Millennial Writer Feels Pangs of Guilt and “Creepy” for Being A Homeowner

Millennial Writer Feels Pangs of Guilt and “Creepy” for Being A Homeowner

Millennial Writer Feels Pangs of Guilt and “Creepy” for Being A Homeowner

Oh, millennials are so funny. So thoughtful, so holier-than-thou, aren’t they? Of course, I am not speaking of all millennials because there are actually a handful that have a clue.

I said a handful. From Salon comes these musings from a millennial, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist in (shocker-surprise), Seattle. Alex Gallo-Brown is a writer who took to Salon to offer his introspect on home-buying for the first time:

“…for the past several years we had been trying to live according to values that dictated the sacrifice of material comfort in exchange for collective well-being. I had worked as a labor organizer and caregiver for people with disabilities and as a restaurant worker before going back to school to study literature and creative writing. My girlfriend had worked her own litany of odd and more conventional jobs before completing her master’s degree in racial and social difference. The little money we made we spent on rent, furniture and food that had not been mass-produced. Our apartments were filled with books and films and visual art made by our friends. Our ideology was imprecise, but the underlying feeling was clear: We had been born into a world that was bad and getting worse (income inequality! white supremacy! global warming!). We had an obligation to improve it in the best ways we knew how.”

I give him and his girlfriend kudos for actually working more than one job during these times of “sacrifice”. Heck, it’s more than most people his age do. But, like some millennials (and some overgrown liberals I know from college who are in their 40s pushing 50), he had a little help along the way:

“…And then there was the issue of money itself. I went to college without taking out loans because of the gift of a wealthy great-grandmother; that gift, which had taken the form of investments, did quite well. While I meandered through my twenties, locked in my pseudo-bohemian stance, the remnants of that money rumbled along. I hardly touched it, believing it to be tainted, stained. It was the product of a system of economics in which I did not believe, and I wanted no part. I suppose I could have donated it, or otherwise given it away. Instead, I buried it, pretended that it did not exist.”

In comes the conflict: He feels terrible for having used his inheritance money on a house. He feels terrible that instead of choosing to live for others, he and his partner chose to live for themselves. He feels terrible that he and his partner moved out of Atlanta after a burglary occurred in their former apartment to a safer neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest. All of this guilt and angst because he took part in a system of financial transactions that he ideologically believes should not exist. After all, he and his significant other are humanitarians and social justice warriors. They are better than your average Joe Homeowner with the pickup truck and riding mower.

“It has to do with the feeling that, in the struggle between safety and faithfulness to our political ideals, we chose safety, that in the struggle between self-care and caring for others we chose ourselves. And that the repercussions of that decision will reverberate for longer and farther than we now know.”

Gallo-Brown actually said that owning a house is “creepy”. Or is this just another way of a millennial checking his privilege at the door? I can just see the conversation now with his significant other: “No honey, I can’t carry you over the threshold of our new abode because it gives me the willies. (So sexist!) I cannot believe how privileged we are to own a home. I cannot believe we left a neighborhood of gang-bangers to live in Seattle instead of standing up for their rights to be gang-bangers. I should have protested the cops with them or thanked them for breaking into our home and allowing me to recognize the privilege I harbor deep in my politically-correct, inclusive, social justice warrior, trust fund baby soul.”

Boo-hoo.

I am sure this particular democratic socialist would have loved to have seen Bernie Sanders in that White House. To this I say, don’t worry because little ol’ Bernie does not feel an ounce of remorse for buying his $600,000 Lake Champlain home in Vermont, I assure you. I also say the next time this guy feels “dirty” for touching his family’s inheritance just so he could live a bit more comfortably, perhaps he can take a drive down to Seattle’s Jungle underneath I-5. Who knows? Perhaps a kind, humanitarian such as he (who is clearly morally superior to us) would be willing to house a homeless person from the encampment on a cold night such as this?

Or would that notion be too scary for a college-educated millennial who acknowledges privilege and has been a victim of a crime? Hmmm….I have few more scary words for this new homeowner that may perhaps have him wanting to shower the soot off of his privileged SJW body. Trigger Warning, cupcakes…these words will seriously creep the heck out of any democratic socialist:

Congratulations, homeowner. You now own a piece of the AMERICAN DREAM!

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7 Comments
  • Lynn says:

    If my google-fu is on target, his residence cost Grandma around 900 grand.

    • Lisa Carr says:

      900 grand of “dirty investment money”, huh? Hmmm. I say, if you wanna go live the bohemian lifestyle, then go live in a commune. Live the life you say you desire to live. Don’t sell out to material comforts and then complain about your ability to obtain them after-the-fact. And, to boot, rant about how your friends and colleagues are “not as fortunate” as you to own a home or be in a safe sanctuary. GAG. How about GRATITUDE for one’s family members who worked hard to obtain fruitful investments to be able to take care of future generations in their families? While we live in a free country and are able to speak our minds and share our perspectives but the perspective of certain members of this generation perplexes me. It’s this type of smug, self-righteous bemoaning that drives me nuts. Have $900K? Great. Don’t want to live in a commune because you want to talk on one side of your house without hearing who is on the other side? (It’s a novel thing called privacy that most of us homeowners enjoy.) Here’s a clue for free: buy a smaller home on the outskirts of the big city, get some land, grown your own food, drink your dandelion shakes, go hide in your room to “write about life’s experiences” and donate the rest to the “socially responsible” organization(s) of your choosing.

  • Jodi says:

    What a whiny, self-absorbed jackass.

    • Lisa Carr says:

      Passing the world’s smallest violin right about now….

      • Rusty Shackleford says:

        I had a really hard time reading the excerpts above without retching; if you read the entire article Lisa, you must have a cast-iron stomach or an industrial-strength antacid handy!

  • Scott says:

    seems to me like a complete and total failure of parenting.. the grandparents obviously had a clue, and worked hard to amass that kind of a fortune, but no mention is made of the parents of this snowflake.. i’m guessing there’s a good reason for that

  • GWB says:

    I give him and his girlfriend kudos for actually working more than one job during these times of “sacrifice”.

    I think you might have read that differently than I did. I got the impression those different jobs were in serial, NOT in parallel.

    And I have to second Jodi’s comment:

    What a whiny, self-absorbed jackass.

    QFT

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