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Hope for the post-boomers? — 91 Comments

  1. I was born in 1968, just six years younger than Obama (I’m also Canadian, if that makes a difference).

    My feeling is that, on the one hand, `conservatism’ is not very popular among those of my age-group; but on the other hand, people around my age are not rushing toward leftism.

    What’s more, positions generally considered `conservative’ (ie. fighting back against terrorism) are quite popular, whilst leftist positions (apologize enough and they won’t attack have little purchase).

    My feeling is that left-wing criticism of the War against Terrorism, and other related matters, has gained such purchase since 9/11 in large part because the left (at least in the U.S.) has not had to put its money where its mouth is: which is to say, unlike the Republicans, they haven’t actually had to get their hands dirty fighting war.

    It seems that this will change next month: all three levels of the U.S. government will be in the hands of the Dummycrats (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

    THEN, people will see just what they are made of.
    Between you and me, neo-neo, I don’t think they’re gonna like.

  2. As a boomer ex-socialist who majored in theater, Portia’s comments are very heartening to me. I have always thought the nonliberal minority would have to fly under the radar for years, or find only pockets where they were welcome. The idea that the change is already underway, but quietly, and could flip quickly at some time future…well frankly, it never occurred to me. I am passing this on to my son, who is a filmmaker, to learn what his thoughts are.

    Portia: Keep the faith, baby! (That’s a retro thing, probably opaque to you.)

  3. My children were raised conservative and Christian.
    Both take religion far more seriously than I expected.
    Both take conservative positions I would take.
    Their friends are the same, for the most part. College-educated, well-employed, having kids at a nice clip.

    My son’s mother-in-law is a public school teacher who guessed, several years ago, that her oldest daughter, the only one with children at the time, would send her kids to Christian school, although trained for public school ed. The sordid, fetid aspects of society can’t be kept out of public school, and some are in the syllabus.
    My son’s mother in law turned out to be right.

    My daughter was married recently and my son-in-law’s groomsmen were all from his church small-group friends. Came from the Dallas area to Michigan to honor him. Great people.

    When I went to a beach party with a bunch of them, I thought I’d fallen into a Budweiser ad. Good looking, athletic young folks.

    Yeah, the untoothed, ill-educated redneck as the only conservative outside of the country club is a bogus conceit of the liberals.

  4. I’m a boomer, officially any way, born in 1958 to parents who went through the depression and WW2. Had a father who was a POW on the Burma Railway, a mother who dated a boy from Brooklyn on R&R in Australia in her twenties. All my paternal uncles served. In Tobruk and New Guinea. But I’ve never found any common ground with boomers. I had all the advantages they did. An easy and affluent childhood courtesy of my parents’ work ethic. I saw my schoolmates big brothers drafted and sweated about it until I was 14 or so and they finally repealed it. I was the classic underachieving gifted child at high school, ripe for the campus activism schtick. Yet I never fell for it. I joined the air force and got an education in the company of men. Learned the responsibility at age 20 of having the lives of 2 crew men in an F111 I signed off as serviceable in my hands.
    I look at Bill Clinton and see a predator and narcissist. I look at Hillary and see an angry underachiever. I look at Obama and see a post-modern nightmare and masters thesis in psychology on the hoof. Whatever went right for me, I’m grateful. I genuinely cannot see how any person with an IQ above room temperature doesn’t smell a rat when they look at that empty suit that will, in all probability, have his hands on the “football”.

  5. Portia’s thesis is a fascinating insight…the tells…conservs are like gays. And she’s right, we are. I no longer like to travel to right-bashing places like Boston or SF, consider and treat the MSM as propaganda, and read blogs like Neo’s.
    I find myself looking for tells in new encounters.

    The real problem is we need our own Act Up and similar agitators. But in dealing with the the dishonest, unethical Left, will such work? Perhaps not, but still needed, lest we otherwise go too quietly into a very bad long night.

  6. My parents were pre-boomers (1940&41), but most of their friends were a little younger, so it was a boomer crowd. I was born in 1969.

    Now, I grew up around these people and have lived in ultra left communities all my adult life (not Berkeley, but pretty left). I am gay. I have to say, the boomer mentality turns my stomach.

    I used to see people protesting the Iraq war every weekend who were either boomers who can’t let go of the 60s and 70s or young people who cling to the anti-war movement to be cool. They have no idea how comfortable they are. There was even a poor woman out there with a big professionally produced NOW sign she’d probably had for 30 years.

    What I see is the desperation to be relevant and to be anti-establishment. What they don’t seem to get as they bleat about fascism (as they hold up their signs comparing the president to Hitler and nobody bothers them), is that they ARE the establishment. They’re oblivious to the fact that they’ve won. They’re sad, really.

    People with libertarian and conservative values are the ones who have to keep their mouths shut these days. We are the anti-establishment. But we get told day after day how oppressive, sexist, racist, and closed-minded we are.

    It boggles the mind.

  7. Every age cohort has its unique cultural and political experience, more connected to one’s classmates than to parents or teachers and naturally inclined in its formative years to question, challenge or revolt against the ruling orthodoxy. Nothing wrong with that: this way historical progress is accomplished when it take place. If the parent’s and teacher’s generation is sincere and thoughtful in its convictions, it can successfully overcome this onslaught and transfer its norms and values to their children; if not, they deserve their failure. Thus wheat is separated from tares, and society purges itself from generational heresies.

  8. I’m Gino with minor modifications. Born in ’54, parents both poor through the 1930s, father survived Cabanatuan, parents worked hard and lived within their means to rear four kids.

    I work in the SF Bay Area in the health care field, 8 of 10 workers are female. Here age doesn’t seem to separate people politically – it’s all anti-Palin pro Obama. There does seem to be some conservatism among 1st and 2nd generation Asians, though. And I’m sure there’s a silent minority of McCain supporters.

    I find that most people don’t (can’t??) put much in historical context. They just see what’s happening right now and gravitate to the short term feel good remedy.

    And little respect is given to tradition. Here is where I feel my age comes into play. I feel I caught the tail end of an era – of the Great Depression, WWII, and the idea that there was no expectation that things are handed to you. Others born later, say 1975, seem to be just enough removed from this bygone era (ie., parents had it good, too) and are simply products of their time – an uninterrupted rise in the living standard like the world has never seen. I’ve lived only through that time as well, but with parents who knew otherwise being the crucial difference.

    We are all products of our era. My Dad worked in the cotton fields when he was 10. I had a paper route and mowed lawns. His father came from Arkansas to CA, right out of the Grapes of Wrath, in the 1920s, dirt poor. We’re all getting progressively spoiled compared to the previous generation.

  9. I’m Gino and Mel with modifications :). Born ’58 and raised in Berkeley CA. I was so sick of counter-culture pap by my first election, ’76, I took what little critical thinking the then-excellent Berk schools instilled in me and voted Ford. Been independent since, voting R more than D, but what interests me is how many Berkeleyans my age I know who left that place and now vote fiscal conservative / social libertarian / strong foreign policy. I have never seen this cohort taken seriously in the media yet it is most people I know.

    Anyway, history’s cycles are strongly driven by generational principles, as was suggested above and as Strauss and Howe explained a decade ago, and I too suspect that this left-leaning election of ’08 represents an ultimate swing of the pendulum. Add to this optimism my hope that the next direction will not be in the way of traditional conservatives, but of people like us.

  10. Sometimes it takes a small boy who has not yet been brainwashed to see that Emperor has no clothes. Those who are older see it too, but do not believe their own lying eyes more than the reaction of the crowd. But groupthink is wery fragile and can collapse instantly. I have seen it in the days of Chernobyl catastrophe: one day people believed MSM version, the next day all credibility of a vast propaganda machine elaborated for decades came down the toilet, forever.

  11. Portia’s comments hit a nerve with me. Not that I disagree with her, because I don’t. I’ve sat in those same conferences and dinners, listened to those same speakers and asked myself if they really know how foolish they sound and if they have the faintest clue about how the rest of us think. The problem is, we’ve been silent and we’ve sat back and waited for someone else to speak up. We have been the “silent majority” for too long and, as a result, those we’ve shaken our heads at have gained enough power to truly become frightening.

