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Hope You Die Before You Get Old
As a Baby Boomer, I'm sure not encouraging generational warfare in America. I have everything to lose from such a battle.
On the other hand, though, as a political analyst, I can hardly believe we're not seeing it.
Never has it been so manifestly logical. Never would it be so thoroughly deserved. And yet, never has it been so astonishingly absent from the playing field of American politics.
I grew up in a period of generational conflict. "Never trust anyone over thirty", "Hope I die before I get old", etc. But I have to say that my generation got a way better deal from our parents than we're leaving for our kids.
Sure, our parents bequeathed us Vietnam and Nixon. But I think those politics were a matter more of naivete, really, rather than malice or greed. I remember how my own parents reacted to the war and to Watergate. Having struggled collectively through the Depression, and having fought the good fight of World War II, I think they were wholly unprepared for the levels of deceit and callous indifference to harm they came inescapably to find that their government was capable of. This was an existential challenge of the kind we jaded Boomers can probably never appreciate. They were true believers, and they were rattled to the core when Toto pulled back the curtain. Their children, on the other hand, were raised to become cynics, for whom no such political crime can ever quite surprise us.
And it's funny, too (though certainly not hah-hah funny), to think of how our generation - as much as you can speak of such a thing without falling into stereotypes worthy only of some PBS pledge-break docudrama - how we mocked the materialism of our parents. At one level, we were right to do so. Big cars with tail-fins were not exactly means for enrichment of the soul. No one was ever gonna transcend the material world and get to nirvana by purchasing a TV set and watching the latest episode of Ponderosa (in living color!). But, on the other hand, we might have been a whole lot more charitable too. Given where they came from, and what they'd been through, it was not so outrageous for them to seek a little prosperity and comfort. Moreover - on the other other hand - there's that whole nagging hypocrisy thing. The truth is that the rocket-fueled materialism of their kids makes Mom and Dad's modest suburban house with the single TV in the living room seem awfully quaint by comparison. Today, if there isn't a satellite-fueled TV in every room of your McMansion (and, of course, your cars as well), with a DVD player and game box hooked up to each, Child Protective Services might well be dispatched to cart your kids away in order to protect them from neglect.
But even if the Greatest Generation wasn't so great when it came to some of the items higher up on Maslow's laundry list, their kids - the Boomers - could only dream of being as devoted parents as were their own. Indeed, if there's any one great crime for which the World War II generation may be most guilty, it is the raising up of the most narcissistic, self-centered, self-aggrandizing crop of kids ever. In China they call the analogous generation the Little Emperors. I guess we're a bit too self-reverential for even that little bit of comedic introspection. Just the same, though, not for nothing are we known as the Me Generation. To get a sense of our sense of ourselves, just look at the two presidents we've contributed to the pantheon: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Of the latter nothing need be said that could meaningfully add anything to the eight years of experiencing this president's capacity for self-indulgence and his unparalleled sense of entitlement. As for Monsieur Clinton, he is said to have lamented, especially after 9/11, the fact that no major crisis occurred on his watch, so that he could join Lincoln and FDR and Washington among the greatest presidents of all time. Now, if I sat down for six weeks trying to think of the most self-centered sentiment I could conceive of in all the world, I doubt seriously I could top that one. Imagine wishing that thousands of people could die in order to enhance your reputation for the history books. And this after you've already had the privilege of serving two terms in the most exclusive position in the world.
Gee, what a legacy we've left in presidential politics. But it only gets worse if we consider the more general picture. I cannot think of a single time in American history where one generation left their children such a stunningly large and complete a mess to clean up.
The fiscal part of it is astonishing, though only the most visible element. A wrecked economy that may sink below the depths of the Great Depression is just the latest contribution. But even before that, economists have been predicting that today's young people will be the first generation in American history to be less well off than their parents. That doesn't even account for the nation's crumbling infrastructure, which has been almost completely neglected for thirty years, so that we could party now and pay later. It also doesn't include bills encumbered as Baby Boomers begin to retire and demand their promised Social Security and Medicare. These would be almost impossible to meet by virtue of demographic and rising healthcare factors alone. But we might have had a chance at doing so had we set aside the revenues coming in all these last decades while Boomers were working, for use at the time when the payers would became the payees, en masse. But, of course, that would have meant raising taxes or spending less - and we can't have that! - since we've been using that money instead to pay for general budget expenses.
Or, should I say, to not pay for general budget expenses? Could you imagine parents so reckless that they would party themselves into a drunken stupor by stealing the funds from their children? I'm not talking about burning through the inheritance, which, after all, is the parents' money to do what they want with. No, I'm talking about spending the money the kids have saved themselves for their own college education, or for a down-payment on a house. Outrageous, eh? Well, guess what? That's exactly what the Baby Boomers did. Because they wanted all the government services they got, plus the tax cuts that put a little extra jingle in their pockets, plus the luxury of being so stupid and ill-informed that they didn't have to grapple with the questions of where that tax ‘cut' money was really going, or how utterly bogus were the administration's claims about its policies, especially concerning the hugely expensive Iraq war. Put it all together and it equates to living well beyond your means. And when you do that, there are only so many ways to deal with the difference in what you're spending versus what you're bringing in. Cue the kids here.
