At last, I finally see. Baby Boomers are everything wrong with society.

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Please stop posting in this thread.

How has Zeal not been banned yet, is the question.

Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
How has Zeal not been banned yet, is the question.

Originally posted by King Kandy
He was given a warning, by a mod. Not by me. I was just reminding him.

lol

I did not read the end of your post where you said you reported him...I kind of got a bit too retarded at thinking you were a mod and clicked "reply".

Yes, I'm serious. 😆

Please get this thread back on track.

And Zeal, keep your thoughts on other members' intelligence to yourself, calling someone stupid won't fly, and you know it.

Do it again and you'll be banned.

It's not a "thought"; it's the truth. ADarkSideJedi is literally mentally handicapped. She herself has admitted this.

And what does that have to do with the baby boomers?

Regardless, the term stupid doesn't mean someone is mentally handicapped, it's an insult - that is its meaning. Do not do it again.

Originally posted by dadudemon
lol

I did not read the end of your post where you said you reported him...I kind of got a bit too retarded at thinking you were a mod and clicked "reply".

Yes, I'm serious. 😆

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
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.

Edit: Even if they had become gop card carrying member en masse, It's ludicrous to blame the youth radicals for the **** ups of conservatism 30 years down the road, as if the problems did not lie in the practices they adopted as conservatives when older.

Originally posted by skekUng
You might want to consider going with the 8ball theory.

No that is not needed I reather come up with my own stuff thank you.

Originally posted by 753
The hippies and other 60's counterculture members were actually a small minority in the US and in all other countries. The consumeristic reactionary assholes you blame for the GOP's current state were, in general, already consumeristic reactionary assholes in their youth. Most old hippies stayed to the left of political center, although some did follow the path you described.

Edit: Even if they had become gop card carrying member en masse, It's ludicrous to blame the youth radicals for the **** ups of conservatism 30 years down the road, as if the problems did not lie in the practices they adopted as conservatives when older.

Originally posted by Someone
I hate the Baby Boomers. They're the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-
interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in
American history. As they enter late middle age, the Boomers still can't grow
up. Guys who once dropped acid are now downing Viagra; women who once eschewed
lipstick are now getting liposuction.

I know it's a sin to hate, so let me put it this way: If they were animals,
they'd be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving
but a wasteland. If they were plants, they'd be kudzu, choking off ever other
living thing with their sheer mass. If they were artists, they'd be abstract
expressionists, interested only in the emotions of that moment -- not in the
lasting result of the creative process. If they were a baseball club, they'd be
the Florida Marlins: prefab prima donnas who bought their way to prominence,
then disbanded -- a temporary association but not a team.

Of course, it is as unfair to demonize an entire generation as it is to
characterize an entire gender or race or religion. And I don't literally mean
that everyone born between 1946 and 1964 is a selfish pig. But generations can
have a unique character that defines them, especially if they are the elites of
a generation -- those lucky few who are blessed with the money or brains or
looks or skills or education that typifies an era. Whether is was Fitzgerald and
Hemingway defining the Lost Generation of World War I and the Roaring Twenties,
or JFK and the other heroes of the World War II generation, or the high-tech
whiz kids of the post-Boomer generation, certain archetypes define certain
times.

You know who you are. If you grew your hair and burned your draft card on campus
during the Sixties; if you toked, screwed, and boogied your way through the
Seventies; if you voted for Reagan and believed "Greed is good" in the Eighties;
and if you're trying to make up for it now by nesting as you cluck about the
collapse of "family values," you're it. If not, even if demographers call you a
Boomer, you probably hate our generation's elite as much as I do.

Let's start with the Sixties, the Boomers' dilettante ball. While a few
courageous people like John Lewis and the Freedom Riders risked their lives --
and others like Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner gave theirs
-- the civil-rights movement was led by pre-Boomers like Martin Luther King Jr.
(who would be 71 if he were alive today) and continued without strong support
from the Boomers on college campuses.