    It’s not just in the political arena that it’s happening. In education, reforms — and I use that term loosely — have taken place in such a way that students aren’t graded in their first years of school because we can’t warp their little psyches by letting them know they aren’t as good as the kid sitting next to them. Score isn’t kept on the ball field because we can’t have winners and losers. Again, we can’t let little Johnny feel he is less than little Joey. State education systems are considering removing the extra weight given to AP and IBE programs because you don’t want the students not taking advanced courses to feel they aren’t as good as those who are pushing themselves to learn more and excel more.

    There is a lack of understanding of political context and a move away from personal responsibility. I don’t mean taking responsibility for paying our bills or going to work, although there is an extreme problem there, as our current economic troubles show. What I’m talking about is taking responsibility of knowing how our government works and educating ourselves on the issues and the stands of the various candidates.

    How often have we heard President Bush blamed for everything from the war in Iraq to the state of the economy? I’m sorry, but there’s this legislative body in our nation’s capital that has the power of the purse and the ability to pass legislation. But, you talk to so many people and they seem to have forgotten that. Worse, the MSM reinforces that misconception.

    The solution? We have to become as vocal as they are. We have to have the facts and figures to back up what we say, unlike the approach most of them take. In other words, we have to stop sitting in the audience asking ourselves if the speaker knows how many of us are out there, believing the exact opposite of what he’s saying. We need to stand up and speak, no, yell it from the rooftops. It is time to take the drivers seat back and remember what made this country great.

  12. I’m in the same generation as Gino, Mel, and Don, with a similar story to tell. I was also raised by parents who went through the Depression and WWII (Dad was a tail gunner in China). They taught us how to work, and to think for ourselves. I’ve tried to raise my children with the same work ethic, and am happy to say they’re all hardworking, contributing members of society. I am currently taking a “blogging as a social force” class at the local university. Our last assignment was to blog about Myanmar. I’m pleased to say that several of the young college students were compassionate toward the Burmese and they also expressed great appreciation for the stability and freedoms that we still have here in the U.S. It gives me hope for the future.

  13. Other than the fact I just spit coffee all over my desk, when I looked one down from the ballet post : ) I’m honored you featured my comment. They’re usually written out of overflowing emotion at the time and not very good.

    I am 45. I don’t know what the defining moment for the other conservatives in my generation was. I should add part of the reason I read your blog is that I tipped over slowly, after being soaked in “boomer ethos” growing up. I am not a classic conservative. I voted Libertarian up to 2000. (They’re just not serious about defense. I can no longer endorse them.) However, I was NEVER “liberal” in the way our left is. Why? Because I remember Carter. Enough said. My boomer brother calls my generation (I suppose the thin wedge between boomers and xers) “Reagan’s kids.” He means it as an insult, but I would love to see it picked up. Yeah, I’m Reagan’s kid. What of it? My friend Irene calls us “Generation Fix It” because we keep doing what has to be done to keep things going.

    I should add — nod to Sergey, though it wasn’t that area of the world — that I was raised abroad and one year I studied Marxism in three classes. (Language, social studies and history.) NO ONE can study marxism that much — and have a brain — and not see the holes in it. So school indocrination MIGHT long term work against those perpetrating it.

    And Goldwater girl, good to know another person off the reservation. I’m straight, but as a foreign-born artist, I often feel like dems think they have me sewn up. I find it interesting the blogs I read tend to be those of gay people, psychiatrists, writers and artists who are out of the reservation and thinking for themselves.

    Are there really that many of us? I don’t know. I started seeing the tip over recently. Oh, we’re still a minority, at least declared and in positions of power. But that I’m SEEING us take over means it’s significant. It will not be reported on, of course, not till it’s done.

    What was that thing about the revolution not being televised?

    Honored,

    P.

    PS – Oh, I do think the “desperation” from the left this year, and the media’s willingness to throw it all in, and destroy its own reputation is because they know the turnover has come. They’re afraid this is the last time they get that much influence. Frankly, it’s the best sign I’ve had so far that we JUST might be winning. And if I might quote M. Simon at Classicalvalues.com — don’t GIVE it to him. Make him STEAL it.
    Vote, d*mn it!

  14. Born in 1964, here.

    I can readily identify with the comments above, and in the article quoted. I remember having political discussions with my teachers during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s – and voted for Reagan in 1984.

    I always found it hysterically laughable that I was supposed to be catagorized as of the same generation as Clinton.

    I mean, Clinton as a teenager had his photo taken with President Kennedy – who was assassinated before I was ever born!

    I don’t identify with boomers at all. Not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with boomers – I just don’t identify with them and have a hard time finding a common frame of reference.

  15. Yeah, I think officially I might be included in the tail end of the baby boomers, but as you say, Scottie, it’s a contrivance and doesn’t reflect too much on reality. I’m a year or two older than you are and there is no way I’m in the same generation as Bill Clinton, in any practical sense. While you weren’t born when he had his picture taken with President Kennedy, I was only a year or two old at most.

    As to Portia’s thesis, I have no idea if she’s right. I hope she is, though. I don’t know why, but I never fell for the leftist crap when I was younger. Since my earliest days, I’ve always been more interested in foreign policy issues than domestic because it was crystal clear to me even then that the Soviet Union was a grave threat to us, the world, human freedom, and peace in general. Some people seemed to understand that and take it seriously and some didn’t. All my political opinions and outlooks flowed from that basic understanding. I was with and for the people who took it seriously. Unilateral disarmament proponents, Castro apologists, Marxist agitators and others of their ilk I always considered naive at best and dangerous or evil at worst. Voting for Reagan in 1980 was a no-brainer for me. I know there is a subset of boomers who are proud of what they did re: Vietnam but I only feel shame for them. They condemned hundreds of thousands of people to death and re-education camps and millions of people to decades of living under a one-party, totalitarian communist state. Compare those peoples’ lives and prosperity and freedom to those of the people in South Korea who we did not abandon. There is no comparison. Again, for whatever reason, that’s always been crystal clear to me.

    I work at places dominated by lefty types, although perhaps not all in the hard core category. I did have a recent experience where, cautiously, another person and I discovered that we were on the same wavelength. I don’t even remember what the ‘tell’ was that got us talking in the first place but we gradually became more open with each other as we realized it was safe to do so.

  16. It seems to me that Russia is the last big country in which any topic can discussed in public without fear of intimidation. At least, this is so for ordinary people; in corridors of power it can be another story. In Europe and Canada situation is much worse then in US.

  17. Sometimes you can do a tell which is pretty forthright. Helps to have little to lose.
    Some years ago, at a Christmas party in a university town, I was talking to a young lady and asked her what she was studying. International security, she said, with a minor in Chinese.
    My idea of US foreign policy, I said, is three-fold.
    If you have nice stuff, we’d like to buy it.
    If you have money, we’d like to sell you our stuff.
    If you mess with us, we kill you.

    I hadn’t offended anybody up to that point, see.

    She looked around and nearly whispered, “That’s pretty much what I think, but with the professors here….” She had a dissertation coming up. Couldn’t afford enemies. I, on the other hand, would like a couple. I could speak out and she had to whisper.
    Eventually, she will either have tenure or a job in the private sector and be able to speak her mind. I hope she’s as insensitive and boorish as I was, when the time is right/wrong.

  18. my friends are older than me, and so they are in this group…

    predominantly… their attitude is that they want to ignore politics, believe the left even if its contradictory, have little knowlege as to how things work (but are violently believing that they know, but get even more violent when you show that they dont even know where their own thoughts come from), are getting old…

    and the scariest most common thought they express without any way to take it differently.

    we are going to die soon, and we dont care what happens when we are gone, the place sucks…

    so basically, they are going to ruin it all out of spite before they leave.

    they will be forever remembered (if we survive to tell the tale), as teh worst generation in human history… who sold their freedom for some pot, and party time, and then sold their posterity for a few more years of cable, and a feel good moment before their hedonistic time ends.

    sigh

  19. Kcom,

    I definitely get where you’re coming from.

