2008: Our Generation’s Trauma
The 2008 Financial Crisis--or the Great Recession--is, perhaps, the 9/11 of my generation (that being the awkward space between Millennials and GenZ). I was an infant when the WTC collapsed, and so that means little and less to me. All I saw was the aftermath; the brutality and injustice the U.S. inflicted on the world and its own people in response. I never knew the world before that. It was just how things were.
However, I was old enough to remember a pre-2008 world. My life was (autism withstanding) typical for a culturally Christian white household. We lived well, but not extravagantly. And then the house of cards collapsed and we lost so much. No single event has shaped the outcome of my life as such.
Now, we didn’t have it the worst. Our home in the country wasn’t financed by the dogshit mortgages that led to others’ evictions. The Crisis’ effect was secondary. My father worked as a CAD technician at the civil engineering firm ESM, working on housing and infrastructure projects. After the Crisis, ESM held on as long as it could, laying off people in a trickle until my father got the axe and the firm was no more. No one was working on housing projects, anymore.
My father had to take on odd jobs to keep us afloat, but the stress of the Crisis strained my parent’s marriage to the breaking point, and divorce followed. My parent’s issue with each other had been building before the Recession, but it all came to a head in 2010.
With little income, we slowly sold off things we didn’t strictly need. Our horses and trailer, our truck, and more. It broke my mother’s, sister’s, and my own heart to see our horses go. It wasn’t enough, though, and we ended up moving into a small duplex apartment in town.
If I was struggling in school before, it was nothing compared to my post-Crisis experience. I need not continue with more details, I believe I’ve made my case. Had the marriage held, had my father kept his job, had we kept our home and our horses and the rest, my life would be very, very different. For better or for worse.
I wanted to reflect on that. It shapes my outlook, now, and the things that are really important to me. I never buy things I wouldn’t outright own. No credit, no loans. Nothing I have can be taken from me the way our house was. I, to put it gently, loathe capitalism. I loathe the political system that enabled the Crisis to happen. I loathe the response to the Crisis. I find the truly rich disgusting and inhuman; worthy of death so that we may all live in peace. and-
Did you see what just happened? Right there: read the first paragraph, and now the one just above.
I hate capitalists after the Great Recession like (some) Americans hated Muslims after 9/11. Only, capitalists aren’t some foreign underclass we can bomb to hell. They are the ones who bomb others to hell. Despite how the pain and suffering discriminated against none, somehow my parents generation still clings to Regan and his ideals like he is god himself. The tragic comedy of that fact is not lost on me.
Maybe one day, when our parents and grandparents are dead, we can take hold and change our fucked up slice of earth for the better. Never forget 2008.