The math is astonishing. The current amount of the national debt is a staggering 10.667 trillion dollars, and climbing fast (indeed, it has already risen substantially since I typed that number). Let's leave aside for the moment that it is rising every year with each annual deficit - which some people now think could be a dramatically record-breaking trillion dollars next year - added to the pile. And let's also leave aside the fact that each of those dollars are borrowed, and are thus accruing additional liability every day in the form of interest. If we just take the current debt, and divide it by the number of payroll workers in America (about 150 million), that means each worker's share of the existing debt is $71,113. Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say a worker has a job pulling down fifteen bucks per hour in pay. At that rate, they would have to work 4,741 hours to do nothing but pay off the amount that has been borrowed in their names, without their assent, and just to cover only what has been loaned so far to date - not counting new additions to the pile each day, and not counting accruing interest. At forty hours a week, that's 2.37 years of someone's life. In fact, that's 2.37 years of 150 million people's lives. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine going to someone and saying "I'm going to force you to work over two years of your life in some job you probably don't like, so that I don't have to"? Because that's exactly what this represents: Baby Boomers refusing to live within their means and desperately turning to their own children to facilitate the parents' irresponsibility. Parents stealing more than two years of their children's lives, to add two years of play time to their own. Unreal.
But, of course, economics are only the beginning of the story, and not even the worst of it. Imagine a meteor was headed to Earth, and there was a way to avoid the destruction of the planet, with little pain or sacrifice involved in doing so. Imagine if instead you did nothing and let the planet be destroyed That's what the global warming crisis and our reaction to it looks like. The only good news here for our generation - and especially for our generation of Americans - is that our maximal stupidity will probably guarantee that there are no historians left around in the future to call us out as the single generation throughout the entire history and pre-history of the species that caused infinitely more damage to ourselves and our host planet than all the others combined. The one that ended the game. What an honor, eh? And haven't we just been wonderful to our kids in this regard? Because we couldn't be bothered to switch to electric cars instead of gasoline, or insulate our houses, we are taking the Earth we were fortunate enough to inherit as our home and giving them Mercury instead.
That's something to be proud of, ain't it? Then there's also foreign policy to consider. America before Bush was no great shakes when it came to our relations with the rest of the world, although we somehow managed to engender a fair amount of good feelings, despite ourselves. We certainly did some good things out there in the world, but we also supported every two-bit dictator who would play ball with our corporate interests, and opposed every real democratic government that would not. Marcos, the Shah, Pinochet, Diem, apartheid South Africa, Saddam - the list is endless. But never, despite all that, has this country been as reviled in the world as it is now, nor ever more deservedly so. In addition to undermining the Anti-Ballistic Missile, Kyoto, International Criminal Court and Geneva Convention treaties, the United States now stands four-square for the principles of unjustified military aggression, invasion of sovereign states, and torture. True, most of us never wanted any of that. But then most of us never did a damn thing about it, either.
As a result, this is just one more way in which we've handed our children a raw deal. In this case, we've made them hated in much of the world, just for being Americans. Not only did we spend their time and money, we've spent their good will for them too. And - according to our own intelligence agencies - we've created a farm system abroad which has been busy generating droves of anti-American terrorists. It is very possible, therefore, that our children will die tomorrow in terrorist attacks that were directly precipitated by our laziness today in curbing the gross excesses of a disastrous administration. You'd almost think we lived in a Stalinesque dictatorship of the most repressive sort, given our disinterest in using the tools readily available to us to replace or even stymie a government gone insane. Who would think, looking at the mass violent crime called Iraq committed in our name, and using our tax dollars - a crime that we stood by and watched happen - that we actually had the power to do something about this? Who would think that we live in country where a president can be impeached for as little as lying about getting a blow job? And yet we did nothing. Shame on us. My god, shame on us.
We could go on and on here. How broken is our educational system? How obscenely twisted is that corporate business enterprise masquerading as our healthcare system, a beast only incidentally concerned with keeping our country well? How messed up is American foreign policy in the Middle East, not even counting Iraq or Iran? How bankrupt are our societal values when everyone knows who Britney and Brad are, but probably not even one in ten could name the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court? How jive is our commitment to equality of opportunity (let alone actual equality), when we fund our schools through property taxes, with absolutely predictable results? How dishonest can one society be, when it deploys more mercenaries than soldiers, woefully abuses the National Guard and the Reserves, hides the bodies coming home in caskets, avoids a draft, cuts taxes and deficit spends, all to prevent citizens from having to think about a war that would instantly be massively unpopular in the absence of such ruses? How breathtakingly paranoid are we, and how devoid of the most basic skills of diplomacy, that we spend more money on ‘defense' than every other country in the world - about 195 of them - combined? How fundamentally deluded at the wholesale level are we that it would be effectively impossible for an atheist to be elected president? How shamefully lazy are we that - even in 2008 - a third of us still didn't bother to vote, and the rest of us tolerate an electoral system frequently designed to suppress turnout?
And so on, and so on. Like I said, we could go on and on here.
To me, it's shocking that one generation could be so blatantly irresponsible as to leave such a broken system to its children. It's one thing to exploit other people, and - as much as I loathe racism or sexism or colonialism - it's a little easier for me as a social scientist to wrap my head around the idea of abusing others whom we first take care to differentiate, objectify and demonize on the basis of some arbitrary primordialist factor. But our own kids? Wow. And, actually, it's far worse than that. Using the term ‘irresponsible' here to describe what has happened is far, far too generous. This is not a case of negligence. This was a knowing theft, and our own children were the victims. While they slept, late at night, we crept into their rooms, stole the piggy bank, smashed it to pieces, then used the proceeds to buy some leisure time for sipping beer and watching "American Idol", or some bullets to destroy the lives of an innocent Iraqi family somewhere. Yep. No doubt about it. It's the feel-good story of the century, my friends.