    I sometimes wonder if perhaps our “Reagan’s Kids'” generation didn’t develop our political views based upon what we saw going on the world when the political left had complete control (the Carter era), and then that view of the world was contrasted with the views of Reagan which seemed much more successful in dealing with the worlds issues.

    Sadly, it may just take an Obama presidency to create the next generation like us. But for now, I agree that the old guard is dying off and a new generation is quietly taking power.

  20. I was born in 1955, which puts me right smack dab at the start of the Younger Cohort of Baby Boomers. Growing up I could see that the ones a few years older than I were different in some ways. They were less patriotic, except for the guys who did volunteer or were drafted, to fight the Communists. I supported the troops and their mission. It was not until 1972 when I felt myself beaten down by a counter narrative that had been hammered home to us by the Left. To this day, I am still angry that I was lied to by these people, who gradually eroded support for that mission and the value in contesting Communism. I joined the Army right out of high school in 1973 for a three-year enlistment, because I knew I could not afford college at that time and I did not know what I wanted to do. I figured that the Army would make a man of me (in some ways it did) and in growing up I would be better off when I did resume my education. I had 12 years of Catholic education. For high school I attended an all-boys Catholic boarding school. So, I had lived a rather sheltered life up to that point. In the Army I met guys who had the yellow and red service/tour of duty decoration for the Republic of Vietnam and some of them had also the CIB (Combat Infantryman Badge). These modest men only sometimes would talk about their experiences. It was many years before I would revisit this period by reading books and articles about the war. When I did, I was furious at the Left for having propagated so many lies about the war and what we accomplished. I had already left the Left after my ten-year sojourn there (1977-87).

    I have found that most of the people in my cohort of the Baby Boomers tend to be more conservative than our older Boomer brethren. Why that is, I am not sure. I find that we younger Boomers have more in common with the GenXers. Why is that? I find that there is some kind of intangible gulf or chasm between the two Boomer cohorts. Anyone understand this?

    And not all the older Boomers are liberal-Left.

    I find that we Boomers are still at war with each other and it shows no sign of abating. Why is that?

    The older kids I remember when I was little and when I was a young teenager seemed more off-putting, defiant, angry, and wild. Maybe it was because I was a quiet, observant kid. But they seemed to have a very different attitude towards the world and its events. I have a lot of cousins who are Older Boomers, and I love them dearly. But we are in such different worlds culturally and politically I amazes me. The funny thing is that for awhile I was openly, intellectually identified with Marxism, while I was never quite sure what motivated them. They were and still are very anti-establishment and stuck in the Sixties’ mindset. While I have moved on.

    These contrasts puzzle me to this day.

  21. She looked around and nearly whispered, “That’s pretty much what I think, but with the professors here….” She had a dissertation coming up. Couldn’t afford enemies. I, on the other hand, would like a couple. I could speak out and she had to whisper.

    Pedagogue’s prejudices
    blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/pedagogues_prejudices/

    And that is why, as his students edge towards their final school years, facing assessments and exams that will determine their future, they should have a copy of Mark Lopez’s The Little Black Schoolbook tucked away in their schoolbags. Launched last week in Melbourne, Lopez’s book is aimed at exposing the bias within the classroom so that students can turn it to their advantage rather than bombing in exams by courageously trying to tackle the received political wisdom in schools and universities.

    Lopez’s book is not a whine about the classroom being infected with Marxist, feminist and postmodern perspectives. Instead it offers up constructive lessons for students to beat the bias in the system. That means more than learning conventional study skills. It means being street-smart enough to recognise the limitations of some teachers. And it means knowing that some teachers will ask for a well-argued essay but reward essays that reflect their own biases.

    ==============

    We should not need a book that advises students that “your campaign for straight As must begin by establishing a psychological profile of your examiner. Make your teacher’s bias your friend, because if you do not it will be a formidable enemy.”

    We should not need a book that explains the continuing effect of the 1960s counter-culture on teaching and school curriculums. Or a book that draws on real-life experiences within the education system to help students identify how political ideology affects the examination and assessment, how to hunt for clues from prescribed reading materials and decipher questions to work out what answer would align with a teacher’s views.

    Or a book that helps students identify the politically correct answers: if you are asked to take a side in the “women in combat” debate, argue in favour, using feminist grounds of equal opportunity. “In a dispute between animal rights groups and duck hunters, if you side with the hunters you are a dead duck,” he writes.

    =============

    Windschuttle exposes feminist historian Marilyn Lake for admitting “the writing of history is a political activity”. [another stalinist, fancy that] He reveals how the search for truth was abandoned by academics who treat the alleged genocidal activities in Australia as equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust. Name after name, extract after extract, the bias of history teaching by prominent Australian academics is laid bare.

    ====================

    and in an article about america…

    Public Schools Are a Threat to Our Freedom

    Parents probably do not know that SIECUS criticizes “abstinence-only-until-marriage” curricula as “based on religious beliefs (that) rely on fear and shame”. SIECUS also complains that these abstinence programs do not view homosexuality as normal. SIECUS promotes policies, like what we have in West Virginia, where the school can provide birth control without consulting parents.

    then look up lukacks and hungary…

    see what they teach?

    Parents are usually unaware of messages that are conveyed to their children “under the radar”. For example, the Early Childhood Equity Alliance (ECEA), a network of activist educators promotes a teachers guide for teachers of young children (pre-kindergarten) that portrays the Navy’s Blue Angels as heartless killers who could bomb innocent American kids.

    and articles like this as they play withthe kids minds, and take them away if the parents do anything…

    so obama losing wont mean antyhing if we dont try to return to what we were… or else, amerca will be the next soviet reich the world will fear and crush..

    California school holds surprise ‘Gay’ Day for kindergartners

    Parents outraged at public elementary’s secretive ‘coming out’ event

    she asked her 5-year-old daughter what she was learning at school. The little girl replied, “We’re learning to be allies.”

    According to the report, a “TransAction Gender-Bender Read-Aloud” will take place Nov. 20. Students will listen to traditional stories with “gay” or transgender twists, to include “Jane and the Beanstalk.”

    and in case you dont know how to act around people whose ancestors came from africa…

    Effective Interactions With African-American Males

    There is a new course being offered at UNC-Wilmington in the spring semester of 2009. Before I go any further, let me assure you that I’m not making this up. The course, called “Effective Interactions with African-American Males,” is offered for credit in both the Social Work and Education departments. Unbelievably, it is offered, not just for senior credit, but for potential graduate credit, too.

    so… we have been asleep way too long…

    70 years too long… 70 years of believing everytime we saw something, it wasnt what we are seeing… social democracy is communism.. duh… doesnt anyone remember the menshiviks?

  22. HI. Born in 66 in Saigon. Immigrated here in 75. Was never political until 911. But I do remember a rant from an taxi driver back in the early 90s about how the Dems through welfare have politically and economically enslaved those they supposedly are servince. That and the fact i have always harbored mistrust of the Dems in how they betrayed the South Vietnamese. Saw that they tried again with Iraq war. The Dems cannot be trusted with national security. They are a party that serve themselves first.

    I am an assistant professor in surgery now. It makes me sad to see how so many of our bright students cannot critically think for themselves, whether it be reading journal articles, interpreting current events, or decide who to vote for.

  23. i’m in art/design biz in nyc.

    if folks knew i was a conservative i’d either be fired or lose my clients first and then get fired.

    most ny’ers are leftists; conservatives amount to 20% at most.

    that’s because most people here in nyc are dems – and they inherited that status.

    and they refuse to read or watch less liberal MSM.

    i DO make a ;opint of this with some by asking them if they think they could come to a rational and sound decision as a juror in a criminal case if they only listened to either the prosecutor or the defense – but not both.

    the readily admit that they would not be able to come to a reasonable decision.

    i then ask them why they think they can make reasonable decisions about politics if they ONLY read the nytimes and watch ABCNBCCBSCNN and skip the WSj and Fox !?!?!?

    i have also discovered that as soon as people here BOTH sides – the left/nytimes side and the right side that they INVARIABLY become more reasonable and more conservative.

    this is why one of the first things obama/reid/pelosi/barneyfrank will do is bring back the fairness doctrine. and extend it to the internet and cable and satellite.

    comrade obama will chavezize/mugabe-ize the usa.

    and once the usa is weakened the free world – which depends on the usa – will collapse.

    this has been the longterm goal of the left.

    they see the west – judeo-christian civilization – as the enemy. and they want it destroyed.

    obama is THEIR messiah.

    he election will damn america….

