Posted on 10/17/2008 10:18:20 AM PDT by foutsc
I guess I'm not the only one wishing Boomers would just shuffle off quietly to Hippie Valhalla. The whiniest, most self-absorbed generation is apparently wearing out its welcome among others as well. And with good reason. This is the generation that brought us Viagra commercials on TV during family hours, introducing our youngsters new and interesting phrases. This is the generation that mainstreamed porn, marketed slutwear to our daughters and encouraged our boys to be pimps. I know, boomers are not the authors of our current social dysfunctions, but they were the libertines who stormed Bastille, unleashing the corrosive social forces that made these dysfunctions possible. Oh, and then as grownups they agnostically market this trash to the masses in worship of the almighty dollar. We are now suffering through the ill effects of the "anything goes, if it feels good do it" culture this adolescent, incontinent generation has foisted upon us. Our political, social and religious institutions are crumbling. The level of vulgarity in everyday life is unprecedented and our inflated sense of egotistical self-entitlement knows no bounds. Instead of building upon the foundation of the Greatest Generation, boomers took a bulldozer to it and left a giant Woodstock-like mud pit in its place. Baby Boomer Richard Berry gives this irresponsible, self-indulgent generation a good lambasting in his latest American Thinker
The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement. Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? How dare we! Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room! This is all merely typical of the smug, cocksure Boomer Elite. This is a group that breaks things. It has set the wrecking ball to institutions that are the essential glue of our society (marriage and the family), the basis of our political system (federalism and the separation of powers), the engine of our prosperity (the free market), the guarantor of our freedom (the military), and the glory of our history (the Constitution, participatory democracy).Unfortunately, we haven't heard the last of the Boomers, and they are sure to continue wreaking their self-righteous destruction for another 20 years or so. Meanwhile, we can only take solace in well-written pieces that lampoon this most worthless generation.
Amen, Sister! (to both)
Hope things can be sorted out there in my home state... (grew up just southwest of Columbus.)
There is nothing new under the Sun. When I was young, there were both the Gray Panthers & those saying, "never trust anyone over 30."
Judging by the rallies I’ve seen here, it’s looking good. If it were not for the Acorn shenanigans, I’d feel a bit more confident. Of course, Cleveland has a large population of slacker dummies ready to vote for the guy that is going to give them government handouts.
I’m counting on the heartland of Ohio to come out in droves.
Excellent points. Thanks for making the point about the eugenics movement.
Two other big non-boomer losers I can think of are Madeline Murray O’Hare (hater of God and prayer) and Margaret Sanger (hater of Blacks and pro-death Planned Parenthood pioneer).
When I start to think like those things in your statement, I try to imagine what life would be like for me if I lived at the time of Jesus Christ. Even if this nation is turned upside down & there is blood running in the streets, we've been blessed, more blessed than most of mankind now & throughout the ages.
Well, to coin a phrase:
GO BUCS!
Only this time, I mean the populace...
;0)
I might carry a plunger to the voting polls just for fun. I think we should all do this (he he).
_______________________________________________
That is from the TV movie Wild in the Streets and was written by a 'greatest generation' aged guy.
This really hit me when Masterpiece Theatre serialized a novel (the name escapes me) about a boy whose mother leaves the family and his father works hard to bring him up and he goes to Oxford or something and becomes a doctor, and meanwhile his father has taken up with a lovely, gracious, intelligent woman, and then the father gets stomach cancer and the son euthanizes him!
And the whole theme is "Wasn't this just the most MAHvellous wonderful relationship between a wonderful man and his wonderful son; and after all why should the man be deprived of love and companionship of a wonderful woman just because his first wife was a jerk; and finally wasn't it just the bravest most loving, kind and generous thing of the son to put him down like a dog by means of a big slug o' morphine!"
And I believe this was a novel of maybe the 1920's.
My dad was born in 1904 in the US; went to Harvard. My mom was born in 1920 in the UK and was a commie (studied economics at Oxford under Keynes) right up until the Nazi-Soviet pact. This was the trendy, quasi socialist, Christian but without all those awkward old fashioned ideas, don't you know innerleckshual milieu. As close-minded and provincial as anything one might find in, say, Alaska?
Actually moreso, because the Divine Sarah is humble, while my folks were pretty confident that they were the cream of the innerleckshual crop.
It's all interesting and a little sad.
BTW, you are aware a 44 year old isn't a Boomer?
If it doesn’t describe you then it doesn’t apply to you. Can we put the genie back in the bottle? Does anything ever get better?
Or was Yeats right, “Things fall apart”?
Your post reminded me of something. I have heard Michael Medved speak many times on his radio show about how he’d hitchhike from Yale all the way to home in Southern Cali. He said he really had his eyes opened when he’d be picked up by truckers who’d be playing Schumann on their tape players and have such intelligent view and thoughts. He was exposed to a good cross section of America by hitching back and forth.
That’s how life gives one wisdom. Of course, the elites from the top universities think they are likened to the Oracle of Delphi or the Illuminati and are to show all of us mere mortals how we must listen to them for they know all.
