Generation Jones is the largest generation you may never have heard of, and it may be the last generation to stand against socialism.
s socialism here to stay in America? My brother and I talked just a few days ago about the state of U.S. politics, and we concluded that the only thing that held back a full socialist takeover of our republic this last election cycle was the Baby Boomers, who overwhelmingly voted Trump into office but are dying off through aging. Although technically both my brother and I are classified as Boomers, we have never identified as such. We are Generation Jones, the largest generation you may never have heard of, born between 1955 and 1965, and who Barack Obama, too, considers himself a part. In part, the name Generation Jones comes from our anonymous, invisibility in popular culture and the popular saying of “jonesing,” or longing for something more.
Generation Jones does not identify with the Baby Boomers in many ways—that was our parents’ generation. The Beatles were passé by the time we were teenagers, and we don’t remember Kennedy being shot, Woodstock or the Korean and Vietnam Wars. We were raised on the music of Led Zeppelin and Kiss and television sitcoms like “The Brady Bunch” and “Welcome Back Kotter,” with its canned audience laughter, and visits to the mall for entertainment.
“I identify with this generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. My mother was a Baby Boomer, and I’m part of Generation Jones.” Barack Obama, U.S. President
What Generation Jones understands is that it is no longer the Baby Boomers that stand in the way of young socialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it is us, the only adults seemingly left. It is time for Jonesers to stand up, all 42 million of us, and be heard, and that isn’t an easy thing to do. Our large generation has always been overshadowed by the Boomers in both popular culture and in the media. Yet, it is us who are uniquely qualified to sound the alarm against creeping socialism, because our generation is the last to remember when truth was not relative, there was right and wrong and there were only two genders. We are also the last lucky recipients of an educational system that actually taught basic geography and civics during a time when virtues were practiced at home and in public life—regardless of whether your parents were religious or not. We were also the last generation to have been taught unrevised history.
We have memories of a time with less government control and have no desire for more. As children, we were never strapped in child safety seats or wore bike helmets, but walked to school and played outdoors until dark. We rarely, if ever, had supervised play. We drank from outdoor hose pipes, got skinned knees and explored creeks and caught frogs. We remember neighborhood pick-up games of football and baseball in the streets, not whether we wore a particular brand of sneakers or jeans. We have foggy memories of Walter Conkrite pontificating the news in a somber voice as the background noise of childhood. As we played on the floor with our Barbies and GI Joes, black and white TV sets with antenna rabbit ears played grainy footage of the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Later, it was news footage of Nixon, arms spread wide flashing peace symbols to news crews as he boarded Air Force One while we waited for “The Jeffersons” or “Happy Days” to come on the television. We were still just children.
We also remember a time when there were no cell phones, internet, cable television or gender confusion—all of which puts us in the unique position of defending a system of government, an American way of life, that is quickly eroding. We understand that, although technology has enhanced our lives and opened up vistas of information, it does not substitute for real relationships, beliefs grounded in truth, actual historical knowledge or who we are as individuals. Jonesers love technology, but we know how to unplug. Generation Jones is all that is left to defend this tattered democratic republic nation we call America. And all because we remember. And that is a good thing, because our generation is much larger than the Baby Boom generation and many Boomers are dying.
But what also makes Generation Jones unique and sets us apart from the Baby Boomers is that we grew up in a time of constant social and technological change. We had one foot in the traditional past of our parents and one foot in a world where we were forced to dive into new social experiments and technological and scientific advances. We were part of nationwide school busing programs, affirmative action, equal housing and runaway inflation. Like many of my peers, I watched the Bronx burning on television as a young girl, witnessed the rise and fall of disco and the long gas lines during the Carter Administration, where gas could only be purchased on specific days of the week based on your tag number. I watched white flight and heroin take down once great cities such as New York and Detroit played over the evening news.
I was a young adult as the cocaine epidemic invaded suburbia and the economic boom of the Reagan years took off. Jobs were plentiful and you could still earn a high salary without having gone to college. I watched on the new CNN the heady destruction of the Berlin wall. NAFTA and GATT were passed as I entered my 20s, and so I also watched the slow demise of our manufacturing economy and the eventual freeze-out of high school graduates in white collar jobs. The rules of the game changed as we began to enter our highest earning years, where degrees suddenly took precedent over experience and common sense and you found that you must pay to play to land that well paying job.