What is most astonishing about the whole thing is that I detect almost nothing in the way of anger from the victims. When I try to talk to my students about how my generation is ripping off their generation, somehow I'm always the angriest guy in the classroom, by far. Probably I should just keep my mouth shut, eh? I mean, I've paid into Social Security since I was sixteen years old, and I'd like it to be there when I'm an old geezer, unable any longer to fool some hapless university into paying me to scandalize yet another generation with my Maoist, anticlerical, sexually deviant, radical environmentalist revolutionary dogma. I'm okay with their generosity, but, to be totally truthful, I wouldn't exactly blame the next generations for saying "Screw you, pal. You guys had your party already, and we're not paying for it twice. Fund your own freakin' retirement." God knows we have that coming.
Whether we get it or not is another question. Societies - especially those as diverse as the United States - can develop political cleavages along all sorts of different lines. In Canada, it's linguistic. In Northern Ireland, it's religious. In Mexico, it's ethnic. In Italy, it's geographic. There is no reason that, in America, it couldn't be generational, just as it once was not so long ago.
No reason, that is, except that nobody seems to be mobilizing along those lines. I do see something of a youth consciousness reawakening, especially with the figure of Barack Obama on the horizon, seemingly having the same effect on young people that John Kennedy once did. But, to the extent that it exists - which isn't much - it seems very benign in its content. Perhaps the young folk of today are all post-ideological, like Obama, sick of the divisiveness and the consternation and the battles that animated their parents and grandparents for so long (if only they knew what was purchased for them with the blood, sweat and tears of those battles). Whatever the reason, though, it's as hard for me to envision them shouting out "Never trust anyone over thirty" as it is for me to envision them just shouting out at all. That doesn't seem to be a part of their makeup.
But the ingredients are there, I'd say, for a generational schism in American politics, if somebody wants to come along to pick up that particular ball and run with it. Not only is there plenty of legitimate cause for anger, there is also a yawning ideological divide opening up. Much as young folks may not necessarily want to construe themselves in ideological terms, they seem nevertheless to be considerably to the left of their elders. A look at the demographic data following the election shows rather emphatically that age was one of the best predictors of the vote. The younger you were, the more likely you were to vote Obama. Moreover, Democratic Party registrations among the youngest voters in America absolutely overwhelm those for Republicans. They may not be thinking in left-right terms, per se, but it is clear that they are rejecting the Republican Party. And not just because they don't like the sound of the name, either, or because McCain came off like the dinosaur he is. Especially on social issues - the red meat and absolute sine qua non of the GOP base - this generation is saying no thanks to prejudice, hatred, religious control and sexual regulation across the board. But if one were to eliminate those items from today's Republican Party, there'd be almost nothing left remaining in the convention hall, apart from a few gun lobbyists and the occasional, stray, left-over neocon cheerleading for another war somewhere ("Freakin' Burkina Faso, I tell you, they're a huge threat to our national security!").
Don't get me wrong - I'm not predicting generational warfare in America. And, trust me when I say that I hope it doesn't happen. Apart from the fact that this country needs another schism like it needs another Bush for president, I personally have everything to lose and nothing to gain if younger Americans start telling older Americans that it's long past time the Me Generation started thinking in terms of being the We Generation, and learned to share a bit.
If that happens, I hope they are at least more gracious and sympathetic to us than we ever were to them. But I'll certainly understand it if they're not.
Because, I'll tell you what. If I was a twenty-something right now, I'd be pissed.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
40 Comments so far
Show Allokfalcon
After a bow in the direction of avoiding stereotyping, this author does just that, and most unfairly. If you don't believe that everybody born in a zodiacal month shares the same characteristics, you may be quite sure that everybody born in a ten-year period does not. By the time I was in my late twenties, we were already being out-sourced, part-timed, and shorn of benefits at work. For many of us, life has been far from the upper-middle-class stereotype of baby boomers. We've worked, loved, and struggled to do right by our families and our nation.
And we've been as horrified as any other generation also present during these years to see what materialism, ignorance, and greed have done to the nation and the world. Many of us have fought to help and to educate younger people, finding no generation much more virtuous than the others.
The last thing we need now is to be set against each other, whether according to race, religion, or age. You would not say all these things against a race or religion, I hope, insisting that all of "them" (or "us")are responsible for the troubles we face now. It incites anger against people who do not deserve it, in a time when we all must come together in mutual support. This is a harmful and, I think, dangerous article.
The title of this essay would make a great Grand Slogan when the Republicans run Bobby Ginmill and Sarah Palin, or Sarah Palin and Bobby Ginmill, in 2012:
VOTE REPUBLICAN AND HOPE YOU DIE BEFORE YOU GET OLD.
David Michael Green: This is easier than writing you a letter. I'm a bit older than the author. In re the title: when is "old"? Consider: some states make you "senior citizen" at 60, the Social Security System is 62 l/2 and many of us have had parents in their 90s while we were in our 60s. That's a "long" old. I think the article is in need of shortening.
Question: how many people did the author interview to find out if they are angry? Not sure I'd count students, as they rely on the professor for a grade, unless it's done as an anonymous survey without handwriting or email urls. The media does stories about women without every interviewing women or having women on the tv show, who are talking about women, or writing the articles about women and abortion or other issues about women. How many old people does David Michael Green know?
