. So we sit around mulling over our own greatness/inadequacies instead, paralyzed by the state of the world (bank), and the state of the self. The only thing that gets us through is irony. This is the height of western civilization?
To survive the world our parents (and grandparents, etc ad nauseum) have built for us, our generation will have to act as the architects of a cultural sea change; the standards of imperialism, resource exploitation, and consumption of The Greatest Country in the World will become a fairy tale. A cultural upheaval of this magnitude seems daunting, as we treasure the destructive convenience that is our birthright, but it could actually be the greatest thing to happen to America and the world in general. With its position as the world's economic super power rendered null and void, the US could start to play nice by actually acting on it's promise of moral superiority, become a leader in developing alternative energies and a home to a peaceful and contented people.
It's our choice. But one day we will be running this place. We're just going to do it on our own terms.