My Back Pages: Debating on the step of Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, 1966. (Left to right:) Me (Somewhat younger but just as strident), An Iranian friend named "Jaz" -- worked with me in the UC library, a refugee from the Shah's Iran -- probably went back after the fall of the Shah, (foreground right)"The Anti-Communist." He lost his eye in the Hungarian Uprising and had to run for the border and on into the West to stay alive. In this picture he's attempting to convince me that Communism is an evil ideology. I'm not buying it then, but I buy it now.
Lately Americans seem to be slimming on a daily drip-feed of despair for our future and estrangement from our past. It's not a new diet in this country, but it is starting to assume the proportions of a runaway fad diet, a political Pritikins. This thin gruel is what's being poured into us from Seattle, Washington to Washington, D.C.
If you look closely at this diet for a diminished America you see a familiar list of "ingredients." The list is composed of the ideological stock and trade of a significant segment of Americans to whom this nation, as conceived by our founders, and struggled for for more than 200 years is merely one long, large joke; the Baby Boomers.
And I should know. After all, that boy in the picture up there -- that boy that thought Communism was "something we could live with" -- that young boy was me.
In my small way, I took part in the crafting of The Boomers’ Big Joke on America. For years I thought there was nothing funnier. Conceived during the waning months of World War II, I had no idea I was a Baby Boomer, but that, in the end, was what I was. And being a member of this large and fortunate generation gave me the leisure to develop quite a sense of humor when it came to basic human values. It even gave one woman of my cohort, Stanley Ann Dunham, the opportunity to actually conceive the punch line to our joke, her emasculate conception, the current clone passing as “President.”
When I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s, we were the Brave New World's social engineers driving our little red choo-choo round the bend. We were the innovators, and we were busy innovating the brave new world wherein everything about the old world of our parents seemed either hilarious or evil.
Our program was quite clear early on and it hasn't changed a jot since those years, it has simply gotten more pervasive and elaborate. After all, we're older now and we're in control. We can finally fund these things. With your money.
Here’s how things went in our Brave New Whirled:
And we were very, very stupid for college kids. Check that. We were stupid because we were college kids.
Many of the most committed of us, decades later, are still in college and even dumber. We're professors now and our ability to be dumb has never been deeper.
Others of us are well ensconced in the various parts of what passes for the media. We are there with a lot of others just like us and, even if we thought differently, we'd never say it for fear of losing regard, position, grants, or promotion. Besides, we've been around others who think like us for so long its no problem at all to top up the latte and nod in blind agreement like the drinking bird bobbing over the glass.
Nope, we never sold out. We bought in.
But we kept the Che poster pinned up forever in our hearts right above the Pier One batik bedspread.
And now, we've arrived at our rendezvous with history.
In our aging but fitness-crazed hearts, we hate what we've become and, like any good group of neurotics, we transfer that hate to the country that gave us everything including the Long Peace in which to enjoy it.
We're the first in line to bitch and moan and hate a country that makes our freedom possible. More than that we're also in love with the privilege, comfort, money and safety that makes it possible for us to mouth off without limit.
And finally, we're coming to understand that we are not our parents' generation. We're "The Not-So-Great" Generation, and, like our president, deep down we're cowards.
We say we're 'afraid' of losing our cherished 'freedom' to the jackbooted legions of Conservative Brownshirts that might stifle our dissent from every street corner. That's really what a lot of us think. That's really just how bull-goose looney we've become.
We're so afraid that we can't look at what scares us but instead pull the covers over our head and dream of the ChristerBoogeymen.
Why? Because they're an illusion. They are not really scary at all. Why? Because they are all "just pretend," and we know it. What many of us simply cannot face is the real terror of the times, Terror.
We're really afraid of the wrath of those who, unlike those of us who believe in nothing, believe in something so deeply that they'll kill us for it and die doing it.
We fear their bomb in their baby’s carriage really is wired to the radio. We fear their teenager in the Army sweatshirt with three pounds of C4 wrapped inside of two pounds of ball bearings will be showing up at the Mall for a Big Mac Attack.
Then there’s the ever-popular Muslim-American who decides one afternoon to park his Jeep on top of as many of our kids as he can find in a group.
Hey, check out that guy who slipped past the TSA career sociopath who was patting down the nun and is now sitting next to the window at 36,000 feet with fuses coming out of his Nikes and a t-shirt on that says, "Just Do It." Then walk a mile in the Tevas of the Gay Imam with a plan who is so tense that he decides to walk into downtown San Bernardino and unwind with a small shooting spree.
