Agreed-which is why it serves to dig into the motivation behind it. This is why I have such disdain for the argument when it's used to shame people for their circumstances. That is why I agree with what you write about Boomers and others who seem to take pride in shaming people about circumstances they had no part in creating, JW. In this case, it's just a bludgeon used for superiority.
Years ago a friends' mother, who died at 95 a few years ago, used to do precisely the same thing to my friend and me. We were in our late fifties at the time, and Dean regularly shamed us by using examples from her life. Sometimes I think that it's a viral infection of age, that people like to quietly rewrite their personal history to belittle what's happening in the lives of younger folks. My parents did it to me as well. That shit just cascades, and all those hippies-who-now-own-homes are little more than Free Love Advocates who got scooped up by the John Birch Society as soon as they made enough money to feel the need to hoard it and then justify their actions.
That's not what I am addressing here and I appreciate that you understand the difference. Any time people wield their story to invalidate other's circumstances it's an jerkoff ploy. The way it feels to me is this: whether it's someone's asshole uncle (I had one of these) who loves to tell you to get a job and work it for forty years and that's they key to life's success (as fucking if), or someone whose life didn't go they they planned and therefore EVERYONE else is lucky and has it easy, it's despicable because of how the story is used to damage and demean.
The origins- and this is my opinion only- to such behavior are rooted in the rotted Calvinist beliefs that God favors us with riches, a perfect body, a perfect life. Therefore, the thinking goes, if you have troubles, it's your goddamned fault. If you're overweight or Black or whatever, God is singling you out for punishment. You deserve it. This whole country's foundations were built on such beliefs, and right now the results of that shit are coming home to roost. So, Jessica, if you're not thin, rich, living in a 10,000 square foot mansion with an army of foot soldiers for servants, that is all your fault. THAT part is disgusting, and this country is diseased with such thinking.
By the same token, sucking the teat of a pity party that life didn't deliver us riches and therefore it's perfectly acceptable to attack people whose circumstances we interpret as lucky is just as dysfunctional. That's the part I am going after here.
One reason I read your material is because it gives lie to the story that previous generations love to bandy around that younger people aren't working hard enough, and "if only" you would do this, or that or the other, you'd have it easier. In other words, do what we did, be like us. Most of us can't see how thin that story is, Jessica, and the folks who are so invested in their stories can't see the misinformation and dishonesty woven into them. So yes of course I see what your point is, and agree with it. I'm coming at this from a different angle. Either way, it's when people invalidate others' reality which is, again, an asshole manipulative ploy. In this I am teasing out a different angle- I get a fair amount of toxic trolling about how fucking lucky my life is, which is insulting as shit. I didn't sign up for multiple rapes any more than you signed up for an educational system that has become cancerous from greed and neglect. When people negate your reality, or mine, or anyone else's using their story (overblown or not) to prove that "we just don't know how bad it is," it is an asshole ploy. Period.
I appreciate that you call bullshit on it from your standpoint, I and I like calling bullshit on it from mine. There's a lot of power in that. While I am not sure it's going to change a lot of minds, at least the different perspective creates the possibility of more understanding. There's no value whatsoever in what can only be termed "toxic positivity" which is like having Joel Osteen inform you that if God really loved you he'd shower you with riches. Really now. The way I see it, some of the most evil pieces of shit on the planet are the richest. Including Osteen. But that's another article. Thanks for the comment; I always appreciate it when you weigh in.