A reader writes:

I just want to chime in on the (honestly fascinating) Millennial thread that you’ve been posting for the past few weeks.  As a member of Generation X, born in 1971, I find myself getting irritated when I see Millennials praising themselves for being so much more progressive and iconoclastic than the generation that preceded them. We members of Generation X were and are just as gay-friendly, pot-friendly, pro-equality, information-hungry and skeptical as these kids are; possibly more so.  We just had very limited political power due to our small numbers and the crushing weight of the generations above us. 

There were so few of us that in the 1990s, advertisers barely targeted us, and our mainstream cultural tastes were considered "alternative" - a contradiction I still find pretty hilarious.  I protested the Gulf War in 1991, voted in favor of medical marijuana in California in 1996, and wrote Bill Clinton an angry letter (which I sent via postal mail) when he signed DOMA that same year.  (I have to give him credit for sending back a well-written response, also via postal mail. In retrospect, I kind of wish I’d kept it rather than crumpling it up and throwing it away in anger.)

The recent political shift that so many of us are celebrating is decidedly not a millennial thing.  It’s the product of a combination of factors, including the explosive increase in availability of information to everyone, the fact that both Generation X (approx. 41 million members) and Generation Y (approx. 71 million members) are now of voting age, and the fact that those kids had us, their cool older siblings, to help shape their points of view as they were growing up.

Another:

I'm a Gen X'er, born in 1971. I graduated an Ivy League college and with scholarships, good paying summer jobs, and loans, ended up with just $20,000 in debt (though it seemed like a lot at the time). I worked for a few years and then went to a top public law school. Tuition was $7,000 a year when I started. I graduated with a combined $60,000 in debt, entered the workforce at the peak of the law firm boom, payed off my loans in a few years, bought a $400,000 house, and promptly quit my job to work for a non-profit at less than half my former salary. I haven't had a raise in four years, but I'm not complaining.

I'm interviewing kids who have no chance at the path I took.