Posted on 07/03/2020 7:36:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
Americans naturally tend to think of their presidents in terms of generations, like they do with their families. This may have started with the news that former Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, half a century to the day the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence they jointly drafted.
The Founding Generation (birth years 1732-1767) held the presidency for nearly half a century, from 1789 to 1837. Five were adults during the American Revolution. Two had childhood memories of it: John Quincy Adams of watching the gunfire smoke from Bunker Hill at age 7, Andrew Jackson of being slashed by a British officer's sword at age 14.
Within a month after Jackson left office, 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln gave his Springfield Lyceum speech, venerating the founders and warning of mob rule. He was part of the antebellum generation (birth years 1773-1809), which held office from 1837-69, grappled with the fissiparous issue of slavery expansion and, after a bloody civil war, abolished the "peculiar institution."
The Civil War generation (birth years 1821-1843) all fought in that war, except Grover Cleveland paid $300 not to do so. Regarded by historians as undistinguished, these presidents presided over amazing technological innovation and tumultuous economic growth in the years 1869-1901. They were followed by the post-Civil War generation (birth years 1856-74), all college graduates, who led America's emergence as a world power in 1901-33.
Each generation held the presidency for 30-some years, as did the three presidents (birth years 1882-90) who served as subordinates in the First World War and commanders in the Second World War, holding office from 1933 to 1961.
There was more turnover for the seven presidents of the G.I. generation (birth years 1908-24), who served from 1961 to 1993, each with World War II military experience. One was murdered; one resigned; and two were defeated for reelection. But after floundering in the late 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s, they presided over revived, broad-based economic growth and nearly bloodless victory in the Cold War.
How have their successors, the baby-boom generation (birth years 1946-1964), done? They started off when some thought we'd reached "the end of history," with democratic capitalism not seriously challenged. Its first three presidents each served eight years -- the first such trio since the political allies Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe -- and followed elite consensus policies on immigration and trade.
But some consensus policies imploded. Subsidizing minority homebuying produced the 2008 financial collapse and lingering slow growth afterward. The non-enforcement of immigration restrictions produced at least marginal downward pressure on low-skill wages and widening economic inequality.
The trade opening to China produced cheap consumer goods but didn't move China toward rule-based conduct or anything like democracy. And it facilitated the spread of coronaviruses, at first with minimal impact but this year with the devastating COVID-19 killing thousands and shutting down much of the economies of Europe and North America.
The arguable failures of consensus trade and immigration policies fueled the oddball candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016. So did dynastic politics: Trump used Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton as foils in the primaries and general election.
Baby-boomer self-righteousness played a role, too -- Trump's stubborn refusal to admit error or avoid trivia; Barack Obama's and Clinton's apparent attempts to delegitimize Trump, in contrast with their predecessors' choices not to delegitimize the close presidential winners in 1960 and in 2000.
Now, after nearly 30 years, the boomers won't go away. Donald Trump, the third president born in 1946, is running again. Joe Biden, born December 1942, is just a month away from boomer status (defined by William Strauss and Neal Howe's prescient 1991 book, "Generations," as starting in birth year 1943). While 37 percent of 2016 Republican voters backed post-boomer candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, only 4 percent of Democratic primary and caucus voters backed Gen Xers Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang this year.
That doesn't mean that younger generations have no influence. The G.I. generation maintained its hold on the White House after 1960s and 1970s ghetto riots and campus rebellions. But it ceded control of the culture to boomer rebels, as Ronald Reagan lamented in his 1989 farewell address.
Similarly, as boomers keep hold of the presidency, many politicians and corporate execs seem ready to cede control of the culture to the Black Lives Matter movement and campus radicals. They're apparently cool with statue smashing -- unbothered by the resemblance to the Taliban's smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas -- and with trashing American history, as in The New York Times' 1619 Project.
Happy Fourth of July.
I posted this a couple of days ago. Fits here too:
Our traditions, that are very important indeed, are to celebrate Columbus Day in honor of the man most people in this Country see as having “discovered” America. History is often a bit hazy, and the days celebrated not an exact replica of the original events, but they are nevertheless very important to the traditions and customs of this Country and have been for years and years. If new U.S. hating immigrants from third world countries, dissidents, terrorists, anarchists, Muzzies, socialists, and general haters of our Country do not like the holidays this Country has chosen to honor, then they can get the hell out and find another host country with more freedoms than ours.
