We must relearn from our 'Greatest Generation' while they are still with us what it takes to be free.
Posted on 10/05/2008 6:21:45 AM PDT by vietvet67
My cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions. The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance -- have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them).
Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.
We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.
The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them. So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at. In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple. It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter. We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package.
Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? How dare we! Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room!
This is all merely typical of the smug, cocksure Boomer Elite. This is a group that breaks things. It has set the wrecking ball to institutions that are the essential glue of our society (marriage and the family), the basis of our political system (federalism and the separation of powers), the engine of our prosperity (the free market), the guarantor of our freedom (the military), and the glory of our history (the Constitution, participatory democracy).
Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world. Whenever a Hollywood celebutard mouths some perfect imbecility in front of a camera, it is sure to be done from a five star resort hotel or on the red carpet of one of those absurdly frequent self-congratulation festivals. The silk tie, moussed hair crowd on Wall Street is no better. If the extent of the naked short selling, self dealing and market manipulation that has actually gone on these last few years were ever to become generally known, it would indict this crew all by itself. And it cannot be said enough: this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party. The cigar chomping, pin-striped caricature of a GOP money man has been false to the Wall Street facts for some time, though the left continues to furiously peddle that image.
The Boomer Elite's tired liberal nostrums are continually falsified by reality but, more and more embittered by the refusal of the world to conform to their dictates, they double down, trying to impose more lefty palliatives upon us, measures sure to be flatly unconstitutional, un-American, and disastrously counterproductive all at once. This is a blindly and viciously destructive cohort. They have degraded our common culture, warped our constitution to suit their purposes, and stand ready to subvert our very nationhood to the pipe dream of the Euro-left. Now they have brought our economy to the brink.
This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both. On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible. On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise. The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations. It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.
Some of the sane knew it all along, but for many others a stunning realization is only now dawning. Much of the vaunted wealth creation of the last 20 years was a mirage, and the ballyhooed processes of wealth creation were themselves largely a scam, no more than the discounted cash flow of the borrowed future.
We must shudder to think how little of our civilization may remain standing when the Boomer Elite finally, mercifully, passes from the scene.
Another concern is how such a sizeable portion of America can entrust our national security to someone like Obama.
Protection of our country and families is supposed to be job #1. All other matters follow this requirement.
Obama supporters are blinded by their hatred of President Bush and placing all others, including themselves, in extreme danger. I pray some of them awake..
My question, precisely, is: Why are you applying a race/ethnic card to the story?
That is similar to the left’s distortion of the term ‘neo-con’ to isolate conservative Jews. It is a leftist tactic. Divide, divide, divide.
Why would that be? Is there not a generation of me-first, materialistic socialists who dominate the present culture in Hollywood, Wall Street and government?
You imply that only WASPs were on Wall Street before the baby boomers came along. Lehman Bros, founded by Jews, was around very successfully for well over 100 years. Boomers had nothing to do with its success and everything to do with its failure. It was Jewish businesssmen, in fact, who largely financed the American Revolution. Jews are not a new ethnic group to Wall Street.
It is not ethnicity nor race that has spawned the current culture, it is an ideology that detests all that America has traditionally represented. It is the ‘elite’ of the boomer generation that set out to destroy the traditional American culture, and who largely succeeded in that endeavor. And it is their kids’ generation who will be left to clean up their mess.
We must relearn from our 'Greatest Generation' while they are still with us what it takes to be free.
The Bommers were in the streets agitating for our defeat (e.g. Chicago 1968). Weak kneed politicians in the Dim party caved into their demands.
It was the generation of Baby Boomers on the college campus that caused the defeat.
We were defeated politically at home not on the battle field.
The only blame you can place on the 'Greatest Generation' is in their over indulgence of the 'Boomers'.
“Boomer Elite”
What a great description.
The phrase should be used to good advantage.
If so then don't do the same with generations.
He nicely placed the blame on the Boomer Elite.
You seem to have missed the main point. No one is talking about the entire generation, merely the ‘elite’ of the generation.
I think I just seen "nuanced," in action.
“Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations”-Never thought of it that way, but now that I do I realize it’s true, and I hate ALL Three!
You don’t have to read the article. But if you do, you might notice the second sentence that sets this out rather clearly, not nuanced in the least.
Good point: I’m not a boomer (somewhere inbetween X-and Mellinial born 1980), however our nation has evil in all generations and WE must fight it (plus I know many in parents gen that have been on the right side of many issues, of course some of them have been manipulated into not going far enough because of the culture we live in).
Good point CA.
decimon, point taken. The greatest generation is my parents' generation, and they are generally hard working and decent folks. I would much rather be associated with them than many boomers I know.
Nope, we are not. But as a boomer, I despise almost without exception, the folks who have become the elite of our generation. Very few have risen by merit through the ranks of experience and hard knocks. They went to elite schools, then to congressional staffs or wall street, and never actually worked at anything where they had to practice useful skills.
That is why we are seeing our financial empire coming down around our ears, with enormous debt invested not in further productivity, but consumption and the excesses of an empire invented by another wonderful group of done - nothing boomers, the neocons.
Nope, we are not.
What you've quoted was written by Comparative Advantage. I agree with it, but if you want to argue the point you should address your comments to CA, not me.
Not trying to be disagreeable, I just know the direction generational threads normally take and I simply don't see the point.
Woodrow Wilson and his ilk sowed socialism (big bankers-The Fed), and other socialist utopian sh**, and they reaped Roosevelt and His massive power grab (and before he, the economy fell apart because of policies inflicted by Wilson and Company)!
As an Xer I too blamed the Boomers for along time, however I think it goes much deeper than one generation. The WWII generation fostered the sterile suburban environment a lot of Boomers grew up in brought on by their uber-materialistic world view fostered by the Great Depression. The WWII generation ushered in Roe v. Wade, Vietnam,the Great Society no-fault divorce, etc. It was not the boomers that oversaw these policy changes. However conservative boomers much acknowledge they lost major battles in the culture war ceding the fields of culture and education to the liberal “masters of the universe”. That gave us pc, affirmative action, etc.
Our civilization is withering on the vine and there is ample blame top go around. Think about it even “conservative Boomer leaders” have various ex wives and are corrupted by the culture as well. Every generation has its sins to atone for. I think the “Boomer We’re Just Great” bubble is bursting and it should.
In my old stalinist days we used to call the bourgeois communists. They want communism for everyone but themselves.
McCain is indeed a pre-boomer but Obama is not a post-boomer. Obama was born in 1961, the baby boom is defined as the years from 1946 to 1964. Obama is in fact a baby boomer.
And considering that in this country the youngers support the elders through a transfer of wealth, the folks sticking us with all this debt just might want to keep that in mind.
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That is one side of the story, the other side is, just look around and you will find plenty of gen x types already into their thirties and being supported by their parents. Some boomers are supporting their children AND their grandchildren!
I am pre-baby boom, I went straight into the Navy, I was signed up before I got my high school diploma. When I walked across the stage I was already on the payroll.
Young people who were not headed for college used to be expected to pull their own weight NO LATER than as soon as they finished high school. Most of those who lived with parents were working and contributing to family support. Most of those I know now seem to think they shouldn’t be expected to grow up before thirty five at the earliest. I know not all are that way but far too many are. We have not only extended the lifespan, we have doubled the age when we expect people to accept responsibility for their own lives.
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