It would be interesting if one could see how many of those who actually tried, wholeheartedly and determinedly, the hippie "thing" and did so for what they thought were philosophical reasons saw that they were wrong and became committed and informed conservatives.
I was on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in August of 1967, having just hitchhiked from New York city. I wasn't there 5 minutes and some guy comes up and asks me if I know where he can get a gun. It seem people had been stealing his stash. I pleaded ignorance, and when he left, turned to my friend and said, "The hippie movement is over. It lasted about 5 months."
On the other hand, in NY there were what we called "weekend hippies". We used to go over to Greenwich village on Saturday evenings to watch them. They were colorful and naive and wanted to party, but weren't really serious about the kind of (equally naive) gnostic idealism of us hippies. So, having risked little, they learned little. Having avoided having their stash stolen or wanting a gun, they could pretend that somehow, somewhere, people could all just be nice and have fun and everything would somehow work out.
And as they moved through their lives, they thought was was really saving prudence was cowardice and told themselves that, though they were married and had kids and jobs, maybe somehow there was something less crass and less mundane that they could have done instead.
While my friend and I began to see that that was just a fantasy and a tragic lack of appreciation for the heroism of monogamy and having and keeping a job and persistently making sacrifices for our family and your community.
It struck me then, and stayed with me, that the friendliest most peaceable guys I knew were soldiers, while the angriest and most hostile were pacifists.
I think that few if any of us are called to tackle the entire genie. Love your spouse; take care of your kids; do your job well and honestly; be a good citizen; stand up for what's right. That's a great witness and pedagogy right there, I think.
I didn't set out to make my kid a conservative. I just tried to be the most loving daddy I could be. I just found out today she's a registered Republican in California, and she loves the Barracuda as much as I do.
Mission accomplished.
When I bought and read "Who Really Cares", the book which showed that conservatives are more giving in their personal charities of money and time, I already knew it. I'd seen it.
I am grateful for my education. I like my "hobbies" of pastoral psychology and philosophical theology. I am full of gratitude when what I love to do actually is useful to someone. But I do not pretend, because I know it would be preposterous, to be in any important way "better" than the guy who swallows his bile at his unfair supervisor and gets the job done and goes home to his wife and kids and, as much as in him lies, makes himself available to them in a loving and nurturing way.
And then, as you say, you find that one of these guys reads Kierkegaard when he has the time, and profits from it!
AS a former arrogant lefty innerleckshual, I am in awe of such people and ashamed of my former attitudes.
Good lord, if it is 10-to-1 in favor of the good guys, so to speak, why is the 1 whipping the collective butts of the 10? There is a small group of boomers that have an incredible amount of clout with the rest of the country, at least from what you're saying.
As for differences between individuals, of course these exist. But the bigger picture is that this is no longer a right-leaning country, with the main reason being that the WWII generation is dying off. The boomers are much more left-leaning, generally speaking, otherwise we wouldn't be drifting off course the way that we are. The WWII generation isn't around anymore to at least warn their kids off from the bad that can come from many of the liberal policies that many boomers worship. Sadly, many boomers are still having the battle with their parents that should have ended when they reached adulthood and got out in the real world. Instead of seeing the world through wiser eyes, there are too many boomers that still think they can change the world to some sort of leftist Utopia.
And one more thing - the battle between generations, at least in the larger sense, didn't truly become such until the boomers came along. They are too quick to dismiss past generations and the accomplishments of their predecessors to instead bash them for their indiscretions. But God forbid when the tables are turned, I guess.
You are right on. But, let’s face it, “there is none righteous; no not one.” Just remember where Paul came from. As he said, he was the “chief of sinners.” It is not where we where but where we are going and you have a grateful heart. I think that is one of the things God looks at.
I also agree with your point about who does the work and who really cares. They’ve done study after study about conservatives and how they give; of course, conservatives are far more likely to also be very religious; not spiritual in the way Oprah talks about, but grounded in a church or synagogue etc., not some ethereal thing - I always laugh at people who say they are “spiritual.”
I’ll share one of my own little stories about “people.” Years ago when I was very poor, I was working on a Toys for Tots campaign and soliciting funds from my co-workers. What happened was the highest level bosses in my department gave me $1 or something like that but the girls who were the low end clerical, etc. would give me $10. I recall one girl in particular, a Black single mom of a daughter - she didn’t hae two nickels to rub together and she gave me 10 x what a couple of directors were making (which at the time was in excess of $150K). I remember mentioning it to my father and he said that the poor are more empathetic. I agreed then and still do.
Like hell it doesn't. Count me among the Boomers who have paid their dues who are sick and tired of this carping crap. An entire generation is a very large demographic to condemn simply because you can't wrap your rhetoric around the subtleties of distribution within it. I'll give you an example - in your generation there are a number of fine people and there are a number of jerks. Which are you?
Who can hear this and not weep?
Ain't that the $64 question? It's because the "Movers and shakers" of my generation were born rich and;/or pursued power. They speak of peace and equity, but their work is about power. One of those of my generation who mocks my conservatism has a house and a swimming pool in the Virgin Islands. Another pulls down over half a million a year while her kids are neglected.
They say one thing,. Their lives say another.
Yes, I would agree.
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