"Might Be Our Last, Best Hope"

"In this way, the chain was broken, and the boomers went zooming into the chaos. Which explains the saving attitude of Generation X, those born between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, say. We are a revolt against the boomers, a revolt against the revolt, a market correction, a restoration not of a power elite but of a philosophy. I always believed we had more in common with the poets haunting the taverns on 52nd Street at the end of the 30s than with the hippies at Woodstock. Cynical, wised up, sane. We'd seen what became of the big projects of the boomers as that earlier generation had seen what became of all the big social projects. As a result we could not stand to hear the Utopian talk of the boomers as we cannot stand to hear the Utopian talk of the millennials. We know that most people are rotten to the core, but some are good, and proceed accordingly."

Rich Cohen at Vanity Fair argues that "it's Generation X that will be called the greatest."