  24. Very interesting to find so many Gen Xers who are conservative thinkers. My daughter is a Gen Xer (Born 1967) She is a Clinical Psychologist who, until recently, worked for a mental health group that provided mental health services to low income people. She loved serving this under-served population, but her co-workers were deeply committed leftists who were atagonistic and angry if she expressed any but PC views about politics or life.

    She left to set up her own practice and is finding life much less stresful in a setting where she does not have to deal with the undercurrent of antagonism and leftist anger she felt from her co-workers.

    When she was still at her old job she used to call several times a week to talk about politics and PC attitudes because she felt free to express her ideas. Since she has been in private practice she seldom feels the need to call to discuss current events, politics, etc. I miss the calls, but know she is much happier now.

  25. Strauss & Howe were mentioned above; I suggest everyone read their The Fourth Turning. I just re-read it, and it holds up quite well. “My friend Irene calls us “Generation Fix It” because we keep doing what has to be done to keep things going.” could be a line from TFT; it’s their basic definition of our generation’s midlife mission.

    They draw the Boomer/Gen-X dividing line at 1961. I’m one of the so-called “Reagan’s Kids”, born in 1965, and definitely feel an affinity with other early Gen-Xers. But I’ve always thought that Obama, born in 1962, really belongs in the late-Boomer cohort. He’s never seemed particularly Gen-X except for the broken family thing.

    The Fourth Turning basically says that there is a fourfold cycle of generational archetypes; and that every time the nation is in this particular constellation of archetypes — about every 80-100 years — we have a Crisis like the Depression/WW2, the Civil War, and the Revolution. There is a catalyzing event, after which for a time the bad habits and acrimony of the previous period continue and appear to get worse, and then another event happens that starts the nation on its path to fundamentally changing how society is ordered until the next Crisis. (For instance, the Crash of ’29, followed by the election of FDR.)

    I used to think the catalyst was 9/11, but I’ve come to think that it’s actually the 2008 election and/or the beginning of the bailout/meltdown/”Great Devaluation”. I think the new seminal event will be the election of 2012.

    Unfortunately, I can’t predict which way the new society will trend, and I don’t think anyone can. I hope against hope that it will be in the direction of classical liberalism and personal freedom, but I fear that it will be in the direction of socialism and incipient fascism.

    I suppose it might depend on just how irresponsible the Boomers are in later life, and on how Gen X strikes the balance between “doing what we have to to make things work” and saying “f*** it, I’m going to go back to slacking.”

  26. Oh, and:

    My idea of US foreign policy, I said, is three-fold.
    If you have nice stuff, we’d like to buy it.
    If you have money, we’d like to sell you our stuff.
    If you mess with us, we kill you.

    I’m going to have to steal that for my sig line… 🙂

  27. It seems like Portia has opened the gates and shown us that we’re not alone here.

    My experience (born 1967 in Australia, moved to the US 6 years ago) is – like I suspect many of us – one of continually inheriting the boomer’s trash. I went to schools losing funding because the boomers were no longer there to require it. I mostly taught myself by reading a lot. By high school, I was getting boomer teachers, and the system was falling apart.

    I left school to colleges shell-shocked by boomer activism and again, leaking money because the boomers were all in the workforce now, so that was where the money went. Not for me and my cohorts the luxury of a year or more to “find ourselves”. WE looked in the mirror, took a deep breath, and picked up the shovel in the faint hope there might be something worth finding under all the trash the boomers had left behind.

    We entered the workforce as the old security of a job being a lifetime career fell apart in the nightmare of stagflation then, as the boomers started to get into corporate power, the mega-mergers and massive layoffs of our parents generation (mostly Depression and WW2 babies). No job security for us, and no comfortable retirement, either. I know no-one in my generation who expects to be able to retire, period. I certainly don’t.

    And always, cleaning up after the boomer messes, making things work somehow, and watching everything fall apart. Most of us aren’t selfish or apathetic about politics. Most of us are too busy trying to hold our lives and our families together to have TIME for anything more.

    We are NOT young boomers, and we’re not Generation X. The X-ers are the boomers’ kids, and they love those. You won’t find many people in the late 30s through touching 50 in power or being lauded as the next great thing unless they’re at either end of the age group and identify with left lunatic ideology.

    We’re the forgotten generation, Generation Fix It, quietly cleaning up the mess and making things work. And we’re sick to death of it.

    Irene

    (Like Portia, I’m in an area where it’s not a good idea to publicly proclaim my leanings. When it becomes impossible to hide them, I shall go out with middle finger upraised, loudly telling the truth to anyone who will listen. Until then, mouse-Irene is hiding in the corner, being ignored, and watching.)

  28. Irene: We are NOT young boomers, and we’re not Generation X. The X-ers are the boomers’ kids, and they love those. You won’t find many people in the late 30s through touching 50 in power or being lauded as the next great thing unless they’re at either end of the age group and identify with left lunatic ideology.

    Eh. The early ’40-s born Boomers who had kids early are the parents of early Gen-X, as are the pre-Boomer “Silent” generation who had kids late (like my parents). The late-childbearing Boomers and early-childbearing Gen-Xers are the parents of late Gen-X and early “Millennials” or Gen-Y.

    Although I do think there’s a difference between people born in the ’60s and people born in the ’70s, it’s clearly a different generation than the “nerf life” (my phrase) kids born in the ’80s and ’90s. (Of course, a whole lot of those kids are the ones doing the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, so they’re clearly not all permanently nerfed.)

    (Like Portia, I’m in an area where it’s not a good idea to publicly proclaim my leanings. When it becomes impossible to hide them, I shall go out with middle finger upraised, loudly telling the truth to anyone who will listen. Until then, mouse-Irene is hiding in the corner, being ignored, and watching.)

    Although I mostly keep it under my hat, everyone in my bien pensant liberal chosen community (the Seattle goth scene — we’re not all stupid Marilyn Manson-fan teenagers) knows to some degree that I’m a libertarian/conservative who mostly votes Republican. Like others, I’ve gotten good at reading “tells” (like my friend who has actually traveled to Europe, assorted Third World countries, and Israel, and whose outlook has changed to “America, F*** Yeah”…)

    I’m strongly considering writing a series of “This I Believe” livejournal posts to make it clear to my friends (and myself) exactly where I stand.

  29. Bryan,

    How about a series of GUEST posts, with testimonials? “I’m not a stereotypical Republican and I vote” and “I am not a boomer” type of thing?

    Would anyone want to help Irene and I do that in our just started, so far largely inconsequential blog? (we’ve been doing joke posts and my son, Hannibal, has been doing cartoons and such.)

    Let Irene know at rnnwcstl at gmail dot com if you’d like to do it/submit a post. (I don’t want to overwhelm neo.) Or even if you want to cross post — since our readership is probably very low just now.

    P.

  30. With regards to Generations, my two Millennials and their friends are far more cooperative and service-oriented than us late-cohort Boomers could ever be. Like the so-called Greatest Generation, that age group will be taking the reins right about when everything falls apart, per the roughly eighty-year cycle mentioned above, in about 2020, when the second-wave nuclear nations have consolidated their newfound strength and emergent nationalism just in time for Americans to wake up out of the coming left-wing torpor and stop giving away the bank. Interesting times those will be.

  31. DOB: 1965. Raised in red diapers by Holocaust survivors and their community. Definitely not like the rest of the kids in an otherwise tow-headed Irish neighborhood. Gah.
    First off, the anti-Semitism the left freely spews in public and online since 911 galls me, my childhood nightmares returned and have haunted me since.
    2nd, I’m more passionate a Zionist with each word Obama utters.
    3rd, I poured coffee and flipped eggs while raising two kids after the first husband drank himself to prison. Now I am 43 and finishing my bachelor’s in philosophy, ONLINE, via SUNY Empire State College. The professors are older, semi-retired, and no-nonsense PhD’s. No prestige, though, so it works against me when I apply to graduate school. I can relate to Sarah Palin’s background that way.
    4th, my kids get straight A’s and work after school and on weekends. They are emotionally healthy, good-humored, and value their family. My youngest is an artist who is already showing her work locally – age 14. My eldest, a HS senior, studies Russian and in her junior year, she won a full scholarship to an Ivy.
    5th, my three childhood friends are well-off liberal Democrats and each works in the fine arts (an administrator and two curators). They have kids on drugs, kids who feel entitled to drive new cars every year, kids who are never happy and scream demands at their parents. Obama they can relate to. Gah.

