If we were to write a literary critique of the August town halls, one of the first elements to discuss would be the pervasive irony. As each senator and representative tours their home state, they are confronted by the same phenomenon: crowds of senior citizens opposing health care reform. More specifically, opposing a single-payer, universal system. Just like the popular Medicare program they currently participate in.

It simply defies logic. Today during John McCain’s town hall, citizens booed and cheered like an audience at a vaudeville melodrama whenever reform and “leaving health care alone” were mentioned, respectively. One charismatic elderly woman took the floor from the Senator for a good five minutes as she riled up the crowd with bumper-sticker slogans like, “it’s either good enough for the politicians’ families or it ain’t good enough for our families!” and “keep the government out of my health care decisions!” Perhaps she momentarily forgot that she's on that government-managed health care plan?

Just before CNN dropped its coverage of the event, there was a small clear voice from the back of the room. Holding the microphone nervously, the woman made a number of atypical statements. She said that she was tired of hearing about the two-year waiting period in Britain for MS treatment when her own daughter had waited for twenty years in the US because no insurance plan would accept her “pre-existing condition.” By the time she qualified for Medicaid, she was completely disabled. She also said that she didn’t understand why everyone in the room – who she said she guessed to be on Medicare- were so vociferously opposed to expanding that coverage to the rest of the country. At this point, the crowd predictably booed again-yet when she asked if any of them wanted to give up their coverage and go back to a private plan, they booed even louder. She pointed out to the Senator that he’d been on government plans his entire life, and asked what was so terrible about them. He didn’t answer her question.

Which brings us to the second element: tragedy. The truth is that for many senior citizens this debate isn’t really about health insurance. Underlying the shouting and fist-shaking is a disquieting trend: the abandonment of America's youngest generation by its oldest.

Today’s oldest senior citizens grew up in a time when America was rural, mostly white, and otherwise segregated. Where getting “work” was relatively easy: you either stayed on the farm, opened a small town store, or walked up to a factory and asked whether they could use any extra hands on the line. This is life the way my grandfather’s generation (born in 1926) knew it.

As the first or second generation to have fully-funded public school through high school and then the GI bill to cover university tuition and housing, those now aged 65 and older were given the best that this country could offer. From the bread lines during the Depression to Social Security today, they have truly been supported from cradle to grave. Such investment in a generation during its youth was unprecedented – and with such support, they propelled America to heights never before imagined: the best living standards in the world, with cutting-edge technology and enviable democratic principles.

Yet curiously, as they approach their own sunset years, they see their manifold successes not as a product of public policy but of their own elbow grease and bootstraps. Certainly, a strong work ethic gave them the fortitude to take advantage of the opportunities given to them – but the key is that those opportunities existed to begin with. The tragedy of our nation is that, upon attaining such previously unimaginable success, this generation turned its back on society and announced that government was the problem.

Alienated from the hip-hop and hipster Millenial generation with its large minority population, peculiar fashion and music sensibilities, and more tolerant and global outlook, it seems the self-anointed “Greatest Generation” has decided that we are all somehow lesser citizens. They don’t like us – they find us weak, lazy and un-American- and they’ve got a lot of time on their hands to attend such town halls. Surrounded by like-minded seniors, they confirm their own world-view and ensure that the needs of their demographic get heard the loudest.

Nobody my age has time to attend. We’re busy working 50-hour weeks with no overtime at non-union jobs with poor health insurance, no pensions and fifteen-minute lunch breaks. Attending a noon get-together with our senators is not only impractical but also, apparently, pointless. Bitingly called the “entitlement generation” by the one that deems itself to have been the “greatest”, we’re actually entitled to very little.