So, can I just ask, what kind of millennial would you like to be in Congress or the White House? Vivek is a stereotype; can't have him. Pete is a stereotype; he's out, too. AOC is a different stereotype, but that's still a stereotype, so she's no good.
Maybe there's another stereotype at play here, Max: the millennial poppy-cutter. The millennial poppy-cutter says, "hahaha, I see you, fellow millennial! I know you well. I know all of your tricks. I knew what you were like in 5th and 8th and 12th grade, and then at Harvard, and then at Yale Law. You don't scare me one bit, because deep down I know just how PHONY you are."
Here's the thing: the candidates are all full of shit. They have to be. If they weren't full of shit, they wouldn't be running for president. Or more accurately, they *couldn't* be running for president. Being full of shit is a hard requirement of the job. Notice that all of the discussion around the candidates – all of them, millennial and otherwise – are about divining insights into their personalities. They're not about policy. How could they be? Policy isn't for the campaign trail. Hell, its not even for presidents; it's for appointees to the alphabet soup that make up our professional federal bureaucracy.
The difference is, millennial psycho shit is a smell that you recognize innately, whereas boomer shit is a smell that you've become accustomed to. I recall that Camille Paglia said that she wouldn't vote for Hillary because she has "basically known her her whole life," meaning the kind of middle-class Pennsylvania and Illinois roots allowed her to recognize the noxious combination of ambition and phoniness that characterize national politicians.
MAPs are a huge reason of why I moved out of DC. I always referred to them as “former student class presidents,” though this is probably more of a specific subset of MAPs drawn to DC.
MAPs also seem to be uniformly terrible to not good at the jobs they strive for (Buttigieg somehow seemingly being equally bad at small town mayor as secretary of transportation)
Bernie still rocks, says this Boomer. Pete is oily sludge, and I would pay to see the public humiliation of Ramasmarmy. (I usually abhor making jokes out of people's names, but that totally fits him.)
Don't doubt that Vivek is a millennial striver, but he did make a lot of $$$ in business with his own co's which is yes, striving, but also makes him different than Mayor Pete and maybe more like Romney / Thiel
Speaking as a Gen-Xer, I wouldn't mind millennial Democrats becoming political leaders.
I would like to see my fellow generation (roughly anyone born after JFK was assassinated and before the recession that ended in November 1982) barred from holding national political office. At the state and local level, only with California-like term limits in place.
We are cynicism-poisoned, curdled sacks of squandered potential who struck out at every at-bat to change the world in a meaningful place.
In technology terms, Gen X-ers are flip phones and pagers in a smartphone world. The Yahoos in a Google world. The only generation who failed to realize the whole point of getting into art, music or acting was to sell out.
Millennials are the ones who figured shit out. Millennials made cities, cities -- in other words, America designs suburbs to be the favored quarter and central cities are the suburbs' septic tanks. The waste has to go somewhere. Cities are both figurative and literal shitholes. The only time American cities were not shitholes was when millennials lived in them. They made their money and they're gone and cities have once again resumed their roles as human septic tanks.
I don't know what to make of Gen-Z yet, but what does alarm me is that the alt-right has come so far and so fast from the fringe to mainstream acceptance and political power (in about a half-decade span, Gamergate went from a stupid online freakout over a breakup to becoming the center of the Republican Party). The Democrats have to basically be lucky in every single election; the GOP just has to win one race and America is the Fourth Reich.
At least with millennial Democrats, there's a mawkish earnestness (you also see it in Biden and Pelosi) and a desire to make "The West Wing" real life that you have to love, or begrudgingly respect.
You've got it flipped. “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind” is pretty much the color-blind Fourteen Words (no wonder 'boss on top' Musk is a fan). It's the industrial-strength FedSoc-approved conservatism of Pappy reaching for his Bible after smacking his wife for overcooked steak.
I think it's worth getting into this topic more in terms of identity politics specifically. I feel like the left sort of lost track of right-wing memes like 'identity politics' and 'virtue signaling' now that they're all competitively batshit and grifting one another. Buttigieg looks like a psycho because he's doing the right thing for the LGBTQ community. I think you're approaching the point where you're just hating on people who have actual investment in political outcomes (as opposed to general betterment of society, including Mom's petrochemical arms) on behalf of their family trees and friend circles.
