this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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if I could've been born just twenty years earlier, just long enough to have my childhood, adolescence and my early twenties during the fuck around period, I feel I would be at least moderately happier and possibly mildly more successful than I am now; having my earliest, strongest memory be the morning of 9/11.
I'm told the world sucked less prior, that the end of the 90s was an exciting and hopeful time to be alive and I have to take their word for it, as I was too young to remember much before the morning of the attacks. It would just be nice to have the memory of hope, too, instead of only the looming specter of the future. It would be also nice to maybe remember a part of history where we weren't having a once-in-a-lifetime economic dumpster fire every few years, but I've already given up on ever retiring, so I suppose that memory would merely make me more bitter.
Plus being born in 1977 would've meant getting to experience the golden years of video games firsthand, before selling a complete, bug-tested product started to be thought of as "optional". Or at least it wasn't nearly so egregious, they didn't have the capacity for microtransactions anyways. That would've been nice to experience more of, I only got the tail end of this.
I was 29 on 9/11. It has been a shit show since.
The hard part is watching everything that was pretty cool (not perfect, mind you) just fuck right on off. I'm certain there's a PTSD carried by most Gen X'rs that have watched the degradation one catastrophe at a time juxtaposed to the relatively peaceful upbringing we had.
Yeah I was a Junior in high school when it went down. The spark kind of went out over the next few years.
Sorry you had to deal with that at such a time. My two youngest were sophomore and senior during the COVID pandemic and I got to watch them navigate that scenario without having any wisdom to offer. Shitty hand to be dealt at what should be a positive and transformative moment in their lives.
Oldest sibling owns a house, I will die working while probably renting with roommates as my body fails me too much to do the employment that keeps me in solo housing. That gap of 12 years changed a lot...
Imagine having a dem president for 8 years without having the economy collapse right before.
Dems aren't perfect. The 90s weren't perfect. Wealth inequality was a problem then too. They could be significantly more progressive. I'd like to see us use our wealth and power for bigger things than the Dems have gone for since JFK.
But they're so much fucking better than the Republicans, even the old 1990s Republicans. So much better.
Do some reading on Clinton, especially his crime bill and what he did to welfare. He undid a lot of FDR's New Deal.
NAFTA was also pretty shit.