You’re Messing With the Wrong Generation (Quintuple Barf Alert!)

Op Ed News ^ | 3/11/04 | Becky Burgwin

[pending]

Boomers wedgies and Xers

Wedgies. I like that one... Future liberal syndrome:
"Collective insecurity at being called a wedgie"

Metallica is on my all time list, for sure.
The black album...yikes. Everyone is still trying to grab parts of that, it seems?
Dave Matthews and/or Blues Traveler?
Not sure about them. I know they have loyal followings though. I like edgier stuff. Infrequent listener now though.
Alice in chains influenced a lot of people, more than admit.
I liked all that seattle stuff, STP too...
Tool is a fine band.
Anything the Nirvana drummer gets into, what a talented kid he turned out to be, eh?
Rage was okay. That new thing isnt workin for me though.

My son told me about the White stripes, they are pretty good really.

Seems to be a bit of a lapse now? Tough times. The downloading has tapped the income, less clubs to play too. This is a big deal around here. .
Most folks i know just wont go out, risk of bustment.
Couple of beers and you are illegal.

To me the rest, from Techno to rap is all the son of disco.
Disco=evil Ha ha.
Although I did like "name of the game" i think it was, Crystal method. At least it sounds like there are Geetarz
in there... Ha ha

Sorry for bustin into a chat folks, we now resume regularly scheduled programming...

[ConservativeGadfly]

Interesting inter-generational fight goin' on here. Not quite certain I understand the source of dave k's angst.

But FWIW, here's my input.

I'm a GenXer (1966), born to parents from the WWII generation (1920 & 1926, both RIP), with step-brothers from the boomer generation.

Don't have a problem with any specific generation, to be honest. Each generation has made spectacular contributions to this country and each one has some pretty rotten characters in it as well.

Tain't so much the generation for me. I just can't stand liberals no matter what time period/time zone they hail from.

[Fletcher J]

LOL. You still seem very angry. Sorry if I hit a nerve with my sarcastic post. It wasn't even directed at you...

That being said, you're the one that so self-righteously demanded that *I* provide answers for the looming fiscal crisis. I didn't realize that was a condition of posting, but after reviewing the thread, it appears that I've already added more substance to the discussion than you have with your cheap name-calling.


Fletcher J

[dave k]

That was the gist of my initial postings (disdain for liberals of the boomer gen)...I even clarified myself later on.

For the record...if there is any 'angst' on my part, it's due to the fact that we have people on this forum who have refused to engage in a civil debate; instead, they have resorted to name calling. Fellow 'conservatives', mind you.

Please feel free to review my previous postings and let me know where I went wrong.

[mabelkitty]

They are also the reason the next President I vote for will be a veteran of Desert Storm (2008).

[qam1]

I am a fan of REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT, state or federal.

Anybody who makes the statement that they'd rather have Hillary Clinton instead of Pataki is a complete idiot and isn't one of us.

My homepage doesn't say that, But please since you like Pataki soooo much

Name in just one way (Actions not words) George Pataki is less liberal than Hillary.

The only thing remotely Conservative Pataki ever did that Hillary or Mario probably wouldn't was end taxes on Marshmellows in 1996.

Name me a second thing please?

I am not an one issue Republican, I understand the need in certain places, at certain times to elect a so called moderate. But Pataki a'int even that. He is a No issue Republican, He is BY FAR the most Liberal Governor in the country and even so when Grey Davis was still in office.

[mabelkitty]

Dude - I totally need to be on the X-er ping list ; ) Please add.

[Howlin]

In 1994 made one of the biggest mistakes in my life. I worked for George Pataki for his campain against Mario Cuomo. While Pataki's first term was wonderful after that he turned out to be further to the left than Mario and has turned New York into a bigger socialist hell hole than Mario or even Hillary for that matter could ever dream of

[Howlin]

OMG, are you an angry Xer? Blaming me for everything? Who would have ever thought that!

[Howlin]

The president elected first by the X'ers is currently in the White House.

I'm enthralled with how much credit you all take for things that you only SHARED in.

[Howlin]

Name in just one way (Actions not words) George Pataki is less liberal than Hillary.

You cannot possibly be THAT dumb.

[HungarianGypsy]

Your dates re: GenX/Boomer are a bit of a conundrum for someone like me who actually READ the book GenX. According to the author, GenX started in the late '50's, the peak was 1961.
I remember the book and wanted to mention something about this, but could not remember the exact dates of what Gen X were "really" supposed to be. It seems to be something the media decided to come up with, since they figured my generation (born in 1973) needed a name. *eye roll* Of course, how often does the media both to research? LOL! If I remember right, according to the book the last of Generation X was supposed to have been born in 1965 or was it 1969? I know it was before 1970, though.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Disagree. I should let you know that I'm a member of Generation X. Wars don't define a generation.

[qam1]

Exactly it doesn't say that, Thanks for pointing out you were wrong

You cannot possibly be THAT dumb.

So please enlighten me, Give me an issue

Well you been shown a link about Pataki's gun grabbing so you can scratch that

Taxes?

LOL! New York has the highest taxes in the country on everything except marshmallows

Spending?

Don't think so.

Under Pataki New York even though it has ~15 million fewer people it still spends more than California. In 2002 Both New York and California spent $90 Billion dollars. In 2003 with both facing huge deficits Grey Davis at least proposed some cuts while Pataki even with NY facing a $10 Billion dollar deficit actually increased spending by $3 Billion.

And that $90 Billion number is actually way more since unlike California which has Prop. 13 Pataki can and does push massive unfunded mandates onto the counties (most notably Medicaid). Almost every county in NY has had double digit property tax increases consecutively the past couple of years.

