I was a child during WW2...turned 6 just before it ended.
This article made me mad. If he had lived during that time, I think he would have realized it was a war that everybody contributed to in some way...even if it was "only" giving up a dad for a few years or forever. Dads were scarce as were alot of things. I don't remember how it worked but things were rationed and required stamps...coffee and sugar were rationed I remember.
I remember victory gardens, candy that came in paper tanks, rocks were our jacks, we collected newspapers in our wagons and took it to the neighborhood fire station everyweek, kids had little military uniforms. There were air raids that were scary to kids and the worst thing we could call somebody was "Hitler."
Of course I didn't make a big contribution but for those of us who experienced the war, every man, woman, and child was involved in some way because the country was involved.
Soon after the war ended, I remember my mother being excited because rubber balls were being sold in downtown Houston and we went to get me one. I didn't have a clue what a rubber ball was, had never seen one, and they were made out of tire rubber and barely bounced. Didn't matter because we didn't know the differnce...and certainly didn't feel deprived.
I don't know why he's in a snit over the "greatest generation" now because there aren't many left anyway! It was the grandchildren of the GG that never grew up and left home!
I agree that the article is misguided on several levels, including, as you point out, that the ‘Greatest Generation’—a moniker that nobody would have dared trot out while the WWI vets were still around—is largely gone now.
What he’s getting to re: our elderly bankrupting the country with the level of, particularly, healthcare benefits that they are receiving from the government is a fair one, but it is put into poor context here.