All these realities disturb our dreams and threaten to pull the covers off our heads. We want to elect that booth-tanned, soothing daddy-cool to smarm us to sleep; to tell us for the umpteenth time how we “inspire him.”
As a result, we like the slogans, books, movies, TV shows, politicians and publications that confirm for us the deep liberal dream that -- if we are just understanding enough, long enough, apologize for living enough, and offer enough in the way of bribes -- the oppressed of the world will come to love us... and then just leave us alone.
Like the French, we believe that by selling off our ideals we'll receive, in return, peace and cheap vacation rentals in France and Greece for the rest of our lives. Like the French, a lot of us believe that by just being nice we'll be left alone to wallow in our prosperity. Like the French, we've come to believe that there's nothing in war for us except "teenagers with bombs." Like all those European morons it seems we’ve come to believe that all we have to do is to leave the war for the war to leave us.
Like I said, people of my 60s generation are very, very dumb.
And, it would seem, we've now bred children who are even dumber than we are. We are now, as far as dumb liberalism is concerned, deep into the third generation of the soul dead and the dumb, and it's clear that not a lot of us are coming around soon enough to avoid another massacre on American soil. To paraphrase a slogan about working with heavy machinery, "You get stupid around terrorism and it'll hurt you real quick and real bad."
We're so stupid we've even started to believe "It can't happen here" after it already has. "9/11? Just a one-off. Chillax. Never again. Forget about it."
How can we get off on being "stuck on stupid" when it comes to this First Terrorist War? How can we prevent another"9/11," "4/20," "5/14," "7/4," "12/25"? Pick a number, any number, there are 365 to choose from. But before that we might want to consider, seriously and carefully, taking some measures which are not merely careful campaigns to 'bring the fruits of democracy,' but things that fall, instead, under the general heading of "Draconian." A modest beginning in this regard would be to convince many members of my baby-boom generation to simply shut up, eat their tofu, and feel their testosterone ebb down to zero.
You don't have to look very far to see that while the dumb teenager might be the Terrorist's first choice when it comes to delivery vehicles, that teenager isn't the one setting the timer, choosing the target, or buying the bomb. That sort of thing is left to the "leadership" which is far too valuable to expend itself on direct attacks. Their leadership is still, thanks to our ever softening policies towards terror, very much in business.
Nor do you have to look very far to understand what the goals of that leadership are. You are told what they are in sermon after sermon throughout the Muslim world week after week. But those of my generation who are still mired in the ideological foolishness of their youth cannot hear these words and, even if they did, would not believe them.
My generation springs from a culture where words seldom have any consequences as long as you choose the right ones. Because of this words don't seem like weapons to us. Words, to my generation, are merely poses at cocktail parties at best, the latest glib lyrics of some pot-drenched rock idol who believes that having a hundred voice choir screech out “Don’t be raaaaacist” is the latest iteration of cool, until the new, cooler president steps forward and administers another slap of pap to the brain -- “Don’t be raaaaacist about me.”
Just because you bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and declare "a famous victory" does not mean the war is over. You’ve just made it easier for your enemies to fight you at home. The Terrorist War scares my generation more deeply than teenager bombs in Tel Aviv put the fear into the Israelis. The Terrorist War is something that is in earnest and it is something that will not go away. What scares them the most about it all is that the conflict, at its deepest core, is actually about something my generation understands only as one of the great standing jokes of our youth: Religion.
You see most of my Boomer "people" don't really get religion unless it comes with a lot of New Age claptrap or a hefty dose of Zen. Pure Christianity or Orthodox Judaism or Islam is far, far outside our ken.
Where previous generations could write, as late as 1927, the sentiments found in the Desiderata:
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
You are a fluke of the Universe. You have no right to be here, and whether you can hear it or not, The Universe is laughing behind your back. Therefore make peace with your God whatever you conceive him to be, Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin.With all its hopes, dreams, promises and urban renewal, The world continues to deteriorate. Give up.
And for a time we did.
But when you get a little further down the road and look back, if you have learned anything at all, you'll have learned to cherish the sentiment of the Desiderata and despise the mocking nothingness in the Deteriorata. The latter holds not 'words to live by,' but 'words to die by.'
Today my generation, being eternally drenched in a mindless nostalgia for its weird youth, refuses to learn that. It believes that the cool answer to the great crisis which has been brought to us in the last ten years is to make a sign that says "I heart New York more without the twin towers," parade about in the streets and, when confronted with the death of your fellow citizens, to stand firmly in solidarity with the sheep of Europe and the cringing coward at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and say, "We give up."
