uncletogie: StoneColdAtheist: You want older folks to just "get out of your way" as soon as you're interested in something.

Ah, yes, because "gay rights" affects me directly... No, I want people to get their outdated moral structure out of the way of progress.

Wut? Up above you demand that boomers quit running for office (presumably to make room for your generation), and here you try to deflect my calling you on it into some nonsense bullshiat line.

But while we're on the topic, have you run for office? Volunteered for someone you respect running for office?

No, and yes {a local rep in Cromwell, Connecticut when I was younger}. I've also voted for candidates that were out to muck up an election here in S.A... and it worked. Why's that important to you?

Just following up on your demand that my generation "Stop running for f*cking office". As I suspected, you haven't ever done anything to have earned the trust of the population in a position of leadership. Get out there and spend the next 20-30 years proving your worth to society. Maybe then you'll be worthy of consideration for public office.

StoneColdAtheist: Just following up on your demand that my generation "Stop running for f*cking office". As I suspected, you haven't ever done anything to have earned the trust of the population in a position of leadership. Get out there and spend the next 20-30 years proving your worth to society. Maybe then you'll be worthy of consideration for public office.

You're right, actually. It's not just that baby-boomers run for office and thereby appeal to narcissism instead of rational debate -- it's that baby boomers are also voting for policies which clear cut the country in the name of even one more dollar for themselves.

bigdavediode: StoneColdAtheist: Just following up on your demand that my generation "Stop running for f*cking office". As I suspected, you haven't ever done anything to have earned the trust of the population in a position of leadership. Get out there and spend the next 20-30 years proving your worth to society. Maybe then you'll be worthy of consideration for public office.

You're right, actually. It's not just that baby-boomers run for office and thereby appeal to narcissism instead of rational debate -- it's that baby boomers are also voting for policies which clear cut the country in the name of even one more dollar for themselves.

There you go again, Dave, wielding that broad brush with stupid effect again. Arguing that my generation is narcissistic while yours is rational is just laughable. Just read this article (new window) linked to in a Fark thread up the page from the present one.

To borrow the author's words, GenY/X feels "entitled to act according to how they feel and to what will immediately gratify them, and entitled to not do whatever they don't want to do".

Rational, my ass.

StoneColdAtheist: There you go again, Dave, wielding that broad brush with stupid effect again. Arguing that my generation is narcissistic while yours is rational is just laughable. Just read this article (new window) linked to in a Fark thread up the page from the present one.

To borrow the author's words, GenY/X feels "entitled to act according to how they feel and to what will immediately gratify them, and entitled to not do whatever they don't want to do".

My generation, and all the generations that followed the baby boomers definitely have their problems. However, they haven't reversed themselves as hard and fast as the baby boomers did. Nor are they infatuated with their own progress, aging, clothing, money, homes, whether to have children, whether to not have children, and how to get more money, money, money.

There's a values gap.

bigdavediode: StoneColdAtheist: There you go again, Dave, wielding that broad brush with stupid effect again. Arguing that my generation is narcissistic while yours is rational is just laughable. Just read this article (new window) linked to in a Fark thread up the page from the present one.

To borrow the author's words, GenY/X feels "entitled to act according to how they feel and to what will immediately gratify them, and entitled to not do whatever they don't want to do".

My generation, and all the generations that followed the baby boomers definitely have their problems. However, they haven't reversed themselves as hard and fast as the baby boomers did. Nor are they infatuated with their own progress, aging, clothing, money, homes, whether to have children, whether to not have children, and how to get more money, money, money.

There's a values gap.

Gawd, that made me laugh so hard I coughed up a lung! My husband and I are end Boomers both born in 1958.

My husband makes $40,000 a year, travels two hours a day to get to and from his job. We live in a little house in a lower middle class subdivision. We did pay our house off. We have no cable, an old TV, used cars, no credit cards or credit card debt. I don't care about plastic surgery, gold, diamonds, furs, anything that is a status symbol.

We are what is called the working poor. We will be the first to not see a dime of Social Security.

Not all baby boomers are clones. I am a liberal, I believe in rights for people, I believe in states rights, I have watched my nieces and nephews grow into fine young women and men and know the future will be in their hands. Don't blame me for anything the Boomers created, I was caught up in the older Boomers shiat also.

At least I don't work, so there is one more job out there for a young person. Hope you like being a dental assistant and/or a receptionist. You will go far (*snorkle, laugh*) in either of those fields.

Dixie_Normous: Not all baby boomers are clones. I am a liberal, I believe in rights for people, I believe in states rights, I have watched my nieces and nephews grow into fine young women and men and know the future will be in their hands. Don't blame me for anything the Boomers created, I was caught up in the older Boomers shiat also.

If you were born in 1958 you were unlikely to have participated in the 60's protests and the like, nor participated in many of the cultural fixtures of the time. You do, however, share the heavy blame for leisure suits.

bigdavediode: StoneColdAtheist: Arguing that my generation is narcissistic while yours is rational is just laughable.