Still, I must say this: If you were one of those young people who did risk their
lives to fight racism in the Sixties, who put their bodies on the line to
register voters, who marched and sang and taught and preached against
segregation, you stand as the best refutation of my anti-Boomer tirade. In that
one moment of conscience and courage, you did more with your life than I've done
in all the moments of mine. In a generation of selfish pigs, you were saints.

But the reality is that most campuses did not become hotbeds of unrest until the
Boomers' precious butts were at risk as the Vietnam War escalated. They didn't
want to end the war because they were bothered by working-class kids being blown
apart; if they had been, they wouldn't have spat on those working-class kids
when they came home from Vietnam, or tried to make heroes out of the Communists
who were trying to kill them.

Yet as troubling as that may be, the Sixties were in many ways the Boomers'
finest moment. It was at least a fad then to pretend to care about racial
justice at home and war abroad, to speak out against pollution and prejudice.
But it was mostly just talk. As they came of age, and as idealism might have
required some real sacrifice, idealism suddenly became unfashionable.

And so the Boomers careened into the Seventies without a thought to picking up
where King and the Kennedys left off. Without a war to threaten them, their
selfishness came into full bloom. You know the results: Drug abuse, once a
boutique curse of hip musicians, became more common than the clap. And speaking
of sexually transmitted diseases, the Boomers began to fornicate with such
abandon that rabbits we asking them to cool their jets. They didn't invent sex
or drugs or rock 'n' roll, but they damned near ruined them all.

And don't give me this crap about Boomer music. The Beatles were all born before
the end of the war. So was Janis. So while the Boomers can claim they had the
good taste to listen to gifted pre-Boomers, when it came their turn to make
music, the truest expression of their generation, what did they give us?

Disco.

The generation that came before the Boomers gave them Dylan. The Boomers gave us
KC and the Sunshine Band. Thanks a lot.

Unfair? Perhaps it is a bit of an overstatement. Some friends of mine have
suggested it's an outrage to ignore Baby Boomer Bruce Springsteen, for one. True
enough.

But even more than music, our remarkable economy is what drives and defines the
times we live in today. And as the generation in the economic driver's seat, the
Boomers should get the credit for building this remarkable prosperity, right?

Well, not quite. Nothing can detract from the breathtaking entrepreneurship of
Boomers like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. But what's interesting is that much of
today's prosperity owes its origins more to the high-tech young nerds of the
post-Boom generation than to the Boomers themselves. The most vital role the
Boomers have in the current economy is to sit on their brains and invest in
post-Boomer high-tech start-ups. The same folks who sponged off their parents
when they were young are now, as they age, getting rich off the industry of
their younger brothers and sisters.

Boomer political and economic values reached their most perfect expression under
pre-Boomer president Ronald Reagan in the Eighties: Screw your neighbor, lay off
the factory workers, shuffle a lot of paper, build an economy in which a few
people get the gold mine and most people get the shaft. It is telling that when
he ran for reelection, Reagan got higher support among Boomers than he did from
his fellow older Americans. Perhaps some of the Greatest Generation saw the
selfishness in Reaganism and turned away from it. And perhaps the Boomers saw
those same qualities, that savage selfishness, and embraced it.

In the long run, will it matter that one generation was so spectacularly
selfish? Maybe not. In a great karmic irony, the Worst Generation may in turn be
raising another great one. Having taught the children of the Baby Boomers off an
on for five years now, at the University of Texas at Georgetown, I find them to
be the opposite of everything I despise about their parents -- they are engaged
in their communities, spending endless hours volunteering to build housing for
the poor or to feed the homeless. They are concerned about their classmates,
having calmed down the PC mania and replaced it with a sensible sensitivity to
the feelings of others. They care about the future and are concerned about their
grandparents. They are more responsible in their private lives and more engaged
in our public life. I have no idea whether it's because of the Boomers or in
spite of them.

