Victor Davis Hanson: The Hysterical Style (Baby Boomers)

National Review Online ^ | November 27, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson

[neverdem]

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November 27, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

The Hysterical Style
Baby Boomers — the ungrateful-est generation — can’t help swinging from panic to frenzy.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Politicians now predict the implosion of the U.S. auto industry. Headlines warn that the entire banking system is on the verge of utter collapse. The all-day/all-night cable news shows and op-ed columnists talk of another Dark Age on the horizon, as each day another corporation lines up for its me-too bailout.

News magazines depict President-Elect Obama as the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt, facing a crisis akin to the Great Depression. Columnists for the New York Times even dream that George Bush might just resign now to allow the savior Obama a two-month head start on his presidency.

We are witnessing a new hysterical style, in which the Baby Boomer “me generation” that now runs America jettisons knowledge of the past and daily proclaims that each new development requires both a radical solution and another bogeyman to blame for being mean or unfair to them.

We haven’t seen such frenzy since the Y2K sham, when we were warned to stock up on flashlights and bottled water as our nation’s computers would simply shut down on January 1, 2000 — and with them the country itself.

Get a grip. Much of our current panic is psychological, and hyped by instantaneous electronic communications and second-by-second 24-hour news blasts. There has not been a nationwide plague that felled our workers. No earthquake has destroyed American infrastructure. The material United States before the September 2008 financial panic is largely the same as the one after. Once we tighten our belts and pay off the debts run up by Wall Street speculators and millions of borrowers who walked away from what they owed others — and we can do this in a $13 trillion annual economy — sanity will return.

Gas, now below $2 a gallon, is still falling — saving Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. As housing prices settle, millions of young Americans will buy homes that just recently were said to be out of reach of a new generation.

If it was once considered a sign of economic robustness that homes doubled in value in just a few years, why is it seen as a disaster that they now sell on the way down for what they did recently on the way up? If we were recently terrified that gas would reach $5 a gallon, why do we now just shrug that it might fall to $1.50?

Unemployment is still below 7 percent; it was around 25 percent when Franklin Roosevelt became president. Less than 20 banks have failed, not the 4,000 that went under in the first part of 1933.

We all wish Barack Obama to succeed as president. But there is no more reason to panic and circumvent the Constitution for his early assumption of office than there was for Bill Clinton to prematurely step aside in November 2000 in favor of then President-Elect George W. Bush.

We have now forgotten that by the end of the year 2000, the American economy was sliding into recession. Lame-duck President Clinton had been impeached. Vice President Al Gore had ostracized him from his presidential-election campaign. In the presidential transition, Clinton was considering pardons for Puerto Rican terrorists and most-wanted fugitive Mark Rich.

George Bush is neither the source of all our ills nor the “worst” president in our history. He will leave office with about the same dismal approval rating as the once-despised Harry Truman. By 1953, the country loathed the departing Truman as much as they were ecstatic about newly elected national hero Dwight Eisenhower — who had previously never been elected to anything.

As for Bush’s legacy, it will be left to future historians to weigh his responsibility for keeping us safe from another 9/11-like attack for seven years, the now increasingly likely victory in Iraq, AIDS relief abroad, new expansions for Medicare, and federal support for schools versus the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, the error-plagued 2004-2007 occupation of Iraq, and out-of-control federal spending. As in the case of the once-unpopular Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman, Bush’s supposedly “worst” presidency could one day not look so bad in comparison with the various administrations that followed.

But these days even that modest assessment that things aren’t that bad — or all that different from the past — may well elicit a hysterical reaction from an increasingly hysterical generation.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal and the 2008 Bradley Prize.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

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[neverdem]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[Eagles6]

save

[gogogodzilla]

PING!

[proxy_user]

The guy who said the sky is not falling did not sell very many copies of his book, nor did anyone care to watch his TV show.

[caseinpoint]

Good voice for sanity but the media and new administration have no reason to calm people when they can use panic to enact unpopular socialist programs. So what if the panic turns out unnecessary. They will just claim their decisive and quick (if extra-constitutional) actions saved the country this time.

[ari-freedom]

“We haven’t seen such frenzy since the Y2K sham, when we were warned to stock up on flashlights and bottled water as our nation’s computers would simply shut down on January 1, 2000 — and with them the country itself.”

well to be fair, a lot of people are doing the same thing just because Obama was elected.

