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| Home Front: Politix |
| VDH: Full On Boomer Bash |
| 2009-01-28 |
| If anyone wished to know what the baby-boomer generation would do when, in its full maturity, it hit its first self-created, big-time recession, I think we are seeing the hysterical results. After two decades of unprecedented economic growth, rampant consumer spending, and unimaginable borrowing to satisfy our insatiable appetites, we are suddenly going into even larger debt and printing trillions of dollars in paper money to ensure that someone else after we are gone pays the debt. As if the permanent solution to a financial panic and years of spending wealth we didn't create were a government take-over of the economy in the manner we currently witness in Spain, Italy, and Greece--or the high-tax, high-spend ethos of a bankrupt California. The reaction to the economic panic was sort of analogous to the call to 'charge it!' after 9/11 (cf. Ike's fights about the surtax to pay for Korea), or to the Iraq 2006 upsurge in violence, when suddenly our leaders declared the war lost, blamed the nebulous "they" for tricking them into voting for the war, and calling for immediate withdrawals and retreats. Ditto the Stalag-Gulag Guantanamo that, by January 19, had ruined the Constitution, shredded the Bill of Rights, and forever tarnished our reputation. Yet, on the 20th, it was suddenly complex and problematic, and required a "task force" to do a year-long inquiry into the bad and worse choices confronting us. At some point in all this serial hysteria, we are beginning to see the problem is not in the stars of the economy or of the war, but in ourselves--a weird generation that, when it finally came of age, proved to be just about what we could expect of it from what we saw in its youth. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #8 explains a lot. I kept smoking pills and swallowing pot with small water chasers. Couldn't figure out why it wasn't working |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-01-28 22:39 |
| #7 "You mean that all the dope we smoked and pills that we popped in the '60's and '70's didn't give us a better understanding of life?" Whatchoo you mean "we," white man? /channeling Tonto ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-01-28 20:26 |
| #6 all the dope we smoked and pills that we popped in the '60's and '70's didn't give us a better understanding of life? Skipped the pills, and mostly missed the dope; guess that's why I don't understand stuff now. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-01-28 20:05 |
| #5 Nimble Spemble made one of his rare mistakes when he forgot to put the link in the source box. Try this, eltoroverde. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-01-28 14:40 |
| #4 Does anyone have the link to the source here? I looked quickly but couldn't readily find it. Thanks. |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2009-01-28 14:16 |
| #3 You mean that all the dope we smoked and pills that we popped in the '60's and '70's didn't give us a better understanding of life? Don't worry. Our new guru "O" will show us the way! |
| Posted by: USMC6743 2009-01-28 11:35 |
| #2 I blame |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-01-28 10:32 |
| #1 Some say after it is all over we will resemble France. Not me. I think we end up resembling America in the mid to late 70's - high inflation, high unemployment and high interest rates plus oil going through the roof. We are fighting the wrong economic war with the wrong-headed ideology and equipment. We have a smarter and more radical Jimmy Carter type leader who is hood winking the boomers because that is what they crave - someone who will save their 401K and equity in their house. Spending will not do that. Not government spending at least. This all started in 68 with the march on the Pentagon and is ending in 2008 with the march on the Fed and Treasury. Neither are likely to survive. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2009-01-28 10:21 |