Posted on 05/13/2009 12:44:52 PM PDT by iThinkBig
Jesus of Suburbia – Green Day
Beneath the finely groomed blissful suburban façade of America lurk desperation, denial, hypocrisy, and anger. The kids of suburbia today have an entirely different reality than the suburbs I grew up in during the 1970’s. The Ozzie & Harriet idealized version of suburbia from the 1950’s has degenerated to the Green Day nightmare vision of today. The suburbs have mansion-like homes with spotless interiors, entertainment centers, three car garages, manicured lawns, and no soul. The children of suburbia have been brought up on soda pop and Ritalin. They come home to empty mansions, as both parents must work to pay for the glorious abode. Our homes have gotten bigger and better, while our lives have gotten smaller and less satisfying. One third of all children in the United States are growing up in a single parent household. Many kids feel angry and disconnected from their families, friends and home. Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. The kids feel rage and hopelessness at their existence in a suburban nightmare. There are 2 million children who take Ritalin every day. Is this because they truly have ADHD, or it is the painless way out for overstressed suburban parents?
My parents both grew up in South Philly. My Dad had a good secure job with Atlantic Richfield and they took the leap to the 1st ring of suburbs outside of Philadelphia in 1955. They bought a 1,120 sq ft row home in Collingdale for $10,000. It had 3 small bedrooms and one small bathroom.
(Excerpt) Read more at theburningplatform.com ...
Old people always yearn for the past. My grandfather used to talk about the “good ole days of the 30’s”. Now this fossil is talking about the “good ole days of the 50’s”. The boomers will talk about the good ole days of the 60’s and the Xers will speak about the wonderful days of the 80’s when they are wearing depends and drinking ensure. It is the cycle of life.
And I bet it didn't have a mud room ("Wally, wipe your feet before you come in!") or a home theater (TV set in the living room...and nowhere else).
So pedal on and get over your teenage self already, I'm an oldster who had the same sort of "tough" childhood , maybe worse, it wasn't so bad, you make the best of it, it always up to you, that's what these little brats are missing, bringin'um over here, I'll smack some sense into'um(I need the exercise).
I’ve got a nice home with 3 car-garage. I have two jobs and my wife works full time, too. But I’ve always made time for my kids. I attend every event they are involved in. It’s all a matter of priorities. I love spending time with them, teaching them everything from how to grip a baseball to how to cook on the grill. And they’ve taught me to play Rock Band.
The payoff? My son, who is in college, decided that for his spring break he didn’t want to go to Florida to chase women and drink beer. Instead, he wanted a father-son trip to Cooperstown NY to the Baseball Hall of Fame. How could I say no?
For far to many people, though, the kids are possessions to show off, or to throw off while the parents go play. The kids get problems, and the parents try to solve them with medications. Bad idea.
It’s more then a longing for the past. I think the left has always hated suburbia. My own library has shown the movie “Death of Suburbia” and it’s sequel this year. I’m going to their program on how all this is supposed to work.
this is the description I copied off the website.
“Description:John Peter Barie, AIA, Chair of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Illinois Chapter, presents on New Urbanism, an urban design movement that arose in the U.S. in the early 1980s. The goal of New Urbanism is to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban lanning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist eighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be compact, well designed, provide options for transit, and be walkable.”
I feel it is a better way to keep control over the population.
Purposefully or not, you are missing the point of Mr Quinn's (he's the old fossil to whom you refer) article.
What is happening today, the McMansions to pay for, the broken homes, the ritalin kids, the latch-key problem, the 200 dollar sneakers, the filth that passes for entertainment, -- all that is beyond busted. It is a societal sickness.
he’s the old fossil to whom you refer
First off that was a joke...we are all going to be there someday. Second although suburbia was good in the 50’s, it was far from perfect. Child and spouse abuse was rampid and alcohol abuse was also very prominent. The situation now is that these problems are now being taken care of through police action or another means.
“The boomers will talk about the good ole days of the 60’s . . .”
This boomer will never refer to the 60’s that way. The 60’s sucked in every imaginable way. I thought so at the time. I still think so.
America’s cultural degeneration had started before that. But we went off the cliff in the 60’s and have never even begun to recover.
Kids have bad attitudes cause it’s cool to have bad attitudes - no other reason - my old man worked 48 hours a week plus and my mother worked 40 plus we had a nice home and we were happy cause it was the 70’s at it was cool to be happy and hang down the beach and drive your car and meet friends and have a few beers. Oh and BTW it was still OK to go to church and honur and obey you parents. It’s all about attitude and not about soda or not having your parents home immediatley you come in the door.
The poor little urchins of today ought to get over themselves and get happy!
Mel
Hey, I decided to start early. Reagan was President and it was morning in America. :-).
The suburbs have mansion-like homes with spotless interiors, entertainment centers, three car garages, manicured lawns, and no soul. The children of suburbia have been brought up on soda pop and Ritalin. They come home to empty mansions, as both parents must work to pay for the glorious abode.