[OCC]

The all-day/all-night cable news shows and op-ed columnists talk of another Dark Age on the horizon

Who would have imagined a news outlet allowing a presenter to have a nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment?

[Ronin]

Common sense Castor oil talk.

Not even nearly as bitter.

[Desdemona]

BTTT

[SuziQ]

Dog-eared for Sunday reading.

[FlyVet]

Oh, that nasty Baby Boomer "me" generation again.

Who are the generations that were born before and after the nasty Baby Boomers who have stopped the Obama Nation? Hmmmmm?

[Fiddlstix]

Click the Pic

[USAF70]

Maybe I'm misinterpeting something here, which I have been known to do, but I couldn't get past "The Hysterical Style Baby Boomers — the ungrateful-est generation" without my emotions getting the best of me. What about the 55,000 plus names engraved on a wall dedicated to the men and women who died for no reason. Most of these folks were Baby Boomers. Maybe Hanson meant to exclude those of us that served to defend our Constitutional Republic during the Nam war from his 'ungrateful-est' remark. Let's see, Hanson was born in 1953 that would have made him 18 years old in 1971 and the draft didnt' end till 1973. Oh, sorry, I see where he was hiding in college. The man (and I use that term loosely) ought to look in the mirror when he calls us 'ungrateful'. I hope he is grateful at least for the men and women of his generation that died so he was free to write as he pleases. I'd just as soon slap this punk up side the head. Now that I have that out of my system, could someone tell be what the rest of the article was all about!!

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The guy who said the sky is not falling did not sell very many copies of his book, nor did anyone care to watch his TV show.

Pretty much.

You do remember that just a few months ago people were running around screaming that it was the end of the world because they "couldn't find rice in the stores."

Now that there is abundant rice in the stores, including in the few areas where panic buying caused the temporary shortage in the first place, they are on to the next big panic.

Personally I think they just like the drama.

[TAdams8591]

"We are witnessing a new hysterical style, in which the Baby Boomer “me generation” that now runs America jettisons knowledge of the past and daily proclaims that each new development requires both a radical solution and another bogeyman to blame for being mean or unfair to them.

We haven’t seen such frenzy since the Y2K sham, when we were warned to stock up on flashlights and bottled water as our nation’s computers would simply shut down on January 1, 2000 — and with them the country itself."

AGREED!

But the left led by Obama needs a big crisis, so they can go more socialist and take over more of our lives and our economy.

[dr_lew]

Wait a minute. 1953? YOU’RE A BOOMER ! YOU’RE A BOOMER!

... what? ... NO, I’M NOT HYSTERICAL !

[ThePythonicCow]

I also served in the Air Force, from 1970 through 1974 (based at MacDill AFB, Tampa, Florida, and at Ko Kha Air Station, Lampang, Thailand.)

I do not take offense at Hanson's characterization of our generation. You and I are in the minority. Many in our generation were unwittingly spoiled by their parents, the Greatest Generation, who having been raised in the Depression and and fought and worked and survived through World War II, quietly dedicated their lives to seeing that their children didn't have to go through what they went through.

It is ok by me if Hanson describes our generation as ungrateful. No such characterization ever describes all of a generation, rather just the most dominant or distinguishing characteristics of it.

I think even you would have to grant that the political leaders of our age who have ascended to power in Washington are for the most part not those of us who served, but rather those who marched in protest, and spat on us when we returned.

Those who are in power, such as President Bush, who did serve honorably, have been (in my estimation) neutered by a Leftist press and Congress, and by a corrupt Wall Street. In particular, I did not get the feeling that Bush was speaking for himself when he read various announcements on the current financial problems over the last two months. He looked to me more like a hostage reading a statement prepared by his captors, while a (metaphorical) gun was pointed at his head.

I salute you.

[DB]

There's always exceptions.

For example conservatives dump on California all the time. In whole it is a liberal state that is destroying itself. But if you look closer there are many conservatives here as well. Just like the founder/owner of this Web site. But their aren't enough to counteract the hard left.

“Baby Boomers” are similar. Obviously there are a lot of “good ones”. But there aren't enough to counteract the damaged caused by the rest of them.