On the question of generational warfare and social security: I refer the author and all to the writings of John Hess, not long ago deceased, who as journalist blasted the Republicans for promoting the myths of social security running out and the other myth:that the young have to carry the old on their backs. We all paid into the system. And those who didn't work are entitled to live, in my opinion. Google John Hess. It is my profound annoyance, OK, anger, that NPR people picked up and ran with the myth about social security being in danger (IT's NOT).
I usually like your articles, but I have to object to this one. You are lumping all baby boomers together as if they all share this mentality of greed and consumption. What happened to the idealistic people who really wanted to change things? Who objected to war and consumption as a way of life? Weren't their efforts crushed and taken over by the corporate machine? Isn't it really that which has gotten us to the state we're in? Granted many if not most people seem to be asleep and accepting of this extremely destructive way of life. But they certainly aren't all boomers - they are of every generation. And it is the ideology of consumerism, of the corporate bottom line that has sourced and encouraged this greed and waste.
I think it is inaccurate and unfair to blame boomers as a group and I get sick of hearing it. My parents, who are of the "greatest generation" are utterly guilty of contributing to this mess, supporting the neo-con corporate ideology which is so destructive to the planet. It has been that belief structure which has done the greatest damage and which is hopefully beginning to fade, not the ideas of love, freedom and care for the planet espoused by many of the boomers.
Absolute drivel from DMG, again.
Not a single word about the treason being committed by the elite kleptocracy, the total class war now being pressed by the elites around the world.
Youth, what a shame it's wasted on the young.
Quoting David Michael Green; “If we just take the current debt, and divide it by the number of payroll workers in America (about 150 million), that means each worker's share of the existing debt is $71,113. Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say a worker has a job pulling down fifteen bucks per hour in pay. At that rate, they would have to work 4,741 hours to do nothing but pay off the amount that has been borrowed in their names, without their assent, and just to cover only what has been loaned so far to date - not counting new additions to the pile each day, and not counting accruing interest. At forty hours a week, that's 2.37 years of someone's life. In fact, that's 2.37 years of 150 million people's lives. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine going to someone and saying "I'm going to force you to work over two years of your life in some job you probably don't like, so that I don't have to.”
Actually it’s a hell of a lot worse, subtract from the $15.00 bucks an hour withholding taxes and a few pennies to pay for two hots and a cot and the worker would have to labor for an additional couple of years. Subtract transportation costs to and from work, child support, minimal health care and a cold beer on Saturday night and you’re up to the better part of a decade, actually this form of employment has a formal name...Indentured Servitude.
Quoting Green; “What is most astonishing about the whole thing is that I detect almost nothing in the way of anger from the victims. When I try to talk to my students about how my generation is ripping off their generation, somehow I'm always the angriest guy in the classroom, by far.”
Ah, I can still remember when I was young and invincible, were it not for the draft, Viet Nam and Nixon weed and pliable young lasses would has sufficed to peg my contentedness meter.
madhoosier:I think you should give George Bernard Show credit for what is my favorite line of his: Youth is wasted on the young. I read your last line and I feel your pain. I'm a bit older. Never too late to "follow your dream" as can. Maybe.
NYCartist,
Memory fades as we age, I remembered the gist of the quote but not the author, I should have googeled it,...As to pain, several years of severe arthritis pain in my hips, then two total hip replacements (one of which left me with ankle drop in my left leg) and two major belly surgeries, I've had about as much pain as I care to experience.
Madhoosier: I hear you. Sorry about the pain. Really sorry. I've got severe chronic illness for too long. As John Hess (journalist)said, "Aging is not for sissies.". I got ill in middle age, am officially a senior now. Our job is to survive as best we can. Good luck. Keeping putting your individual wisdom in comments. Each of us has had unique experience and learned as we got as far as we have, with overlaps as people.
It's not about generational warfare; it's social class warfare, the megarich against the rest. I don't identify with W because of his age...........
The wealthy looted the US and are demanding that everyone else pay up on bets they wrote. Screw 'em. Declare all monies issued by the PRIVATE federal reserve bank to be no longer legal tender and all debts in such currency void. Stock-holding corporations would become the immediate property of employees unless there were no employees at which point the members of the board share ownership. Then issue new money on a per-capita basis every year. Tax actual wealth, property, businesses, patents and income-earning intellectual property instead of labor.
There will be no foreclosure on the US because we would still have all those nuclear weapons we built during the cold war. The wealthy would have their mansions and their yachts but no incomes to support them because they don't work for a living. Nobody who has seven houses is really working for a living. Workers have trouble keeping up one house evenings and weekends.
Screw the debt. We can't pay so why pretend we're going to?
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Pangolin-
You have written the only comment in this thread with which I can agree with. NOTHING would be more satisfying than to dump the chess board onto the lap of the so called "elites" (criminals) and tell 'em to fuck off. We really do NOT have to continue "playing" these games...
Jeevee
WHY are we so mesmerized into destruction unto extinction of this world? SELFISHNESS. LACK OF GENUINE LOVE. EVERY individual can and must sacrifice their egomania and WAKE UP if we are to have a viable world!!!
My generation (in my twenties) is as much to blame as the Baby Boomers are; both are deeply plagued with a devastating type of ignorance that has been passed down though the ages. (although considering the 19sixties, I present the Baby Boomers with the Award for biggest sell out of all time)
The real bulk of the blame belongs with the political and corporate elites that horde societies resources at the expense of the masses, while propagating lies and half-truths in order to keep the idiotic public in line with it's selfish agenda. These A**holes will not end their tyranny when they deservedly die, but will pass it on to their A**hole children. So as stated by another It is predominantly class warfare.