Greatest Generation chronicler Tom Brokaw has the difference pegged: "The World
War II generation did what was expected of them. But they never talked about it.
It was part of the Code. There's no more telling metaphor than a guy in a
football game who does what's expected of him -- makes an open-field tackle --
then gets up and dances around. When Jerry Kramer threw the block that won the
Ice Bowl in '67, he just got up and walked off the field."

That kind of self-effacing dignity is wholly alien to the Boomer elite. But when
that day comes, when they finally walk off the field -- or what's left of the
field -- a few of us who've been trailing behind them will be doing a little
dance of our own.

...by Paul Begala

Originally posted by 753
The hippies and other 60's counterculture members were actually a small minority in the US and in all other countries. The consumeristic reactionary assholes you blame for the GOP's current state were, in general, already consumeristic reactionary assholes in their youth. Most old hippies stayed to the left of political center, although some did follow the path you described.

Edit: Even if they had become gop card carrying member en masse, It's ludicrous to blame the youth radicals for the **** ups of conservatism 30 years down the road, as if the problems did not lie in the practices they adopted as conservatives when older.

maybe "hippie" isn't the best way to group these people, but the 60s were a much more radical and socially conscious time, at least that is how it is remembered

that almost all of that radicalism has turned into white flight and suburban living is an interesting point

the change in social consciousnes on university campuses, for instance. I guess those london riots were something...

Originally posted by inimalist
maybe "hippie" isn't the best way to group these people, but the 60s were a much more radical and socially conscious time, at least that is how it is remembered

that almost all of that radicalism has turned into white flight and suburban living is an interesting point

the change in social consciousnes on university campuses, for instance. I guess those london riots were something...

I don't know about that. Well, at least where I live, there used to be lots of communes, and the city expanded to draw them in, not so much them leaving in favor of the city.

Originally posted by King Kandy
There were radical hippies in the 1960s... but, there were tons of "straights" as well. You can't be a counterculture unless there's a larger "regular" culture to be against. When the time comes to vote, hippie candidates never panned out, because in terms of sheer numbers, they weren't as much of a presence as their social impact was.

I don't know about that. Well, at least where I live, there used to be lots of communes, and the city expanded to draw them in, not so much them leaving in favor of the city.

no, that totally makes sense, but like, do you think you could get the "counter culture" of today to hold a sit in or occupy a university? Students got shot by the police during the protest movement of the 60s, it had to be a bigger phenomenon than just "those outcast kids".

Maybe not everyone was a hippie, but there was way more going on. Maybe it's just rose coloured glasses, but it seems like that era was more aware of the world at large. Maybe it was the draft, or civil rights, or whatever, but I think the radicalism, at least by today's standards, was more widespread than just religating it to a counter-culture would insinuate.

Originally posted by inimalist
no, that totally makes sense, but like, do you think you could get the "counter culture" of today to hold a sit in or occupy a university? Students got shot by the police during the protest movement of the 60s, it had to be a bigger phenomenon than just "those outcast kids".

Maybe not everyone was a hippie, but there was way more going on. Maybe it's just rose coloured glasses, but it seems like that era was more aware of the world at large. Maybe it was the draft, or civil rights, or whatever, but I think the radicalism, at least by today's standards, was more widespread than just religating it to a counter-culture would insinuate.

Originally posted by King Kandy
Well, I totally agree. That's why I made a thread to discuss whether it was related to the draft or not.

it does make sense. Even the london protests were over tuition fees.

god, maybe you are right, I've always thought we should reinvade Vietnam just for the rock and roll, 2 birds, one stone.

Originally posted by inimalist
it does make sense. Even the london protests were over tuition fees.

god, maybe you are right, I've always thought we should reinvade Vietnam just for the rock and roll, 2 birds, one stone.

Originally posted by inimalist
it does make sense. Even the london protests were over tuition fees.

god, maybe you are right, I've always thought we should reinvade Vietnam just for the rock and roll, 2 birds, one stone.