When I look at the spectacle that my Boomer generation has made of itself, a generation that had everything going for it, that had every opportunity, and instead came up with Caramel Soy Lattes and the slogan "ReElect Obama in 2012. He’s too black to fail!” all I can say is:
"I resign the Revolution. I'm joining the Resistance.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 30, 2016 9:24 PM
We have a relative that is fighting the good fight against the plastics factory in Tacoma. She seems to be a good hearted soul, but she is so dismissive of jobs. (Funny how these places ONLY turn out 250 jobs. Those would be a big benefit to the people that were hired, to the community where they spend their money, and to the better lives for their children.) But we don't need that plant because RECYCLING (never mind that you can't combine plastic types like that) and ENVIRONMENT (somehow using an existing ex-aluminum plant would run the view of Mt Rainier).
I have a new theory. I've always read that civilizations fall because they get wealthy. They fall because people want "an easier life for their children". This is what you get. People who don't want "dirty" jobs. People don't understand that money for government programs comes from taxpayers. People who aren't afraid of .7% economic growth and think we can afford to blow off new jobs for stupid reasons.
At least, as Boomers, we did have some small education, by people who were raised in the culture of Western civilization. We have a generation today that reads pictures. I feel certain the next version of iOS will have stick drawings.
Posted by: Teri Pittman at January 30, 2016 12:49 PMFrom the heart! Excellent essay. And very scary.
What we're observing now is not just happening by chance. It's being directed (and the first fool to call me a "conspiracy theorist" will be invited out to the parking lot).
Nikita Khruzchev predicted:
"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands."
Communist Jan Kozak described their strategy in And Not A Shot Is Fired. And it's always "two steps forward, one step back" for his fellow travelers. Even if they lose the next election or two, they never give up.
Total control is their goal, which was described by Plato a couple thousand years ago: a tiny aristocracy commanding a loyal miltary, and both overseeing the taxpaying proles/sheep.
But neither Kozak's fellow travelers, nor anyone else reading this will be among the new aristocracy. That's reserved for the UN, and for Bill Gates, George Soros, and similar special folks; a billion will get you into the club. During most of the USSR's existence only about 1% were Party members. The rest of us will be part of the 99%, and we will be expected to pay the freight. Dissenters will be re-educated. If they're lucky.
One of the central planks the eco-movement is currently using is the 'dangerous man-made global warming' scare. It is a complete hoax: there has been no global warming for almost twenty years now. But did that fact debunk the so-called 'science'?
No. It has openly morphed into the political arena, where that narrative originally began in quasi-secrecy. In fact, the whole enviro-eco-green movement is being centrally directed by the erstwhile soviets. 'Greens' preach 'sustainability', but without any definition. It's anti-science, thus perfect propaganda.
Now the "green" movement is focused on the 'runaway global warming and climate catastrophe' scare — despite the fact that the planet is continuing to enjoy a true "Goldilocks" global temperature: during the past century and a half, global temperatures have varied by less than ≈0.8ºC — an amazingly flat and unprecedented temperature range: just prior to our current Holocene, global temperatures fluctuated by TENS of whole degrees — both up and down, and within only a decade or two. Now that is scary!
So now every snowstorm is claimed to be proof of 'anthropogenic global warming'... and War is Peace... Freedom is Slavery... Ignorance is Strength...
'Diversity' is another tentacle of the controlling entity. Jurassic Park author and biologist Dr. Michael Crichton wrote:
This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down.
Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible.
That’s the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas.
People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.
But just try to point out that 'diversity' isn't a good thing at your next cocktail party. You will be looked upon as an idiot, and they'll say in their own words what Maj. 'King' Kong (Slim Pickens) said in Dr. Strangelove:
“I’ve been to one world’s fair, a picnic and a rodeo and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard."
In the novel "1984" George Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, wonders if the State might declare “two plus two equals five” as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes in it, does that make it true?
Your cocktail party friends really do believe that 2+2=5; that man-made global warming is a proven fact. Nothing you can say, and no evidence you can show them can penetrate their belief system. Now that's really scary!
The country has been thoroughly dumbed down by the gov't .edu industry. Now everyone just head-nods along with television news anchors when they pontificate with a straight face on "diversity" this-or-that, or "global warming" this-or-that. Critical thinking is not permitted for the general public. Their minds are closed tighter than a submarine hatch.