What is needed is a major change of thought, into a mode that will rupture the social stratifications in America. But, a paradigm shift of this magnitude appears impossible given that the dominating trends of our culture continue to emphasize cut throat capitalism, and the alienation or elimination of any person with an unfortunately contrary disposition to it.
It is just like America to say to hell with those foreigners, we'll destroy ourselves.
DMG, please don't bash our audacious new reservoir of hope. God bless our shiny new AIPAC chimp!
Green really does go overboard here with stereotyping. As if ALL Boomers are equally guilty of all the charges he makes. Is it really our fault (I'm one) that Clinton and Bush are (barely) in our generation, and that they combined to essentially wreck the country and maybe the world? Is it the fault of Our Generation, by Green's analysis the worst in history, that the economy is collapsing on the heels of a criminal war?
Look at Obama, well-known for decrying the Baby Boomers and promising to move beyond all our reputed bickering, etc. He's poised to continue all the worst of Bush's policies, keep us in Iraq forever, expand further in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly bring it on in Iran. That's progress? That's responsible leadership unlike what we've seen in Boomers like Clinton and Bush? No, that's bullshit, and David Michael Green is smart enough to figure it out.
The problems we're leaving to our kids are not the sole and exclusive fault of everyone in the Boomer generation, despite an undisputed narcissism at its core. But every generation has its own narcissistic traits. The problems arise from institutional policies well in place before we came along, and many of us tried like hell to stop. Failing to stop them, does that make us guilty of all the behaviors Green accuses us of? He's a Boomer himself, so apparently he enjoys wallowing in cheap guilt.
The best among our generation haven't been able to stop the Clintons and Bushes, because we haven't had any fucking power to do so. Millions of people and dozens of organizations have tried for seven years to impeach Bush, and gotten nowhere. Is that our collective fault? When he isn't prosecuted for war crimes after he leaves office, will that too be the everlasting fault of the selfish Boomers? The forces of stasis, and protecters of the status quo, in this country are far greater than those of any kind of change, as Obama will discover. He isn't bringing change anyway, so it's a moot point. When we're still thrashing around self-destructively in Iraq and everywhere else in 2012, who will Green be blaming then? Obama's generation? The point is, blaming entire generations for anything is absurd and simple-minded. Pay attention to the political landscape, Green, not to ridiculous generational formulas that lead nowhere but sulking in the unproductive mea culpa corner.
I suppose all commentaries are generalizations of a sort Ephraim. What associations can be picked up from the context of Green’s argument to move beyond fault to potential remedies?
If the author is wondering why his students seem so passive, rather then being angry and rebellious over the mess their parents have made of the world, well, perhaps they are only waiting for "My Generation - Student Riot pt.2" to become avaliable on PS3 and Xbox 360!
(Parental advisory - the above title rated 'M' for mature audiances only, of course!)
"If you're not idealistic when you're young, you don't have a heart. If you're not nihilistic when you're old, you don't have a brain." - Sydlitz
perhaps some of you should read over mr. green's article one more time. seems to me, at least from what my monitor projects, that he's including himself in the generation of people who have helped create this mess. repeatedly he refers to "we" and "our generation." like it or not, it's the truth. frankly, i'm pissed and embarrassed at the mess we're leaving the next generation, and i don't even have children (for good reason, as the article clearly points out) to help share in their soon-to-be misery.
i question the importance of how many people the author interviewed to help determine where the level of anger in our society is at this point in time. if you aren't aware of the anger, then you're not in tune.
ivy, do you deny being a consumer?
lastly, ephraim, it's a bit premature to compare obama's presidential actions to 16 years worth of presidential actions by clinton/bush.
Overall I think this is more class warfare then generational warfare.
However, the Boomers do seem to be out of touch when it comes to how Generation X is struggling to get by with high student loans, the high cost of housing, and executive salaries being a zillion times higher then mid-level (Generation X) and entry level (Generation Y) workers. They seem not to notice and sometimes turn a blind eye to it. I remind my parents that my generation will probably be the first to live not as well off as their parents generation in this country and they say "don't worry you will be fine". Well my generation is not fine we are extremely worried about the debt burden and our futures and that of our children. Boomers need to start paying attention we need thier help to create a more just society right now.
I'm with Ephraim (and others) on this one! As I was born in the middle of WWII and not just after, technically I am not a Boomer, but I was a late starter and thus was influenced by the same social forces, including pot and acid and Dylan and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pete Seeger for God's sake and the ASSASSINATIONS of heroes in my formative years: The SIXTIES (and now that I am in my Sixties the pun is intended...).
Like we had nothing to do with getting LBJ to finally do the right thing on the Civil Rights front (BTW, I hated LBJ when he was in office, Viet Nam, but in retrospect he had it pretty much right on the Domestic Economics Front given the TIMES)? Or Medicare and Medicaid? Or with Nixon creating the EPA? Or Earth Day and the Environmental Movement? Does anyone remember Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring") and the ban on DDT? Does anyone remember Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and the collapse of new nuclear power? (Taxpayers will be paying for "decommissioning" the existing plants for literally centuries...)
Many of us in the Sixties fought hard and read a lot and organized and marched and wrote and anguished as others conspired against us to maintain the Corporate status quo. Perhaps we remain in denial on the true impact of the late Sixties ASSASSINATIONS (after JFK), but we were scared into a rethinking in the midst of Nixon's success with his "Southern Strategy" and spent the Seventies trying to find a different path. We came up with Jimmy Carter and ended up with Reagan! And the active destruction of the Democrat base. (Carter has been trying to make up for it ever since...)
