Another Day in America

And remember, kids, if you do join the military and serve with distinction, we’ll use your exemplary record to smear you if you ever try to run for office. Just so you know.

Bravo Adam!

I wish I had something brilliant to add but I don’t.

So I’ll close with a, “Well said Adam.”

Silly children, protest are for adults.

Although as I recall, our parents didn’t listen to us baby boomers either. We marched, and protested and it wasn’t until Walter Cronkite declared the war unwinable that the nation started to do anything.

If there is anything that the youth should protest it’s the cost ($) of the war and how they will be the ones to pay for it when the monster bill comes due. (It’s a good thing that kids aren’t that smart or they’d be coming after us geezers).

The lousy side effect of the protests is that the schools lose $30/day for each absent student. Of course, the schools serving predominantly Hispanic populations are normally way over-funded, so they probably don’t need the money, right?

Ugh.

Clearly Adam is between the “boom’ and this generation. If he had a 17 year old (as perhaps SeattleTammy and I do) he’d be listening.

True story. Before the launch of the attack on Iraq in 03,SeattleTony,aged 14,marched against the impending war.It happened to coincide with the weekend that SeattleTammy was diagnosed with a severe anemia and spent the weekend in the hospital,getting infused with four bags of plasma. We’d fully intended to go to the march,but couldn’t. Our son did. And he was the lead interview in the Seattle Times. Reporters talking to our boy. The reporter asked “Did you come with your parents?” and eloquently, SeattleTony said “No,I’m by myself”. For weeks we were asked,”was that “SeattleTony” we saw interviewed in the paper? Why didn’t you go?”

Well, we were busy. But we have been consistently reminded of what old farts we are.

And you wonder why we’re supposedly lazy, self-absorbed and apathetic.

Off target - Wow, Mr. Bush and his Neocons certainly have stirred the pot in the Middle East. A quick look at Aljazeera shows Iraqis are still killing Iraqis by the dozens/day; Hamas is losing civil control in Gaza 3 days after taking over; Kurds in Turkey are protesting and rioting; buildings are being sacked in Egypt. Any more good ideas about how to introduce the Moslems to the benefits of democracy, Fraulein Doktor Rice? Mr. Perle? Mr. Cheney?
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

Back on target, bloggingheads.tv current has, as one of its talking points, a discussion about immigration with David Corn and Byron White.
Join the fun - http://bloggingheads.tv/

I was born in what used to be the last official year of the baby boom - 1960. I spent most of my life feeling like I’d Just Missed Something Big and would never catch up.

The other day I heard the Boomer period now extends to 1964. I was too young for all the parties and FUN drugs; now you want me for political counts and Medicare????

I never really understood how you could extend ‘post-war’ for a full 15 years, at least not in the States. Sheeeit….

Sorry, the first link didn’t work. Let me try this again:

www.itmfa.com

Jay

As a member of the tail end of Generation X (gads, I hate that name), I demand that we come up with new generational attributes beyond “lazy, self-absorbed, and apathetic.”

After all, those were supposed to be our generational attributes. I’m 32 and have a son who’s 3. Today’s youth can’t have them. They have to get their own.

Cooper, please don’t extend “there exists” to “all.” I’m sure you’ve never met any self-absorbed, lazy, and apathetic boomers, right?

No generation can be distilled. “The Greatest Generation” is catchy, but it’s also nonsense. External pressures and demands vary, the two most important being environmental forces and the tenor set by leadership at all levels, from the president down to the mayor, the police chief, and the superintendent of schools.

My only suggestion on this issue: never let anyone else categorize, define, or distill you. And never narrowly categorize, define, or distill yourself. In this regard, churches are as often part of the problem as they are part of the solution, especially the churches that are currently all the rage. The same is true of our current crop of authority figures, both the reactionary ideologues and the venal opportunists, of which Tom Delay is both.

What was central to what was best about the 60s was the opening of the human mind and the humanist soul. What was worst was the self-destructive excesses, especially those that involved counter-violence (it was the authorities who were most prone to violence, both at home, especially in the apartheid South, and in foreign policy, most notably in what was formerly Indo-China. Current conservative revisionist history is a load of shit.)

