Posted on 10/05/2008 6:21:45 AM PDT by vietvet67
My cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions. The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance -- have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them).
Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. 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.
We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.
The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them. So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at. In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple. It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter. We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package.
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).
Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world. Whenever a Hollywood celebutard mouths some perfect imbecility in front of a camera, it is sure to be done from a five star resort hotel or on the red carpet of one of those absurdly frequent self-congratulation festivals. The silk tie, moussed hair crowd on Wall Street is no better. If the extent of the naked short selling, self dealing and market manipulation that has actually gone on these last few years were ever to become generally known, it would indict this crew all by itself. And it cannot be said enough: this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party. The cigar chomping, pin-striped caricature of a GOP money man has been false to the Wall Street facts for some time, though the left continues to furiously peddle that image.
The Boomer Elite's tired liberal nostrums are continually falsified by reality but, more and more embittered by the refusal of the world to conform to their dictates, they double down, trying to impose more lefty palliatives upon us, measures sure to be flatly unconstitutional, un-American, and disastrously counterproductive all at once. This is a blindly and viciously destructive cohort. They have degraded our common culture, warped our constitution to suit their purposes, and stand ready to subvert our very nationhood to the pipe dream of the Euro-left. Now they have brought our economy to the brink.
This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both. On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible. On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise. The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations. It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.
Some of the sane knew it all along, but for many others a stunning realization is only now dawning. Much of the vaunted wealth creation of the last 20 years was a mirage, and the ballyhooed processes of wealth creation were themselves largely a scam, no more than the discounted cash flow of the borrowed future.
We must shudder to think how little of our civilization may remain standing when the Boomer Elite finally, mercifully, passes from the scene.
9.5 million boomers have served in the military, now look at this article in the Weekly Standard. No, the author of it has never served.
The 9/11 Generation
Better than the Boomers.
by Dean Barnett
07/30/2007, Volume 012, Issue 43
In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn’t answer the phone.
Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers—those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation—took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers’ response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.
Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled through the rest of the century. In the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, military service didn’t occur to most young people as an option, let alone a duty. More.....
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/904pffgs.asp
But now, once again, history is calling. Fortunately, the present generation appears more reminiscent of their grandparents than their parents.
My generation is even worse than the Boomer generation.
Don't get me started on my generation.
Those are liberals we see in every single generation. The “boomers” here is a complete red herring, a strawman a canard...it’s liberals who indeed seek to divide divide divdie...and now we seriously want to inject “generational” warfare into their class envy, race-baiting and so on...ad infinatum??????
Ummmm painting all of the boomers this way means you must hate Sarah Palin also?
All boomers think alike. That’s the intellectually lazy position of this would-be pundit.
He nicely placed the blame on the Boomer Elite.
But why is it necessary to use “boomer” in the first place when he could just as easily and more accurately said LIBERAL elite?
It’s pretty simple really, each generation has it’s heros and idiots:
John Wayne/Al Capone
Michael Moore/Sarah Palin
Paris Hilton....
As an Xer I too blamed the Boomers for along time, however I think it goes much deeper than one generation. The WWII generation fostered the sterile suburban environment a lot of Boomers grew up in brought on by their uber-materialistic world view fostered by the Great Depression. The WWII generation ushered in Roe v. Wade, Vietnam,the Great Society no-fault divorce, etc. It was not the boomers that oversaw these policy changes. However conservative boomers much acknowledge they lost major battles in the culture war ceding the fields of culture and education to the liberal “masters of the universe”. That gave us pc, affirmative action, etc.
Our civilization is withering on the vine and there is ample blame top go around. Think about it even “conservative Boomer leaders” have various ex wives and are corrupted by the culture as well. Every generation has its sins to atone for. I think the “Boomer We’re Just Great” bubble is bursting and it should.
Exactly, the more accurate battle is and always should be liberal vs. conservative ideals across each generation.
Palin and Obama are both boomers after all...in fact so is Biden.
To be more precise, I see godless failed liberalism and secular humanism ruining our cultrure via the NEA and PC run rampant and attacks on Christian culture with incessant separation of church and state PC idiocy as more to blame.
Look what failed secular humanism allowed Europe to become:
a moral vacuum filled with militant Islam!
McCain is indeed a pre-boomer but Obama is not a post-boomer. Obama was born in 1961, the baby boom is defined as the years from 1946 to 1964. Obama is in fact a baby boomer.
Yup...and Biden AND Palin are baby boomers also!
RIIIIIIGHT...and Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears are model citizens in the spolied dept.
Ummm not just a FEW of us.
Using your logic virtually everyone born after 64 is no better than Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton!
Charlie Rangel’s no “boomer”. Why do you need to bash boomers?
Is it an insecurity or ignorance or what?
Excuse me, I am a boomer and I have always thought we should rein in our national debt. However, the politicians fail to listen. I feel it is criminal to burden future generations with crippling debt.
How does it make you feel to see most of your generation act like spoiled brats?
Kettle meet pot!
We don’t know, everytime we go pick up milk I see Paris Hilton and/or Brittney Spears on tabloids in the check outs!!
Boy I can almost see it now...when generation x and y are fending off their young for all of what’s left of their culture.
*sigh*
Well being a baby boomer that was in the USAF for 10 years, I can say that people born in 46 lumped in with people born in 64, I think boomers could easily be broken down even further.
For instance what’s gen X? 65-80?
and y? 80-94?
We have a larger spread...it’s really hard for instance for me to consider my MIL a boomer but she is! :)
Joe Biden Born: November 20, 1942 (1942-11-20) (age 64) Scranton, Pennsylvania. Not a Boomer
Sarah Palin, America’s favorite boomer.
I’m a BOOMER,,,(RA),,,(66-69),,,8/26 ARTY(67-68),,,
Blame the BullSh!t on the so called “Greatest Generation”.
I remember well the Azzholes in the VFW/AL/etc. that
“Knew it all”,,,
Never gave a rat’s ass about anything but themselves,,,
Look who they put in office!!!
How Many Of The NOW generation Went Knockin’ Down The Door
To Join The US Military On 9/12 After We Were Attacked?!?!?!
(Give that to the WWII guys),,,
How Many Have A Fit When A DRAFT Is Mentioned?!?!?!?!
(cluck,cluck,cluck),,,”It’s All Tech. Now”,,,
Bullsh!t!!!
Real MEN Of MY Generation Stood Up When Called!!!
Many Of Their Names Are On A Long Black Wall In DC,,,
(changin’ magazines)
You cite Democrat party political achievements which I =obviously= was not referring to. Apparently you missed that. Many families voted Republican throughout the 20th century. Try reading some history yourself.
Yup...and Biden AND Palin are baby boomers also!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Uh, no. Biden was born in 1942 so he is definitely NOT a baby boomer, he is a war baby like myself. Palin is technically a baby boomer, she was born in 1964, the last year of the baby boom but some of the earliest of the boomers were having children of their own by ‘64. Obama is actually the only one born during the boom and well before the end of the boom.
“The Boomer Elite”
I only made it a few responses to this article and I am surprised at how many posters missed this important distinction.
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