The "Whiniest" Generation

I’ve recently finished reading three works set in approximately the same time period. You can see the briefs here. Indestructible tells of a young man going off to fight World War II. Triumph tells of a young man going off to combat racism at the Berlin Olympics. Hitch tells of a young man going off on his own to fight off poverty in the Great Depression. All of these young men would probably be described as a part of America’s greatest generation. I’ve come away from all these with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude as well as a thought that our generation may well be America’s “whiniest” generation. We know nothing of leaving your family; having to stay in a different hotel than your sports team because of your skin color; dodging bullets at seventeen; wearing the same, unwashed, clothes for months or other common hardships of that time period.

We whine because the restaurant didn’t get our meal to us in an appropriate time frame. They were sometimes standing in line for hours for the next meal. We complain because we were slighted for that job promotion. They may not have been allowed to apply for a job because of their skin color. We grumble over the cost of a gallon of gas. They would have loved to have a car to fill with gas rather than walking for miles. We are, often, the antithesis of the greatest generation.