The Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin tickets share one thing in common‚ the absence of Baby Boomers as principal contestants. As a Generation X-er trapped between the monolithic Boomer self-mind and what Jeff Gordiner calls Generation Y's "Lindsey/Paris/Britney … Us Weekly samsara … [of] bloggy, bling-bling birdsong of me-me-me-me-me sounds," it was for precisely this reason that I breathed a cautious sigh of relief when the party nominations finished. The outcome was a cryptic first sign of Boomer decline and of the ability of the Generation X vanguard to forge alliances with the preceding senior generation.

We are at the zenith of Boomer power right now. Since they came to dominate world affairs on both right and left, Boomer ideas‚ a masquerade of 1968 idealism and 1988 greed‚ have proved disastrous in practise. Beneath Boomers' vaunted morality lies self-serving melodrama, love of power and blind expediency. They are willing to change any system, rewrite any law and transform any society to serve their theoretical utopias.

An oppositional manner of thinking now infects public life, a catechism so entrenched that any alternatives are drowned out by the roar of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism." Even as political battle lines become more entrenched, the political reality is actually not a clear right-left argument but a meta-story, a mish-mash of ideas borrowed from across the political spectrum. But this messy truth is constantly re-packaged in dire, polarized, morally-charged, ersatz-religious terms. Boomers create a world of labels, of political-economic brands, that seem deceptively simple but never deliver what they promise. Boomer rhetoric of mutual crisis vindicates a generational mindset cloaked in secular and pagan humanism but steeped in heretical evangelism. Boomers brought us unprecedented wealth, cultural development, late Cold War social change and, above all, a technological revolution. Yet their generational manifest destiny remains a credo of the Cold War, an anti-50s' iconoclasm that could never conceive of the transformation of human life consequently precipitated. This is a transformation for which the Boomers bear much responsibility. Rampant globalization and infinite technological integration are the logical end consequences of the sun-kissed, sex-driven dreams of 1968. Boomer-generated disasters reinforce self-absorption, infinite relativism and blame, justify aggression, and generate‚ contrary to every Boomer message‚ multiple imperialisms, evident in the ongoing creation of several continental geopolitical spheres of interest and the erosion of nation-states.

Nor are their offspring, the Millennial echo boom, proving to be much better. They inhabit an ironically-X-designed electronic wonderland; their mirror image is an army of paintball terrorist foot soldiers; and their world is one where suicide bombing is the new frat toga party on YouTube and Facebook. Both Boomer and Millennial generations are attractive and seductive precisely because they catastrophically fail the golden rule for this new age: Know Thyself. They know nothing of the human cost, the environmental cost, the cost to the world, despite the fact that talking endlessly about these issues is their stock-in-trade. The media-driven parade of world crises justify their self-righteous moralizing and conspicuous consumption in equal measure.

And X-ers ask: what happened to the redemptive parts of the Boomer spirit? They ask why Gorbachev, Boomer poster boy in the 80s, was the new face of Louis Vuitton in 2007? Both generations‚ boom and echo-boom‚ suffer from hubris and short memories. But the truth is that we live in a Gen X world, where scattered, divided and leaderless individuals cannot (unlike their generational contemporaries) externalize and project their social responsibilities and fears with any heartfelt conviction. The Boomers, in their wild youth and cut-throat days at the office, initiated change. But the generation that has absorbed and will absorb the painful costs of that change was Generation X.

Of the three great generations that span this riveting, historically significant turn-of-the-millennium, only Generation X spans the divide exactly. Their voice always carries a double tone, a two-sided message, a "yes, but ,." Their historically-tempered view sparks Boomer dislike. X-ers have more in common with the Boomers' predecessors, who remember World War II. They also feel an affinity with other generations that came of age at the dawn of new centuries: the fin-de-siecle generation, ruined by World War I‚ and the Romantics who saw Europe ravaged by Napoleon. Generation X cannot minimize their intimate and paradoxical connections with tradition and technology; with the past and the future; with the Edward-Scissorhands-meets-Pet-Shop-Boys-Suburbia‚ and with other people living in utterly different continents and contexts. As Douglas Rushkoff puts it, "When future archeologists recover the artifacts from our failed civilization, may they at least find some reference to the forgotten sliver of a generation who dared to consider‚ even just consider‚ whether doing something other than selling out was a viable option." Their fundamental refusal to join a collective, corporate hivemind has puzzled and infuriated Boomers since Ferris Bueller first took his day off in 1986. As Ferris says, when a Boomer-styled Maitre D' apologizes for attempting to ban him from a fancy restaurant, "Don't think twice. It's understanding that makes it possible for people like us to tolerate a person like yourself."

If trying to see the other point of view is an X-er trait, X-ers can't say they have enjoyed the same treatment in return. When they first stepped out into the adult world in the late 80s and 90s, the Boomer media immediately labeled them as Slackers and Generation X, a nameless, faceless and useless generation, and viciously wrote it off before it had even begun. The X-ers were labeled the Lost Generation before they were barely out of their early twenties. Compare that to the cooing Boomer adoration that the Millennials get. Their every whim is greeted rapturously with an approving shelf-load of soft-back managerial manifestoes on how to greet, treat and supplicate Gen Y in the workplace. This will be the generation, the Boomer line runs, that will reach the heights and take up the mantle.

And yes, the Millennials thrive in the global marketplace. But will they survive on the global battlefield? Their older siblings have finally milked memories of an 80s' youth completely dry, and X-ers are awakening into full-blown adulthood with a sense of late bloomers' urgency. There is genuine shock that they could be dismissed wholesale before they have even made their mark. But browse the Web chatter, and it's evident that they are starting to talk now. They are defining themselves, rather than being defined.

The next decade will demand at the very least an understanding that humanity stands on the brink of a massive, species-wide transformation to a new level of communication, integration and interaction. It will be an era during which we will be enslaved by our technology if we cannot imagine a way to transcend its infinite demands. We've heard about a second, massive technological and scientific revolution that is due to increase exponentially, beyond anything previously conceivable, in the next decade to quarter century. We've heard about Asia's enormous demographic and economic growth. Beneath the Al Gore fanfare, Boomers greet these reports mainly with concerns about their retirement plans and search for medical treatments to extend their youth. Ironically, the wave that will engulf them will be a population boom rivaling their own. In the coming deluge, Boomers, who have dominated public life since the late '60s, but who gained their initial credibility through their massive numbers, will no longer be important. At that time, X-ers may rise and lead in this new world, as individuals who have stood outside the circle, and for decades had humility hammered into them by the multitude.