This is on topic, because it relates directly to the majority of active LDS types. Baby boomers are much maligned these days, partly out of ridicule just for being old, but partly because they have become the mainstay of religious and political conservatism. But that's not how "we" started. "We" were the anti-war, anti-nuke, pro-environmental protesters. We championed civil rights and voting rights and denounced racism. We envisioned a world where peace would finally have a chance. We believed that All You Need Is Love. In the sixties Mormonism itself embraced progressive ideas and had a place for engaging with the non-Mormon community. So what happened? Where did my generation take a hard right turn that gave us QAnon and white supremacy as viable political institutions? Please help me understand. Thank you.

The Baby Boomers were also the yuppies of the 1980s, focused on greed and shoving anyone out of the way to get to the top. Hippies of the Baby Boomers were a small subset. They're glorified now, but definitely were not at the time.

Materialism is huge in the Baby Boomer population as a whole. It's the post-war generation - catered to since childhood to have it all. And compared to their fathers, they absolutely did. They maligned their fathers' generation as being out of touch - just as the Boomers are getting maligned now.

The Boomer generation is massive with a lot of different subgroups. The problem is that they are so large, they were able to drown out the complaints that have been bubbling up for 30 years. GenX is tiny compared to them, so it was easier to ignore or denounce them as "slackers". Now that the Millennials are beginning to crest age 40 and are a larger generation than the Boomers, with GenZ/iGen behind them... that initial bubbling from a fissure of frustration has now grown to a volcano.

Wow. You have the blame game down pat which seems to be what generations do nowadays rather than just "get 'er done." And, you are a master of grouping;painting with a broad enough brush to make millions of people exactly the same with one bold stroke. All of em together caused Selfish destruction everywhere! Wow.

Look up the long lists of what "a few" of the Boomer generation did for the world. Impressive as hell. Others were doing a multitude of other things like being sent to Nam or just trying to dig out of poverty like everyone else. The Hippies weren't the only subset.

Can't stand whiny black and white thinking.

I see my response, sent purely without any malice and just neutral honesty, struck a bit of a nerve.

I'm not a black and white thinker - I recognize that every generation has many people - hence why I said there were many subgroups in the generation. The OP's question is why the Boomers are maligned.

But hey, since you lumped all of us in the younger ones together... I guess you have that blame game down quite well yourself!

If you got out of the generalizing bubble about the younger generations, you'd discover that ALL of them are get-it-done generations. Due to the obstacles ahead of them, getting things done requires different skills and different techniques. Right now, as part of Gen-X, that requires going to work, taking care of aging parents and occasionally grandparents, taking care of their kids - now often with added assisted teaching while also working full time, and hoping that in the end, there may be a little left for us afterward.

But keep on denigrating the younger generations as a whole. It works wonders for reinforcing that image about Boomers!

Whether you indicated a couple of sub groups or not, your post laid all the woes of the younger generation on the Boomers. I am touchy on the subject.

I don't generalize about the younger generations. I work with tons of them and each one is different. I am in rapture right now of a few who are knocking it out or the park for me. I have also let a lot of spoiled ones go. Which is the way all generations are. That is my whole point. I don't like people in general for no reason at all. I have no feelings until I get to know someone. Actually I like you from what I have read of your posts here.

And you say,

" Right now, as part of Gen-X, that requires going to work, taking care of aging parents and occasionally grandparents, taking care of their kids - now often with added assisted teaching while also working full time, and hoping that in the end, there may be a little left for us afterward."

You can say that for any generation. I was raised dirt poor. Life was not an automatic picnic because I was a boomer. Our family car was a Ford Model T that was dilapidated but we loved riding in the rumble seat. If my dad didn't get a deer in the fall we didn't have a lot to eat in the winter. And at weddings people did not register and expect to get T.V.s and fancy stuff--they got brooms and towels and dish cloths. The really lucky ones got a vacuum cleaner. And yes, we were just one of the sub groups.

Well, considering that you decided to skim over my post and not actually read what I wrote - and decided for yourself what I wrote... yes, you definitely are touchy on the subject. I will agree with that.

