I was going to say there's a weird dynamic in my head where, on one side, the Xers are these "fuck you" anti-establishment punks and on the other side they are these "fuck you, pay me" pro business Gordon Gecko's. I can't say that because as I was typing I realized they followed the basic common denominator "fuck you". Also, side note, I hate it when people complain about their generation being worse off than the one before it on a magic light box that connects them through time and space to near infinite knowledge.
I talked a lot of smack up there about Strauss & Howe but I'm glad I read it. They make the point that every Western generation that follows yours is full of fuck you anti-establishment punks (static establishment cultures such as the Ottoman Empire or Confucian China excepted) and their "generational theory" makes an attempt at explaining the shape and color of their anti-establishment punkitude. They make some broad, sweeping and non-falsifiable claims but they also point out that if you rebel against your parents you're going to end up assuming your grandparents' values. The Chinese Zodiac is about as empirically defensible, with a length of 12 years. I guess the basis of that is the orbital period of Jupiter (who knew?) while Strauss and Howe pin the "saeculum" at 80 years because "that's the average lifetime of a person." NVM that "the average lifetime of a person"... well...
I read the fourth turning in college, but I'll have to take another look at it. Though the idea of every generation resembling their parents and rebelling against the gen before is really interesting. The first wave of the "homeland" generation is turning 16 and it'll be interesting to see how they emulate xers and rebel against millennials.
More specifically: rebelling against their parents and emulating their grandparents. So they should be rebelling against GenX and emulating the Silent Generation. Although I dunno. That's my kid, me, and my parents. And none of us are as obnoxious and lame as the 'boomers.