  32. I can’t imagine the next 4, 8 or 12 years taking place and America’s miraculous founding ideas NOT making a mass scale resurgence.

    We should see movement in this direction about the same time aquiring the basics of life starts mirroring the efficiency of going to any local DMV.

  33. I grew up in the 1940’s and experienced the tail end of the Great Depression, so I am in the pre-Yuppie, pre-Boomer generation.

    My choice of Engineering as career was aligned with my personal philosophy that getting something to work correctly was more important than how many degrees one had or who ones parents were.

    My perspective on liberals is based on years of working all over the US in a wide range of corporate environments. IMHO, those who actually could produce useful services and products tended to be conservative and those who slid through school and developed a glib facade and played office politics were generally quite liberal. They never seemed to connect actions correctly with results. They grew up living off other people’s work.

    In reading these comments, it appears that there have been continuous alternations of liberal and conservative political environments over the years.

    Liberals getting power and being forced out when it becomes obvious that socialism is a self-defeating activity in the long run.

    Conservatives getting power and being forced out when their abuse of power is recognized.

    With the advent of the Internet, we are able to reach others who share our subset of viewpoints and beliefs and it becomes immediately apparent that these subsets are not cleanly divided into liberal and conservative camps. I find myself allied with people of different political and religious affiliations depending on the set of issues we are supporting.

    Because I can now find and communicate openly with those who share my views, I feel less inclined to persuade my everyday associates to be less liberal or less opinionated. As other commenters have said before, I listen amiably and nod as others relate conspiracy theories and exhibit BDS in various ways.

    Occasionally, I look around and catch a knowing wink from another stealth conservative in the crowd.

    I live in a small town where everyone is connected to almost everyone else in some way. This is not a bedroom community, so everyone knows more about everyone else than you could ever imagine. It’s almost like an extended family and we are going to be together for a long time so it makes sense to share only those thoughts that can be easily accepted.

    I think that the return to a more conservative, non-entitlement nation will be done through much networking on the Internet and a growing recognition and use of the distributed power of people working in concert to encourage conservative activities and discourage social programs that debase in the guise of help.

    This is not Astroturfing where coordinated efforts are made to influence opinions with canned talking points. It will only work when thousands of individuals find their own voices and deliver their uniquely personal messages everywhere abuses are detected.

    The MSM has gotten gun shy recently about criticism directed at their lack of professionalism. Multiply this tenfold or a hundredfold and include politicians as targets of your fact checking and opinions and you will see a change in the way that our elected representatives operate. An informed and articulate public providing feedback will be a force that will change the way that government works.

  34. Irene, that was amazing… wow… my way of trying to say that is that i am the wonder years generation… 🙂

  35. I was born 1968.

    I’m a Gen-xer; Reagan’s kid; Gen Fix-it.

    I raised myself after my parents split ‘cuz my boomer mom wanted to ‘find herself’. My uncle put me through college–Uncle Sam.

    I’m the youngest electrical engineer in my company–I’ve been laid off 4 times. I have 5 boomer bosses who got in under the pension system. They have stock options. I’m at work when they come in and still at work when they leave for the day. They call me ‘slacker’ and I have to hide my tattoos. They call me ‘kid’: I’m 40.

    I have no loyalty at all to my company–they will get rid of me in an instant if it is convenient.

    I’ve never had a pension. I’ve never had stock options. I’ve been drug-tested for every job and every position since I was 17.

    So far, I’ve paid higher taxes; higher Social Security taxes and worked for a lower Real Wage throughout my entire working years than any generation before me. I’ve attended mandated ‘sensitivity’ classes; ‘Consideration of Others and ‘anti-harassment’ courses my entire life.

    I’m happy about the market crash ‘cuz for the first time in my life I get to buy into a cheap market.

    All I want from my government is to be left alone. Stop trying to ‘create opportunities’ for me–I can’t afford it.

  36. I was born in 1952. So, I’m a boomer. I was a hippie in the late 60’s, early 70’s, a rock guitar player, all that stuff. My mom was from Boston, my dad from Providence. Both long gone. They loved JFK.

    I got a real job. Changed everything. Jimmy Carter became president, and that quickly made me a republican. Reagan made me a conservative.

    Looking back, I was never a liberal democrat. The peace – love – dove – hippy beads, and far out crowd never were peace niks. They hated the way things were. Still do. It’s all they know how to do. They have no idea how to build and make better and maintain afterwords. They want to destroy the very country that gave them everything they have – including the freedom to believe as they will. They simply cannot see the very spot they are standing on.

  37. Don from Berkeley: my guess is that Berkeley natives had to leave to stop drinking the leftist Kool-Aid. Before you got to high school, I spent a year in Berkeley doing the dropout/hippie/activist thing. Many of the people I hung out with were locals- Berkeley High graduates, w various relationships to UCB. I lost touch with them after I left Berkeley, but several years ago I ran across news of one of them on the Internet. Suffice it to say that this person had reason to reject the entire left, based on what this person had found out, but instead of doing so, restricted personal wrath against only part of the left, sounding on other issues like the standard boiler-plate leftist. It is very difficult to spend one’s entire life in that environment and not drink the Kool-Aid.

    Many in that environment were full of themselves. I recall a middle-aged professional saying that in the future, the Bay Area would be viewed as we currently view Renaissance Italy. Talk about unwarranted hubris!

    Or: one of the local people I hung out with said that if he got drafted, he would be quite content: he would go into Ordnance. Shades of the Weathermen, a route he did not end up taking. He later became an MD.

    Definitely a hot house environment!

  38. “All I want from my government is to be left alone. Stop trying to ‘create opportunities’ for me—I can’t afford it.”
    Bless you.

  39. “All I want from my government is to be left alone. Stop trying to ‘create opportunities’ for me—I can’t afford it.”
    Bless you.

    Amen. I’ve come to accept I’ll die at work no matter how long I live. At work and likely paying taxes. I prefer that to any more help from the government.I can’t afford their help.

    I don’t want change. They’d just take my dollar bills and give me a nickel.

  40. Wow Neo, looks like you have a demographic 🙂
    1964 here, great comments, struck a cord with quite a few.
    I may be the only one here that is in the opposite situation, In my occupation I am surrounded by conservatives and the liberals need to keep quiet for the most part. 🙂

  41. Amen. I’ve come to accept I’ll die at work no matter how long I live. At work and likely paying taxes. I prefer that to any more help from the government.I can’t afford their help.

    Who ever would have guessed that personal pride and self-reliance would be counter-cultural!?

  42. Wow Neo, looks like you have a demographic

    Well, I, for one, just love Apostate Boomers like Neo and Gerard Van der Leun.

    As long as they don’t call me ‘kid’….

  43. YES! Though I must confess at 45 it’s cool to hear Palin referred to as a babe and too young to be in the race. I mean, I know she’s not, but… makes me feel young again!

    Just one more advantage of Sarah Palin!

  44. Gray, of course personal pride and self reliance are counter-cultural. How long have we been told that “the Government” or “the system” or some other magic hopey-changey thingie should provide for our every need?

    By looking after ourselves and taking pride in ourselves we’re denying our would-be masters their superiority.

  45. By looking after ourselves and taking pride in ourselves we’re denying our would-be masters their superiority.

    That’s the pure distillation of Gen FiXit spirit! We’ve been doing that since we were in grade school.

    I’ve never heard it put so well!

    I get furious when I hear candidates talk about taking care of my children…. I’ll take care of them. You leave us alone, government.

  46. I’ve never studied mass social movements or how they manipulate entire generations. I’m more of a 1 to 1 person in terms of the fields of psychology and propaganda.