Then did exactly what you claim I did by lumping everyone else together younger than you with this: "You have the blame game down pat which seems to be what generations do nowadays rather than just "get 'er done."

GenX and Millennials also have served in wars - for the past 20 years we've been in a constant one. GenX and Millennials have also fought for the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. We've been attempting to keep women's rights, protecting voting rights, healthcare improvements, education access, and equal pay for equal work.

So yes - all generations are the same. Including Boomers. Whining about everyone else. Even you. Congrats! Isn't it wonderful to all be the same?

It's been fascinating though that although GenX and Millennials have been getting crap laid on them for upwards of three decades - within a few months of it being pushed back on the Boomers because we're tired of it, it's Suddenly A Problem That Must Be Addressed.

But hey... (shrug) you do you.

"So yes - all generations are the same. Including Boomers. Whining about everyone else. Even you."

You have a very skewed idea of the definition of whining. Giving an opinion is not whining. Blaming someone else for you problems is.

On to of that, my whole post was to say that lumping together and generalizing is not the way to go. As I pointed out if you had read it, I see each of the younger generation individually.

You are too anxious to claim victory when that is not the goal. Understanding is.

Bye, Felicia.

Well now I can whine a little bit about how Auto Correct always changes things I don't want changed and I forget to proof.

What makes you think they are the same people? The Hippies and Peacniks were always a minority.

I was a boomer hippie, and boomer bullies shoved me around in high school. A part of my generation was talented and bright, but that part was a minority. The thugs have always been with us.

Exactly. That's why Nixon appealed to "The great, silent majority".

I venture that there was also a generational element to that. Hippies were a minority among baby boomers, and many of their cohort were more conservative. Meanwhile the bulk of voters were by dint of age members of the Greatest Generation. So Nixon was appealing to older people as well as to conservative boomers.

I do, however, think it fair to say that the boomers were generally more liberal than their parents. They were also unusually optimistic--rather than the Depression, they experienced an era of prosperity and the promise of ever-rising standards of living. My hypothesis is that the Oil Crises worked a serious change in boomer psychology: that is when the exigencies of work and money really came home and people lost the naive confidence that had enabled them to support civil rights, environmentalism, etc.

When the pie begins to shrink, people become less willing to share with each other.

Good point about the oil crisis. Also, inflation raged in the seventies. I joined the Army from economic desperation in 1977. Perhaps the hard times hardened us, as you say.

And recall that the bulk of the inflation came from the oil crises. True, the VN war had engendered a bit, but the real explosion came when the price of oil quadrupled in late 1973 and then doubled again in 1979.

Yes, the war debt you mention was part of it. There was a wealth gap between the old and the young. Men like my father gloated and refused to share. Being a boomer was not so advantageous for me. What did me the most good in my life was unions. I am sorry to see them go.

Your father indicates the point D&D has made: while it is accurate to describe changes that occur from generation to generation, within each cohort are all sorts of people with differing values and behavior. Your father, to the extent I understand him, was about as selfish and self-indulgent as anyone in any generation.

As for union, forgive me for a moment if I resort to economic analysis. Unions empirically only work when management needs labor more than vice versa. In the post-WWII decades companies were operating at full speed as they met reconstruction demand around the world and the needs of the households forming in the late 1940s and 1950s. Unions capitalized on the shortage of labor and made a big difference.

Since the 1980s, however, the addition of China to the global labor force and more recently technological advances that likewise suppress wages have reversed the situation. During that period companies had the bargaining power and unions weakened and in many cases disappeared. That's how it always goes: unions rise and fall based on the supply and demand for labor.

It's a brutal world.

While that is all true. It's also true that many of the large labor unions in the US became infiltrated by the Mafia and were steered directly to their favor. That also lead to the downfall in the 1980's.

I find your question fascinating. I know a lot of older Mormons well, or knew, as my parents friends are pretty much gone. I can't lump them together, though.

What occurs to me is that no one really changed but what was there all along surfaced and crystalized. I think that is natural and not just for Mormons.

