Because once we’re out of the way, you’ll find out that there are as many reactionaries in your generation mucking up the works as it turned out there were in ours.
And as for waiting for us to get out of the way, that’s life, kids. Did you know that seven Presidents in a row - JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. - were born in the narrow interval between 1908 and 1924? True fact. Now there’s a generation that wouldn’t let go. We boomers still have a bit of time on the meter, thanks.
But be patient - your turn to screw everything up will be here before you know it.
Its not that all boomers are evil or greedy, they’re just a really really big demographic and everyone from pandering politicians to ratings hungry television to Madison Agency advertising agencies have been courting them their entire lives. They have gotten used to getting what they wanted. And over the last 30 years or so they have wanted high levels of government service with low levels of taxation.
“They”? As in all of us? Or just some? Please be more specific.
The zeal to lower taxes and reduce services is not specific to baby boomers by any means.
And to those who think we’re condescending–every generation goes through that with their elders. We thought ours were condescending, too, and some of them certainly were. But that has gone on since before we descended from the trees
The major problem here is one of scale. It really does not matter, at the end of the day, if the Boomer motive is essentially no different than that of their parents or of their offspring. The sheer bulk of their numbers means that they are going to have a much more dramatic impact.
I don’t believe that it is the Boomers fault that they are narcissistic. This is a function of environment. The sheer number of them has meant that as they have moved through their lives they have been pandered to. There is no way that this would not have happened in a capitalist culture. There is just too much money to be made. It was inevitable that, as a group, they would come to believe that everything that they said, did or thought had value for out of proportion to reality.
What would be nice would be if that generation would realize that, due to their vast numbers, they wield an incredible amount of power and, having had this realization, returned to the purported values of their youth and took steps to leave a much smaller footprint.
We did leave a smaller footprint - we had less kids than our parents did. Now all you have to do is have fewer again, and your kids fewer still, and eventually we can get the population down to a reasonable number where everyone on earth is descended from the Duggars (themselves Gen Xers, but I won’t hold it entirely against you). I certainly don’t approve of the uncontrolled breeding of the Greatest Generation but my parents and their friends failed to consult me in time to save the world.
ETA I see Plumbkrazy and I can agree on something - it’s all my parents’ generation’s fault.
Mrs. Cake, having less children is a good start and all but won’t even come close to mitigating the damage. It would be like me saying that, as a member of an industrialized nation, I am accomplishing something for the global good by eating one less hamburger a day. Sure, it is better than nothing but absolutely meaningless in the face of the problem.
You (the collective Boomer you) are pretty much running the show right now and things are pretty much fucked, as far as I can see. So…
You obviously don’t watch PBS. “The documentary exposing law enforcement ignoring civil liberties and sending innocent people to death row has been pre-empted by this very special performance by Smokey Robinson and his Miraculous Hydraulic Tuxedo.”