    I don’t have the background nor the fundamental premises to analyze whether this is a growing trend or a local phenomenon.

  47. Xers,

    Boomers like me are not your natural enemy. And as one who has tried to live my life without leaving messes (solid marriage, devoted father, and trying to be ethical in how I treat people at work and in my social life), I want to focus your attention elsewhere in order to find the source of the chaos that is shredding our world – OUR common world and heritage.

    The roots of this chaos and vortex of destruction are spiritual and intellectual, and have fed into family, school, workplace, and all social life. The Older Cohort of Boomers I referred to in my earlier post – the older kids I found perplexing and even repulsive – were themselves set on a path by people who sanctioned their uncritical rebellion against all tradition. These teachers and professors were imposing their own agendas and also working as part of a larger effort to undermine the West with many ties going right back to Dzerzhinsky Square.

    Those agents of dizinformatzia succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Stunningly so. Today, I am sure Mikhail Gorbachev is probably second-guessing himself and wishing he had been able to hold the Soviet State together for just a while longer.

  48. Fred HJR

    As Gray put it, we don’t consider all boomers our enemy. (Would I be reading neo — and would I respect her immensely I must add — if I did?)

    You must forgive us, but we had boomer teachers and met so many lefty-nut-boomers that we’ve gone a little over the edge.

    The boomer generation was used, yes. It was pumped full of its own importance. And many of them right now would rather destroy the country than go quietly and be forgotten.

    You’re right on where the money came from. I don’t remember if Neo covered it in her change series, but a lot of the vietman protests were agitprop from the USSR, or at least financed by them.

    And truly, speaking for me, that I know, me and others like me, aren’t mad at anyone but the “liberal fascists” still trying to get us to “get with the” their “program.”

    P.

  49. Year or so older than Obama–my husband is even younger. Have always hated being referred to as a Boomer. (here’s an aside and I wondered if it’s happened to anyone else–used to date a guy dob56–very conservative–went to college after the Navy married a Northern girl probably dob 63-she is/was very liberal and now so is he). I come from a family that is pretty religious and southern–so we tend to be conservative. I didn’t hide it much in college either–I went later–started at 23.
    I even dated a full fledged little older than baby boomer University professor who was your typical liberal professor–was at Ohio State when Kent State happened so I had to listen to all sorts of anti-war stories.
    It’s funny why you hide your conservatism and who you hide it from. I used to have to hide it from my cousin’s wife (cousin dob 65–she much older dob 53) but now he’s become more conservative even than me–He goes around to schools lecturing on HIV and what not for the Health Dept–only for the last 10 years and it has turned him from die hard liberal.

  50. FredHJR–you’re right. I know I’m guilty of painting boomers with an over-broad brush….

    I guess I blame that generation, and their intergenerational warfare that defined ‘hip’ and ‘square’ for all eternity, for making personal choices political.

    What I eat, drink, drive, listen to or wear is not a political statement. I’m not a Maoist. The Personal is not Political. But it’s a boomer world, I just live in it….

  51. Gray,

    I’m very much a live and let live kind of guy. I tend to not go looking for fights. Even when I played hockey in my younger days, I never went looking for conflict, but if it found me I could bring it and then some.

    I remember when, in 1973, when I had first joined the Army and then came home on leave after basic training at Fort Dix, NJ, some of my cousins of the hippie sort would kind of snicker at my haircut and my uniform. One would ask my why I would join up with Uncle Sam’s Army when we were supposed to be imperialist monsters. Most of my relatives were not like that, but it did bother me that some older guys who avoided service would so look down on the armed forces that even a cousin was not off limits for their stupid attitude. But I remember how proud of me Dad was. Dad and I did not always have the best relationship, so anything that would forge a bond was great by me.

    There were very many older Boomers who did love their country and who answered the call. I am so glad to have made their acquaintance. And the older Boomers who supported them. They don’t get enough credit for standing by the men and their mission during a time when it was not easy to do so. The peer pressure to be against the war was palpable.

    When I think about what Ayers and the Weathermen wanted to do to soldiers and their wives and girlfriends at Fort Dix back in 1970, it makes me very angry. That these evil people are not behind bars for the rest of their lives is a mystery to me. Well, yes, I know. It was the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act.

    And for a man who is likely to be our next Commander in Chief to keep company with people like that is loathesome.

  52. And for a man who is likely to be our next Commander in Chief to keep company with people like that is loathesome.

    Well, the chilling thing for me is that I wasn’t even born during all that crap and now they want to visit it on me.

    I wasn’t around to oppose them, or fight them at the time; and now the malignant old bastards want to inflict their ideas, backed by the force of government, on me and my family.

  53. scottie Says:

    “Sadly, it may just take an Obama presidency to create the next generation like us.”

    Yeah. They can contrast the anti-republican propaganda with the reality of lefty government. We also need to learn some way to roll things back. It really won’t do that anytime a progressive is in power they can muck things up and there is no way to undo it once they’re out.

  54. Irene Says:

    “We’re the forgotten generation, Generation Fix It, quietly cleaning up the mess and making things work. And we’re sick to death of it.”

    I’m just sick of the resistance…. our group (I was born in 70 / am a Reagan kid) didn’t have a war so working in other ways seems our duty or way of giving back. All I resent is the push back from the boomers that makes it so hard. This next election will be another example / another mess… an outspoken boomer at work summed it up. He said America won’t really move forward until my (re: his) generation passes on…

  55. Gray Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    All I want from my government is to be left alone. Stop trying to ‘create opportunities’ for me—I can’t afford it.

    Grey, that is a great line. I am going to shamelessly and unapologetically steal it and use it ad nauseam as I troll the internet looking for the diminishing signs of intelligent life. 🙂

    Great conversation, everybody. I am uplifted. Thank you.

  56. OK, neo, so your blog is a kind of group therapy! I am glad to be reading that others have similar views or experiences. I ain’t gonna cry or wanna hug youse all, though.

    Like Scottie I can not call myself a boomer; never could. They are way too self-absorbed, self-congratulatory and self-righteous over so little. They get their identity by being part of “that generation.” I got to the point if I heard another commercial touting a product or documentary or something talking about how great it is to be part of that generation I was gonna scream. (I do not watch commercials anymore. Tivo is a wonderful thing.)

    I wish I could tell you that things are getting better in my career field. They are not but that is not a bad thing. I am a military officer; most folks joining are usually leaning conservative, so, there is not much room for change.

    What I am hoping for is what Thomass says: America is waking up and is slowly passing “that generation” out of its’ system. Too bad I might not have a whole lot of time to enjoy it when they are finally gone!

  57. Gray Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
    All I want from my government is to be left alone. Stop trying to ‘create opportunities’ for me—I can’t afford it.

    Yes! This is what “laissez faire” means! For those who do not know, it was coined when a member of the French government was asking merchants, bankers, etc, what he could do to help them. The response was, “Leave us alone!”

  58. Elected officials can be weeded out. My concern is with bureaucrats at all levels, with house and senate “aids”. There is no way the senate and house had time to write and read the 700 billion dollar bailout before voting on it. I wonder who actually wrote it. I wonder how much of it was written, and for how long, before it was stamped and approved. The only ones who did not know this was coming from a long time back, are us mushrooms – about 300 million of us these days.

    All the committees overseeing this fiasco are headed by, and populated by, democrats. Look it up. Yet the republicans got the blame, and it is sticking.

    Who put the funds for ACORN in the 3 pager (that was NEVER SUPPOSED to pass)? Why? That type stuff is always hidden. The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. It was a gimme to someone for some reason. It brought ACORN straight to the front pages and TV screens. Another diversion.

    Bills go from the house, to the senate, to the oval office. The senate passed the second bailout. It ain’t supposed to happen in that order. No one went ballistic over that, so what kind of precedence has now been set? Like maybe we won’t need a house in the future? Too many cats to herd? There is so much crud flying this cycle that all kinds of things are passing under the radar.

    When Obama clasps his hands over his crotch, while everyone else has their right hand over their heart during the national anthem (including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton), it is saying more than any words he has ever spoken.