The ones who championed civil rights and voting rights and denouncjacist because "it was just God's purpose."

I am shocked and actually upset at how many white supremecists exist in this country though only the extreme few will cop to the label. More now that their leader has made it okay by refusing to denounce. Most are subconsciously careful to keep their actions just under the radar as they say, "I don't have a racist bone in my body." It's not your bones we're worried about.

One thing for Mormons I believe that gets stronger as you get older is that it was instilled in us that we were not part of the problem. We were in the world but not of the world and that ran deep.

Boomer---probably the very one who caused all the trouble in the world. Don't blame the rest.

Thumbnail:1980 happened.

*Reagan/Bush happened - got the “gov=bad - corporations=good” ball rolling (neo-liberalism), Fairness Doctrine gutted (further gutted in 2000), etc.

*Clinton happened - The Crime Bill (mass incarceration), war on drugs expanded along with the death penalty, Glass-Steagall broke, Telecommunications Act of 1996, punitive welfare reform, Wall Street begins to be deregulated, manufacturing jobs begin to be shipped away, middle America begins to hollow out and income disparity widens, etc.

Bush II happened - 9/11 and the beginning of the neo-con’s 30-40 year war to reshape the Middle East (kids born then are now fighting in Afghanistan), the beginning of American fascism (Patriot Act, AUMF, world-wide torture program (American Gulag), assassination of American citizen and torture of an American citizen setting precedent, etc), economic fascism solidified with part one of the bank bailout, MSM chilled into cheerleading and opts for infotainment, which obliterated MSM news forever, etc

Obama happened - fascism solidified, 2nd half of the bank bailout with more Wall Street deregulation, rapid acceleration of American inequality, expands Bush’s two wars to seven or eight (and Special Ops expanded), expands drone program (which kills 90% civilians), prevents AUMF and Patriot Acts to “sun-set”, Mass Surveillance State ramped up to ubiquity, whistleblowers harassed, prosecuted, exiled, and tortured (Manning, Assange), cages built on Southern border and two million immigrants deported, TPP kept as secret as possible then signed(which literally has zero environmental protections), etc etc etc

This, and lots and lots I didn’t write, and no health care and no living wage, and debt enslavement, on purpose!, is how a Nation gets a Trump. And the next Trump is inevitable and will be worse.

This is the Boomer’s Legacy. How? Why?



You ask an interesting question. Maybe there is something to Voltaire’s, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Average American citizens have no idea how much abuse, murder and torture -atrocities on a level that would make a Nero or Caligula blush- have been committed worldwide and at home in their name since WWII. And the absurdity American’s have accepted is a simple one: that somehow America, and by extension Americans, are exceptional, better than everyone else. Absurd indeed.

Manifest Destiny went far past the Left Coast to encompass the entire planet, and American Exceptionalism won’t stop until every human is enslaved and the environment completely decimated.

So it goes...

Human

yes, yes and yes. Perfectly written.

This is true.

Pretty much sums it up.

And the wealth that was passed down to them by their Greatest Generation parents is slowly and steadily being drained away by nursing homes, eldercare, and other end-of-life costs.

The bigger issue is the massive expansion in the national debt that the Baby Boomers imposed as a way of shifting future wealth into their hands. Debt is a higher standard of living today in exchange for a lower one in the future.

People almost always vote their own pocketbook. Historically there has been something approaching a balance between the electoral power of different generations, but that broke down when a single generation arose that was disproportionately powerful as a voting bloc. I would add that the Greatest Generation was complicit in that, too. They felt that having been through the War, they deserved whatever they could get. So it was really 1.5 generations who found the keys to the piggy bank.

As Alexander Tyler is reputed to have said in 1787, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."

If it hadn't been the Baby Boomer Generation, it would have been another.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2020 12:46PM by Lot's Wife.

The collapse of democracy when the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, I think is more clearly exemplified when corporate CEOs discovered they controlled the corporate checkbook, and could write themselves huge salaries/stock options/golden parachutes. The corporate boards had to approve, but the boards were made up of CEOs from other corporations.

