You’ve heard of the “greatest generation,” that won World War II and conquered Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? Dozens…no, it’s probably hundreds by now…of movies have been made about propeller-driven fighters and bombers lifting off from aircraft carriers, muddy Willie’s and Joe’s in foxholes in Italy, LST’s filled with baby-faced soldiers wading ashore at Normandy. Magazine covers of triumphant parades of Americans and French soldiers parading down the Champs- Elysees toward the Arch de Triomphe, ticker tape descending on victorious parades down Broadway, husbands and dads returning to the outthrust arms of adoring wives and children back home…
The WWII generation had to work together in their lives for their families and their communities. Once the suburbs arrived we didn't have to look after anybody but ourselves and we are a bunch of greedy little bastards.
I tend to blame the suburbs a lot myself. occasionally, I've found myself out there and also found myself wondering how I would have come out if I'd grown up in a subdivision with no public transportation that could transport me to The City (as bridge-and-tunnel guys like me referred to Manhattan). my imagination is limited enough that I stopped imagining pretty quickly because what I was imagining wasn't very pretty. but I think it's actually a lot of things. I do, however, remember that things FELT like they were manageable until the oil crisis, which of course led to Reagan, which of course went to shit. and part of that shit was a lot of people I knew suddenly making a lot of money in the mid-to-late eighties and assuming that it was their due. I definitely know that if somebody was called in to testify before a congressional committee in the sixties or seventies and, when questioned about some double-dealing or whatever used the "my job is to increase shareholder profits" excuse as the ONLY one, it wouldn't have been acceptable. and now it is....
I have wondered about that myself as one from San Fran, is 72, and made it out to the fringes of Woodstock. Where have all the flowers gone? And it's 1,2,3 what are we fightin' for?
“Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Viet Nam.” The 60s generation marched against the war, started the ecology movement, fought for women’s and gay rights, and then had to get jobs after they graduated from college. While many of us were engaged in these activities, a large contingent of our generation was fighting in the Viet Nam war. My husband spent four years and four months in the Air Force during that war. He completed college after he came home. He still cuts grocery coupons and looks for sales as if he’s still a poor student living off the GI Bill.
My hubs is a Vietnam Vet too. He completed college afterwards but had a breakdown about 23 years into his county job. PTSD was the diagnosis and it’s been hell for him and for me. War is HELL!
We got a bunch of politicians who wanted to move money up rather than spread it around for all to share. They enacted policies to do that which also, as a byproduct, managed to destroy the middle class. We let colleges and universities become shills for predatory loans which have crippled the economic futures of our children. We let our health care system become a for profit enterprise which drives thousands into bankruptcy every year. The greed of a few has destroyed the lives of the many and sent most of us well back along the path to serfdom.
Well, sentimentality aside, it’s always made sense to me: across the history of mankind, every single “ruling” civilization has had its day, and then invariably overreaches, implodes, collapses under the weight of its hubris and blindered drive to control everybody and thing of lesser strength, and then dies an ignoble death of its own bloated accord however much human history will try to frame it as another group or civilization’s fault. So here we are, with all our Putins and Trumps and Bushes and MAGAs and sleepy comfortable classes and depthless rage and poverty; the thread has unraveled; the end of western civilization is upon us, right on schedule. A rather bleak assessment I will admit, but Nietzsche and Kierkegaard notwithstanding, the only one that makes any solid sense to me.
Well, somewhere in between WWII and today came the Reagan administration. Reagan, having been born in 1911, is part of that so-called "greatest generation." An awful lot of the ugly flows from the 1980s, which is when the white-supremacist-misogynist backlash to the 1960s and '70s became institutionalized in the U.S. I can't help noticing that all the disgusting individuals you mention (it's sobering that the least disgusting of the lot is G. W. Bush) are white men. So my hypothesis is that this has less to do with baby formula or maternal smoking habits than with the Y-chromosome.
Indeed. Plenty of looney ladies out there. They've a lot less excuse, unless you write them off as part of the universal privileged elite based purely on skin color, and putting on the clingy dream suburban housewife act for white men.
?? You may have noticed that for centuries women had no independent legal existence apart from first their fathers and then their husbands. Women had to fight like hell for the right to vote, and for just about every other right that was supposedly "self-evident" for men. To this day, most women take their husband's name when they marry. Ever think what that's about? I don't write Boebert and Greene off, but I do see them in context of the 53% of white women who voted for Trump the first time around. Many, many women so identify with "their" men that they oppose any effort by women to fight on our own behalf. You can call it privilege if you want. I think of it more as Stockholm syndrome.
I hate to classify them as "women." I think of them as "poor white trash." They may be female, but they don't come close to "women." I think they stopped evolving at about age 5.
