Day 523, Quasi-Quarantine: Uneven "Can't Even" Still Manages To Be Instructive And Revelatory

"Millennials have been denigrated and mischaracterized, blamed for struggling in situations that set us up to fail. But if we have the endurance and aptitude and wherewithal to work ourselves this deeply into the ground, we also have the strength to fight. We have little savings and less stability. Our anger is barely contained. We're a pile of ashes smoldering, a bad memory of our best selves. Underestimate us at your peril: We have so little left to lose."

In "Can't Even," Anne Helen Petersen works hard to dig out the millennial origin story in a way that overturns lazy and automatic characterizations of the generation. Pinpointing the erosion of employee rights, the rise of student debt, and the onslaught of the gig economy, she describes how the 73 million millennials have found themselves inheriting the worst job market in 80 years.

"Left to its own devices, capitalism is not benevolent. That's hard for many Americans to hear or think about, having been raised to adulate capitalism, but the fact remains: If the goal is always growth at any cost, then employees, like machine parts, are exploitable, as longs the productivity continues to go up and the profit margins continue to rise. But for a brief period of time, after the Great Depression and before the recessions of the 1970s, capitalism was -- at least in America -- somewhat more humane. Still imperfect, still exclusionary, still subject to market whims. But proof that the way we do things today doesn't have to be the way we do things in the future."

"The gig economy isn't replacing the traditional economy. It's propping it up in a way that convinces people it's not broken."

Petersen relies on impactful stats to help shed light on this generation. She is able to construct a vivid line from the disappearance of pension plans and the middle class to the rise of "concerted cultivation" parenting techniques and the soaring cost of child care -- all of which contribute to the prevalence of burnout.

"Millennials live with the reality that we're going to work forever, die before we pay off our student loans, potentially bankrupt our children with our care, or get wiped out in a global apocalypse."

"But the myth of the wholly self-made American, like all myths, relies on some sort of sustained willful ignorance -- often perpetuated by those who've already benefited from them."

Petersen even updated the book with a quick commentary on the coronavirus and it has exacerbated and shined a light on existing problems.

Granted, "Can't Even" is rampant with avoidable grammar issues. It's also littered with assumptions -- however, these may be unavoidable when you're trying to represent an entire generation. But as a non-millennial, I learned things reading this book - that's a win, in my estimation, as well as a call to continue to try to understand the generation that likely will need to salvage the post-reality society.

"The overarching clarity offered by this pandemic is that it's not any single generation that's broken, or fucked, or failed. It's the system itself."

" ... The refrains we return to -- that we're a land of opportunity, that we're a benevolent world superpower -- are false. That's a deeply discombobulating realization, but it's one that people who haven't navigated our world with the privileges of whiteness, middle class-ness, or citizenship have understood for some time. Some people are just now realizing the extent of the brokenness. Others have understood it, and mourned it, their entire lives."