In the period up through the 1950s, there was a shame factor in a corporate CEO being too greedy. That has eroded over the years to the point now where utter shamelessness is seen as a virtue by many.

I agree about the corporate elite.

I don't, however, think that absolves people who were of voting age during the critical decades (including today). It's simple. Since the Reagan tax cuts the national debt has exploded under both parties. That's demonstrable fact--as is the price paid, with the single exception of Bill Clinton, by those pols foolish enough to advocate higher taxes. Voters have with remarkable consistency voted for representatives who cut their taxes and increase their benefits.

Disagree? Try cutting social security or Medicare or reversing the Trump tax "reform."

I see we have all bypassed the OPs question and gone straight to bashing the Boomers.

The OP was itself a pretty damning indictment of the Boomers. The question slskipper posed was how did the generation go from boom to bust. I think many, if not most, of the posts in the thread attempt to answer that question.

You can do that sort of autopsy on any generation.

I've never related to being a Baby Boomer. I didn't even know I was one for a long time. When the hippies were preaching "make love, not war," I was just a little kid, playing with my Barbies.

The only thing I can say uniformly for the Boomers (of which I am one, on the tail end,) is that college was a heck of a lot cheaper for those of us that had the desire and ability to go. Back then, states used to subsidize tuition a lot more than they do now. And colleges did not go on a massive building boom and then expect their students to pay the bill.

A number of places that were formerly affordable have also gotten really expensive in terms of housing, I think because of the technology boom.

Apart from that, it was life as normal for the most part. People got their schooling, worked, bought homes, and raised families. There were various recessions, so life was not always easy.

I saw the following reference to "latter-day hippies" in a political data-aggregator/analysis" website, that contains the now deprecated "Latter-day" phrase, plus it is really referring to Boomer hippies, which is why I'm posting it here.

Q: Pennsylvania has been described as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle. Can this be said about every state, or are there rural areas of the U.S. that are reliably blue? B.H., Pittsburgh, PA

A: There aren't many rural areas in the U.S. that are blue, but in the ones that are, you tend to find a lot of sandal-wearing, granola-eating, Prius-driving latter-day hippies. So, in New Hampshire and Vermont, parts of Oregon (like, say, outside Eugene), parts of Colorado (like, say, outside Denver), and parts of California (like, say, Humboldt), among others, there are some blue rural areas.

[my addition: rural Black areas and Indian reservations are also reliably blue, but low population]
--------------------------
Reader response the next day:
M.M. in San Diego, CA, writes: Latter-day hippies? Kudos for another great coinage. Now I just need to track down the nearest congregation of the Church of LDH...

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A: There aren't many rural areas in the U.S. that
> are blue, but in the ones that are, you tend to
> find a lot of sandal-wearing, granola-eating,
> Prius-driving latter-day hippies. So, in New
> Hampshire and Vermont, parts of Oregon (like, say,
> outside Eugene), parts of Colorado (like, say,
> outside Denver), and parts of California (like,
> say, Humboldt), among others, there are some blue
> rural areas.

What you're describing is a phenomenon that conservatives bemoan: Affluent liberals vote generous policies to various constituencies in Blue states, only to find that their taxes have risen and the quality of life becomes problematic (e.g. more homeless encampments, rising crime). So they move to cozy rural LOWTAX jurisdictions, which tend to be Red/Conservative. Yet the newcomers still vote Blue. What follows? More benefits and services to various constituencies, more taxes, and an influx of more people seeking them.

Vermont may have been the first to illustrate this development. Once reliably conservative and Red, it has been swamped (infested?) with urban liberals, all to happy to mutate the political landscape. Witness also New Hampshire, southern Maine (CD-1), western Montana, coastal Oregon and Washington, Nevada, western Montana, northwestern Wyoming, North Carolina, Kentucky...etc.

Thus, it's not a matter of rural hippies, but political migration. Remember the bumpersticker, "Don't Californicate Colorado"?? Too late for that now!

Lastly: You know why they don't sell many Priuses in Alabama? You can't mount a decent gun rack in the rear window!

