Criticizing later generations

[cally]

So, I'm pissed at fellow progressives--especially my generation. Once more, I see some of my generation and older blame college students for not being active enough. When did it become OK to think that you can sit back and expect others to stand up for our rights?

I'm 47 and I've heard about the activists of the 60s since I was a teen. The general theme is that every generation since has fallen short of this great radicalism. I don't see it that way. I see a movement and a group of folks who helped usher in change. I see many who continued activism their entire lives but I see way too many who think they can live their lives and expect others to carry on.

If any one generation is to blame for this maladministration, I blame babyboom generation. We saw what was happening. We knew about history, viet nam, and abuse of power because we lived through it once. Some of us marched, some of us worked on campaigns, some of us wrote letters. Way too many just got quietly concerned and hoped someone else would fight back. We are the folks others would listen to if they listen to anyone. We can't be dismissed as young, naive radicals who will become conservative once we are older. It's hard for me to believe at times that I'm older. It is my generation in power. With age also comes responsibilities.

I'm proud of the beliefs of college students. They seem much more egalitarian. They support environmental protection. They seem very worldly. Blaming the next generation only divides us and is an attempt to take the blame off of us.

I wake up many mornings wondering what else I could have personally done. I knew they stole the 2000 Presidency. I feared after 9/11 and wondered what freedoms we would lose. I knew that we had no reason to go to war in Iraq. I KNEW that it would be a disaster for generations all around the world and would be the best action to take to further Al Qaida. I KNEW and I don't like seeing the reports now which let me know that I was right.

[pitohui]

1. self-blame cheap and easy

i do not blame my generation, don't see what more could be done

self-blame is a way to say my generation more important & has more power than the others, a comforting fantasy because it lets us deny how powerless we are, but i'm weary of denial


this naive statement makes me chuckle in a sad way: It is my generation in power

your generation has no more power than any other, it is a few rich white men in power same as always, i don't know any boomers who have any power, even the men i know w. millions have no real power, their concerns abt a need for affordable health insurance for small business is laughed at for just one example

if you have "only" 2 or 5 million dollars, these days, you feel insecure

the biggest march in human history came in 2002 to protest any invasion of iraq

in case you didn't notice, iraq was invaded anyway

we the people have no power, if we were running things, twould be a different world

[The Traveler]

2. Still it is difficult for some of us boomers

to understand what the hell happened to us. We are that generation that swaddled its children in 20 pounds of safety equipment to ride their bikes. Yet, we are also that generation that in the name of a mystical commerce engine called "the Free Market" slaughtered our children's future. I have come to regard my fellow boomers as that generation that chose to eat its children so we could drive SUVs.

[cally]

3. Look at the history of many in the MSM

Many were active in the 60s and 70s. Also, the rhetoric of * and his cronies harkens back to then. It is their chance to reverse what was accomplished by activists. Unfortunately, they are succeeding.

[Hidden Stillness]

4. It Goes the Other Way, Too

It is usually a pretty easy and safe statement to make, telling people not to blame the younger generation--applause, applause. Now show a little guts, and tell them, equally, not to blame earlier generations for doing what they believed was right, too, even when you don't agree. About bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example: the Japanese army was the most mercilessly cruel of modern times, they tortured and then displayed the corpses of their victims, they kidnapped thousands of women and abused them as "sex slaves," (slaves), they actually obliterated the entire country of Manchuria, they like the Germans had concentration camps and death camps--never referred to--and no, they were not going to surrender; signing declarations had happened before, as a stall tactic. For all this and more, they never paid reparations to anybody, unlike the U.S. for Internment camps.

Whatever you think of the bombings--whether necessary or unspeakable horror, or both--it is a real test, to refuse to attack earlier generations when they thought they had no alternative, and can't know what you would only know years later. No generation is categorically "better" than another; that would be impossible.