She Was Just Seventeen, You Know What I Mean

Diary Entry: May 26, 2025

You have to love how Georgia collects new vocabulary. Every so often, a new English word just seems to drop out of the sky and land right in the middle of our politics, and everyone has to pretend they know what it means. I remember back in 2012, when Georgian Dream took over, the buzzword was “cohabitation.” A fantastic word nobody understood, but which apparently was a polite way of saying, “Let’s try not to immediately imprison the last guys in charge.” A political “conscious uncoupling,” if you will.

And now, the latest must-have term has arrived: Gen Z.

The first time it started popping up, nobody had a clue. Not even the kids who were supposedly in it. Suddenly, it was the official brand for the brave young things protesting the government in front of Parliament. They were crowned “Gen Z,” the designated symbols of bravery and the eternal struggle against despotism — the very despotism that, according to the term’s marketing team, the new government had become. Speaking of despots, you know who else got that label? Zviad Gamsakhurdia. At least, according to U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. Gamsakhurdia must have been a real prodigy of tyranny, considering he only had about a year in charge to earn the title. Quite the overachiever.

You can practically see the fingerprints on these terms, the way they just materialize and weave themselves into the public conversation. But then, this battle for — or rather, against — Georgian generations is a long-running national tradition. It’s been our thing for centuries. Ever since our beloved King Tamar kicked things off by killing her cousin to snag the throne, it’s been rare for more than a couple of generations to pass without being more or less wiped from the face of the earth. It’s a continuous, almost impressively consistent genocide. You get the feeling the enemy is just terrified of Georgian youth actually growing up and, you know, having opinions about being dominated.

The tactics change, but the Russians, bless their hearts, have had a particularly successful run this past century. First, they signed us up for World War I and World War II — a couple of massive European club brawls that had absolutely nothing to do with us. They weren’t our wars, weren’t in our interest, weren’t funded by us, and yet, we died in spectacular numbers. Far more than the Americans, for what it’s worth. We also had that famous one-off special, the “Junkers” incident, where a gathering of patriotic youth managed to get themselves heroically annihilated by the Russians in a single, efficient event. I can just imagine how this scenario would play out. Some Russian general in his headquarters would ask: “How do we put an end to these Georgian youths?” “What could possibly gather them all together? It’s impossible,” some low-ranking officer would mutter. And right at that moment, some local Judas would appear on the scene and say: “I know the secret instrument for gathering them…” He would approach the Georgians and roar the fateful words: “Come on, Georgians, let’s strike the enemy!” And the Georgian gene pool, clenched into a single fist, would turn to ash in a matter of hours.

More recently, after the USSR finally imploded, our prize was a brutal coup d’état that gracefully transitioned into a civil war. Looking back, it seems like pretty much the entire world decided to pitch in to overthrow our legitimately elected president. They were so helpful, funding the bloodshed and supplying weapons and drugs to keep the party going. In just a few years, the entire 1960s generation — what was supposedly the best of our gene pool — was gone. The ones who didn’t die in the violence were left to navigate a fun new world of addiction and mental collapse.

So, this latest push to get the youth all fired up for another bloody conflict feels depressingly familiar. It reminds me of this one creepy foreign “investor” — a pedophile, from what I could tell — whose main business in Georgia seemed to be translating Telegram war stories from Russian to English all day. He asked me, with this weirdly eager, high-pitched voice, “If war begins in Georgia, will you Georgian youth go fight?”

I gave him the answer he wanted. “Of course we will.”

“Oh,” he cooed, “you Georgians are so brave. I wish I was brave like that.”

What an idiot, I thought.

I remember one of our big-brained public intellectuals, a guy considered one of the most educated men in the country, saying that this current generation is the last real link to the idea of a free Georgian state. He argued that our survival is, you know, crucial. The underlying sentiment was that there are entire state-run programs dedicated to methodically planning the destruction of Georgian youth, just to keep the centuries-old tradition alive.

I guess they’re just working their way through the alphabet. Some were Generation A, some were B. Now it’s our turn at the plate: Generation Z.