The Top 40

Gerard,

The Sixties will eventually go away. The people in charge now will someday no longer be in charge, and the people coming after them (I was born in '62) are increasing unsympathetic to the Boomers' various manias. We've have just about enough of them-- both the manias and the flesh-puppets they animate.

When the change comes, I think it's going to be abrupt. The economic disaster the Boomers are leaving behind will, like the gallows, wonderfully concentrate the mind.

It's just too damn bad that we'll have to wait another ten or twenty years for the bastards to either retire or, failing that, simply die off.

(Nothing against you, personally, Gerard. You wised up. But so many of your generational cohort are just so damned tiresome.....)

Hale Adams
Pikesville, People's Democratic Republic of Maryland

I survived the '30s, I survived the '40's; I survived the '50s, fathering some of them; I fathered some of the '60s, and by damn, I'll survive them. I'm a survivor.

In an agrarian metaphor kinda way:

1 - spread a lot of manure over the field;
2 - plow it in;
3 - wait for next year.

Works for me. Y'll never get the hay into the barn by standing around talking.

The tea-party is the anti-establishment movement of the time. People hated the hippies for wanting to change things. The hippies are now in charge. People now hate the tea-party for wanting change.

The tea-party is the new hippy.

iri,

I agree-- the "Silents" have to shoulder some of the blame. And as for "Boomer-bashing", I'm a late Boomer myself (or an early Gen-X'er, depending on how one slices the demographic baloney).

My point is only that the future belongs to those who show up, and the Boomers have made such a spectacle of themselves that the younger generations have every reason to not emulate them. If nothing else, the wealth won't be there to allow the younger generations the self-indulgence my older Boomer siblings enjoy. "Hardship builds character", or so I was always told. Too bad we get to find out the hard way.

Its sort of disturbing that the greatest generation spawned probably the most destructive, corrupt and evil generation in human memory.

Mankind is busy constructing new Hitlers and Stalins. Their name, possibly Legion or maybe Obama. Covetousness is the cause, starting with power/control.

I'm an early boomer. We didn't "invent" the Age of Aquarius, but merely populated it. Many of us did indeed go off-track for a bit, but many more didn't. The Information Age is a boomer invention. You're Welcome.

Every generation does some good and some bad, but there's no question the boomers were more bad than any before them I'm aware of, and far less good than most. My own generation is a bunch of lazy slacking losers, but even we haven't and aren't interested in causing the harm the boomers have. We only contribute to it by our sloth and apathy.

iri, the question we have to ask ourselves is: would the world be better or worse today if every American born between 1947 and 1965 had been abducted by aliens and carried away to some faraway planet?

I know what my answer is.

I graduated college in 1954. Spent the next twelve years learning to fly and floating about the Western Pacific courtesy of Uncle Sam. In 1966 I was assigned to recruit prospective Navy pilots on the college campuses of northen California. Damn, it was like Rip Van Winkle. In 1954 when I "went to sleep," the world was pretty squared away. People believed in patriotism, fighting the Communists, and serving when called. The college world I went into was as foreign as if I had landed on Mars. Who were these young people and where did they learn to dislike their country? If I had acted like they did back in the 50s, I would have landed on my keester in the gutter. But no, someone had told them they were smarter than their parents. "Don't trust anyone over 30!" What conceit! Many, like Gerard have grown up, but too many of them are still smart aleck punks who refuse to grow up and are still trying to live in their make believe worlds.

Jimmy - Ditto (almost). Graduated '53; spent next 16 years cocooned on a flight deck; assigned in '69 to the AFROTC unit at the biggest U. in Los Angeles. Felt more welcome and less threatened in Vietnam.

I tire of defensive boomers whining about how people are mean to them by noticing how awful they've messed things up. But that's not surprising from the self-absorbed, entitlement-minded majority of them all.

Who did the most damage in the 60's ? The young people or the greatest generation ? Who was tired after the depression, WWII, Korean War, and gave us the Yalta mess,Cold War and the UN ? Who raised us ? We didn't know our ass from a hole in the ground. Who folded and didn't smack our asses when we started acting out in the 60's ?
Who voted for LBJ's great society and all its destructive policies. Who were the main voters, movers and shakers in the 60's and when were they born ? Who allowed us to think we were Special ?

Grace: "Who allowed us to think we were Special?"

Well, it sure wasn't me. (Born 1933.) I raised my kids to love their country and know that life was no picnic. Also didn't take any lip from them. They didn't disappoint me.

"Who folded and didn't smack our asses when we started acting out in the 60's?"

From what I saw it was the pansy-assed college administrators who, unbeknownst to most, were com-simps parading as defenders of intellectual freedom.

"Who voted for LBJ's great society and all its destructive policies."

It wasn't me. I have never voted for a democrat for President. (I did vote for Ross Perot once - may God forgive me.) LBJ inherited the Presidency from Kennedy, but did get elected on his own once. I agree he was one of the most destrcutive Presidents EVER.

I get it that you are pointing your finger at the Greatest Generation. Unfortunately, some of the best of the Greatest Generation never made it home from WWII and Korea. Maybe it might have been different if they had. It hasn't. So we now have to play the cards we've been dealt. As Gerard demonstrates, the Boomers can mature. We just need more of them to follow his lead.

"Who allowed us to think we were Special ?"

You. You refused to listen to authorities, tradition, teachers, parents, or anybody "square" or old. They weren't with it, man. They were out of touch, being left behind by the youth generation. You did it.

I mean, like I said above my generation is worthless too, its not like I think we were great. We didn't fight back, we didn't try to fix anything. Most boomers know the mess their generation was. Some were exceptions, some grew out of it. But the rest? A plague on humanity we're all suffering from.