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.
I thought Biden was born in 46, my bad.
Am I exculpating the lib Boomers of my generation? Hell no, I despise them as much as you do. But the framework for the present lib culture in academia was laid many years before the Boomers libs took over. When I started going to college in the late sixties, practically all my profs were not only hard-core libs, some were openly communist. You are promulgating the idea that when Boomers became of age, all of a sudden all these awful lib ideas started cropping up. It started a long time before that. The lib Boomers were taught their lessons by the previous generation of libs (remember Dr. Spock), and they learned their lessons well.
I don’t think I missed anything you wrote. How old are you anyway? Your words about “spoiling the little tykes” reveals a profound ignorance about those times. Very few middle-class Boomers (who constituted the great majority) were spoiled. Few parents in those days spoiled their kids. I didn’t know any because neither me, my friends, or anyone else I knew were spoiled. The people I knew were mostly middle to lower middle class i.e. poor. I guarantee you none of them were spoiled. Large families were common and usually only the father (like my father) worked for money. There wasn’t that much money period. That came later. So stop with the “Boomers were spoiled” crap.
So you think your experience represents the entire generation? Okay.... Like the "I don't know how Nixon won because everyone I know voted for Humphrey". Maybe your experience is not representative of most other boomers, particularly the NE liberals who dominate liberal politics nowadays? But you probably already think this. So why take exception at a generalization directed at them?
Often in political discourse generalizations are needed to characterize political movements. Sorta like what this article is doing. Why do you take the article or the commentary personnally? It's not 'all about you'.
: )
Boomer = Jew = Black = Irish = Italian...
no shite....and spewed ad nauseum by folks who should know better here
I beg Gen X and Y who don't know better to look at voting stats and report back
and don't take the problems you might have had with your own neer do well parents on my ass.
I was a late boomer...the hippies and white levis penny /oxford button down shirt loafer gang came before me and we always had to catch up with them
the faults of leftism go way back....do some research.
the folks who pushed all this low income minority sub prime garbage are pre boomers from the Carter years and so forth...
same bunch who brought forth the Great Society ...not boomers.
now if you must go after grey haired Jerry and Dave Crosby types then feel free...it's on me.
But here in Nashville, I drive by Gen X and Gen Y havens and I got a news flash for you DUDES...it's Obama central.
hey at least we don't wear girls jeans, know how to chase Puni for all it's worth, ain't forgot to fight, and don't recoil from the dreaded R-word...
to those youngsters out there with juevos....God bless ya and ignore my rant....to the other whiners...eff off.
maybe outside the South, all boomers suck...if so then my apologies junior, but it ain't me babe
I'm drowning in levels of responsiblity the generation that doesn't leave home till mom kick them out at aged 30 can only fantasize about
Intergenerational conflict will be one more fault line in the coming social explosion. The young will actively despise the old, whom they will blame for squandering their legacy. They will spit on elderly beggers outside of the markets that are still open.
It was pathetic the first time I read it and it’s even worse the second time around.
I have a life...a wife, 3 kids, and a mother that lives under the same roof. I’m a hospice nurse, and served 10 years in the Air Force as a medic prior to that.
I’m a “baby boomer”.
And when I see a liberal tactic like “generation warfare” employed...
I call ‘em just like I see ‘em.
Liberalism is a mental disorder, and this country has a very serious mental health issue. Liberals infect every generation.
Ignoring thesae liberal tactics don’t mnake them go away, but actually EMBRACING them...well that’s another matter.
It’s simple really...there are good and bad people from EVERY generation...but by isolating the GENERATION, you take the eye off the real ball...LIBERALISM!
“boomers” has absolutely NO place in this discussion.
It’s not only ignorant but it’s actually a tactic liberals employ ALL the time!
class
race
wealth
and now we need to argue about GENERATIONS too?
Simply incredible.
This article isn’t about you personally; it’s about the pervasive, self-absorbed character of our cohort (meaning our collective selves). Now go have a good cry and buck-up.
Uh-huh...so why the “boomer” references then confucius?
I mean our “collective selves” pretty much spans ALL generations, none being more or less responsible for all our ills than the other, so again; why the need?
With this mentality I guess the next thing on here will be about “x generation” new voter punks are voting for ObamaNation in droves.
It’s stupid to mention the generation, but it’s prudent to mention liberalism.
Fall into the trap of class warfare, generation warfare, etc. ad infinatum all you wish, but leave me out!
And don’t pretend you have some standing to lecture me about YOUR psychosis.
Dude, I was 9 years old. Don't throw the crap at me. I might be a tail end boomer, but I ain't THAT kind of boomer.
RE: “Dennis Hopper, by the way, has cut his hair and is a strong conservative. SOME folks grow up.”
I was wondering what happened to Hopper. Sure didn’t expect to see him in the new An American Carol film with Kelsey Grammar, Jon Voight, et al.....
Who, in the boomer generation, can forget Easy Rider?
I see a trend...the generation before boomers understand the futility of generational warfare, I guess because they’re wiser than those that have come after them.
Rest assured, us boomers are having a pic-nic dealing with x,y,z or whatever...
but imagine the sheer hell THESE generations will get when they get older!!!
I actually shudder to think and feel sorry for my kids...because if we’re going to be euthanized...then I guess they’ll be cannibalized. Or worse. :)
damn Matt, that sounds like loads of fun..
I think there will be plenty of young volunteers to load destitute old folks onto buses heading for “elder camps.”
One way rides.
Yes, I would bet that most Boomers shared my experience. We were low to average middle class by the seventies. I knew a lot of kids who had less than we did. The only kids in my high school I knew who had cars worked after school for the money. Most kids either walked, took the bus, or got a ride from their parents to get to school. The habit of parents buying their little dears a car (like my niece) when they were in high school came the next generation. You provide proof please about all these spoiled Boomers.
And why am I taking this personally? Are you serious? You defame an entire generation or nod assent and you expect the people slandered and lied about not to respond? The people like the dope who wrote this article didn't accuse a small percentage of Boomers. He basically lumped us all together. And once again, how old are you?
“Dennis Hopper, by the way, has cut his hair and is a strong conservative. SOME folks grow up.”
Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, all of them are McCain’s generation, they aren’t even close to being boomers.
None of them are veterans like the many (almost 10 million) boomers.
Bull-oney! Exactly what generation is paying exorbitant taxes right now so that the “wonderful” older generation gets more $ out of Social Security than it ever paid into the system, and will be the last generation to be on this gravy train? Boomers are footing the bill for their generous SS benefits and for the ever-expanding Medicare benefits.
And what will Boomers get when they retire? Zilch! They won’t recover even a fraction of what they paid into all of these Ponzi scheme programs. Instead of criticizing Boomers all the time, the old coots ought to be saying “Thanks.”
I’m so tired of all this generational identity crap anyway. Who decides exactly what generation one is in? Is everyone born between certain years really exactly the same as all the others? Some of us tagged as Boomers have always been conservative and resent being portrayed as being a bunch of selfish, immature hippies. So, shut the heck up about Boomers.
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