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I'm a baby boomer and very proud of it. My parents survived the Great Depression and went to fight in the war after the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. My mother was 18, my father was 19. She joined the WAVES, he joined the US Army.
They enlisted to serve their country for "The Duration Plus Six Months." As my mother told me, "Hitler looked unstoppable. We thought we might be at war for the rest of our lives."
Their friends weren't out getting their noses pierced or having a plate put in their ear lobe; they were dying on battlefields. Those life lessons made my parent's generation grow up in a big hurry.
I grew up listening to my parent's stories, and because of their self-less example, I learned a lot about patriotism and the Greater Good, and serving mankind and living by the Golden Rule and honoring the Ten Commandments.
The parents of baby boomers smacked us when we were ill-behaved and didn't mind watching us sweat in the noon-day sun while we earned our first few bucks.
When the teacher called the parents in for a conference, the oft-heard refrain in our household was, "You have embarrassed us. Having a teacher angry with you is the very least of your problems."
They meant it, too.
When I look at the younger generation today, I am deeply concerned about the future of this country. I see too many examples of self-absorbed, self-serving narcissistic, whiny kids who think that everything in this life should be free, and that work should be a laugh a minute, and that their parents are a disappointment.
Y'all need a grow up a bit. IMHO, of course.
What really strikes home is the parent-teacher meeting. You got your a$$ beat for that because it wasn't for you being the best kid in school. Parents had more important things to do than meet with teachers in the middle of the day; your dad had to take time off work to be there.
Today's kids would never have survived the 60s-70s...we were tortured and deprived as there were no video games, cell phones, computers or anything. TV had maybe 5 channels and 3 of those were very fuzzy analog UHF. VHF wasn't always great but we lived.
You only got to use the phone if your parents allowed - it isn't a right.
Grandparents could work you over just like your parents and often did. Sure, grandma and grandpa could be sweet and loving but they would teach you the rough side of being a kid as well. Hey, they raised your mom or dad so they knew full well how to do the job. You were always glad to see them and if you didn't show them respect you learned to.
Baby-boomer parents were archaic. They were unfit for any time beyond their own, and they were barely qualified for that one. The boomers were left with quite a lot of stuff to fix, but have been hampered by the selfish prig wing of the generation the whole way, so it's kind of an uneven story so far.
Sounds like military school would have been good for you.
Yes OP, every single one of us boomers are all the same. We are all the same sex, drive the same car, are the same exact age, vote the same way, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and live in the same house.
Trade with China was expected to benefit the US, as it was thought that China would be a huge new market for US manufactured goods. What tipped the scales in favor of China was when a law was passed that gave tax breaks to companies that outsourced manufacturing jobs. I don't know under what President that was passed.
Why do you care so much about the space program? There have been recessions every decade after the 60's. They cut back for awhile, but in case you haven't noticed, the space program has been going strong, with the Apollo program, sending a mission to Mars, the shuttle program, etc. Do you keep up with the news? How old are you, anyway? And what are you planning to do with your life, besides whine?
No one whose job was at stake actually believed that crap. I was working at a manufacturing plan right before trade with China was passed, and we all knew it was just to get cheap labor.
I do follow the news, but I also know enough to question what they tell me and to examine the facts when they try to potray things a certain way. You see, us people of the younger generation know enough to get from other sources than corporate news.
I do quite fine for myself now, btw, and I am actively involved in my community, not that your ad hominem is relevant.
I don't get what is so hard on the eyes. I read the long post and found it quite good. I even agree that it should have been broken up into several paragraphs, but I don't agree about making such a big deal about it. Are we losing our reading comprehension in this country?
Quite the opposite, if what I read tells the story.
Writing skills are vanishing, they no longer teach cursive writing in schools and grammar is not important. If you can get your primitive thoughts scrawled across a piece of paper there, you are gold.
Putting cohesive thoughts to any medium which make sense to a writer and intended audience is a skill one need pursue for years. I don't know many born with the gift.
Those thoughts need be organized and not scattershot into one running paragraph. I lose interest.
The act of saying one is going to write a book is a far cry from actually doing so, believe me.
What really strikes home is the parent-teacher meeting. You got your a$$ beat for that because it wasn't for you being the best kid in school. Parents had more important things to do than meet with teachers in the middle of the day; your dad had to take time off work to be there.
Today's kids would never have survived the 60s-70s...we were tortured and deprived as there were no video games, cell phones, computers or anything. TV had maybe 5 channels and 3 of those were very fuzzy analog UHF. VHF wasn't always great but we lived.
You only got to use the phone if your parents allowed - it isn't a right.
Grandparents could work you over just like your parents and often did. Sure, grandma and grandpa could be sweet and loving but they would teach you the rough side of being a kid as well. Hey, they raised your mom or dad so they knew full well how to do the job. You were always glad to see them and if you didn't show them respect you learned to.
You and RosemaryT are the target audience of the original post, not all boomers. I'd try to explain, but I imagine you'd just furrow your brows and then talk about how hard it was not having hybrid cars.
I blame it all on sex, drugs and rock and roll.
That "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" period of time left it's psychic scars on all of our collective souls as we were led to believe that we were the last generation before the Nuclear war was gonna wipe out the planet.
Then Obama came along leading us once again down the path of the promise of hope and restimulating our surpressed spiritual quest of Nirvana with the liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life, and death.
Unfortunately, now it's the time to let the new "adults in the room " clean up the mess.
HERE'S the problem with the Baby Boomer Generation, no matter if you Boomers want to admit this or not. You were HANDED a solid economy, a solid middle class and a solid retirement on a silver freaking platter and you did NOTHING to sustain it, maintain it, develop it, nor grow it for the next Generation behind you (Gen X and Gen Y).
Instead, you spent the money like crazy, bought a bunch of CRAP from retail stores you didn't need, and didn't establish any solid trust fund, college fund or anything for your children coming up.
You had it all Baby Boomers, you had it all.....and you didn't pass down nor share a damn thing with us Gen Y folks in the form of more investments, stronger tax policies, protecting the jobs from bad trade deals, protecting the dollar from crashing causing mass inflation....nothing.
You didn't protect the solid economy you were handed, and as I pointed out in the Gen Y thread that's popular right now, my generation (Gen Y) is taking the tail whooping of YEARS of bad policies that were voted in place by the damn Baby Boomers. Plus, don't get me started about the breakdown of the FAMILY which was promoted BY the Baby Boomers through the far left feminist movement.
Back down Projunior.
What would Gen X or Y have done given the same circumstances?
From the tone of your whining, not much different and from your generation's habits, far less productive, as you have no knowledge of what an honest day's work involves.
Too many Gen X and Gen Y whiners have not bothered to lift a finger to learn about the three recessions of the 1950's, the thirteen months in Vietnam of the 1960's, the economy-wrecking oil crises of the early and late 1970's, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression in the early 1980's, or the stock market crash of 1987 which was actually worse than the one in 1929. Instead they think it was all visions of sugar plums over those four decades. This is part of the price of severe intellectual laziness.
Otherwise known as progressive liberal elitists.
They will raise awareness and walk away.
They won't carry the shovels and they surely won't dig as they are too qualified to do so.
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