> Witness also New Hampshire, southern
> Maine (CD-1), western Montana, coastal Oregon and
> Washington, Nevada, western Montana, northwestern
> Wyoming, North Carolina, Kentucky...etc.

I don't know about New England, but almost all of your other examples are places that get much more from the federal government than they pay in taxes. In the case of Idaho, Montana, and Oregon and Washington, the ratio is about 3:1.

So no, those places are not bastions of fiscal responsibility. Quite the opposite: they are subsidized by the rich liberal areas. The Marlboro Men who live there benefit from big government more than any Welfare Mom in NYC.

What you say does not negate my point.

As liberals move to these once-Red areas, services and "entitlements" are desired and instigated. Whether they are paid by municipal, state, or federal dollars is beside the point. It's not locals turning into granola-feeders that are turning these areas from Red to Purple to Blue, but liberal migration. What changes are things like increased gun control initiatives, more services (such as curbside trash pickup vs. self-transport to the town dump), appointing "inclusion" officials, etc.

An example: Income tax initiatives were once anathema in NH politics. Now the proposal appears quite regularly. As more Massachusetts residents flee north, it will probably pass some day.

You are entirely missing the point.

The red states are welfare recipients. Idaho and eastern Washington and Oregon pay $1 to the feds and receive $3 in federal spending that arises from taxes paid in blue states. You can't talk about entitlements without addressing the massive entitlements that Trump's voters will not surrender in any circumstances.

If people who have paid much higher taxes to those states' living standards want to move there and vote their own interests, they are constitutionally and morally justified in doing so. Until the red states wean themselves from the public teat, they have no right to complain.

My God, you just accused liberals of imposing "entitlements" on the those who are the masters of entitlements. The irony is astounding.

You want to know why the country is so profoundly indebted? Because people like say, "my entitlements and those of my friends are sacrosanct but everyone else's are illegitimate and must be eliminated." The refusal to recognize that one's social security and medicare income streams--or federal subsidies for his farm--are entitlements worth far more than he paid for them is irresponsible. That one might then turn around and complain about what are ultimately much more modest subsidies for others is the height of irresponsibility.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2020 06:41PM by Lot's Wife.

People are fleeing Blue jurisdictions, as reports from Uhaul, Bekins, and others who monitor demographic trends. Consider the costs of renting a family-size UHaul in various locations (Sept. 2020):

https://www.thedrive.com/news/36430/u-haul-prices-for-one-way-moves-out-of-california-are-astronomical-right-now

Typical move from LA to Boise: $4,208; Boise to LA: $383. A rental from LA to Austin will cost you 4.2 times the opposite direction. Basically, they're fleeing. Outer suburbs, exurbs, and rural real estate is in a major cost spurt now. It's multifaceted, of course, as people learn they don't have to commute to the city five days a week (e.g. my son goes in 5-7 days a month now), they distance themselves from the Wuhan pandemic and urban violence.

Speaking personally, the builders I've spoken to in my rural, mid-state area have all told me they're booked well into 2021. "Take a ticket and wait till you're called, please."

:=(

For me, that's the proof in the pudding, something I think you would applaud, as these staunch Red districts devolve to Purple, the Blue. It seems that loyalty to party affiliation is much too deeply ingrained for my comfort a --like a religious loyalty.

Worth the read:

https://www.city-journal.org/democrat-states-midterms

Article breaks down where, and why, people are dissatisfied with their home jurisdictions and want to move.

*SALT = "State And Local Taxes"

Minor personal note: As we go through our new property, we're finding all sorts of neat stuff: mid-19th century envelopes with stamps, antiques, and a circa-1950 century never-fired shotgun! Also, a lot of JUNK! Still hoping for some 1920-issue IBM stock certificates... Come pick blueberries with us next summer!

Of course people are moving to rural areas. There's a pandemic at work, shutting down the cities. What else would you expect to happen?

And to the extent that that is happening more generally, why not? Why would any reasonably intelligent person stay in a coastal area that is taxed heavily to pay for people in rural areas to live far above what their earnings merit? Is it really your position that people who are overtaxed should not seek to join those who are undertaxed?

