How many plants is too many?
At what point should you partake in a deep socio-political evaluation of your houseplants?
The age-old question, “how many plants is too many?” has been around since millennials realized that raising children in the current political, economic, social, racial, and environmental crisis is a little unethical. So, to first answer the question of “how many plants is too many?” we have to answer the question, “why do millennials have an ethical issue with bringing children into this shit show of a world?”
Millennials grew up getting fucked by Reaganomics and The War on Drugs harder than Monica Lewinski in the Oval Office. Long story short, Ronald Reagan is the reason why millennials sucked on their thumbs in their late 20s and asked for a participation trophy for going to the grocery store alone that one time. All jokes aside fuck Ronald Reagan, that dirty, capitalistic, white ethnocentric, nationalist narc to say the least.
The link between Ronald Reagan and too many plants may seem like some long and convoluted road that diverged in a yellow wood, and millennials took the one that lead to too many fucking plants, but it’s true and it’s made all the difference. I don’t know how a Robert Frost quote made it into the final cut, but I think he belongs there, you know? Anyways, do not dismiss this correlation until you waste another couple of minutes reading the rest of this godforsaken article.
Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency is a great place to start when connecting the dots between him and too many plants. Reagan won the 1980 presidential election after mopping the floor with Jimmy Carter like Groundskeeper Willie cleaning up after Bart’s sloppy foreign diplomacy. After that, America went downhill faster than a soapbox car made by a Boy Scout by the name of Bill Gates. No, really, look it up.
The beginning of his presidency was an accurate depiction of how the next eight years were about to go, considering, 69 (ha-ha nice) days into his presidency, he was shot by John Hinckley Jr. in an assassination attempt to impress Jodie Foster. Unfortunately, he didn’t die, but was critically wounded and in the hospital for 11 days, which is about the amount of time it takes for a lizard to regrow its tail. Coincidence? I think not.
Reagan’s first 4 years as president can be summed with one word: Reaganomics. Have you ever been contacted by one of the pyramid scheme marketing companies that say they’ll pay you an outrageous amount of money if you sell your soul to them and agree to sell knives, Tupperware, and other useless bullshit to your family members? Think of that but on a MUCH larger scale.
Then came a resurgence of The War on Drugs when Nancy Reagan decided to get involved by being a narc like her goody-two-shoes husband, saying shit like “Boo hoo drug bad.” From the start of Reagan’s presidency to 1997, the number of individuals behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses went from 50,000 to 400,000, with a majority of them being African American men after getting pulled over for driving suspiciously well.
After his presidency, Reagan spent a good amount of time jerking him- I mean writing his memoirs in his Bel-Air mansion and constantly telling Uncle Phil that his nephew was “too black for Bel-Air.”
When old millennials were starting to have kids and young millennials just stopped pissing their pants, Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004, at the ghoulish age of 93 years old. Rumor has it that millennials let out a sigh of relief that day deep enough to blow the earth out of orbit temporarily.
Ask any millennial that grew up during and soon after the Reagan administration and first ask them if they are doing alright. After they talk your ear off about how their liberal arts degree offered them nothing but cocaine and crippling depression, ask them how many plants they have. Odds are they start listing off the names and species of every plant they “raise” because they feel it’s irresponsible to raise children of their own. So, they substituted mother and fatherhood in favor of naming a cactus “Jerry” and telling you Jerry’s tummy has been upset today because they accidentally watered Jerry with an iced caramel macchiato instead of his usual vitamin-enriched water.
The question “how many plants is too many?” is solely based on generational trauma and the ethical dilemma of raising children in a world where a reality TV show host can become president and brainwash 74,222,958 people into voting for him… AGAIN! To all the plant moms and dads out there indoctrinating Gen Z into hoarding plants just as you did when you became an adult, remember that Ronald Reagan is to blame on you spending over half of your paycheck on a non-sentient “child” that will surely never disappoint you.
