I say all this because I was one of the hand-picked. The chosen, so to speak. I was told everything you said and more. And it was a burden you cannot imagine. I was given more responsibility as a result, more water to carry, not a free pass. It was also a free-ticket to some perks, but not anything CLOSE to what you mention. It meant I could to go the library instead of class, play cards through math, ignore History completely until I hit the AP levels, check out of high school whenever I felt like it because they knew my Dad was really sick and I needed to take him back and forth to doctor's appointments. I wasn't "owed the world" but I was allowed to check out of classes that I could have passed with my hands tied behind my back. And I did get to rewrite my AP English curriculum so I could get into private colleges that required more than the class did. It meant I was expected to run ten student organizations, work thirty hours a week, raise foster kids, and keep straight A's because it was "easy" for me.
But you mean everyone else. The people who didn't earn it.
Except, EVERY DAY they saw me. They saw me walk out of class, they saw me get my way, they saw me not hand in the papers they were handing in because the teachers made special rules for me. You really think that participation trophies in 4th grade made them feel like snowflakes? Fuck you. Everyone knows the hierarchy. You know the smart kids, the dumb kids, the pretty kids, the rich kids. The whole 'snowflake' bullshit is a story that an older generation has drawn up to cover their own failings. They've left a crumbling, mitigated, over-managed educational system to a series of bureaucrats who are playing Russian roulette with the future of children. And, guess what....you DO deserve a participation trophy. Showing up is hard, showing up at seven is INCREDIBLY hard. There are kids who need to know that just playing, just being there in their jersey, matters. Sometimes trying is in and of itself an achievement. Why do we undermine that?
Human nature hasn't changed much. The reality is that there are outsiders who feel slighted. Mix that with mental illness and poor gun control, and a 24-hour news media, you are going to get mass shootings. Period. Point blank. End of story. There will always be wackos, there will always be guns. I am not going to give you some compelling thesis as to why mass-shootings are so popular in the US. People much more educated on the subject than I am are writing those as we speak.
But I can tell you this.
After TEN YEARS of raising foster kids, of being the snowflake, of seeing the devastation in the eyes of kids who are convinced they aren't special....the BEST thing we could ever do as a society is tell kids they are special. They are. You are. I am gifted. I just am. It's not a choice, I just was born that way. But my gifts are academic whereas others come in the form of cake baking or fishing or being really good at finding the car keys when you are late. I'm not diminishing that, I am celebrating that. We're all REALLY good at something. And REALLY awful at other things. And pretty okay in the middle. So something that seems normal to you (in my case, driving a car) seems like passing the BAR EXAM to me in terms of stress. But I can give a keynote lecture on Dante in front of 1000 people without blinking. I went to get groceries the other day and had to turn around because anxiety. I can teach 19th C. Lit like breathing, but buying potato chips freaked me the fuck out.
We ARE all snowflakes. Strong in some places, weak in others. It is a wonderful achievement in human history that we've started telling kids they are strong and beautiful and great. We've spent MOST of human history telling them they are chattle or bragging rights or money in the bank. We are entering one of the first ages in human HISTORY where psychology matters. Psychology is young. Freud happened in the early 1900's. That may seem long to you, but from an academic that's basically yesterday.
Telling kids that showing up, working hard, and trying is what matters is a genius moment that is being condemned by generation who feels shorted out. But fuck them! They are wrong. Participation trophys are awesome. As IF there wasn't enough competition (socially, sexually, intellectually) to reinforce the hierarchies inherent to school.
They are idiots. And you're an idiot in believing them.