Seems like a lot of Baby Boomers are showing the ill effects of all that LSD they swallowed back in the 1960s and ’70s. When they were young and had nothing but sandals and weed, they were all peace, love and rock & roll, and a lot of them stayed sober long enough to help finally get America out of the tragic and futile Vietnam War. Fast forward forty years and a lot of Boomers have stuff now, houses and boats and kids and grandkids and jacuzzis and the like. Now it’s okay with a lot of these former peace marchers (“Hell no, we won’t go!”) to have this country go to war at the drop of a hat. Now that they’re too old to go to war, that is, and there is no military draft to take their sons.
Somewhere somehow a lot of of bitterness infected the Love Generation and many have turned against everything they used to stand for. So much for all that brotherhood, peace and understanding jive. Now it’s all “I got mine. Fuck everybody else!” At the first sign of disagreement between America and some crummy little country somewhere, we’re not always sure exactly where, there’s all sorts of formerly reasonable people screaming for war. All of a sudden it’s bye bye Peace Corps, hello Marine Corps.
What kind of bullshit is that? Our military people love this country so much they’d run through hailstorms of bullets for us, and they do it all the time. Why do we treat that commitment so lightly and waste their lives in places that are no threat to America? These people have pledged to give their friggin’ lives in defense of their country if necessary. That’s asking a hell of a lot of anyone and is not an oath to be regarded lightly. How many of us risk death and dismemberment for a living? We need to respect that a hell of a lot more than we do, and put them in harm’s way only as the very last resort.
Eisenhower’s prediction of the “undue influence” of the Military Industrial Complex has come true in spades and the Boomers are silent about it. America spends more on our military than the rest of the world combined, and we can’t even get a national health care system put in place like every other successful Western Democracy has, and damned few people see the connection. Do we need pie charts?
The Revolution so many Boomers used to talk about is forgotten, sold for split levels, cocaine and swimming pools. Life turned out kind of weird and difficult the latter half of the 20th century, with nobody’s predictions coming true but a whole lot of unforeseen stuff happening, just like the rest of history. The crazy Jesus freaks bought suits and entered politics and are now raining hellfire down on everyone else. The Internet happened and a new generation of tech kids took over the way Boomers and everyone else communicates.
The world suffered from a plague of billionaires, then the billionaires suffered from a plague of sticky fingers and stole all the money. People got screwed out of lots of dough and a ton of jobs went poof. Many got bitter and with that bitterness came their Born Again Conservatism. Born Agains of every variety are worse than ex-smokers when it comes to the nagging, real pains in the ass. New conservatives are no different than the Christian Fascists, all hate and fury and disgruntled bullshit, only instead of hating in the name of a loving and merciful God they hate in the name of their country. Is this helping anybody?
People are working against their own interests out of anger and frustration, abandoning their decency and getting manipulated like marionettes by the same wealthy Republicans and corporate royalty that inflicted so much damage on America. Even their brand new Tea Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, conceived and funded as a business model to roll back any progressive and humanitarian legislation that seeks to put the American people back in charge of America. They even hire idiotic Republican shills like Sarah “I’m bailin’!” Palin to make speeches for $100,000 a pop to tell them that they are real Americans, just in case they were wondering what they were. And oh, by the way, the rest of America? Not real Americans and so they don’t count.
This is one of those cases where you can fool some of the people quite a bit. Fool them into thinking that hatred and racism weren’t such bad ideas in the first place, and that America needs a bogey man in order to function properly, fool them into thinking that they can have a piece of that vast wealth action enjoyed by a small ruling elite. All sorts of crazy ideas are being circulated, with even the Governor of Arkansas considering creating a separate State Militia to fight against the American Government, even though the United States Constitution places any and all State militias under the command of the President of the United States. How dumb is that guy?
Is this the best use of our time here? In an atmosphere where prominent politicians openly state that the Civil War was (!) not about slavery and calmly declare that they will not cooperate with the administration that the American people legally and overwhelmingly elected to replace their thieving and corrupt asses, power mad morons are coming out of the woodwork. Too many Baby Boomers dropped the ball on changing the world for the better, turning their backs on the success of the Civil Rights and Women Rights movements and embracing the politics of greed and stupidity. The greed of the wealthy, the stupidity of their pawns.
The Baby Boomers’ “Revolution” was purchased by the wealthy elite, who proceeded to use it against them, transferring so much wealth from the working classes to themselves that less than 1% of Americans now own more wealth and assets that the bottom 95% of Americans combined. How is that working out for anyone but that 1% with their multiple luxury homes, private jets and lifetime supplies of your money? They’re not going to share a cent with the stooges who do their bidding.
These aging Tea Party Animals are just as clueless now as when they were smoking pot all day long back in the day. Do they think no one notices the reality of their betrayal and blind hatred? Sorry, Pete Townsend, but it looks like a lot of us are getting fooled again. Me-first Politics pretty much guarantees that the many will get screwed by the few. It won’t be the first or last time that fear mongering has benefitted the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, historical business as usual. PT Barnum would be proud, but Baby Boomers ought to be ashamed. A better world was within our grasp, and we blinked.