I am absolutely of the video games generation, starting on the Atari and Commodore 64 and the Amiga.—Duncan Jones
Generation Jones is wholly unique because our perspective is unique. We were the first generation to go out and purchase Ataris, VCRs, CD players, microwaves and those monstrously sized computers that just flashed a DOS prompt at us. We found MTV on cable and we made it great. We raised our children on keyboards and early Sega games and, as Windows developed, we embraced computing with enthusiasm even though we had slow dial-up internet service and most websites were hideously designed and frustrating to navigate. And yet, we had a love of books and remember the libraries of our childhood.
As my brother so astutely observed, if Trump is able to carry us into 2024, it is Generation Jones that will be all that is left standing in the way of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are gunning for their New Green Deal and open borders. Although we were the first generation to grow up celebrating Earth Day in school and taught to care about the environment, believe in racial equality, working and living among people of other races, today we are sneeringly called fascists, racists, Nazis, deplorables and smelly Walmart people. It’s insulting because our generation was really the first generation to enjoy racial harmony and embrace women’s rights.
We are told that this great nation we have been a part of, isn’t really all that great. That the United States is an unfair patriarchy and that everything should be free. Generation Jones isn’t retiring yet, but we are the first generation to hope that it will still be there when we need it because billions of our government dollars are being spent on illegal immigrants and three- and four-generation welfare recipients and, of course, countless unnecessary wars.
We have lived through economic booms and busts, inflation, the crash of the housing market and the divorce epidemic, all as we watched our own career dreams stagnate and the housing bubble burst just as our children were graduating with worthless university degrees thousands of dollars in debt. And like Millennials, we are not nearly as well off as our parents were. We were raising expensive children during years of anemic growth, high debt and a tight labor market. But while we may worry if we will be able to support ourselves going into the future, we are now faced with one of the most challenging crisis of our time—the relentless push for socialism. And make no mistake, it is the biggest threat to our nation, far bigger than anything we have thus far faced.
Do not be fooled. Generation Jones is the first, true woke generation. It was the first generation to embrace technology, make MTV great, embrace racial diversity and make America truly great.
It is imperative that Generation Jones expose the lies of socialism, which is really communism controlled by big government, big tech and big corporations. We are now half way there, and it is only those Americans who can remember what liberty tasted like and the freedom of the wind in our hair—not a helmet—who can stand up against these absurd lies, dangerous policies, constant surveillance and the poison of identity politics. And I believe that we will succeed—at least for a time. Generation Jones will hold back the coming flood of socialism, but Generation X, which has been steeped in political correctness, will embrace it as embittered Millennials stand idly by and let it happen. We have passively allowed the insidious infiltration of socialism in our school systems and allowed communist ideas to take over our government institutions, culture and corporate boards out of fear of doxing or losing our job as we age. Yet, many, many of us have woken up.
As tiring as it is to fight, we must do so for those who come after us. Generation Jones must finally be heard, for our children and grandchildren who no longer know how to think for themselves, have no practical knowledge of history and are relentlessly propagandized. Because we remember, we must preserve what has always made this country exceptional. We were a nation that aspired to not see class or color, but individual potential. And although we often fall short, we are—whether Obama thinks so or not—quite exceptional in upholding this ideal. And we are an exceptional generation that may be the last to put others before self in a world that swipes right, ghosts its peers and believes in after-birth infanticide. And because we honor sacrifice, our history and understand that individual, personal responsibility is how we make a better world, not by rising to power and telling others how they should live, we must find our voice.
Recent studies by Nielsen and Pew Research found that younger Boomers are a driving force in the growth of technology. It’s no mystery—GenJones came of working age in the 1980s, on the cusp of the digital revolution. Faced with rapid technological changes in the workplace, Jonesers had to adapt or die, which has made them both tech-savvy and fearless about innovation.—Karie Daudt
Generation Jones is the first and most “woke” generation of our time in the true sense of the word. We cared about racial equality, eschewed the mistreatment of homosexuals and care about the environment, but we are, after all, our parents’ children, and many of us hold dear the Constitution, the Second Amendment and our right to remain a free people. We were also the first generation to understand that we, too, had been propagandized by the left. It’s time to show some respect. Let us not go gently into the good night. #Reignwell