But the hoax is getting long in the tooth, and it's my reasonable expectation that ten months from now we will experience the rubber band effect: a radical pro-Constitution candidate, or a radical populist, will get elected as the antidote/reaction to the Obama/Hillary contingent (although at this point Hillary is toast).
Otherwise, we may see what Kipling foretold:
THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy -- willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date...
That the Saxon began to hate.
Posted by: Smokey at January 30, 2016 1:05 PMWelcome to the resistance, Gerard. Though I know you have been a member for some time now, this renunciation of the Boomer Generation is a classic of historical truth. Sending it far and wide. (with attribution, of course.)
I'm a member of the silent generation and our paths may well have crossed on the UC campus in 1966 or '67, as I was a Naval Aviation recruiter for northern California at that time. I recall the campus as seeming about as bizarre to me as the bar scene from Star Wars. To say that we were the center of zealous protests would be to put it mildly. None of my team really wanted to be there, but we did recruit many fine young men for Naval Aviation from Berkeley. They would see us being protested, pick up a flyer, and call us at our offices to come in for pre-testing.
I could not understand where or how students had become so brain washed until one day I had a conversation with a semi-rational protestor who kept referencing his Poli-Sci prof's teachings. That was when I knew for sure that the Commies were trying to subvert our young people. So, I've always been a member of the resistance and have never regretted it.
Posted by: Jimmy J. at January 30, 2016 3:26 PMTweaked this essay nine years later, yet still every bit as relevant. That is kinda sad.
Posted by: growler at January 30, 2016 3:59 PMVery open,very brave.
Posted by: Thud at January 30, 2016 4:17 PMLike you, I am also a member of the Boomer generation, born almost 9 months to the day after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was disgusted by the antics of the protesters, unable to understand how someone could NOT love this country and all it stood for. Well, they didn't learn to hate this country in a vacuum, they learned it at the knees of their parents, aka Stanley Anne Durham, and professors in college. They aren't the ones who lost the Vietnam war, that noble cause of the Democrats who went in to "fight communism" while kneecapping the troops even as they fought. (and the kneecapping continues to this day) Who led the protesting hippies at the Chicago convention of '68 but pre-Boomers like Abbie Hoffman? Let's not forget Hanoi Jane Hilton, whom I have not forgiven to this day. Where did Hillary learn about Alinsky, at home or at college? Those being indoctrinated in college as "foot soldiers" of the revolution weren't raised in a vacuum. They had to learn it somewhere, and young minds are sooo malleable. I loathed the hippies and their stoned lifestyle, and everything they chanted for. I actually cried (and I don't cry easily), during the evacuation of Saigon, and for the first time in my life was ashamed of my country for deserting those who believed in us. It was not to be the last. Remember Carter and the Irani hostages, and the giving away of the Panama Canal? There was a brief pause during the Reagan years, then there the Bimbo eruptions and the sleaze years. And the entire time the media constantly pushing and pulling to the left, and mocking those who rejected their guidance. During the Bush years I actually worried about their sanity so vitriolic was against anything Bush: and the 180 degree turnaround to praising all things Obama. When and where did journalists learn to follow the Narrative and not the story, but in college? Now they teach the special snowflakes. Not all of us were brainless hippie protesters, chanting mindlessly. Some of us sactually became adults, raised responsible children to be responsible adults. Some of us were NOT hippies, not protestors, fought (and died) in Vietnam, became citizens who taught their children love and respect, while the squeaky wheels went to Washington to accomplish there what they could not accomplish in school, including journalists who wanted to make a difference. I didn't mean to go on so long, but I am so sick of being lumped in with and being defined by a rowdy, lawless generation who are the very antithesis of what most of us are today. The ones who never grew up are either still stoned, journalists, or politicians. Or both
Posted by: lilo at January 30, 2016 8:15 PMI thank Gerard and the commenters above.
Now, or still, a Winter Soldier
None more fine, none bolder
As simpler lives all smolder
The liberty phoenix rises, glows, no older.
I remember well the picture in Post, was it 1969? I was in a Post pic as well, as a member of Up With People, which believe it or not was a rather subversive group in its own right, sort of a Ralph Nader cult. That pic may have been in the same issue. I even recall thinking your haircut was a pretty cool version of the surfer cut I was trying to cultivate. Eventually threw away all the old magazines I had saved from that era, probably upon the realization that the era and the prospects it offered was rather bleak. Youth is wasted on the young. Viva la resistance.
Living as I do in a quaint fishing village in Florida that has been discovered of late, I see scores of retiring boomers from the northeast retiring here. Dressed like nine year olds, opening yoga centers and more dog and cat rescue centers than one can shake a stick at, it's a little depressing, but the fishing's still good.