So..., to cut to the chase, David Michael Green's "political science" in his above article is about as ahistorical as political science should ever get. He obviously found a "hook" for an article and ran with it. It is the wrong hook. I could write in equally condemning terms about how my parents (the so-called Greatest Generation) failed me and left me poor. What is needed is historical analysis of the structural failures and the strategic demands we now face. It's not that we didn't try to do the right thing, even in the face of excess. It's that we were misled, lied to, people in high places took advantage of our base instincts for capital advantage (another pun), and now they are systematically raping the world. "Globalism" means no "exceptionalism." Which means that ultimately we are all in this disaster together. Or, to quote Ben Franklin... 'Hang 'em high!'
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It wasn't the assassinations that screwed us. It was the 30 years of active treason by the Bush family that destroyed america. The selling of the US hostages to Iran in exchange for missiles by George H.W. Bush that got Reagan elected. The complicity of the corporate media in allowing Reagan to cut taxes for the wealthy in order to grow the national debt and call that "fiscal responsibility."
Once we get past the Clinton hiatus the Bush's were at it again. The complete cluelessness that greased the slide for the 9-11 attacks and the sudden appearance of Constitution destroying legislation. The anthrax attacks on Democratic US senators from inside the government security apparatus. The looting of the banks.
The young aren't active because when they hit the streets in their millions before the Iraq war they barely made the news. They knew they were facing a fascist regime that wasn't going to hesitate to gas them or shoot them. It didn't work and still doesn't. You can see the homeless population growing and Congress rushes to give money to the wealthy.
We're just beating the corpse of our civilization. It's brain dead. In spring we'll get the smell.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Here’s what you boomers did. You gave me a voice and a chance to make as much money as my white male friends. Although you didn’t pass the amendment, your generation gave me equal rights. In my high school, sports were male-only enclaves. When I was in college, a woman could be paid less than a man for the same job and I could be passed over for hiring because the boss said he wanted to hire a man. You changed this.
You also won equal rights for minorities, especially Afro-Americans. Give yourself credit.
And you taught us not to be afraid to speak out. You boomers don’t know what straightjacket political correctness really is. Let those of us who attended schools in the heyday of Joe McCarthy and the House of Un-American Activities tell you.
You did some good. But you didn’t realize all boomers would not agree with you. You were not prepared for the rise of the conservative right. We tried to warn you– we older brothers and sisters understood political seismic shifts.
Today you boomers think your children have a right to be angry. Those of us who are a bit older than you are don’t have angry kids. We have always been realists. We just elected one of our kids as president. Young people voted for him. And so did we older people. And so did a majority of you boomers.
So here’s what you boomers learned. We are in this together. You can’t take all the blame for the mess we are in and we aren’t going to give you all the credit for the good things that happened. We still need you. We need everyone. There work to be done. Let’s stop agonizing, roll up our sleeves and start fixing this world one more time!
Ephraim wrote:
The best among our generation haven't been able to stop the Clintons and Bushes, because we haven't had any fucking power to do so. Millions of people and dozens of organizations have tried....
COMMENT:
Millions of people? Not enough.
The population of the US is over 300 million. Ten percent of those walk lock step with the 1/2 of 1 percent that rule, another 10 percent benefits from the status quo anyway. That leaves the "bottom" 80 percent or some 240 million people to "try" to change the government.
Now, what paltry percentage of those 230 million showed up in the streets to protest anything. Ever? A million? or two?
What if a hundred million had taken to the streets or two hundred million?
The reason those that wish change have had no power is that the vast majority won't do what is necessary to affect change. They stay home. They go to the polls and vote for whomever in one of two parties the establishment puts forth as candidates. They vote based on 30 second spot adds.
Until the majority of the citizens choose knowledge over ignorance, choose to elect people the establishment is afraid of, choose to stop being incredibly lazy and get out and clog the streets to stop all commerce, to rout the criminals out of their buildings - the public buildings, stop giving the criminals their money, choose to take back the country that has been stolen from them, they will remain at the mercy of the criminals: the establishment.
The citizens of the United States have the government they allow.
The only way to change the US from within is to change its citizens and I don't think that will happen for generations if ever.
I believe the best hope for the world, and ultimately the average working people in the US, is for the other nations of the world to abandon the US economically. Some nations already are and I wish them and the wage slaves of the US the very best, even though most of the wage slaves are politically as stupid a people as you'll find on the planet.
Still, how can we justify our own right of citizenship if we don't at least try to educate the politically illiterate among us?
"ut I have to say that my generation got a way better deal from our parents than we're leaving for our kids."
Don't blame us. We got COINTELPROized, WODized, WOTized, corporate media propagandized, marginalized, raped, robbed, killed and demonized by the oligarchy. Blame the super-rich behind it all.
This may be the worst yet but as far as I'm concerned he did not go back far enough;it seems that "meism" has been part and parcel of our history and I'm 72.
WE;THE PEOPLE
We the people of the US of A have come to where, other peoples have been and some who still are.
We the people spend more on a warmongering war dept., misnamed the defense dept, than all the rest of the world by far.
We the people agree, for we do nothing, on the ongoing mayhem going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and where ever else we decide that people should do as we say , not as we do.
We the people think I or me is more important than “we” and act as if the rest of humanity and whatever else I or me can use no matter the cost to all of the “we” peoples or the environment is our due.