    When the devil comes, he will not be dressed in a red suit with horns, a pointy tail, and be carrying a pitchfork. He’s going to be the prettiest thing anyone has ever seen. That’s a terrible paraphrase from Network (the movie), but the point is hopefully made.

  59. I’m 42, born 66

    FWLIW, the people my age who support Obama the most tend to be marginal sorts. Truthers, welfare types, drug-addled. Its the kids behind them, the 18yo students and such, who are supporting him in majority.

  60. Kind of late to the party here, but here goes:
    First off, love the site, Neo. I’m a frequent reader and first time commenter here.

    Grew up in the 90’s, born in ’81. I’ve spent most of my life in the Bos-Wash corridor. Many (though I can no longer say most) of my friends in my age range trend towards libertarian. I find that I’m hands down the most conservative leaning of my friends. If I had to slap a label on it, I’d say I’m a conservative libertarian with a neo-conservative foreign policy.

    My biggest problem is trying to convince them not to take the “don’t blame me; I voted for Kodos” route. Still, there are people in the generation behind the Xers who believe in hard work, small government, and personal responsibility. I should know. I’m one of them.

  61. urthshu Says:

    ” Its the kids behind them, the 18yo students and such, who are supporting him in majority.”

    Its not what some of the polls say. 18-24 years old tilt McCain…

  62. Portia writes:

    “I voted Libertarian up to 2000. (They’re just not serious about defense. I can no longer endorse them.) ”

    Ditto, and ditto.

  63. I’m one of the first of the boomer generation, born in 1946, probably 9 months to the day after my dad got home from the war. Fortunately, I seem to have escaped being sucked into the boomer mainstream. I’m fascinated by the whole generational discussion and have found this site very intriguing. The site seems to have been upgraded considerably since the last time I looked at it, but I hope the information that I read earlier is still there.

    http://www.lifecourse.com/mi/insight/generations/intro.html

  64. Pingback:a new tide rises « lumpenscholar

  65. Late to the party. Hi, Y’all!

    Born in 1956; of Goldwater/country club Republican parents. Grandparents: one set Roosevelt voters, one set Wilkie voters. All Southern. Half the family unvarnished fundie Protestant, the other half varnished Episcopalian, Social Register.

    My parents did some things right, bless ’em. When Kennedy was assassinated, they were shocked and horrified. They sat us kids down and said, very seriously, “You know we didn’t like President Kennedy very much. But he Was the President. And No One Gets To Assassinate the President. Ever.”

    Lesson learned, unforgettable: Principle before party, country before party. Office before man.

    My sister used to wrangle with them, but she was never a Marxist or any of that crap. Just an averagely rebellious social hippy. (As distinct from a political one.)

    I was an Independent for years, and prided myself on being an equal-opportunity skeptic. Liked the Dems’ support for women’s rights; conservation. Can’t think what else, now…. Respected the Republicans’ stance on Communism. Never became a leftist myself, because I despised their moral failure with respect to totalitarianism. Disliked the Republicans’ anti-abortion, social Darwinism, damn the environment ideas.

    Was a Democrat for five years, and had the scarily seductive experience of taking my feet off the sea floor and letting the undertow sweep me along, resistless… Here in NYC, I finally “fit in.” Marched on Washington in 2001, convinced by the MSM that GWB had “stolen” the election. Cried on the Mall in the rain–not for the party, but for our country.

    First crack in the cement for me, was the Emily Litella moment when the media said, “Oh, Never Mind. They didn’t steal the election after all,” in a little-remarked report that the WashPo and USA Today, etc., published that spring or summer on the election. I was instantly furious: I saw at once that the Dems had been willing to DESTROY the faith of the citizenry in our electoral process in their tantrum over losing the election. Oh, boy.

    Still hated the Republicans. Then I saw those bastards attack NYC on Sept. 11th: from the roof of my home, 20 blocks away, I saw thousands of people butchered. Saw the people jumping from the skyscrapers. Knew evil when I saw it.

    After that? seeing the Dems, within six effing weeks, start their Quisling garbage with amplified shrillness, even derangement. Saw them make excuses for our enemies, our enemies who embodied EVERYTHING they affect to despise: the vile misogyny, the homophobia, the theocratic tyranny, the violence, torture, mass murder.

    And I knew them, friends. I felt like I’d waked up next to a crocodile. None of their alleged principles has mattered a tinker’s damn to them, except one: their hatred of America and their hatred of patriots. If I could grind my foot in their faces I would. I will never, never, never forget what I saw that day.

    I’ll tell you one more thing. Two weeks after the massacre, I went down there. I had to see it, see what They had done to My Beloved City. It had just gone dark, and I stood by the chain link fence, with notes, love letters, prayers from all the people thrust the wires.

    Two women stood nearby: one about 30, one in her sixties. Talking softly in a foreign tongue. I asked them where they were from. “Israel,” said the younger. “Oh, then you know about this; you’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

    The older woman turned to face me square-on. “Never. Never like this. This is so much worse than anything we’ve had to deal with.” Her eyes were dark with horror.

    Never, never, never forgive. Never, never, never forget. Fight them, tooth and toenail, to the last of our strength. They can never enslave a free people. If we can defeat the Fifth Column, we can make very short work of the jihad boys. And they know it.

  66. One more thing: the one note affixed to that chain-link fence beside “the Pile” just about did me in: It was a child’s drawing of the Two Towers. From the tops of both, rising like smoke, were scores of tiny stick-figure people. And floating above them all, his arms opened in love, was Jesus welcoming them Home.

    There are no words.

  67. This is, far and away, the most moving thread, and most uplifting discussion I have yet read on any blog.

    Thank God, Thank Heaven, Thank the Universe for you all.

    Beverly, there are no words.

  68. Born in 1961. My mom was the eldest of a large group of cousins, most of whom are classic 50s-born boomers, who went on to be pretentious hippy New York Jewish intellectuals. It’s fun to look at old pictures, and see the clothes they wore to my mom’s annual Chanukah party.

    The lovefest began to melt and get muddy as I came up in the 70s and 80s. Most of them found niches in – the folks out in the real world have mellowed some. But the hubris about their generation is largely intact. Some are still in academia and are “still crazy after all these years”.

    Graduated high school under a Carter-era cloud. I guess you could call us the Billy Joel generation – although I guess we have a different explanation of what caused the woes in places like Allentown.

    Really great thread.

  69. I’m one of FredHjr’s “younger cohort” of Boomers, slightly younger than he is. I grew up northern, urban, Democrat, union, and Catholic, but I never drank the Boomer Kool-Aid. Commies were always despised at our home, as were welfare cheats of any race. Even while still young, I could never abide the Left’s nihilism, although I didn’t recognize it for what it was until years later. I thought the stoned hippies rolling around in the mud at Woodstock were ridiculous. I believed the SDS punks and Black Panthers belonged in jail. And I thought the Ohio Guard needed to go to the range more in the wake of Kent State. (“Only 4?”) In college in the early-to-mid-1970s, I shunned the few campus lefties (my state school was basically apolitical), stayed out of the drug scene, and managed to earn an ROTC scholarship. I still considered myself a Democrat (mostly because that’s what my parents were) and voted for Carter in 1976, but after I graduated and went on active duty, I saw what a putz he was. I’ve never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since. My political awakening, such as it was, took place then, and I found I had more in common with Reagan and at least a portion of the GOP than I did with Carter and any part of the Dems.

    I see some of the dynamic that Portia noted at my place of employment. People my age and older, with the significant exception of former military types like me, tend to be fairly liberal. Not hard-left by any means, that’s fortunately not a common view at my employer, but basically the JFK/LBJ type of big-government liberal. They’re not overly impressed with Obama, but very comfortable with Biden. The younger, 30-ish crew, on the other hand, is quite a bit more conservative than its seniors. Every one of this age group of young professionals that I know personally (and it’s a good sized group) who’s willing to talk is voting for McCain/Palin (especially Palin). What’s important is that this group is just now starting to climb the first rungs of the management ladder, as my age group starts thinking about retirement. At my company at least, this bodes very well for the future.

