At last, I finally see. Baby Boomers are everything wrong with society.
For some time, I have been asking myself, "Where did the Republican party go wrong?" When did my party of small government and fiscal responsibility become the big government party of corporate greed and national debt? It was when the Baby Boomers took over.
Yes, the Boomers. The promiscuous "free love and do drugs" Boomers who epitomized hedonism in their early years. Woodstock, fornication, and Haight-Ahsbury defined them--all of them gluttons of the flesh, consuming everything pleasurable with no thought to moral consequence. And if that lifestyle had continued, the Boomers would have done us all a favor and died young, saving our country from the crushing weight of Medicare and Social Security.
But no, the Boomers grew up. They, like every college liberal, stepped out of their marijuana-induced haze of freedom and "**** the consequences" mindset, and they started working for a living. They put away their burning bras and LSD, and they became gainfully employed. And as they worked, they made money. As they made money, they embraced consumerism. And still at this time, America was mighty, and they gobbled up everything that capitalism offered to them. They delighted in their own decadence. But that wasn't enough for them. Nothing has ever been enough for the "Me" generation, nothing except for more, more, more.
Because then the 1980s hit, and Ronald Reagan became president. The Boomers at this time "got religion," so to speak. They condemned sin and lectured about abstinence, all the while their loose thighs tingled with the remembrance of sexual encounters past. Even in the Nixon years, they turned against the drugs they so happily imbibed in their youth, but Reagan was the height of Boomer self-indulgence. Reagan was the shining beacon of moral decay in America, when greed became good, when "**** y'all, I got mine" became the slogan of the Republican party.
And what did Reagan do as part of the Boomer legacy? He cut their taxes. He lied to us, told us that the rich would give us jobs if we gave them more money. He explained in that cheerful, disarming, charismatic way that he had about him--he explained that rugged individualism was the key to success in America. And the Boomers, the generation that did not know want, the generation that had grown up in an idyllic America, ate that shit right up. And how did they repay America for lowering their taxes? They shipped jobs overseas to see their stocks go up a point. They laid off thousands of workers to see a 2% profit increase. They took a giant, steaming dump all over America in the name of greed.
And what happened? Christianity became swallowed up by the Republican party and perverted so that it appealed to the Boomer generation. Instead of railing against greed and demanding that we provide for the poor, Christianity became twisted. It turned from a religion of peace and charity to a religion defined as pro-life and anti-sex. As long as a politician talked about "traditional values," the Boomer's warped, hypocritical Christian morals signed on. Military action in the Middle East? The destruction of working class America? The sanctioning of avarice? Well, as long as they were pro-life, it didn't matter. At least not to the Boomers.
And this is where things in America took a turn for the worse. The Republican party, once a party of relatively moderate, sane persons, took a turn to the right to appeal to the Boomer audience. Embracing greed and self-righteous piety, they welcomed the Boomers into their ranks. Now the party has borne the fruits of its labor: an aging populace known for their piggish, reactionary elements who shriek at the top of their lungs that the notion of anything remotely progressive is sinful or socialism.
And now what is left of the Republican party? Nothing resembling humanity. We have the liars and politicians assuring us that we need to give tax breaks to the rich so they'll give us jobs, and the Boomers nod their heads and smile. We have the religious authoritarians telling us that drugs are a sin and we need to keep them illegal, and the Boomers nod their heads and smile. We have the neoconservatives telling us that we need to send more of our soldiers to their deaths in the Middle East, and the Boomers nod their heads and smile.
And why shouldn't the Boomers agree? They're the wealthy business owners now, so they want tax breaks. They're done with drugs, so they don't mind if a new age of prohibition if upon us. They aren't in the military, so they don't care if our men and women die. In fact, as long as something doesn't affect the most selfish, self-indulgent generation in American history, they don't give a ****. Why else would they rail against "socialism" and "big government" while leeching off of Medicare and Social Security? Because they're worthless and a cancer on society.
And this is why the Republican party is bad. As long as the Boomers cast their blighted shadow on America, the party of small government and fiscal responsibility will remain the party of corporate greed and regressive social mores. The only hope for the party is for young, educated people to push aside the bloated carcass of the Boomer heritance and retake the Republican standard from the wretched grasp of the worst generation.
