It has been eight years since a blog post made by yours truly in 2017, when the generational squabble was still in its charming infancy – a mere playground spat between the Baby Boomers, who had pulled up the ladder after climbing it with the aid of free education and houses cheaper than a decent bottle of Barolo, and the Millennials, who responded by inventing avocado toast as a form of economic protest. Back then, I noted with a certain weary amusement that the real adults in the room were Generation X, those uncomplaining drudges sandwiched between the self-congratulatory elders and the perpetually aggrieved young. We were the ones who invented the internet on computers the size of suitcases, pioneered grunge as a fashion statement against excess, and somehow managed to raise families while remembering what it was like to queue for milk during the Winter of Discontent.
We were, in short, the evolutionary link: respectful of the past without living in it, optimistic about the future without demanding it be handed to us on a silver smartphone.
Fast-forward to this very day, 14 December 2025, and the game has not merely evolved – it has detonated. Just hours ago, as the sun dipped over Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach, a place synonymous with carefree summers, surfboards, and the occasional shark sighting, two gunmen turned a joyful Hanukkah celebration into a scene of carnage. At least twelve innocent lives snuffed out – including a beloved assistant rabbi – and dozens more wounded, in what authorities have swiftly declared an antisemitic terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community on the first night of the Festival of Lights. One might almost appreciate the grim irony: a festival commemorating light triumphing over darkness, eclipsed by the darkest impulses of hatred. The politicians, ever quick on their feet when cameras are rolling, have condemned it in the strongest terms – 'an act of evil', thunders the Prime Minister – while quietly convening national security committees to ponder how such horrors could unfold in a nation priding itself on mateship and multiculturalism.
But let us pause, and consider how this atrocity fits into the broader tapestry of division that governments have so assiduously woven. The Australian under-16 social media ban, an apparent noble crusade to shield the young from online ogres, now looks rather quaint amid real-world gunfire. One wonders if the architects of that policy imagined it would prevent the spread of 'misinformation' that ASIO itself cites as fuelling polarisation – the very polarisation that, alongside imported conflicts and unchecked intolerance, has elevated our terrorism threat level to 'probable' since last year. Yet here we are, on the probable end of probable, with Bondi – of all places – transformed from postcard paradise to crime scene, complete with improvised explosives in a nearby car and heroic bystanders wrestling rifles from assailants.
The generational divide, once a matter of inheritance taxes and house prices, now intersects with deeper fractures: imported hatreds amplified by the very digital platforms soon to be gated for the young, while the old fret over superannuation amid rising threats that no policy seems able to quell. The Boomers, many of whom built lives in the sunny suburbs now shadowed by such events, gaze upon a world where their grandchildren's playgrounds are no longer safe from ideological imports. The young, already silenced in one arena by bureaucratic fiat, now witness how unchecked division manifests in blood on the sand. And the politicians? They promise unity while stoking the fires – one day banning TikTok tirades to 'protect mental health,' the next scrambling to explain why known risks were not mitigated, all while eyeing that great wealth transfer as a fiscal lifeline.
It's divide and conquer, now with added ballistic accompaniment. The Jewish community, long a vibrant thread in Australia's multicultural fabric, becomes the latest casualty in a game where polarisation pays electoral dividends. Antisemitic incidents have surged in recent years, we're told, yet the response often feels more performative than preventive – until, of course, the inevitable occurs on a beach packed with families lighting menorahs. And in the middle? Ah, yes, Generation X, still there, still paying the mortgages on houses we bought at merely extortionate rather than astronomical prices, still funding the universities that saddle our offspring with debt, still propping up the superannuation schemes that politicians eye like a starving man eyes a buffet – and now, perhaps, attending vigils for victims of hatreds we neither imported nor ignored.
One might almost feel sorry for us – except that pity is a luxury we can't afford alongside the school fees and, today, the profound national grief. No, Generation X endures because we must, and in that endurance lies our peculiar strength. We are the ones getting it from both ends: taxed to support the pensions we ourselves may never see, while watching our children priced out of the market we once entered with nothing more than a decent job and a bit of optimism – and now, shielding them from a world where beaches are battlegrounds. We remember the 1980s, not as some golden age, but as a time when interest rates hit 17% and unemployment queued around the block – yet somehow we survived without blaming entire communities or demanding safe spaces from reality.
It is precisely because we are squeezed hardest that we hold the greatest potential to unravel this farce. The Boomers, bless them, are too busy defending their gains to notice the broader sleight of hand. The young are too immersed in immediate outrage – or soon to be deprived of it – to see the long game. But we Xers? We have the cynicism born of experience, the irony that comes from inventing the digital age only to watch it weaponised, and the quiet determination to protect both our ageing parents and our bewildered children from a state that views society as mere revenue streams and voting blocs, even as it fails to safeguard the most basic public joys.
If anyone is going to bridge this chasm – to call out the politicians for pitting group against group, generation against generation, while hatred festers and terror strikes – it will be us. We'll do it without fanfare, without viral hashtags (age-gated or otherwise), and probably while working a second job to cover the latest levy, or today, donating to relief funds. Just don't expect gratitude. After all, saving the world – or at least preserving some semblance of sanity in it – is what we've been doing all along, sandwiched between the mistakes of those before and those after.
And if we fail? Well, at least we'll have the satisfaction of knowing we saw it coming – back in 2017, when the games were just beginning, long before the shots rang out over Bondi.