  70. waltj

    It was enjoyable to read your story above. You seem more level headed than I was, since I took a detour on the Left for those ten years (1977-87) after I got out of the Army and started college. Despite that, it was a valuable experience for me, because now I know the Left very well. Many of those who left the Left took the playbook with us. And that’s why we’re so hated by them.

    Like you, I feel more kinship with the GenXers than I do with the Older Boomers. I feel that those younger ones, when they ascend up the ladder in their professions will put things right. Honestly, I just don’t have much use for a lot of the Older Boomers, exceptions do exist among them, however.

    Beverly,

    Like you, in the aftermath of 9/11 I knew that the alliance of convenience between the Left (increasingly taking control over the Democratic Party) and Islam was at the point of no return. And so the following year I switched parties. I burned my bridges after 9/11 and cannot see myself ever going back. And it’s kind of sad that this has happened, because Democrats like Joe Lieberman I would have no problem voting for. But those guys are being driven out of that party. It is a completely different party from the one of JFK days. Unrecognizable.

  71. FredhJr: Speaking of JFK, I was reading something about him the other day and was reminded that his senior thesis was on the subject of Britain’s appeasement leading up to WWII. He was indeed a much more hawkish—and in general conservative—person than the Democrats of today, that’s for sure.

  72. Something I’ve observed by virtue of being in more parades than I care to remember (I used to play trombone. My band was regularly hauled in to provide music). When you’re behind the animals, you get to deal with (edited for general politeness) manure.

    For those boomers who didn’t join the “if it feels good, do it” trend, thank you. When you’re trudging uphill through what seems like an endless pile of manure, it’s easy to forget that each single bit was dropped by an individual, and that not all the individuals dropped it.

  73. Suds46: Lifecourse Associates is Strauss & Howe — or at least Howe since Strauss passed away last year. I’d say if you don’t want to buy the books, then read through the website.

  74. Before I give my little life story I want to comment on two comments I read.

    First, br549’s comment about the Bailout bill. He is the only person other than myself who noticed the outright dishonest method that the 2nd Bailout bill took to get passed.

    Per the Constitution, bills related to finance, must originate in the House of Rep… as the first bill did.

    So how it could be that the Senate had their own bill that they passed before getting it from the House?

    They answer is, they took a random bill that the House passed earlier in the year that related to Mental Health and erased all the text and put in their version of the Bailout text and passed that.

    Now, because the Senate technically passed the same bill the House passed earlier in the year, the next step in the process is to send the bill to a conference committee to reconcile the language so that each chamber can hold a yes or no vote with no option to amend the bill any longer. This locked the House of Rep out of making any changes to what the Senate did.

    Is that not a travesty or is it not? I hate the Democrats with all that is inside me.

    And then to Beverly’s comment:
    I live in Chicago and I had to see the WTC site for myself too… I drove to NYC in Thanksgiving 2001 … the site was still smoking and the air near the waterfront still had a powerful chemical stench to it.

    And I too detest the Quisling Media and Democrats. 2001 wasn’t over yet and they were using words like “Quagmire”

  75. I was born in 1974, and was 6 in 80 when my most of my memories start to kick in.. I grew up in South-Side Chicago neighborhood called Bridgeport. Home of Chicago’s Democratic Machine. (Though when Daley leaves, it will probably be moving down to Hyde Park)

    Being Italian and not Irish (thank God), my family/friends had an unquestioned patriotism for America and none of the arrogance that the Irish and other masters of the Machine have. Most of the adults I knew as a child were not overtly political. They were city workers, truck drivers, small business owners, some of them on the fringe of the mafia, a few schemers and mooches.

    It was sort of like the greater political battles skip this part of the world.

    I went to Catholic Grammar school. We were taught what a great place America is. We were taught the religious basis of the country (though I dont think we were ever told about Protestants, hehe)

    I loved Reagan, I don’t know why I did. Maybe I’m just seduced by greatness? I knew Reagan was exceptional, I knew he was like a Washington of our day. I dont remember why I knew this.

    I do remember , as a boy, watching TV and seeing idiot EUtopians protest the US and Reagan as a warmonger. I remember Hollywood making off as if we were deliberately making people homeless and poor. I remember thinking how stupid they sound. I recall immediately identifying with Alex P Keaton.

    I detest ,in general, the Boomers. The Worst Generation is what I call them. Their Self-Importance makes me want to vomit. If they hated this country so much why didn’t they all leave and go to their EUtopia.. why did they have to destroy the Foundation and leave to the rest of us a house unable to stand?

    Oh well, that would be too much to ask for from the first generation that legally murdered the next.

    I’m gay so that leaves me with two secrets that I could keep about myself depending where I am. And as is universally experienced by other people who share my attributes.. I get no problems from Conservatives who know I’m gay… on the other hand… the reverse is usually indeed the reverse… intolerance, disrespect, retaliation, hostility and all the rest of it.. these are Boomer values.

    That is the Legacy the Boomers have created… an America decoupled from its foundations, and the Leftist Priesthood of Hatred.

    I’m very pessimistic about America surviving the next decade. I predict a total collapse of our currency and with it a collapse of the Federal Govt.

    Once that happens, we will be neutralized and the rest of the world will descend into oceans of blood.

  76. So, VinceP, you would get rid of ALL of us Boomers, if you could?

    At least when I talk about the ones at least a few years older than I am I couch it with the understanding that they aren’t all that way.

    While there may be such a thing as collective guilt, collective punishment is unjust and cruel.

    Also, much of the Far Left socialists and anarchists have large gay contingents, but I don’t tar all gay people that way. Reality is a lot more complex than our constructions of it are. Raw anger sooner or later has to be constructively channeled. Otherwise, it can become destructive.

  77. Hey folks, I’m a bona fide boomer! Like all generations, we are not a unitary group.

  78. I think the people who come after the Boomers always hear from the Hippy faction how great they were and what not and so make the link that Boomer = Hippy Anti-American Scum… So when I say Boomer that is who i have in my mind.. not the ones who turned out normal. .

  79. Dear Neo,

    I quite understand if you don’t want to hear from me fro a while (!) I swear I didn’t realize there was a finger holding back the flood!

    However I sent you a message — the last one — asking if I may post a comment pertinent to the “all the boomers” or “a few.” Mind you, the beginning reads dishearting, but it truly isn’t…

    However, I don’t want to post it without your approval as it is INCREDIBLY long. (Sorry. I’m long winded.)

    P.

  80. Thank you Neo. I hadn’t meant it to make it that horribly long. 🙂 I’ll post it in my blog tomorrow, to give Cam’s post some time on its own…

  81. Neo, It is over for Barack if people learn about this:

    No, it’s not. The fix is in.

    Back to the topic: I’ve been thinking for quite a while that this country needs to move beyond the 60s radical-vs-establishment paradigm and toward something more cooperative. I don’t think that can happen until the last John Kerry, George Bush, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, and John Murtha is out of office, out of power, out of influence, and maybe even in his grave. The fact that the 2004 election was practically a referendum on the Vietnam War shows that these people are still living in the past more than they’re dealing with the present. The fact the neo felt the need to create this blog shows that lots of normal people are still suffering the effects of that poisonous era.

    One of the few good things I can say about Obama is that he lives in my world, not in my dad’s world. Unfortunately, my generation inherited the schism created by the Vietnam-era people, and Obama and I are on opposite sides of the divide. Obama flourishes in this schizoid atmosphere; he games it in order to win power. I’m just weary of the whole thing.

  82. This has been very heartening to read. Some of these comments sound like they’re coming from inside my head.

    I was raised conservative — my father was a Henry Wallace Democrat when he got back from the war, and when he found out his candidate was backed by Moscow he turned into a hardcore old-fashioned Hoover Republican and hasn’t budged since.

    But when the time came for my youthful political rebellion — it was 1980. I’d watched my country get humiliated and wallow in helplessness for my entire childhood (born in 1966). The first man I voted for was Ronald Reagan in 1984 and I’ve never looked back.

    Right now I live in Massachusetts on the fringes of academia; I’m a freelance writer. I know only two people who aren’t liberal democrats or worse. At times I feel close to despair, watching the college students parroting back what their leftist profs have taught them.

    I’ve been self-employed most of my adult life and I expect to die that way.

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