Move over, MeToo ladies. There’s a new group of people who want to shout their victimhood. They’re members of the “Massacre Generation” — millennials who think they own trauma and martyrdom.

Oh, please. Where do I start?

Julia Savoca Gibson, a freshman at the College of William & Mary, coined the term ‘Massacre Generation’ in an opinion piece first published in the Washington Post. Entitled, “I am 18. I Belong to the Massacre Generation,” it starts with this sentence:

“Last Saturday it hit me that my entire life has been framed by violence.”

Using the pronoun “I” more frequently than Obama in a stemwinder, Gibson tells us that as a baby she was too young to remember 9/11, but makes sure we know how the shootings in Newtown, the Pulse nightclub, and Parkland have seared her young conscience. Especially Parkland. She tells us that she participated in a walkout at her high school for that one.

Credit: pixabay.com. 

Then, after the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, Gibson had a revelation:

“And it was then that I remembered everything at once. I remembered all the violence looming around me, and my friends, and my entire generation. I remembered that for anyone born near the year 2000, this is all we’ve ever known.”

Funny she didn’t mention the 58 people killed in Las Vegas a little over one year ago. Or residents murdered on the mean streets of Chicago — nearly 500 as of October. The people killed in Vegas were attending a country music festival, and the dead in Chicago were, well, not privileged. None were part of “me,” and “my friends.”

Talk about self-absorbed.

Now I’m a Baby Boomer, and I remember how violence was rife in my generation, too.

For example, I remember the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. I also recall when drifter Richard Speck stabbed and strangled eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966 — proving you don’t need a gun to enact mass carnage. Then there were the race riots of the 1960’s where hundreds of people died. Yes, there were plenty of American massacres to go around when I was young.

But I have nothing on the violence that my parents’ generation endured. World War II was the ultimate ‘Massacre Generation,’ when an estimated 3% of the world’s population were killed. My mother, who was a teenager, cried when news of Pearl Harbor reached them; she knew that there would be war. My father did go to war, flying 50 missions over Europe as a member of a B-17 bomber crew. After he returned, he had nightmares, one night breaking a window in his parents’ home. They didn’t call it PTSD back then. But he recovered like most other veterans did, looking back on his service as “a job we had to do.”

They didn’t call it PTSD during World War I either. It was called “Shell Shock,” a term which was first coined during the Great War. Theirs was another Massacre Generation.

The fact is there is no single generation that should claim the moniker ‘Massacre Generation.’ The violent death of innocents at the hands of others has existed throughout all of history. Those of us who adhere to the Jewish or Christian faiths say the roots of such evil can be laid at the feet of man’s sinful nature.

Perhaps Ms. Gibson should quit the self-absorption and learn a bit of the history she wants to be major in. She just might discover that the zeitgeist is not all about her, or her peers. She might also look outward into serving others: through volunteer opportunities in a religious community or her city. Or taking time to perform small kindnesses, like allowing someone into your lane while driving, and opening doors for the young mother with a stroller.

Because eagerly embracing a victim mentality is no way to go through life.

Featured image cropped from pixabay.com.