Such as one where they will have the freedom to choose their own holidays, maybe Black Lives Matter” Day, or erect a statue of George Soros. Good luck finding such a country. I want a “White Lives Matter” Day, but I’ll be dead before I ever see it. This Country fought a Civil War to end slavery, and that war was fought primarily by WHITE men. But the “original sin” of slavery, commonplace in the history of the world at that time, long after most prejudice has been wiped out in this Country, is still continually used as a cudgel against “Whitey” in order to obtain more and more privileges and perks. Many of them against poor white men and women who get lesser access to federal and state grants, loans and awards to White students at colleges, and have lost job opportunities only because they are White. My how the pendulum ever swings. How do you think minority overlords will treat a White minority, hmmm? The same way as those they continually accuse of prejudice now? You bet they will once in power. Payback time.
If all things on a resume are even only somewhat equal, the default is to hire the minority, regardless of skill sets. I know what I am speaking of here firsthand from where I worked (a major State University where I was involved with the hiring process in my Department; and also I was in the private sector for many years). Whitey is the endangered species here.
Blacks are about a 14% minority in this Country, but recently you would think they are an 80% majority. They aren’t, they never will be, and many hate that, along with many of them just hating Whites, period. Those Whites who have bent over backward to right wrongs over many years now. And do you know whom I blame for the current turmoil in the Black community?
It’s white communist/socialist elites stirring the pot, along with elitist tech companies infected by White guilt and the corrupt MSM, this year in particular because it is an election year and they hate Trump who has been busy overturning many of their Obama Admin socialist policies, rules and regulations, perks and freebies, and improving our economy to the best it ever has been prior to the coming of the Chinese Coronavirus.
Trump will do it again if his enemies’ numbers are not quite large enough as a voting block yet, or this Country’s recent demographics haven’t nullified the dreaded White man’s majority yet. That will happen soon enough, but maybe not quite yet, if Trump is lucky.
White elitists and anarchists jumped on the BLM bandwagon, hijacked it, and appealed to an irrational mindset among too many Blacks that there is systemic racism in this Country. But both the White elitists and BLM have pushed way too far, and the racism that had pretty much been eradicated will probably make a comeback because of the actions of this year’s illogical, irrational protesters afoot throughout our land, and the attempt by these domestic terrorists to destroy our customs, tear down our statues, and ruin our melting pot culture so they can remake our Country in their own commie/socialist image. They hate us.
I for one am sick to death of it, and I will arm myself and defend my personal castle and our Country’s traditions against these traitors and their brainwashed, stupid, emotionally based pea brain followers. May they all rot in their own personal versions of hell.
This once wonderful Country is on the precipice of internal destruction, one election away from being a socialist hellhole like Venezuela and Cuba. You need go no farther for examples of what socialist dictators can create in their versions of Utopia. Maybe this Country needs for Biden to win so they can get a bird’s eye view of how a thriving economy and culturally mature Country can go downhill in the blink of an eye.
If Biden wins, our way of life will be destroyed so quickly it will make one’s head spin. I’m older; I won’t be around that long to view much of the crumbling of our Country, but I feel very sorry for the younger generations who will suffer under the yoke of socialism/communism and a dictatorship of the Left, not by their choice.
Actually, the elitist Libs had better sleep with one eye open because the perpetually aggrieved minority, once in power, will come for them next.
The “clenched fist” is a threat of violence and should be banned from demonstrations and from signage.
Restructuring society to avoid offending the easily offended only emboldens them, teaches them that being offended is power, and makes them easier to find excuses to be offended.
Give in to the offendsensitive, the PCdiots, and they won’t stop being offended till you’ve lot your whole culture, anything you value will ultimately offend them.
Blacks have already been surpassed in numbers by Hispanics, and eventually the same will happen with Asians - and they know it. It isn’t just demonstrated in these groups populating our cities, but replacing them in the workplace as well. The end of “cash for kids” as part of the 1996 welfare reform seriously reduced the black birthrate (despite all the posturing at the time that they weren’t breeding for bigger checks).
Most of the Whites they seek to “punish” are escaping by simply passing away without breeding at all; they leave no children behind to deal with this nonsense, maybe just four-legged friends (with much shorter lifespans) for friends to care for afterwards.
It says a lot that you can watch a commercial offering to help feed little Third World children for donations of $19.99 per month, and within the same commercial block see another offering to care for dogs for the same price. Who is the target market of the second commercial?
Bump
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