For the purposes of this post, Generation X shall be known as Generation Cranky McBitchy Pants.

Generation Y, also referred to as Millennials, shall be known as Generation Baby Wants A Gold Star.

The Baby Boom Generation will be referred to as The Me! Me! ME! Generation.

John McCain’s Generation, too young to be The Greatest, too old to have enjoyed weed-fueled, consequence-free sex, will from here on out be referred to as Generation Get Off My Lawn!

There. Done. The modern media thrives on the ancient rules of drama, which requires conflict to fuel its creaky wheels. And much has been written about the Generations this election cycle. It’s been young versus old versus very, very old.

Generation Baby Wants A Gold Star and Cranky McBitchy Pants support Obama. Hillary Clinton is supported by The Me! Me! ME! Generation. And John McCain appeals to conservative members of all those Generations, as well as Generation Get Off My Lawn!

The media reports that workplaces are deluged with members of Generation Baby Wants A Gold Star, who suffer from ADD, entitlement, and acute specialness syndrome — a byproduct of being force-fed cheap self esteem by their doting Generation Me! Me! ME! parents. If everyone were special, no one would be special.

They are managed, increasingly, by those who are a part of Generation Cranky McBitchypants. A smaller Generation, these individuals feel increasingly alienated by the seeming conspiracy between Generation Me! Me! ME! and their apron-string thong-wearing spawn. Of course, Generation Cranky McBitchypants suffer from their own malady — premature old whiner syndrome. Recently, this Generation has started to sound increasingly like a mob of thirty-year-old Andy Rooney’s.

So that’s the situation as I see it. This election is as much about tectonic Generational change as it is ideological. In fact, they go hand in hand.

There was a moment when I briefly considered throwing my vote at John McCain; those were the days when I had to consider Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee. I considered voting for McCain, albeit briefly and before I came to my senses, for one reason: I didn’t like the world Generation Me! Me! ME! had built. Their overweening vanity, smug sense of entitlement, and unhinged greed are their legacy, and that legacy overshadows their virtues.

There are new battles to fight, and their battles are old.

That Generation has been in the Big Chair for 16 years, and I don’t think they’ve made the world better than when they found it.

And I’m including Dubya in those 16 years, of course. He’s a member of Bill Clinton’s Generation. In fact, they’re two sides of the same coin. Bill Clinton is who Generation Me! Me! ME! really is: brilliant, charismatic and passionate, as well as morally compromised, covetous and obsessed with youth and money. George W. Bush is who Generation Me! Me! ME! self-deceptively want to pretend they are: honorable, church-going, and brave and strong, just like the Generations before.

One great irony of this generation is that Hillary Clinton might have been the best political talent they had, but the leadership precedent set proved to be chains too heavy for her to heave. Her recent endorsement of Barack Obama showed that she is capable of passion and sincerity. And what’s even more ironic is that in defeat, she gave herself something that had long escaped her – a glowing, powerful speech of historic proportions.

John McCain is not of this Generation. And I wanted someone who didn’t identify with the Generation currently buying retirement plans from former Hollywood bad boy Dennis Hopper.

Thankfully, I can relax. I respect McCain’s Generation. It’s the Generation my dad belonged to: Depression kids raised in the glow of a post-WWII America that believed they had a responsibility to show the world what a free country was capable of achieving. A sentimental notion, but I’m prone to sentimentality these days.

If a new Generation is ascendant, what is their ethos? What, really, do they believe in? What, exactly, do they want to change?

I’ll start. Both Generations Baby Wants A Gold Star and Cranky McBitchypants are the first to be post-racial, in that a majority of the population lives up to Martin Luther King’s dream that we judge a person by the content of his character.

That might be hopelessly naïve, and overly sentimental. It is, actually. But even more reason to believe.

–John DeVore