There's a values gap.

You may be right about that, but your generation has yet to establish a clearly defined set of values.

In contrast, as Publisher's Weekly wrote of Leonard Steinhorn's The Greater Generation, "The so-called "greatest generation," he says, imposed a cultural complacency whose worst elements included racism, sexual inequality and anti-Semitism. Boomers rebelled against their parents' values, striving to create an inclusive society that would recognize the contributions of all of its members. Defying and denouncing authority, the baby boomers protested against an unjust war and challenged an unethical political system. Even after the clamor of the 1960s quieted down, boomers refused to tolerate environmental violations, continued to challenge racial and sexual discrimination, rejected religious intolerance and defied racial and sexual taboos. And despite an apparent conservative turn in America, says Steinhorn, boomer values have in fact permeated our society to the point where a younger generation takes them for granted."

StoneColdAtheist: Even after the clamor of the 1960s quieted down, boomers refused to tolerate environmental violations, continued to challenge racial and sexual discrimination, rejected religious intolerance and defied racial and sexual taboos. And despite an apparent conservative turn in America, says Steinhorn, boomer values have in fact permeated our society to the point where a younger generation takes them for granted."

Eh, some truth in there mixed with a whole lot of nonsense. Yes, the parents of the baby boomers needed to change, badly. However, the baby boomers then took everything they supposedly valued and turned on it just as soon as it was convenient and profitable to do so. They had no core values, except hypocrisy and extremism. The EPA? Nixon. And Nixon was terrible!

And again, it's not just my generation (which you don't know) that despises baby boomers, it's every other generation. Oddly enough, self-interest, greed and running up debts on the kids' dime is not a way to make friends with other generations.

Weed will be legal all over the country in less than 20 years, because all of the baby boomers will be dead. Thus is the prophecy of Alhrahzed!

stiletto_the_wise: Savoir-Faire: Most economists pinpoint the exact year when things began to change to be 1973--also known as the year when the middle class was the largest, and had the most power. Many things happened that year all at once that shook world economies and society in general, which had been relatively firm and stable since the Second World War, including:

1) The dissolution of the Bretton Woods financial contract
2) The removal of the Gold Standard in the World Bank (actually 1971)
3) OPEC flexes its muscle
4) The number of union workers reached its peak, and has been steadily declining ever since
5) Women's Liberation Movement was at its height. Title IX enacted (actually 1972)
6) Leo Strauss died

Shhhhhhh.. Don't tell the FoxNews crowd.

They might start to get the idea that correlation equaled causation.

SuperTramp: This is not mine, it was posted on the internet a few years ago. I encourage those bashing the Boomers to pick up a copy of "Generations" by Howe and Strauss.

I'd like Millennial Generation readers to think about an older generation.

Sorry, no one anymore is buying the idea that the kids are always f'd up but will turn out all right. We want our times to be the end times. We want to point fingers hard enough to put out eyes. We want to lay whoopass on entire generations.

I'm an X'er - born in that aforementioned year of great change, 1973. A few thoughts if I may:

No generation is pigeonholed into neat little boxes - there are great entertainers, scientists, philosophers as well as crack heads, murderers rapists and everything else in every generation.

I do think a generation can have a few common traits however, though I would assume most of us have observed the world enough to know that there are exceptions to anything, still there can be a "spirit of the times", or predilection for a particular mode of thought.

Boomers tend to have had a relatively easy time achieving comfort and success - they grew up in a period of general economic prosperity, were handed education and skillsets which were in demand and had relatively high payout, existed through a profound period of scientific and cultural advance. Given the economic instability of the periods before and after, and the constant warfare and inter-class conflict which characterized the generations following and previous, it is easy to dismiss them as entitled whiners. I do not - I see it as merely a product of their age. Someone who has not had to struggle profoundly is of course going to be at a disadvantage in tenacity to someone who is used to adversity - we get better at dealing with shiat the more we deal with. I don't feel a need to make a judgment of better or worse based on a set of characteristics.

My own generation is strong on initiative and short on bonhomie - we make good independent operators and lack good teamwork skills. We're a morose, fatalistic bunch who prefer the company of machines to each other. We can be given a sketch or outline of what needs to be accomplished and find a way to do it without further guidance, which is something neither our parents or kids seem capable of. We kill ourselves at much higher rates, adjusted for age, than any other recorded generation.

The millenials seem to have good emotional coping skills and an ability to lean on each other in a way that my generation would find stultifying. They have little understanding of consequence compared to the other operant generations - but that comes with being younger, doesn't it? I mean, they have had less time to observe consequence - of course they can't make good predictions based on tings they've never seen. They have a very high respect for kindness, mercy and sharing, but little in the way of competitiveness or political acumen. They are less jealous and possessive, but also less invested in commitment than their parents or grandparents.

