Boomtastrophe

[Odin2005]

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-05-02/news/boomtastrophe

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Baby Boomers hoped to die before they got old. They lied. And now they’re dragging the whole country down.

...snip...

But as sure as Woodstock's free love gave way to Altamont's bloodshed, the promise of Boomers succumbed long ago to egotism. Beneath the middle-class nostalgia lies an American dystopia of their making, a state of disgrace now laid bare by social critics and the online hordes.

Boomers traded tree-hugging for money-grubbing and unraveled the social welfare net. Their refusal to reform Social Security and Medicare threatens to bankrupt federal coffers, while their talk of "reinventing" retirement conceals the bleak fact that almost half of them can't afford to quit working, thanks to deficient savings. Their budget woes derive, in part, from checkbook parenting, an indulgent manner of child-rearing that has yielded a cultural anomaly once thought impossible — a generation of young adults more narcissistic than Boomers.

...snip...

Yet as Boomers voice faint concern about the widening economic divide — everything's fabulous on our side, thanks — they persist in lionizing their role in the civil rights crusade. "They don't like to admit hypocrisy," says Males, who's writing a book titled Boomergeddon, an analysis of his generation's influence on America. "They like to think, 'We are good, we are just, we do almost no wrong.'"

The tendency of Boomers to claim the moral high ground as their private domain explains the popular perception that they alone agitated for civil rights. In fact, their parents and grandparents, the Silent and G.I. generations maligned by Boomers as social conformists, supplied the movement with brigades of foot soldiers and its most visible leaders — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, and Rosa Parks, among others. "Boomers take the credit, but the Silent Generation should get it for civil rights," says social historian and author William Strauss, an expert in generational studies. "What the Boomers were doing was starting riots."
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*Hides from the Boomer hordes...* :hide:

[acmavm]

1. Our real crime was to let the rat bastards who we kicked out of power

sleeze their way back in. We got fat and lazy, didn't teach our kids shit about freedom (because we really believed in the phrase "NEVER AGAIN").

But the slug who wrote this is an idiot.

[evlbstrd]

2. Yep. Every fucking one of us.

That's a mighty broad brush.

[havocmom]

3. LOL yeah, none of us evidently do anything positive

:rofl:

What are the official years of the Baby Boom Generation?
1946 - 1964 saw a marked increase in the number of births in North America.


Dennis John Kucinich (born October 8, 1946) Baby Boomer
Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) Baby Boomer

Yep, they are all the same :eyes:

[Odin2005]

4. Ever heard of the terms "on average" and "typical"?

:eyes:

[havocmom]

12. typical response for on average debasement of a whole population

shown to be in err.

Yeah, I know what what they mean.

[evlbstrd]

13. No such thing.

[tech3149]

5. What a sorry bid of screed

Martin Kuz can kiss my hairy whatever.

[bemildred]

6. I know there is some point to this rant, but I don't see it.

Actually it reminds me of some of the drivel boomers used to write about the older generations. "Don't trust anyone over 30" and that sort of thing.

[Demeter]

7. At the Time, Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 Was Good Advice

Nowadays, it's don't trust anyone, period.

[bemildred]

8. I have never seen trustability as an age-related issue.

And that has served me well, over the years.

"But to live outside the law, you must be honest, I know you always say that you agree, But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?"

It all depends on what it is you are trusting them to do in any case, different people can be trusted for different things ...

[Odin2005]

9. "At the Time, Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 Was Good Advice" Bull Shit..

I find it funny that you boomers were screaming "Fascist" and "pigs" at the generation that crushed the Nazis in their youth

[bemildred]

10. You seem very uspet.

Being angry will just ruin your day.

All this stereotyping is just simpleminded.

They were a very mixed group, a lot of them were serving in VietNam and being killed, others were going about their business, some of them were resisting the war, and others were wallowing in drugs and sex and rock and roll. And there are a lot of different combinations of those, and other things. Some of them are now "conservatives" and so on. It is not correct that the hippies turned into yuppies. The history is much messier than you seem to think.

I am not a boomer, being born a couple years too soon, but I watched it all. The whole this generation and that generation thing is horseshit in the first place, it's all continuous, and we are all products of the time and place that produced us, free will tends to be exaggerated. It may be fun to set up a straw man like the Boomers and beat it to death, but it won't really get you far, and it has nothing to do with what really occurred. If you applied this sort of bigoted stereotyping to racial, religious, or ethnic groups you'd get handed your ass in a sling. But if you pick something large and imaginary like "the Boomer generation", I guess you can still get away with it.

[Odin2005]

11. The main thing that annoys me about Boomers in general is...

...that they "stole" the accomplishments of the "Silent" Generation of MLK Jr., Gloria Stienhem, Bobby Kennedy, Tom Hayden, etc and made them thier exclusive achievement in the minds of most people. Also, the left-wing activist boomers were always a small minority of boomers just like the "fascist pigs" those activists ranted about were only a small minority of the GI Generation.

[fedsron2us]

14. Total gobshite from start to finish

Blaming some arbitrary age group in the population for a society's political and economic woes makes as much sense as blaming jews and blacks. Capitalist elites are so good at finding scapegoats to direct attention away from their own crimes.

[robertarctor]

15. Lame, but expected

I worked for the editor of that paper at a different publication, and his ideas there were every bit as cheesy and sophomoric as this piece.