If there was a greatest generation (the whole idea rankles me), then it would have been the parents of the WWII kids. The ones who were grownups during the depression. They suffered mightily to raise their families. Their kids fought in the second world war and came back, thinking they'd done their bit and the world owed them everything. Then came the 60s with some other real some other "greats." The ones who FOUGHT the greatest generation re/ civil rights and war and sexism etc. I was there in the 60s. The older folks were very happy with the status quo because they could enjoy their military benefits and sit back and relax with their nice car and new refrigerator. The greatest generation folks I knew HATED the war protesters and civil rights leaders. I remember one quote--"Martin Luther King is responsible for more deaths of American boys than Ho Chi Minh." That was from a WWII vet. Another vet thought Nelson Mandela should rot in jail (which he nearly did). Most of the WWII era folks I know are as selfish (or more so) than most people. And MY generation, which is YOUR generation LKT IV, is NOT the generation of Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz---who were born in 1970 and 69. What happened to THAT generation? It's not the 60s generation!
I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by...private equity, McKinsey, gated communities and the absence of leveling opportunities, the end of the draft and the concomitant rise of a professional military answerable to nobody, the death of the labor movement and the relocation of manufacturing to cheap-labor markets, the triumph of capital and the concentration of money, power and influence in an increasingly small and self-perpetuating group of overprivileged assholes. But nobody deserves Ted Cruz, not even us. Not even Texas.
Money, money, money governs all nations, buy yourself a politician or a coup. Greed and poer rule. I am with you my brother in arms. Major, Infantry, U.S. Army Retired
That was our parents and grandparents who lived through the depression and served in WWII (and a few WWI) - after that came drugs, greed, corruption in government and business, Nixon, watergate, a movie star for president and plastic pat his wife and it seems to have gone down hill even more. Now we have the greatest generation of corruption, racism, sexism, greed, rage, and stupidity run rampant thanks to "social media" that makes it possible for anyone to spew forth hatred without consequence. I am old enough to know that I will not live to see how this plays out for a decade or so and I fear for my children and grandchildren who will have to try to deal with the death of democracy and probable return to the stone age.
Remember the psych experiment where they put rats in a cage. Put a few in and everything is calm. Put in more and things get dicey. Put in even more and they start eating each other! Population growth from the time you were a boy until now has created a situation were the rats (us!) are eating each other. Too many people fighting over dwindling resources (also explains oligarchs).
They didn't smoke nearly enough pot.
The WWII generation had to work together in their lives for their families and their communities. Once the suburbs arrived we didn't have to look after anybody but ourselves and we are a bunch of greedy little bastards.
I tend to blame the suburbs a lot myself. occasionally, I've found myself out there and also found myself wondering how I would have come out if I'd grown up in a subdivision with no public transportation that could transport me to The City (as bridge-and-tunnel guys like me referred to Manhattan). my imagination is limited enough that I stopped imagining pretty quickly because what I was imagining wasn't very pretty. but I think it's actually a lot of things. I do, however, remember that things FELT like they were manageable until the oil crisis, which of course led to Reagan, which of course went to shit. and part of that shit was a lot of people I knew suddenly making a lot of money in the mid-to-late eighties and assuming that it was their due. I definitely know that if somebody was called in to testify before a congressional committee in the sixties or seventies and, when questioned about some double-dealing or whatever used the "my job is to increase shareholder profits" excuse as the ONLY one, it wouldn't have been acceptable. and now it is....
Maybe it was the myth of the greatest generation that gave us a false sense of who we were and are
I've been pressing for LKT4 for President for a while now, but after this newsletter I hereby nominate him for Poet Laureate, too!
Yes, the West Point poet!
The Corps...the Corps.
I have wondered about that myself as one from San Fran, is 72, and made it out to the fringes of Woodstock. Where have all the flowers gone? And it's 1,2,3 what are we fightin' for?
“Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Viet Nam.” The 60s generation marched against the war, started the ecology movement, fought for women’s and gay rights, and then had to get jobs after they graduated from college. While many of us were engaged in these activities, a large contingent of our generation was fighting in the Viet Nam war. My husband spent four years and four months in the Air Force during that war. He completed college after he came home. He still cuts grocery coupons and looks for sales as if he’s still a poor student living off the GI Bill.
My hubs is a Vietnam Vet too. He completed college afterwards but had a breakdown about 23 years into his county job. PTSD was the diagnosis and it’s been hell for him and for me. War is HELL!
I’m so sorry to learn about your husband’s PTSD. I hope he is getting treatment. Politicians make the decisions and young men and women pay the price.
Yes he does but it is the VA which = the government. You are right about men and women paying the price. The spouses or partners do too.
We got a bunch of politicians who wanted to move money up rather than spread it around for all to share. They enacted policies to do that which also, as a byproduct, managed to destroy the middle class. We let colleges and universities become shills for predatory loans which have crippled the economic futures of our children. We let our health care system become a for profit enterprise which drives thousands into bankruptcy every year. The greed of a few has destroyed the lives of the many and sent most of us well back along the path to serfdom.