There can be more written but my heart wont let me and tears fall from my eyes but no one can see the ones that flow from my heart and soul for a “We the people” that went to I or me the people.
The future is our choice. Tony 10/13/08
Marie Antoinette is alleged to have said, of the poor who were rioting for bread, "Let them eat cake." Then came Ronald Reagan and his supply side economics, who convinced people they could have their cake and eat it, too. What the government has done collectively with massive deficit spending, people have done individually with subprime mortgages and credit cards. These are the same people who lecture the poor on "personal responsibility."
Alex
Why do we need to read negative thinking again? Would it be too much for us to ask for enlightening us to better ideas and solutions? We all can keep getting upset about spilled milk but what's done is done. Now, let's try to come up with better ideas to undo the damage and push for the better. If you keep subjecting readers to this, they'll keep thinking that liberals and progressives want to keep talking down America's future and then they'll vote against their future.
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
If you look at life expectancy statistics in some underdeveloped countries even today, you will see life as it was before this century, wherein the average lifetime is only 45 years long. Some people had more years of course, and some even fewer.
This is why there is an age bulge in developed countries now, and why there is not in underdeveloped ones, as in these latter the old are dead and gone. It is due to this prolonging of life only in the developed world. And as well, it is due to a lower birth rate; for having a baby in a developed country is expensive and women also have choice (whereas, not so much in underdeveloped countries... costs nothing because there is no doctor and no hospital, and women are cattle/children.)
But should we let 'god' or 'nature' kill off the old and sick and un-needed? I would hope we have progressed from this state, as our forebears would have wished for us. We must attain balance with the carrying capacity of this physical planet however, so, as we interfere with the 'natural order' of dying at 45, we must interfere with the fecundity of birth; that is, birth control must be universal and promoted. And babies must be appreciated and nurtured, not just churned out without planning, simply in order to replenish the herd. And the old should be cared for, appreciated, and respected. This will only happen with a new socio-economic system.
So that is why there is an age bubble now. It is because of the success of science, medicine, rationality, government utilities like water and sewer and garbage disposal and hospitals, social planning and welfare and social(ist) security, new technologies, and the discarding of tradition and superstition. We should use these same tools, socialist tools, after we toss out the troglodytes like billionaire Alan Greenspan and all his Randy kind, and also the CEOs that hide behind Greenspan's mighty Himalayaic pile of bullshit, while they rob the country blind.
Now, the question is, are the aged a burden? And have the old folks been selfish? Yes, these are both true postulates. however, everyone is selfish to a degree, and the old, who used to leave things the next generation would utilize, are utilizing their assets themselves now.
But this is common at every age, just listen to the tax whiners whinge about their taxes. They seem totally ignorant of the fact that, at this coutry's recent zenith of admiration in the world, the Top tax rate was about 90% through the 'Thirties, 'Forties, and even the Eisenhower 'Fifties. And Kennedy lowered it, but only to 75%, which it was through the 'Sixties, and 'Seventies. Reagan, the corporate-paid-shill-spokesman, lowered it to 50% and the red ink began. And now the Top rate is 35% OR EVEN a measley 15% for hedge-fund speculators and stock manipulators.
And now, if you include the recent secret backroom deals of the financiers/racketeers, our Federal government is right now in a debt hole of around $20 Trillion dollars. SO yeah, there are other considerations besides the older folks that have created Dubya's Domestic Fiascos, to go along with his War Fiascos. Everything that guy touches turns to crap. Even religion and capitalism. Even the very US of A.
But this is not the crux of the problem, because if you look at what is useful and what is not, most people NEED NOT WORK or could work far less, and this would make sense, BUT ONLY IF THE KLEPTOCRACY stops being greedy and power-hungry. Fat chance, I know, but still, there exists the reality of a Better World, if only people would cooperate, and not go every-monkey-for-itself.
Reference www.dieoff.org, or the economic book HEAVEN ON EARTH at Amazon. There are other ways, past the train wreck of dog-eat-dog capitalism and the dead dodos of fascism/commandcommunism. If only they are used. And if they are not, heaven help us all, for the path we are on leads off the cliff.
I'm a professional 58 year old white male and drive a sub-compact auto,
have no debt, and try to conduct my life as if the environment
mattered. I live in a community in which most of the people are
young enough to be my children, in other words, the generation that should
be enraged at the way I live, according to this article. I observe that, overwhelmingly, they drive oversize vehicles, whether SUVs, hummers, or huge pick-up trucks, eat at fast food restaurants (the evidence for this is in the amount of fast-food wrappings and bags I see littered around the community), and are serious shoppers who would make George W. proud. Conversations with these
younger people seem to consist of what redundant junk they have bought, where they bought it, and where they hope, next, to do their shopping. Maybe I should be enraged at what the generation born since 1980 has been doing to our country and the world.
"As a Baby Boomer, I'm sure not encouraging generational warfare in America. ... never has it been so astonishingly absent from the playing field of American politics."
Sigh. Even when you boomers try to get it right, you get it wrong. The generation-gap was not a universal, age-old feature of politics. Far from it: it was a one-off event occurring in your generation and your generation alone, caused by the invention and commercialisation of the contraceptive pill. The generation gap was *primarily* about sex.
So kindly stop assuming that the unique historical and social events of your time apply everywhere. Nothing funnier than seeing baby boomers be shocked that kids these days still listen to ABBA and 80's shoulderpad music. Of course they do - it was only your generation which (for excellent reason) repudiated everything to do with their elders.
