It was a Saturday.
Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.
From our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet:
Lex Anteinternet: Chris Christie on the Baby Boomers. How to make a...: Chris Christie said this in a C-Span interview. Baby boomers—the most selfish generation in American history, the most self-centered genera...
Chris Christie on the Baby Boomers. How to make an entire demographic outraged with one fairly truthful comment.
Chris Christie said this in a C-Span interview.
Baby boomers—the most selfish generation in American history, the most self-centered generation, the least sacrificing generation American history. You look at Biden and Trump in particular, and they personify thatI commented on it on Twitter, defending what he said.
There's a large element of truth to it.
People reacted overall to the statement with outrage. Lots of Boomers died in Vietnam, it was pointed out.
Biden and Trump sure didn't serve in Vietnam.
Christie is fat, was all some people could say. Well, yep, Christie is fat, and Biden and Trump are demented due to age. I'll take fat over demented (indeed, from personal experience I'll note that demented people really like to point out when somebody is fat, oddly enough, and Trump does that a lot).
There are "some" good Boomers. Oh come on, there are lots and lots of good Boomers. Defending a generation with a reserved "some" means the person making the statement basically agrees with the underlying comment.
"Biden isn't a boomer". True, he was born in 1942, not 1945. But as one person posted in reply to that, "he's close enough".
"Christie is a boomer". Yeah, so what? And to add to that, he really isn't. Both the Biden comment (1942) and this one (Christie was born in 1962) point out that the guardrails to generations are somewhat fluid. Moreover, the fact that late Boomers in no way whatsoever fit into the Boomer generation has caused later demographers to define them as being in Generation Jones. Their experiences, including getting the shaft from Boomers, is completely different from the real Boomers.
And indeed, Boomers just can't grasp that. There's a lot, and I do mean a lot, of discontent, and even outright animosity, towards the Boomers, and its largely justified.
Boomers are a unique generation. There are a lot of them, for one thing, but they also came into the country at a unique time. They were the children of the generation that was young during the Great Depression and which fought World War Two. We're not going to use the "Greatest Generation" moniker here, as while that generation is admirable, it doesn't deserve that title.
The World War Two Generation was a broken one. As with the Boomers, you can't take a sweeping statement like that and apply it to everyone, but there are generational characteristics. That generation's attachment to home and family was weakened by the desperation of the Depression. As an example, my mother was pulled out of school at age 16 in order to work, and while she was always close to her family, she left home when still a teenager as she was tired of her income being treated as just the family's, and not her. Her mother begged her to stay, and then begged her to return. She didn't (she lived with an uncle who gave her a job across the continent).
And an entire generation of men was trained to kill with a large number of them actually experiencing that. Killing other people, particularly in that fashion, is not normal, and every other human vice opens up after it. Not everyone who killed or was trained to kill engaged in that vice, but more did than Americans cared to acknowledge. That helped bring about postwar domestic instability everywhere, with some of those Boomers born not so much into idyllic families but into ones that were struggling with parental infidelity, violence, brutality and alcoholism. Not all, to be sure, but more than you might suspect.
They also came home to a United States in an economic boom which meant a massive transfer in economic status for people who hadn't expected it and who didn't really know how to handle it. Those pictures of ideal American families in the 50s don't address a culture that was beginning to be taken ever by consumerism.
By the time the first Boomers, the real ones, were entering their adulthood all that was in full bloom. And their parents wanted them to be free of the horrors that had been inflicted upon them, so they handed them educations and businesses when they were young, not trying to really hold on to them.
The Baby Boom Generation early on figures that all the rules that preceded were stupid, and like people who succeed in business and life early on (the latter of which they really didn't), they came to believe they were really smart. And they often held the generations, including Generation Jones, that came behind them in contempt. Handed businesses, they wouldn't hand them over. Handed advantage, they didn't see that they needed to help others obtain it. Handed wealth, they felt free to use to use it for personal and societal destruction.
American society has become one, as one commentator noted, that's being run by oligarchs. Well, the Boomer focus on money, making it, and career, which really started to come into focus in the 1970s, helped get us there. The mess they made of their family lives and indeed even the topic of sex, in which everything was all about themselves, has made a mess of domestic life that current generations are trying to fix.
And they won't let go of things now.
And that's the main thing.
Now, let me take a step back. I've written here as if all the Boomers are a monolith. They are not.
Thousands of men volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and a lot of them did not come back. Environmentalism, which the Republicans have struggled against, was something started by their parents, but which was adopted to an enormous degree, had a huge positive impact, may have saved the planet for generations, and my save it in its entirety yet. The same is true of conservationism, which dates back well over a century but which was very well expressed in the Boomers. The combined legacy of environmentalism and conservationism is so deep that younger generations truly cannot grasp it.
So then, what of reality?
Well, the record is mixed. It always was. The World War Two generation did save the country, but in doing so they were rising to a challenge that they had to, and many sacrificed not only their bodies, but frankly their temperaments. The Silent Generation built much of the post war world in their shadows and without their acknowledgement, even fighting a war without complaint that costs the US as many lives as the Vietnam War but which is in fact largely forgotten. The country started yielding to the young Boomers by the 60s and in their heyday they tore everything down and when they went to build back up, they managed to forget and dump much of the humanity that had characterized prior generations, no matter how flawed they were.
So what now?
The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Boomers can rightfully take credit for some great things, although the current ones, in the age of Trump, don't seem to want to. They can be blamed for a lot of things that caused the rise of Trump and MAGA, which is a movement largely in younger generations, something that's often missed. The liberal "Me Generation" aspect of the demographic was harmful in ways that we are still desperately trying to recover from, and turning, oddly, to Boomers who exhibit the trait, such as Trump, to try to fix.
They won't.
The Boomers want to remain relevant. Post anything on this topic and you'll be accused of agism. But the truth is, they needs to step back to the sidelines now in everything they are in. The biggest favor they can do for Gen X and Gen Y (it's too late for Gen. Jones, our day is already over having never started) is to step back, and out of the way. If in office, get out. If heading a business that isn't you alone, step down. If hoping for a Bishopric, stop.
Time to yield.
I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
Flannery O'Connor
Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not should be compelled by force.
Hilaire Belloc
Last year, I had a life-changing experience at 90 years old. I went to space, after decades of playing an iconic science-fiction character who was exploring the universe. I thought I would experience a deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration.
I was absolutely wrong. The strongest feeling, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.
I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting so starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.
This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realized that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside. I did my share in popularizing the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable.
William Shatner, actor.
The idea of vocation attaches to work a cluster of other ideas, including devotion, skill, pride, pleasure, the good stewardship of means and materials. Here we have returned to intangibles of economic value. When they are subtracted, what remains is ‘a job,’ always implying that work is something good only to escape.
Wendell Berry.