BTW Texas with population just little above NY spends $67 Billion, And their counties do not have anywhere near the big property tax burdens like NY. Let me assure you the difference between NY and California and Texas is not due to the cost of snow removal.

Socialized Medicine?

The only difference between Pataki and Hillary is Hillary wanted to socialize medicine but failed while Pataki is actually doing it!!!!!

Right now 1/6 New Yorkers are on the state medicaid dole with more to come because even with a $10 Billion deficit Pataki still plans on adding 720,000 more people onto the state doles via his Family health Plus and Healthy NY medicaid schemes. http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/fhplus/index.htm

Environment,

2 words, "Forever Wild" 'nuff said.

A FYI, It's not because of the legislators because the Republicans have a big majority (38-24) in the Senate and they to voted unanimously to increase spending and raise taxes. The Senate Republicans consistently vote unanimously on Liberal tax/spend/regulate schemes, Not one of the 38 Senators can be considered anything like Conservative, All of them without exception are RINOS to say the least, Each one of them if they were in another state's legislative body (and that includes the ones controlled by Democrats) would be the most Liberal member. (To be fair, There are some good Republicans in the NYS State Assembly though they are in the minority)

A little more on the insanity of New York

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970596/posts

Knock yourself out and please give me an issue.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Your post should be hanging in the administrators offices of every high school and grammar school in America as an example of just how much the education system in this country has gone downhill, being taught by the same Gen X'ers most of you and your ilk in this thread want to highlight.

[meadsjn]

It is no secret that many boomers are conservative and have been most of our lives. I was born in '56 and am quite ashamed to be associated with the likes of most publicized boomers.

It is also no secret that even more boomers are liberal, and it is those boomer liberals that dominate the public schools, government bureacracies, and policy making positions in government and business. Even the Republican party is top-heavy with neo-cons who are simply liberals that got mugged.

The conservative boomers have not had, and do not have sufficient numbers to force constructive changes in our "tax, spend, and regulate" government.

However, change is coming. The Gen-X people who are paying attention are well into their careers, have families, and are trending more conservative. The Gen-Y college students today are trending conservative and driving their professors to tears.

The liberal Gen-X and Gen-Y potential voters comprise a much, much smaller force.

If the conservative boomers make the effort to look past their own age group, they will see the opportunity for constructive change that exists in staying conservative, rather than compromising with the left-drifting neo-cons.

As soon as 2008, the voting numbers can solidly be on the conservative side -- not the mushy middle, and not the liberal left.

Smaller government, low and simple taxes, sunsetting laws, disappearing regulations, and a booming business and economy -- all these and more are possible with a combination of conservative boomers and conservative Gen-X, and the even more conservative Gen-Y voters.

A little infighting is good for the spirits, but let's keep the artillery pointed at the really bad guys.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Using your logic, the Gen X'ers also elected Bill Clinton to the White House. They were just as stupid then, as they are now.

[Helms]

Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962

Courtesy Office of Sen. Tom Hayden.

THE PORT HURON STATEMENT OF THE STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introductory Note: This document represents the results of several months of writing and discussion among the membership, a draft paper, and revision by the Students for a Democratic Society national convention meeting in \cf2 Port Huron\cf0 , Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. It is represented as a document with which SDS officially identifies, but also as a living document open to change with our times and experiences. It is a beginning: in our own debate and education, in our dialogue with society.

published and distributed by Students for a Democratic Society 112 East 19 Street New York 3, New York GRamercy 3-2181

INTRODUCTION: AGENDA FOR A GENERATION

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.

When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world: the only one with the atom bomb,

Lie #1:

The Soviet Atomic Bomb: 1939-1949

The most significant early work on fission in the Soviet Union was performed by Yakov Zel'dovich and Yuli Khariton who published a series of papers in 1939-41 that laid the groundwork for later Soviet atomic weapons development.

The Soviet weapons program proper began in 1943 during World War II, under the leadership of physicist Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. The program was initiated by reports collected by Soviet intelligence about the rapidly growing Manhattan Project in the U.S. It remained largely an intelligence operation until the end of the war, but it was a highly successful one, due to sympathies of many for the wartime Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany; the socialist political sympathies of some; and the weak security screening program necessitated by the hasty assembly of the vast program. Klaus Fuchs, an important physicist at Los Alamos, was by far the most valuable contributor of atomic information. First Lightning/"Joe-1": The First Soviet Atomic Explosion

Test: First Lightning/"Joe-1"

Time: 07:00 29 August 1949 (local)

Location: Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan

Test Height and Type: Tower

Yield: 22 Kt

The first Soviet nuclear test, code named "First Lightning", detonated a plutonium bomb, the RDS-1. The code designation RDS was actually arbitrary and meaningless, but various people on the project gave it a variety of interpretations, one popular one was "Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina" (Stalin's Rocket Engine), another was "Russia Does It Alone". The whole focus of the Soviet program at this point was to set off a Soviet atomic blast at the earliest possible time whatever the cost. At Beria's insistence, this device was an exact copy of the U.S. Gadget/Fat Man design.

the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people -- these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency.

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.

While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal . . . rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War status quo.

We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered, yet the dominant nationstates seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of human history. Although our own technology is destroying old and creating new forms of social organization, men still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-thirds of mankind suffers undernourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance. Although world population is expected to double in forty years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation governs the sapping of the earth's physical resources. Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people."

Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era. The worldwide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism, the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, supertechnology -- these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to visualize their application to a world in upheaval.

Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority -- the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change.

Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity -- but might it not better be called a glaze above deeplyfelt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining determining influence over his circumstances of life.

[CyberCowboy777]

1977

Add me to that list.

[freedumb2003]

The president elected first by the X'ers is currently in the White House

Nice try. Gen Xers don't generally vote. They just whine.