Thank you to the other posters here for questioning the stereotyping of the "Boomer Generation." I was born on the crest of the "baby-boom," and the significant fact is that I did not choose to be born under these circumstances, and neither did millions of others: we did not choose to be in the boomer generation. Furthermore, overpopulation is most likely the root of our serious and growing environmental and warfare problems, and I never chose to be part of those. Perhaps we are actually justified in blaming the older generation for the baby-boom: they did all that unprotected sex for us to get here. Many if not most "boomers" in the U.S. have had smaller families than their parents, and that is good, but the baby-boom was going on in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia too, and we are witnessing the dire and tragic consequences of that. As with Ephraim, I have tried to live very frugally, driving a very small car, while I see much younger people driving unneeded SUVs and trucks; now THAT's narcissism.
When you use terms like "we the people," please be aware that "we the people" are very much divided in various ways. Apparently 47% of "we the people" voted for McCain/Palin. That is almost half. I am not leaving any debt for my children and grandchildren, for I have none, but I am deeply troubled for the children living now and those to come.
Thomas Marx:I'm a bit older than you. One point: birth control was illegal until into the 1960s, or later, except a bit earlier in NYS. I just googled, "when did birth control become legal?" and found : birth control turns 40. June 6, 2005. Supreme Court decision, Griswold v Conn. on www.guttmacher.org I'm old enough to remember going to Planned Parenthood in those days.
The ruling class are trying to set one generation against another. They always have. We must be united against the richest 1%
The schism waiting to storm this country is going to be geographical. Look at the make up of red and blue states. Religion? That will probably be the surface reason, like slavery was the surface reason for the Civil War.
In defense of the author, re the Boomers, WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU WHEN THESE THINGS WERE KICKING OFF?!?
Ahem... No one really has much excuse since, as a whole, we keep putting the same crooks in charge of the government and corporations. I vote third party as much as the ballot will allow, but I must take some of the blame for not shouting loud enough to help wake people up, although, I really don't know what else I could have done.
I think that is the point that the author was making. And now the same question to everyone now. Like Chalmers Johnson has said, we can be excused for the fact that Bush became president in 2000, but enough people voted for him in 2004 to make it close enough to steal that essentially we made his (mis)rule legitimate and thus we condoned it. And yes, we've been trying for eight years to impeach the lot of them but we are still putting the same people back in office who have taken impeachment off the table.
From Gen X to Gen Red
From Gen X to Gen Red
From miss strikes to missed pie
to barely american pie
from Mad And Frightened In America
to the chosen race... to saving face
as I pledge allegiance to the Mafia of the world
and to the empire for which it rules
for the good old greedy fossil fuel fools
and robber baron banker tools
I hear a stealthy hiss
as I look into the abyss
was that flatulence or eructation ?
or a little uncontrolled elation....
perhaps just Gen Red stagflation
you know a methane burp
really light... like collateral bubbles
that go glurp
I hear the super race plans weapons in space
could it be that the saw, ‘better off red than dead’
is now: ‘please get more and more in the red...
then choose death!
The perfect universal nationalist storm is brewing
The baron strike dons are stewing
Color code me led
from Gen X to Gen Red
From miss strikes to missed pie
to barely american pie
"As for Monsieur Clinton, he is said to have lamented, especially after 9/11, the fact that no major crisis occurred on his watch, so that he could join Lincoln and FDR and Washington among the greatest presidents of all time."
And you think the Baby Boom generation is the only one to have produced such self-inflated pompous asses such as Bill Clinton? Right...
All generations produce sociopaths who aspire to greatness at the expense of anyone and everyone else. Until humanity can figure out a way to keep these people in check and govern ourselves in a truly democratic manner, we will relive the past.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
I sense the author's expectation of anger is simply a projection of his own guilt, and it would be more productive for him to dig a little deeper into the dynamics of social change. Anger, and the Marxist struggle between opposing forces, is obsolete, and I believe the younger generation understand that. Many of them haven't projected their anger onto their parents, they have internalized it into suicide and homicide. However, many other young people are reaching for solutions, inventing and creating new social structures. They are showing us old geezers by their example how to be response-able. They know intuitively that we are all in this together.
As a boomer myself, I want to apologize to the gen xers and other later generations for all the false promises that boomers have made. It is the boomer generation that ran the US economy into the ground. It is the boomer generation that refuses to learn the lessons of Vietnam. It is the boomer generation that did drugs in the past only to advocate laws to jail your children for the same thing. It is the boomer generation that has embraced the prison-industrial complex. It is the boomers that whine about global warming and at the same time driving SUV's and opposing mass transit. For all this and anything left out I just want to say I AM SORRY FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART!!!!
To winning ticket---
Reaganism ultimately "ran the US economy into the ground." Reagan was not a boomer.
The drug czars of the American empire have not been boomers (McCaffrey et al).
As for driving SUVs, this is a huge sociological issue hardly available for treatment here; suffice to observe that people drive them for a host of different reasons.
Meanwhile, I know not a single person in my rather wide range of associations who opposes mass transit. The real question is If they had it would they use it?" In the current economic downturn use of mass transit is up dramatically, but when was the last time you heard about that in The News?
As for the "prison-industrial complex," it is itself a crime. Incarceration for profit can lead only to more incarceration, inherently an abomination. But how does this relate to the boomers? At one level or another this has been going on for centuries. Boomers have been leading advocates of exposing this crime.
You apologize too easily, as though you have some personal guilt where some transferrence is involved. Generational guilt is possible, but so is personal guilt. Not good to conflate the two.
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