The generation of Americans who are now (in ) young s has been, as odd as it sounds, deprived of the adversity that has been so valuable in shaping the American character.
The First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the depression, the civil rights movement, and the assassinations during the 1960s were traumatic experiences that tested the nation’s mettle and proved that we as a people, joined together, could meet the stiffest of challenges. Those tests, which ultimately gave us such great confidence, have been crucial to shaping every American generation this century.
Until now, Americans in their late s to early thirties--a group that accounts for a hefty 25 percent of the American population--are the first of this century to mature in a world where the elusive American ideal of simultaneous peace and prosperity is, for very many of them, at long last a reality. These young men and women were spared the brunt of the Cold War, of Vietnam, and of the domestic chaos and bitter discord of the 1960s. They have grown up in a world without the megachanges of previous decades such as the women’s movement, for example, or the ual revolution that the Pill brought about.
They are the post-Vietnam generation, the 60. 3 million Americans born from 1957 to 1971. The oldest of them, now thirty-two, remember Watergate, but they were pres during the most turbulent parts of the late sixties. The youngest of them, now eigh, were not even born when Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were killed. The older ones come from the final years of the baby boom, the younger ones from the years when American birth rates were declining--now called the baby burst. But what makes this group fascinating is their lack of a common, bonding experience and their failure--so far--to challenge and push the nation as their predecessors did twenty years ago. In a sense they are a generation caught in the middle--not products of Vietnam, but not Nintendo (日本电子游戏机名) kids, either.
The author writes the passage to tell the reader that ______.