At the end of the day, maybe I'm just wasting time with analysis. The important thing is to focus on the direction of the society and body politic - not on a generational breakdown. What sort of world do we want to live in? Are we getting closer or farther away? What can we do to get closer?

It seems clear to me that the middle class is disappearing, and that this is a bad thing to be fought against. Logically this means being at odds with the things that are destroying said class - namely: corporate culture, government stupidity & incompetence, concentration of wealth and power, weakness of infrastructure, concentration of media, co-option of the public sector by profiteers, devaluation of scientific truth, and disintegration of the dignity of man.

Can we stop biatching about hippies and hipsters and start fixing the goddamn world already?

bigdavediode: Dixie_Normous: Not all baby boomers are clones. I am a liberal, I believe in rights for people, I believe in states rights, I have watched my nieces and nephews grow into fine young women and men and know the future will be in their hands. Don't blame me for anything the Boomers created, I was caught up in the older Boomers shiat also.

If you were born in 1958 you were unlikely to have participated in the 60's protests and the like, nor participated in many of the cultural fixtures of the time. You do, however, share the heavy blame for leisure suits.

Hey, I'm a woman! I laughed at leisure suits when they came out. And men in platform shoes...

Dr._Love Boomers tend to have had a relatively easy time achieving comfort and success - Not all of us. Maybe because you don't hang with us "younger" Boomers, but many of us did not achieve "comfort and success". Many of us live without all the "stuff" younger generations feel they must have - cell phones, ipads, ipods, i-this and that... new fancy cars... tattoos that cost about as much as a house payment. Stuff. Every generation has those who want to be conspicuous consumers. Some of us don't feel that way.

Dr._Love: At the end of the day, maybe I'm just wasting time with analysis. The important thing is to focus on the direction of the society and body politic - not on a generational breakdown. What sort of world do we want to live in? Are we getting closer or farther away? What can we do to get closer?

Nobody but the naïve, the stupid, and the crazy knows the answers to these questions anymore. Or even asks these questions.

It seems clear to me that the middle class is disappearing, and that this is a bad thing to be fought against. Logically this means being at odds with the things that are destroying said class - namely: corporate culture, government stupidity & incompetence, concentration of wealth and power, weakness of infrastructure, concentration of media, co-option of the public sector by profiteers, devaluation of scientific truth, and disintegration of the dignity of man.

The disappearance of the middle class is indeed a bad thing, but If this is what's involved in fighting it, then it's not to be fought against - not realistically - because it's a fight that can't be won. Not, at least, until some great calamity throws the government, media, business, and private wealth so badly off balance that they can't find their feet again. And what are the chances of the rest of us surviving if that happened?

Can we stop biatching about hippies and hipsters and start fixing the goddamn world already?

No. That's the tragedy. We can't. We wouldn't if we could. Most of us are to the point where we have to hate to know we're alive.

Bagelox-99: No. That's the tragedy. We can't. We wouldn't if we could. Most of us are to the point where we have to hate to know we're alive.

Hey, the subsequent generations would love to fix the debt problem, for example, if they could just keep the baby boomers from digging in for yet more tax cuts.

That's not called "hating" that's called "responsibility."

Dr._Love: Boomers tend to have had a relatively easy time achieving comfort and success - they grew up in a period of general economic prosperity, were handed education and skillsets which were in demand and had relatively high payout, existed through a profound period of scientific and cultural advance.

Yea, all those good times like the 70' and 80's. Multiple recessions. Particularly the one from 1980-1982 with Unemployment over 10%, inflation over 13%, with the added bonus of dueling nuclear super powers and the cold war. Tack on globalization from the 80's - 2000's resulting in the loss of manufacturing in the U.S., and other factors. You end up with people that spent their entire lives working for companies to find out their pensions are gone. etc. etc. etc. apparently creates a generation who thinks everything was handed to the preceding generation while we were the ones who developed those comforts you have that you take for granted today.

Dude, put down the cheetos, stop wasting your days and nights texting your pals or updating your facebook status on your latest plans to take a monster bowel movement or other inane shiat you feel compelled to tell everyone you're going to do, step away from your xbox, and come back to reality.

Oh, and one other thing. Don't blame everyone else for your falling graduation rates. Many of us were working, going to school, raising families and taking care of business when we were your age.


Dixie_Normous:

Dr._Love: Boomers tend to have had a relatively easy time achieving comfort and success

Dixie_Normous: Not all of us. Maybe because you don't hang with us "younger" Boomers, but many of us did not achieve "comfort and success". Many of us live without all the "stuff" younger generations feel they must have - cell phones, ipads, ipods, i-this and that... new fancy cars... tattoos that cost about as much as a house payment. Stuff. Every generation has those who want to be conspicuous consumers. Some of us don't feel that way.

Well put. I expect it will be completely missed by him or if not, completely lost on him, but that's life.