You are arguing that a transfer from educated hard-working people to poor and under-educated people is not only ethically appropriate but that it is wrong for the former to seek more equitable treatment. You are defending the elements of the welfare state that benefit you and your friends.

That's the essence of Trumpism: "we are victims of big bad liberals and we insist that you liberals keep subsidizing us so that we can live far better than we deserve." If you put your money where your mouth is, the highly taxed states would get every bit of their taxes back and their living standards would rise while yours would fall. Then the state and local burdens would fall. That is the lassez faire outcome.

It's ironic but no longer surprising that you and your allies, who ostensibly prefer individual responsibility, continue to pretend that you are victims and insist that as a moral matter you have a right to live on the back of other people's work and taxes. It's beyond pathetic.

New England has always been a mixed bag (I grew up there and my father's family has deep roots there going back to the Mayflower.) A lot of families from Boston, Rhode Island, etc. have weekend houses, ski houses, or summer homes in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. They often retire to these second homes. So saying that states like Vermont became "infested" is a gross generalization. There has always been a lot of mobility between states in New England as my own family lineage amply illustrates. My family moved back and forth between all of the New England states.

I live in a reliably blue state, Maryland. Even Maryland has its red zones, chiefly in the far western, eastern, and southern parts of the state. Even though we rank about number 11 in terms of state tax burden, I've never personally felt that my state and local taxes are overly burdensome. We do get great services in return. We have, overall, an excellent public school system that normally rates in the top five states nationally. We were the first state to institute helicopter airlifts to a premier trauma center for critically injured patients. If I need police, fire, or ambulance assistance, they will be at my door in minutes. Our roads and bridges get repaired in a timely fashion. You get what you pay for.

Most importantly, if a Democratic governor gets a little too full of himself in terms of taxes or anything else, the state will vote in a moderate Republican. And vice-versa as well. This happens in other blue states as well (i.e. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.) Maryland currently has a two-term Republican governor whom most people will acknowledge has done a great job.

Maryland does have a high cost of living, but that chiefly means housing, groceries, and other expenses, not taxes. People here who retire to North Carolina or elsewhere are not normally moving due to taxes, but to reduce their housing costs.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A lot of families
> from Boston, Rhode Island, etc. have weekend
> houses, ski houses, or summer homes in Vermont,
> New Hampshire, and Maine. They often retire to
> these second homes. So saying that states like
> Vermont became "infested" is a gross
> generalization.

Precisely.

This is what gives the upper middle class (and above) its edge. Example: registering and insuring their metro-Boston or Providence car in low-cost NH or some such place. Frequent trips out of state give them the sales (and liquor) tax advantage. Now they're shifting their residencies to these seasonal homes, winterizing and upgrading them, and establishing themselves there. Hence, the demand on contractors (see my post, above). The problems of 2020 are accelerating this trend. They're died-in-the-wool liberals and are changing (mutating) the political landscapes.

You notice the difference in infrastructure the moment you leave Massachusetts: the pavement becomes smoother, quieter, and wider. Yet NH road maintenance per mile costs a fraction of Massachusetts'.

But this is not a new trend. It's been going on for many, many years.

"A lot of families from Boston, Rhode Island, etc. have weekend houses, ski houses, or summer homes in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine."

It helps that the New England states are about the size of a postage stamp*. Here in the West, it can take about four hours to reach the nearest state line.

The largest single CA wildfire in 2020 by itself covered 1,613.5 sq mi.
The entire state of Rhode Island covers 1,544.9 sq mi.



*[hyperbole used for rhetorical effect]

Yes, true. My sister-in-law grew up in west Texas, and she has told us tales about how her family thought nothing of getting in the car for hours-long drives. And I lived in Colorado for a number of years and went on long road trips through the western states.

Pennsyltucky, Honey. Pennsyltucky.

Please continue. :)

Gentle reminder that "latter-day" means "modern". It does not mean "final", except for Mormons.

I had originally put this in all caps, but I thought it best to edit to tone down my exuberance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2020 05:48PM by slskipper.