This definitely tracks with my experience as an elder millennial, especially the bit about how PB types are calibrated for older generations to swoon while AOC's wavelength can bewilder them (I'm mostly thinking of my boomer dad). One related thing I've been thinking about a lot, though I'm still cooking a more fully formed idea, is whether, on the national political stage, millennials will also fall victim to the boomer gerontocracy as Gen X has and basically get skipped and sidelined until all the younger boomers die at which point the Gen Z celebrities will be the "fresh faces" mobilizing stan armies on platforms the older generations simply don't understand and don't use.
Basically it's the type of person parents and college admission officers love. "Interesting" and accomplished on paper but boring in real life because you know the only reason they do anything is to get into Harvard. Now we're seeing the adult version, which is being or doing anything adults (boomers) want you to in order to be president.
The next generation of strivers may adopt a postironic take on this. Not just a formless blob that takes in all manner of schizophrenic political takes and then shits them out into appeals to a voter bloc. They will be more like Alex Jones in the sense that they will spout what they want to hear. They will be genuine believers, but their schizoid timeline driven talking points will be filtered through the same engagement maximizing defense mechanism as the millennial striver. They'll self censor and focusgroup their off kilter beliefs to their followers, pivoting their own internal models and genuine sense of self as fit. While the next generation is more genuine, this new sincerity is dissonant with an ego driven mob mentality streak that is just as if not stronger than the millennial striver's.
Or maybe they're not so different after all. Maybe 10 years from now we'll have Mr. President Beast.
Bernie was not the "preferred candidate among Millennials" in 2020, and why would Pete drop out just to endorse a loser? This negates your premise that MAPs seek to accumulate power. I would drop this footnote - it makes you seem unserious. Another bitter Bernie bro.
So, can I just ask, what kind of millennial would you like to be in Congress or the White House? Vivek is a stereotype; can't have him. Pete is a stereotype; he's out, too. AOC is a different stereotype, but that's still a stereotype, so she's no good.
Maybe there's another stereotype at play here, Max: the millennial poppy-cutter. The millennial poppy-cutter says, "hahaha, I see you, fellow millennial! I know you well. I know all of your tricks. I knew what you were like in 5th and 8th and 12th grade, and then at Harvard, and then at Yale Law. You don't scare me one bit, because deep down I know just how PHONY you are."
Here's the thing: the candidates are all full of shit. They have to be. If they weren't full of shit, they wouldn't be running for president. Or more accurately, they *couldn't* be running for president. Being full of shit is a hard requirement of the job. Notice that all of the discussion around the candidates – all of them, millennial and otherwise – are about divining insights into their personalities. They're not about policy. How could they be? Policy isn't for the campaign trail. Hell, its not even for presidents; it's for appointees to the alphabet soup that make up our professional federal bureaucracy.
The difference is, millennial psycho shit is a smell that you recognize innately, whereas boomer shit is a smell that you've become accustomed to. I recall that Camille Paglia said that she wouldn't vote for Hillary because she has "basically known her her whole life," meaning the kind of middle-class Pennsylvania and Illinois roots allowed her to recognize the noxious combination of ambition and phoniness that characterize national politicians.
MAPs are a huge reason of why I moved out of DC. I always referred to them as “former student class presidents,” though this is probably more of a specific subset of MAPs drawn to DC.
They both went to law school - and there, they would've been known as "Gunners".
MAPs also seem to be uniformly terrible to not good at the jobs they strive for (Buttigieg somehow seemingly being equally bad at small town mayor as secretary of transportation)
Your piece reeks of insecurity
Bernie still rocks, says this Boomer. Pete is oily sludge, and I would pay to see the public humiliation of Ramasmarmy. (I usually abhor making jokes out of people's names, but that totally fits him.)
You managed to pick a coinage whose acronym already stands for something much worse
Don't doubt that Vivek is a millennial striver, but he did make a lot of $$$ in business with his own co's which is yes, striving, but also makes him different than Mayor Pete and maybe more like Romney / Thiel
I'm already so ready for Vivek Ramaskrawny to stfu. He is basically on a book tour.
Also, I refuse to skip over GenX. No millennial president before we get a GenX Pres.