Posted by: fodderwing at January 30, 2016 8:59 PMIt always amused me that with few exceptions, those professing the wonders of Communism, Socialism and the "radiant Future" never wanted to move to where they could live in the glorious splendor of those societies. When it was suggested to them that they should do so, howls of rage and invective were thrust in personal attacks as a response.
I wish they could have seen what I saw in the Nam; a village headman's wife raped in front of him and his kids, then his kids shot and finally his throat cut. the villagers were told they were next if they didn't have rice for the Cong next month. We were a LRRP patrol, way out numbered to do anything by watch. After that, no mercy for the Hero People of the Revolution.
Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at January 31, 2016 4:28 AMAt the time (1960-70's)the baby boom generation was simply the latest manifestation of the elite's mocking and undermining of the middle-class, christian values that made and propped up American society. The ground had been prepared the decade before by the big four of the silent generation: Kinsey, Hefner, Ginsberg & Friedan who all realized that if one wanted to bore into the foundation of middle-class life one should do it through sex. Make abnormal and promiscuous sex normal and the pillars would come tumbling down, American society along with them. Of course, the Silents stood on the shoulders of the literary giants of the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. Read Melville's The Confidence Man, Lewis' Babbit or any of the Lost Generation writers and witness irony and pessimism win the day. The baby boomers, because there were so many, simply added their weight to the struggle. Who could resist sex, drugs and rock n roll. And now the bill is coming due, in more ways than one and I'm not sure we have the resources to pay it.
Posted by: chuck at January 31, 2016 6:05 AMThis essay is just another reason American Digest is my favorite site, Gerard. Truth spoken, of the bedrock kind, elegantly and powerfully offered up, and in which I find a kindred spirit of the age, myself a former radical atheist who spouted precisely the kind of political nihilistic nonsense you refer to here. Poetry or essay, I love your writing and consistently share it with others. Yes, Boomers, there is a God, and yes, there is a Day of Reckoning, whether it is within the scope of your personal reckoning or not. It's finally time to grow up.
Posted by: Mark Nicolas at January 31, 2016 7:00 AMSpot on, Gerard. This article echoes one of the bomb-throwers at UC Berkeley, turned resistance fighter, David Horowitz, his book"Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About The 60's".
Posted by: cmak at January 31, 2016 10:30 AMMr. Van der Leun: You speak--and so well!--for millions.
Posted by: Jerry at January 31, 2016 12:36 PM"This thin gruel is what's being poured into us from Seattle, Washington to Washington, D.C."
This is right on Gerard, but it wasn't a thin gruel but an "Idiot Wind", a song Dylan was singing at about the same time that picture was taken of you at Berkeley.
"Idiot wind, from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol"
followed by:
"It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves"
Posted by: Denny at January 31, 2016 5:08 PMWrong then. Wrong now.
At least you're consistent.
And still strident.
Posted by: Arthurstone at February 1, 2016 12:31 PMArt is back! Flamethrowing while making no point....again.
When I was young I thought a strong central government was a positive thing. Even when I heard the first reports of the FBI having a shoot out with Randy Weaver and his crew. Rednecks..deserved it, I am sure.
Then I slowly realized that not everybody in Government necessarily has good at heart, or at least a vastly different view of what "right and wrong" actually is.
Upon hearing the details of Weaver's wife shot in the jaw while holding her infant, and his son shot in the back I started having reservations about our Government and its competency level on all fronts.
Countless more assaults over time on personal rights, property rights and our inconvenient Constitution further solidified my belief in smaller government. Benghazi, Lois Lerner and most of the IRS now only underline my views developed through discernment of what happens with a too strong central government.
I evolved too.
The use of the words "Free" and "America" in the same sentence is a hoot.
The most caged, regulated, robbed by the political filth- losses to Burglary were surpassed by theft by police from innocents last year, people on the planet.
Bill Jones-
Quickly now. At this very moment in time what is you would do with yourself if you weren't at the mercy (and 'regulated and robbed") of gubmint?
And go back through your day, your week, and last year if you like and describe just how you are unable to do whatever it is you would do if you weren't under the foot of gubmint.
Thanks!
Posted by: Arthurstone at February 3, 2016 4:53 PMThis is exactly the problem Arthurstoneless, what he would do with his stolen money and time is none of you or your gubmint's fucking business.
Posted by: Denny at February 7, 2016 11:58 AM
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