Harold, world traveler, li’l brother. I graduated high school in 68.
Re the body armor, if you’re blown up and severely wounded and found to be wearing non-issue body armor, does that void your VA benefits? This whole situation is an embarrassment to the U.S. and further confirms that Bush and Co are stupid assholes for inventing a war and sending American citizens into harm’s way with inadequate and non-existent armor for vehicles and personnel. What a GDSALSoS.

David - swim, kill, consume, sleep…

Historyenne, I would agree that the American culture has gone off the rails. Perhaps, the kids are aware of that and trying to figure out what part of the whole deal is relevant to their needs. My son tends to bring in friends and school mates from a whole spectrum of ethnicity. From what I’ve seen, it’s the children of Asian and South Asian immigrants who are the ones being pushed from dawn to dusk to advance and succeed. Whites and blacks are in cruise control.

And pull up your pants.

“Ah, Dennis Miller– the satirist whose grasp of foreign policy is as strong and sure as a baby’s grip on a buttered anvil”.

Thanks for the link, Coop– good stuff.

David, Eat ‘em Gators! or whatever y’all yell.
What are we called stuck between the boomers and Gen. X?

Fowler - “Bummers”. Quit bringin’ me down, man.

Adam,
Even the Sopranos are getting into the act. Your publicist must be working overtime. In the middle of the show Hal Holbrook started talking about Schrödinger’s Cat. I missed the web link though.

Waterfowler, according to the list in the Generation X article in the always-qustionable Wikipedia, if you were born between 1954 and 1965 you may fall into “Generation Jones”, between 1964 and 1984 you may be in something called the “Consciousness Revolution”, and between 1958 and 1968 you could be a “Baby Buster” - a term I always thought was an alternate name for “Generation X.” According to this article, it is the Busters who are the smallest and least demographically significant gneration. So you probably fall into several different overlapping named generations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Busters

Consciousness Revolution? It sounds good and everything but I don’t think alot of the guys I grew up with fit into that mold. I mean, I still remember the bottle rocket fights around the 4th of July! YOB 1970.

I have to confess that, even as one of the Boomers, who ostensibly Mattered, I’ve never understood what cutting class had to do with protest. Students, it would seem, are only hurting themselves by boycotting the classroom for the picket line. The teacher’s probably happy for the day off. The school, as mentioned elsewhere, is poorer for the lack of attendance, which directly affects the quality of education, again depriving the student.

It would seem that carefully crafted and sustained economic boycotts would have more effect.

Boycott the malls, the Wal*Marts, the purveyors of baggy jeans and hats designed to be worn backwards.

That would get someone’s attention in a hurry.

Waterfowler, Bless your heart!

And remember, Larry grew up in Nebraska. His accent is no more authentic than Dubya’s.

Thanks for the info. I haven’t been much past El Paso, which is more West than South, I guess. I’ll have to revert to the usual reasons for finding Alberto disturbing.

Waterfowler, I think one of the reasons why you’re part of “Generation Hosed” is because of the strain the geriatric Boomers will put on the Social Security and Medicare systems (and other social services systems) before you are eligible for or in need of them. By the time you and I hit our 80’s, there won’t be anything left in the pot for us. Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re less likely to spend our last years alone in a diaper filled with our own filth in some nursing home somewhere, and far more likely to have tasted the sweet, sweet kiss of death from government-sponsored euthanasia.

That is, if our majority-geriatric nation even makes it past, say, 2030 without being invaded by a country with a far larger number of young, hale and hearty soldiers - which by then could be, say, Costa Rica or Monaco.

Oops! Harold/Waterfowler.

BTW, don’t think of us as your enemy. Think of us more like a plague of locusts, eating everything in its way! Yeah, that’s more appropriate.

What really sucks is: born in 1960, I’m considered part of the boomer generation and thus fair game for all who loathe the boomers, but I’m late enough that I’ll be sucking the hind teat on SocSec and Medicare. If I retire before I’m 80, it will be a miracle.

Max Bob, that’s why the marketers are expending so much effort to get young people hooked on sodas.

Correction:

Swim, kill, eat, sleep, and bellow in a mud wallow during mating season.