I got in on the ground floor of baby boomerdom I guess being born in 1948. By the 80's I was married with 2 children, trying not to go broke during a drought so contrary to kestrafinn's contention I was not a yuppie..and most of my contemporaries were in the same boat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2020 12:59AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

Same for me and every other boomer I happened to know--well, except for the married with two children. Somehow I missed out on the big free giveaway and the instruction manual on how to ruin everything for everybody. We were all just trying to get by somehow.



Yuppies were something I read about in the paper like everybody else but never ever saw one or met one. I had no idea we were all that.

I don't think I've ever met a yuppie. I have yuppies in the same category I have Mary Poppins.

And then there were the hippies: no one wore bras and everyone wore sandals.

> I don't think I've ever met a yuppie.

There are probably a few in your aquarium.

Since the beginning of time, the making of bucks is what decides everything. Each person finds their own way to get in on that or not. Talent, and smarts will get you further than being part of any particular generation.

Yes. Some have extra challenges. And the ones who overcome even those become are the cream of the crop.

And those who help those who just plain have too many challenges are the salt of the earth.


BUT the biggest tell here about the way things are:

Fewer than half of the people 18 to 29 voted in the 2016 election. The youth don't vote. Half don't pull up a chair to the table and get in on things. I love the half that do----from any generation.

I try to sit at the table where the women with the widest hips are to be found.

For some reason, I became fixated on the notion that wide hips equal easier births.

You are truly gifted. Odd, but gifted. Bless you.

What ever happened to the baby boomers?
There out here raising your kids from your failed relationships and providing living space for children that can't seem to find themselves when they're 40 years old. THATS WHERE THEY'RE AT!

ka-CHING!

There isn’t as much white supremacy or racism as the media would make you to believe. There are a lot of divide and conquer tactics being played. It’s agitation propaganda.

There’s less racism now than there was 50 years ago. The so called boomers are a diverse group as are all these age groups. The world is a complicated place. If it was so easy to figure out there would be less business failures, more marketing successes and more people getting rich because they got it all figured out.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There isn’t as much white supremacy or racism as
> the media would make you to believe.

I strongly disagree, especially since (in the last month) reading CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson--which has turned out to be one of the pivotally important books in my life.

Not only do I now understand my own [maternal] family, something which has always been an unsettling and impenetrable mystery to me since I was maybe five or six years old, I now also understand the "doesn't make any sense" parts of American history, which I have been struggling with since I was a ten-year-old fifth grader (the year when, in my school system, American/California history was introduced as a serious school subject).

"Suddenly," after reading this book, all of it (my family and their collective weirdnesses, plus American history) actually DOES "make sense"! Had I known back then what I understand now, I would have avoided many literal spankings and many other, far more hurtful to me, punishments I endured throughout my growing up.

Personally, but intensely important to me, this book also allowed me to suddenly (over the course of my reading this book), and with great clarity, "see" things in the entertainment industry I "knew" (in an outer sense) full well--but absolutely did not adequately understand. My perspective on "Hollywood" (film plus television, mostly) history, especially after me systematically going through most of the videos on Hollywood history on YouTube, has now (also) changed forever (in the sense that my perspective is now far more realistic, instead of idealistic).


> There’s less racism now than there was 50 years
> ago.

In many ways: yes, undeniably and absolutely. The problem is the deeper, bone marrow deep, inherent racism that is so "ordinary" in American life and culture it is effectively "hidden" from our conscious view.

Once consciously identified, it can be consciously dealt with--for the good of every American. Until then, though, our collective lack of factual perception and understanding keeps the bad old stuff, still within us and our culture, perking along.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2020 02:23PM by Tevai.

As a Boomer, I extend to you a very heartfelt and enthusiastic F**K YOU.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2020 02:19PM by Tevai.

Seriously though. There is a great book "A Generation of Sociopaths" that is filled with a very convincing set of data that the Boomer Generation is leaving a large trail of Sh*t in their wake. Give it a read. It is well written.

TopperToppington (somehow I locked myself in this voting booth)

Wow. Now I'm a sociopath? This is getting better by the second.

Let the violins play.