Well, sentimentality aside, it’s always made sense to me: across the history of mankind, every single “ruling” civilization has had its day, and then invariably overreaches, implodes, collapses under the weight of its hubris and blindered drive to control everybody and thing of lesser strength, and then dies an ignoble death of its own bloated accord however much human history will try to frame it as another group or civilization’s fault. So here we are, with all our Putins and Trumps and Bushes and MAGAs and sleepy comfortable classes and depthless rage and poverty; the thread has unraveled; the end of western civilization is upon us, right on schedule. A rather bleak assessment I will admit, but Nietzsche and Kierkegaard notwithstanding, the only one that makes any solid sense to me.
Well, somewhere in between WWII and today came the Reagan administration. Reagan, having been born in 1911, is part of that so-called "greatest generation." An awful lot of the ugly flows from the 1980s, which is when the white-supremacist-misogynist backlash to the 1960s and '70s became institutionalized in the U.S. I can't help noticing that all the disgusting individuals you mention (it's sobering that the least disgusting of the lot is G. W. Bush) are white men. So my hypothesis is that this has less to do with baby formula or maternal smoking habits than with the Y-chromosome.
Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are women. They’re part of the crazies too.
Indeed. Plenty of looney ladies out there. They've a lot less excuse, unless you write them off as part of the universal privileged elite based purely on skin color, and putting on the clingy dream suburban housewife act for white men.
?? You may have noticed that for centuries women had no independent legal existence apart from first their fathers and then their husbands. Women had to fight like hell for the right to vote, and for just about every other right that was supposedly "self-evident" for men. To this day, most women take their husband's name when they marry. Ever think what that's about? I don't write Boebert and Greene off, but I do see them in context of the 53% of white women who voted for Trump the first time around. Many, many women so identify with "their" men that they oppose any effort by women to fight on our own behalf. You can call it privilege if you want. I think of it more as Stockholm syndrome.
I hate to classify them as "women." I think of them as "poor white trash." They may be female, but they don't come close to "women." I think they stopped evolving at about age 5.
Got to say a good word for Lydia Lunch and Iggy Pop.
If there was a greatest generation (the whole idea rankles me), then it would have been the parents of the WWII kids. The ones who were grownups during the depression. They suffered mightily to raise their families. Their kids fought in the second world war and came back, thinking they'd done their bit and the world owed them everything. Then came the 60s with some other real some other "greats." The ones who FOUGHT the greatest generation re/ civil rights and war and sexism etc. I was there in the 60s. The older folks were very happy with the status quo because they could enjoy their military benefits and sit back and relax with their nice car and new refrigerator. The greatest generation folks I knew HATED the war protesters and civil rights leaders. I remember one quote--"Martin Luther King is responsible for more deaths of American boys than Ho Chi Minh." That was from a WWII vet. Another vet thought Nelson Mandela should rot in jail (which he nearly did). Most of the WWII era folks I know are as selfish (or more so) than most people. And MY generation, which is YOUR generation LKT IV, is NOT the generation of Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz---who were born in 1970 and 69. What happened to THAT generation? It's not the 60s generation!
I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by...private equity, McKinsey, gated communities and the absence of leveling opportunities, the end of the draft and the concomitant rise of a professional military answerable to nobody, the death of the labor movement and the relocation of manufacturing to cheap-labor markets, the triumph of capital and the concentration of money, power and influence in an increasingly small and self-perpetuating group of overprivileged assholes. But nobody deserves Ted Cruz, not even us. Not even Texas.
I am hoping that when Texas secedes they take Gohmert. Abbott and Cruz.
What a trifecta of evil incompetence.
Money, money, money governs all nations, buy yourself a politician or a coup. Greed and poer rule. I am with you my brother in arms. Major, Infantry, U.S. Army Retired
The architect of our social and moral decline:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Milton-Friedman
Brilliant!
That was our parents and grandparents who lived through the depression and served in WWII (and a few WWI) - after that came drugs, greed, corruption in government and business, Nixon, watergate, a movie star for president and plastic pat his wife and it seems to have gone down hill even more. Now we have the greatest generation of corruption, racism, sexism, greed, rage, and stupidity run rampant thanks to "social media" that makes it possible for anyone to spew forth hatred without consequence. I am old enough to know that I will not live to see how this plays out for a decade or so and I fear for my children and grandchildren who will have to try to deal with the death of democracy and probable return to the stone age.
Remember the psych experiment where they put rats in a cage. Put a few in and everything is calm. Put in more and things get dicey. Put in even more and they start eating each other! Population growth from the time you were a boy until now has created a situation were the rats (us!) are eating each other. Too many people fighting over dwindling resources (also explains oligarchs).