And, I wouldn’t call them MAPs, as this makes me think of psychedelics, but MAMs—Millennial Ambition Mosquitoes.
Speaking as a Gen-Xer, I wouldn't mind millennial Democrats becoming political leaders.
I would like to see my fellow generation (roughly anyone born after JFK was assassinated and before the recession that ended in November 1982) barred from holding national political office. At the state and local level, only with California-like term limits in place.
We are cynicism-poisoned, curdled sacks of squandered potential who struck out at every at-bat to change the world in a meaningful place.
In technology terms, Gen X-ers are flip phones and pagers in a smartphone world. The Yahoos in a Google world. The only generation who failed to realize the whole point of getting into art, music or acting was to sell out.
Millennials are the ones who figured shit out. Millennials made cities, cities -- in other words, America designs suburbs to be the favored quarter and central cities are the suburbs' septic tanks. The waste has to go somewhere. Cities are both figurative and literal shitholes. The only time American cities were not shitholes was when millennials lived in them. They made their money and they're gone and cities have once again resumed their roles as human septic tanks.
I don't know what to make of Gen-Z yet, but what does alarm me is that the alt-right has come so far and so fast from the fringe to mainstream acceptance and political power (in about a half-decade span, Gamergate went from a stupid online freakout over a breakup to becoming the center of the Republican Party). The Democrats have to basically be lucky in every single election; the GOP just has to win one race and America is the Fourth Reich.
At least with millennial Democrats, there's a mawkish earnestness (you also see it in Biden and Pelosi) and a desire to make "The West Wing" real life that you have to love, or begrudgingly respect.
But please, please, please, NO GEN X-ERS!
You've got it flipped. “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind” is pretty much the color-blind Fourteen Words (no wonder 'boss on top' Musk is a fan). It's the industrial-strength FedSoc-approved conservatism of Pappy reaching for his Bible after smacking his wife for overcooked steak.
I think it's worth getting into this topic more in terms of identity politics specifically. I feel like the left sort of lost track of right-wing memes like 'identity politics' and 'virtue signaling' now that they're all competitively batshit and grifting one another. Buttigieg looks like a psycho because he's doing the right thing for the LGBTQ community. I think you're approaching the point where you're just hating on people who have actual investment in political outcomes (as opposed to general betterment of society, including Mom's petrochemical arms) on behalf of their family trees and friend circles.
What they're doing is quite simple: they're acting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CIgWX1J_s8
Millennial Ambition Psycho sounds like something I would have paid the Suncoast at my mall a lot for in 1999.
This definitely tracks with my experience as an elder millennial, especially the bit about how PB types are calibrated for older generations to swoon while AOC's wavelength can bewilder them (I'm mostly thinking of my boomer dad). One related thing I've been thinking about a lot, though I'm still cooking a more fully formed idea, is whether, on the national political stage, millennials will also fall victim to the boomer gerontocracy as Gen X has and basically get skipped and sidelined until all the younger boomers die at which point the Gen Z celebrities will be the "fresh faces" mobilizing stan armies on platforms the older generations simply don't understand and don't use.
Basically it's the type of person parents and college admission officers love. "Interesting" and accomplished on paper but boring in real life because you know the only reason they do anything is to get into Harvard. Now we're seeing the adult version, which is being or doing anything adults (boomers) want you to in order to be president.
The next generation of strivers may adopt a postironic take on this. Not just a formless blob that takes in all manner of schizophrenic political takes and then shits them out into appeals to a voter bloc. They will be more like Alex Jones in the sense that they will spout what they want to hear. They will be genuine believers, but their schizoid timeline driven talking points will be filtered through the same engagement maximizing defense mechanism as the millennial striver. They'll self censor and focusgroup their off kilter beliefs to their followers, pivoting their own internal models and genuine sense of self as fit. While the next generation is more genuine, this new sincerity is dissonant with an ego driven mob mentality streak that is just as if not stronger than the millennial striver's.
Or maybe they're not so different after all. Maybe 10 years from now we'll have Mr. President Beast.
Bernie was not the "preferred candidate among Millennials" in 2020, and why would Pete drop out just to endorse a loser? This negates your premise that MAPs seek to accumulate power. I would drop this footnote - it makes you seem unserious. Another bitter Bernie bro.