The Aging of Aquarius - Boomers can take credit for the 60s (LAUGH ALERT)

Gen Xers I know very little about. Nirvana and the 90s tech boom whiz kids is pretty much it, so far as I've seen. But demographically they're a dip, not a boom, so they don't really seem to have the numbers to be a boomer-style cultural force.

I was under the impression that the Clinton years were some sort of boomer wet dream revenge for Nixon, not something due to gen X, but I suppose you have a point - the moonbat faction of the boomers couldn't have come to political power over the sane boomers without help from Xers.

Gen Yers, I would guess, are probably the slowest out of the box of any generation yet because:

(1) Given the tremendous tech advances society has made (and that is mostly boomers, thank you, the industrious and inventive faction of the boomers), for the vast majority of fields, a heck of a lot of education is needed to really contribute substantially to society. Many boomer parents see that education as a worthwhile investment. Insofar as their children enter engineering and biology research and 4-year or Masters nursing programs and the like, I don't disagree. Insofar as parents often end up funding a 5-year frat party so their children can drink and bugger their way to a Gender Studies degree, I do.

(2) A huge number of gen Yers are really disturbed, dysfunctional people who have no values of their own (basically, apathetic nihilists) and can't function outside of the system of their youth, where there is an authority figure telling them exactly what to do each minute. Without that constant supervision they turn into blobs in front of a TV or videogame screen... rendering them incapable of functioning outside of high school environments. This group is going to spend a long time as parents'-basement-livers, and when they do finally get off their bums, I doubt it will be to do more than flip burgers to get money to smoke pot.

I think these two groups account for most of the slowness of gen Y getting out of the box... I hope for a lot of interesting work, eventually, from a subset of the former (there both the liberals and conservatives in the former), and expect nothing but impotent whining on DU from the latter.

"However, before you burn up the last of your remaining brain cells fretting over this, I fully expect Congress to face a fiscal reality in the next decade or so and reduce the government bennies for the boomers."

I hope you are right but my fear is that boomers may choose the route of the railroad unions... voting to drive the thing into the ground rather than give up an inch of entitlement. I fear the new prescription drug benefit is a harbinger of that path.

Bill Gates did not invent the PC.

However, point in general taken - the innovative people who invented all this computer technology, made the chips go faster, worked out the logic in the programs, etc... these many many scientists and inventors, many of them, maybe a majority, are boomers. Granted. Those who invented, even those who organized the inventing and brought it to market (Intel, say), great people. Thanks to them.

Those who, say, changed the sexual norms such that middle school children commonly engage in oral sex, or who changed norms such that women have been frequently reduced to "bisexuality" in order to compete with porn and with corrupt peers, or those who cheered on communist dictatorships that killed millions of people (Mao's China, the USSR, Cuba), that faction of the boomers should be ashamed of what they did with their time on earth. No thanks to them.

A lot of good points in your post. Let me address a couple. While I am generally pretty hard on Gen X/Yers, I also have to acknowledge that they got screwed on the education side and, that is one complaint that they are justified laying at boomer's feet. The aging hippies that we contributed to the world of academia realy sold the X/Yers short. They know next to nothing of American history, the Constitution, math or science. Thanks to Clinton killing off the Super-Conducting SuperCollider, we lost a huge opportunity to spark a rebirth in the interest of all things engineering and/or scientific. Now, with engineering jobs being shipped offshore, we have taken a definite leap down the slippery slope of irrelevance. Like many great nations that have gone before us, we are headed down a disturbing path.

The issue with Yers is more acute. These folks have grown up in a world filled with computers, VCRs, Nintendos and Gameboys. Because they spend so much time in isolation either palying video games or playing on the computer, (as a group) they lack well-developed social skills or much of a sense of reality. I worked as a substitute teacher for a couple of years and was surprised by the majority of the kids I encountered. Most of them are convinced that they will either be pro athletes or music stars. I hate to think of the rude awakening these kids are in for when they discover that someone is going to fix cars and someone will have to deliver bread and someone will have to build houses and buildings. The Yers may, eventually, figure it out and accomplish great things but, currently, I ain't impressed.

Not trying to get personal … But so you are saying Abusive relationships don’t happen now, JULIA, THAT GIRL, MARY TYLER MOORE are sitcoms that changed the world and liberated women from getting married early, and helped women to realize the nuclear family was optional, but not necessary? That’s the contribution you want to tout?

I’m sorry, but that is what I got from your post to me (#144) and I’m not going to quote the whole thing here.

As for your question:
>>What legacy will Gen X'ers leave the rest of the world that comes behind them?????

We intend to work hard raise children ourselves and instill in them the morals our forefathers had. We have specific steps we are taking to effect this change.
1. My wife stays at home and raises the kids.
2. I work hard to support the family so she can.
3. We send our children to private schools (no government indoctrination).
4. We are teaching our children to work by giving them chores.
5. We require accountability
6. We live within our means
7. We spend time together as a family
8. We go to church together
9. We have an evening meal together every night.
10. We talk about current events and how ethical behavior is better than “instant” success.

What legacy will I leave behind? Strong children who will know what is right and have the faith to do what is right even when it’s hard. That’s all I can hope for.

GOD Bless you for that...If every family was like your's the world would be a much greater place.

What I was saying in my posts was before the Baby Boomer generation I suppose, came along many troubled families especially women who were living with physical,sexual mental abuse by thier husbands felt they had no way out because they had no where to go, no money, no social support, no education and many daughters of these women did not want to end up like there mothers.

My mother even told me when she was a child in the 40's many husbands did not even allow thier wives to drive a car.

I feel Girls today should have balance with family and career but to say they should go back to the days where women were trapped is ludacris.

The problem with the Women's Movement was they did not incorporate into thier agenda how important family was as well as women knowing how to achieve educational and financial success as well.

Today's women are stay at home mother's with an education and the ability to work outside the home with a decent job if they need to and that came from the generation prior to them.

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