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To: Gaffer

"I was born in 1950 and have been a solid Republican since I started working at 14. I have worked all my life, paid taxes, served 8 years in the military, married, children/grandchildren, never been without a job, finished college while working with a wife and child, and have been paying the maximum social security payments for the last 25 years."

Sounds exactly like me except I only spent 4 years in the Navy. Every time I see one of these posts I scratch my head and think "I did all that?". Sounds like a bad case of transference to me. I don't see a grand movement of X, Y, Zer's trying to turn thing around though.


17 posted on 10/25/2006 5:07:51 AM PDT by dljordan
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To: dljordan
I get really tired of the generational bickering between the Boomers, Xers, Z-Z toppers, whatever.....The problem with what's been going on is a result of FDR's grand plan starting with Social Security and continuing with LBJs "Great Society" and the lingering Liberal hanger-on ideas.

It's true the "Greatest Generation" suffered immensely and accomplished Herculean tasks; they have also profited the most. What's left after that is the table scraps of their feast and the bickering between the successive generations......

19 posted on 10/25/2006 6:31:19 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: dljordan
"Sounds exactly like me except I only spent 4 years in the Navy. Every time I see one of these posts I scratch my head and think "I did all that?". Sounds like a bad case of transference to me. I don't see a grand movement of X, Y, Zer's trying to turn thing around though."

I think that in my generation's case (tail end of Gen X), we are still trying to figure out the way. We didn't have the guidance on the way we should live given to us by our parents (who rebelled against the same advice from their's). A lot of my peers are struggling through school debts, life debts, etc to make ends meet, some of us are interested in recapturing the youth that was never an option for us, while others can't seem to figure out why the powers that be still do things that are twenty years old. From my experiences with Boomer bosses, they expect me to wait, "get my time in grade" before giving me an opportunity to "do" something, or "turn things around". This is an attitude that they inherited from the "greatest generation" but something they never taught us as their children (by their actions.) A lot of my peers are getting caught in middle management, able to do enough to make things worse, but little to make things better. Perhaps we're late bloomers? Or maybe we're just fed up. It is hard to be optimistic or idealistic in a world that has had a lot of the air sucked out of it by a generation that sated its own vanity. (I know this is a broad brush, and not everyone who is a boomer did this, I am after all attempting to put a montage of emotional reactions by lots of Gen X'ers I've met into a few words.) I think the lucky X'ers (of whom I consider myself), had parents who were centered on their family, their children, they paid the bills, stayed together, and taught those values. Unfortunately for everyone that was lucky there seems to be the unlucky ones who lived in divorce, impoverished emotional families, or brutish war zones of competing egos. We're all a bit disaffected, some of it belongs on our shoulders, and some of it is the fault of the boomers. In a world where we were always told (by parents, the media, etc.) to express ourselves, it is hard to gain a group movement. X'er's are loners, or at most tribal, the desire to fit in only goes so far with us. The hope for boomers should be that whatever they have reaped they can sow. If you "did right" then you have no reason to worry. But from what I've heard from my friends, the 'Solyent Green' Nursing home awaits a lot of Boomer Parents. Maybe that will be the grand movement that joins the future generations.
35 posted on 10/25/2006 4:40:18 PM PDT by CompSciGuy (Holy Father isn't time to reconstitute the Templars?)
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