When the Generation X cult classic Reality Bites first came out in 1994, I did a very Gen X thing and swore off seeing it. It didn’t matter that all the cool actors I loved—Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garofalo—had starring roles. I didn’t want Hollywood telling me who I was or trying to define what I believed. Of course, that was just a pose. The real reason I skipped out on the film about young college grads was because it cut too close. I was finishing up graduate school then and about to face the real world I could no longer avoid.

Twenty-eight years later, I finally saw the film twice in one sitting. It wasn’t just a nostalgia fix; I was looking for insight into a generation in hiding. We Xers—in sociological terms, those Americans born between 1965 and 1980— seem to have gone socially extinct. We don’t get talked about a lot. Nor do we seem to engage much in the social conversation, unlike Boomers or Millennials. These two cohorts seem locked in a battle for attention and relevance while everything of substance falls apart around them and us and everyone else. Our attitude seems to be: we didn’t make the world. We just live in it.

Generation X has made its presence felt in the tech world. Google’s Sergey Brin (1972) and Twiter’s Jack Dorsey (1976)are Xers. But elsewhere? We have no leaders to show for ourselves, except perhaps Tarana Burke (1973) who founded the #MeToo movement. And we have yet to elect a Gen X president. Kamala Harris, a cusp Xer born in late 1964, may be our one chance. If she’s able to run in 2024 and win, she will have to contend with a host of internal and external threats to stability and democracy, including a trio of reactionary Gen X Supreme Court justices: Neil Gorsuch (1967), Brett Kavanaugh (1965) and Amy Coney Barrett (1972). The three have already ruled with the conservative majority on cases that have dismantled provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; now they stand poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Back when the media called us “slackers,” we had no politics to define us, largely because we had no causes to fight for. What we had was luxury of not caring what a more less coherent government did and often didn’t vote. Now no one can agree who we are politically. A Pew Research Center poll shows Gen Xers lean slightly left depending on where we live. Politco magazine, however, suggests that older Xers born before 1970 or tilt decidedly to the right. We may never have been demonstrably progressive. But now we’re becoming a generation that will be remembered for reflecting the ideologies of those in power rather than standing our own political ground.

The young people in Reality Bites aren’t particularly political. But they are disaffected. In the opening scene, Lelaina (Winona Ryder), is giving the college valedictory speech. She’s an aspiring documentarian who’d like do something to better the world and criticizes Boomers for“disembowel[ing] their own revolution just to buy a pair of running shoes.” She doesn’t know how to make things better. Neither does Troy (Ethan Hawke). Rather than finish a philosophy degree, he leaves. He doesn’t want to be part of a system that would reward a lifetime of sacrifice with a “gold watch and balls full of tumors.” Instead, he would rather jam with his band in the same café where they’ve been playing for the last five years. Vicki (Jeneane Garofalo) opts to make do with a Gap store manager job. At least it keeps college loan repayment goons off her back.

These characters represent the moral paralysis that’s become the scourge of my generation. Hypocrite Boomers fucked everything up. We can’t fix things so we’ll just drop out or deal with what is and not think about how we could change the system. And take the hits that would come with trying to make those changes happen. Now we’re watching Rome burn, reaping what we’d like to think we didn’t help sow. But maybe we can still turn things around enough to begin redeeming ourselves in the eyes of future generations.

Surprisingly, one Xer journalist has actually called Generation X “our last, best hope” because, like Leialana and her friends, we are the spiritual and “market correction” to Boomer excesses. The last generation to know non-tech childhoods, we are the skeptics and doubters, the ones willing to say we don’t have the answers. Cohen even goes so far as to compare us to the world-weary Rick Blaine from Casablanca. If Xers have withdrawn from the world, it’s because we have seen enough of it to want no part of the madness and say in knowing chorus with Rick, I don’t stick my neck out for nobody.

What Cohen doesn’t say is that Rick was once an idealist who acted on his beliefs; who ran guns to Ethiopian patriots battling their Italian occupiers and fought alongside the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. His Café Américain is a refuge from the disillusionment of having fought on the side that deserved to win but didn’t. There’s heroism in him, but one tarnished by a profound cynicism. Only one thing rescues him from his own bitterness: love for his old flame Ilsa. Thinking beyond the selfishness of his passion for her, he saves not only Ilsa but her anti-Nazi husband from the German soldiers hunting them down, making himself a target in the process. By the end he’s making plans with his former antagonist, police chief Louis Renault, to go to Brazzaville and help the French Resistance.

So what is it that we will decide to love enough to sacrifice for? Democracy? The Earth? Social equality? Or will it be young people, many of whom who are the children of Gen Xers? There are causes in bewildering abundance now; we can take our pick. If not for our own self-respect then for those who will fight harder than we ever did to repair even bigger messes they never asked to inherit.