Hope You Die Before You get Old

Clic Cow for Full Story, this is one of David Michael Green's best to date

As a Baby Boomer, I’m sure not encouraging generational warfare in America. I have everything to lose from such a battle.

On the other hand, though, as a political analyst, I can hardly believe we’re not seeing it.

Never has it been so manifestly logical. Never would it be so thoroughly deserved. And yet, never has it been so astonishingly absent from the playing field of American politics.

I grew up in a period of generational conflict. “Never trust anyone over thirty”, “Hope I die before I get old”, etc. But I have to say that my generation got a way better deal from our parents than we’re leaving for our kids.

Sure, our parents bequeathed us Vietnam and Nixon. But I think those politics were a matter more of naivete, really, rather than malice or greed. I remember how my own parents reacted to the war and to Watergate. Having struggled collectively through the Depression, and having fought the good fight of World War II, I think they were wholly unprepared for the levels of deceit and callous indifference to harm they came inescapably to find that their government was capable of. This was an existential challenge of the kind we jaded Boomers can probably never appreciate. They were true believers, and they were rattled to the core when Toto pulled back the curtain. Their children, on the other hand, were raised to become cynics, for whom no such political crime can ever quite surprise us.

And it’s funny, too (though certainly not hah-hah funny), to think of how our generation – as much as you can speak of such a thing without falling into stereotypes worthy only of some PBS pledge-break docudrama – how we mocked the materialism of our parents. At one level, we were right to do so. Big cars with tail-fins were not exactly means for enrichment of the soul. No one was ever gonna transcend the material world and get to nirvana by purchasing a TV set and watching the latest episode of Ponderosa (in living color!). But, on the other hand, we might have been a whole lot more charitable too. Given where they came from, and what they’d been through, it was not so outrageous for them to seek a little prosperity and comfort. Moreover – on the other other hand – there’s that whole nagging hypocrisy thing. The truth is that the rocket-fueled materialism of their kids makes Mom and Dad’s modest suburban house with the single TV in the living room seem awfully quaint by comparison. Today, if there isn’t a satellite-fueled TV in every room of your McMansion (and, of course, your cars as well), with a DVD player and game box hooked up to each, Child Protective Services might well be dispatched to cart your kids away in order to protect them from neglect.

But even if the Greatest Generation wasn’t so great when it came to some of the items higher up on Maslow’s laundry list, their kids – the Boomers – could only dream of being as devoted parents as were their own. Indeed, if there’s any one great crime for which the World War II generation may be most guilty, it is the raising up of the most narcissistic, self-centered, self-aggrandizing crop of kids ever. In China they call the analogous generation the Little Emperors. I guess we’re a bit too self-reverential for even that little bit of comedic introspection. Just the same, though, not for nothing are we known as the Me Generation. To get a sense of our sense of ourselves, just look at the two presidents we’ve contributed to the pantheon: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Of the latter nothing need be said that could meaningfully add anything to the eight years of experiencing this president’s capacity for self-indulgence and his unparalleled sense of entitlement. As for Monsieur Clinton, he is said to have lamented, especially after 9/11, the fact that no major crisis occurred on his watch, so that he could join Lincoln and FDR and Washington among the greatest presidents of all time. Now, if I sat down for six weeks trying to think of the most self-centered sentiment I could conceive of in all the world, I doubt seriously I could top that one. Imagine wishing that thousands of people could die in order to enhance your reputation for the history books. And this after you’ve already had the privilege of serving two terms in the most exclusive position in the world.

Gee, what a legacy we’ve left in presidential politics. But it only gets worse if we consider the more general picture. I cannot think of a single time in American history where one generation left their children such a stunningly large and complete a mess to clean up.

........clic COW for Full Story, this guy rules