There are a few ways to fix this "problem". Obama can tax us into submission so that we don't have enough to pay for big houses anymore. We could also restrict new building, so we can't afford big houses any more because even the small ones will be expensive. We could drive up property taxes so that (once again) we can't afford to buy big houses anymore. About the only other option is to change the hearts and minds of Americans so that they aren't so focused on overextending themselves to buy bigger houses but would rather have money saved. The first three require government action which will make us poorer and less free with no benefit except to those who smugly feel that I should live in a smaller house. If the options are big houses vs. poorer people/richer government, I say build, build, build! I think the only thing which will change our habits of buying big houses will be a major economic shakeup. What we have right now might be the start of it, but it will have to get a lot worse to break us of our bad habits.
And to his quoting Green Day to make his point, my response is:
Do you have the time
To listen to me whine?
About nothing and everything
all at onceI am one of the those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it
My own daughter decided to skip spring break and spend the week with her grandmother (my mom) in South Carolina. She told us we needed to come down there if we wanted to see her. Of course, we did and mom loved it. How many kids would choose to spend a spring vacation that way now?
To each there own.
Personally I have no interest in living in the big city, with all the "soul" that the suburbs apparently are missing, but, unlike liberals, I also have no interest in using the force of government to make others to live as I wish to live.
Oops, I do know better, but sometimes the fingers do what they want.
My suburbian house is hardly a mansion ... big yes, but not a mansion. My wife is at home with the kids and there to greet them when they come home from school. That will change next school year as they will then be in a Catholic school near my office so I will be the one shuttling them to and fro. They rarely drink soda, do not take ritalin, we have dinner at the table every evening, we have game time together, spend weekends doing things together, go to church together. Life is good.
I think the “American problem” with architecture and homes is based on two situations that dominated the 20th Century: demographic movement and technology.
Because Americans were always moving around, homes were based solely on utilitarian functionality, price and complexity, not quality. Why build a quality house you will only live in for five years before moving, and when your kids grow up they will move into their own house?
Technology went hand in hand with this, because the materials used in homes had to have a low price, and fit the times.
However, the concept of a transient society is winding down somewhat. Cities, especially West of the Mississippi, are becoming much alike in design, and the easy credit economy that made such transition simple, is winding down as well.
This leads to a future where children again live with their parents in adulthood, inheriting the family home. So the emphasis changes back to building homes that will last for generations, and provide some resource to support the family, be it rainwater, solar energy, a garden, even fuel, not just being a domicile.
America has an abundance of open land, though our society likes to cluster together in tight enclaves, but a gradual change to quality will restore America of old.
In a transient society, small towns are dreary and isolated places, but in a society oriented toward quality, small towns become jewels of uniqueness, each place creating a novelty of design and abundance.
There is one flaw with your theory, you’re assuming there will be no employment reason to move. I’m in Michigan(and I’m seeing an exodus(My self also once my Masters is done)
Employment migration is a big part of American society, now, however, it had an interesting evolution.
When the US was preparing to enter World War I, it was noticed with some amusement that in some parts of the rural South, the assumption was that recruiting was for the purpose of once again fighting the Yankees.
America was still a very rural dominated nation, dotted with small towns spaced so that travel between them, on foot, would take less than a day on an unimproved path. But at the conclusion of the war, the question was asked, “How can Johnny return to the farm, once he had seen Paris?” The answer was, “he didn’t”, and this began America’s first major demographic shift—from the farms to the cities.
This accelerated during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, after World War II and the building of the western cities and interstate highway system.
Even as late as the early 1960s, there was an American linguist that could talk with a person and tell what part of the country they came from to within 50 miles, given regionalisms and dialects.
However, after then, the US entered a period of homogenized growth, where regions and States mattered far less than national identity. And that is the situation we find ourselves in today. But that doesn’t mean it is going to last.
The growth of federal power since WWII has been extraordinary, and has gone far beyond sustainable growth. In short, it not only cannot continue to grow, but must to a great extent collapse, with power returning to States and regions.
Other institutions, such as the major universities, have grown in parallel with the government, and likewise became overextended. They were a major impulse to migration, and with their return to educating almost exclusively local students, this will be reduced as well.
Employment, other than purely migratory, like farm labor, will likely diminish because of the unavailability of easy credit. Home mortgages will be much more difficult to obtain, and demands for collateral will approach 100%.
It is unlikely that the US will return to what it was at the turn of the 20th Century, but it is just as unlikely that it will remain as it is now, without considerable retrenchment to a more stable, settled society.
The historian Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed the end of the frontier in 1890, and we have been filling the gap ever since. Finally, now that the western cities have been built, and industrial centers decentralized, there are fewer and fewer reasons for migration.
So a return to quality and regionalism is in the cards. If you and your family intend to live in a place for generations, you will want a legacy of permanence and local identity.
This is a well thought out probable outcome.
That was the best Green Day album.
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