Remember how there was a time when it seemed like we might be entirely free of Ralph Reed and his sanctimonious toothiness? But somehow he rose like a smug phoenix from the flames, and now we have to endure his assertions that hating on the gays is still totally good for Republican business.
<blockquote>Basically, Reed&rsquo;s entire political gamble rests upon the idea that since the Boomer generation contracted into conservative motherfuckers after they got theirs [...]</blockquote> Wait, what?
In reality there were always a helluva lot of conservatives in my generation. I know, because a whole lot of them were in my high school when I was there. Yes, perhaps we might have had a higher proportion of the socially-conscious than in previous generations. (Although that is disputable -- our parent&#039;s &quot;Greatest&quot; generation, and our cousins&#039; and older siblings&#039; &quot;Silent&quot; generation, both had their share of activists, with the former in particular having remarkably communitarian values. It was, after all, from them that we learned them.) We had our share of opportunities to put that idealism into action and we certainly had plenty of reasons to do so, plus we benefited from greater media coverage.
But just as in previous generations (including those that I just mentioned), we had our share of conservatives and reactionaries. Most of the right wing assholes I knew in high school grew up to be right wing assholes as adults, and just about every liberal progressive I knew back then has remained so in the decades since then. Many of the latter (and even some of the former) became community organizers, social workers, doctors and nurses in free clinics, Peace Corps volunteers, addictions counselors, and advocates for the poor, the disabled, the mistreated and abused, the wounded and the forgotten.
Also too, it&#039;s true that by 1980 and &#039;84 most Boomers were of voting age, but that doesn&#039;t mean that it was them who swung the elections in favor of Reagan/Bush. My generation, the bulk of whose members were in their 20s and early 30s at the time (the oldest were 34 in 1980; the youngest were 16-18 and still in high school) was far from the only group that voted in those elections. In fact, we were still in the minority then. So we were not responsible for the Reagan Revolution, at least not solely. You can&#039;t put that on us.
We were far more numerous as voters in the Aughts, but remember that Bush didn&#039;t actually win the 2000 election (at least in the conventional sense) and hardly received any kind of mandate in 2004. Since then we have elected the liberal candidate, with absolute majorities, twice.
During the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, Boomers ranged in age from having just been born (or not even yet) to attending grade school and high school. So yeah, we didn&#039;t have any major role in it.
The oldest Boomers are in their mid to late 60s and the youngest of them are in their late 40s. (Just a year or so ahead of the oldest Gen Xers.)
The &quot;Silent Generation&quot; is composed of people born between approx. 1925 and 1945. I have two siblings from that generation. Its members include nearly all of the best-known leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements, the writers and poets of the Beat period and the singers and songwriters of the Folk Revival, the majority of the troops who fought in Vietnam, most of the protesters who burned draft cards and fought the police in Chicago in 1968, nearly all of the pioneers of and greatest bands in rock music in the 1960s, a significant number of the &quot;second wave&quot; feminists and the organizers of, the bands who played at and the bulk of the people who attended Woodstock, among many others. Holden Caulfield was a Silent. All of the employees at Cooper Sterling Draper Pryce in &quot;Mad Men&quot; who are younger than Roger Sterling and Don Draper are members of that generation. (Don Draper&#039;s children are Boomers.)
Since this is a generation of people with impressive accomplishments, I have no idea why it is called &quot;Silent&quot; unless that name was chosen to be ironic.
The Boomers (my gen.) had little to do with <i>&quot;creating&quot;</i> the 1960s and only had a small role in the events of the 1970s. The importance of those decades to the Boomers was that these were the years in which we <b>grew up</b> and <b>came of age.</b> As a result the tumultuous events of those decades had a big impact on us. We weren&#039;t the creators or motivators of those events; rather, we were witnesses to them and they left a lasting imprint on us. That is why they are so significant to us.
And who, or should I say, what straw men, are alleging that again?
Anyone who makes such claims is either a) ignorant of the actual history (as opposed to invented history that originated in the 1980s and was the creation of Reaganauts and their ilk; see, e.g., PJ O&#039;Rourke) or b) is unable to read a calendar and calculate dates (and is therefore unable to plot out the infant, pre-school, grade school, high school, college, etc. dates of people born between the years 1946 and 1965) or c) is just bullshitting.
As I mentioned before, and you apparently missed, the elections of 1980 and 1984 were not determined by the votes of a cohort that was comprised of people who were just finishing high school, in or just out of college, or were working minimum wage jobs (when they could find work) while they were struggling to launch careers and become financially self-sufficient. They were not anywhere close to being a significant portion of the electorate yet in those years.
A little bit of insight into human nature would also have helped you to understand that humanity is not neatly divided up into generations that are All Good and generations that are All Bad. In fact, every generation is a mixed bag, including yours. I went into this in some detail in my earlier comment, when I described the dickwads who I attended high school with.
And when I described the Silents, I was focusing on the positive. By no means was that generation free of its shady characters. People such as James Earl Ray, Lee Oswald, Jerry Falwell, Lt. William Calley, and a fellow named Richard B. Cheney, to name just a few, were all members of the Silent Generation. As were many of the Chicago PD who fought with those protesters in 1968.
If, as you seem to feel, it only takes one bastard to cast ignominy over an entire generation, then we are all destined for the dustbin. I don&#039;t want to devote so much energy dealing with fratricidal feuds over which of my allies is more morally or politically &quot;pure,&quot; when there are far bigger things that we, together, need to fight for.
&quot;mtn&quot; as in &quot;(Appalachian / Allegheny) mountain.&quot;
I was a big fan of Abbie when I was in high school, and I read all of his books. My friends and I took much inspiration from him and others. We were active in the anti-war movement, and marched in protest during the October 1969 Moratorium, participated in and led teach-ins in the November Moratorium, marched in and attended rallies during May Day 1971, etc.
I started my political activist &quot;career&quot; passing out flyers on the street and stuffing mailboxes as a Johnson volunteer in Detroit in &#039;64 (when I was all of 10 years old). As a 10th grader I volunteered for Bobby in 1968 (and actually got to meet him briefly during the campaign), and then later that year for Humphrey. I did so again for George McGovern in 1972, making phone calls and recruiting volunteers. Owing to the just-ratified 26th Amendment, I was also able to actually vote for the first time in that election and I have not missed an election since then.
My father was a great admirer of Franklin Roosevelt, who he credited with saving America during the Great Depression, especially ordinary working people like us. My dad worked for a Democratic governor in in Michigan state government early on, then served in WWII. After the war he was an auto worker for many years and he was a great believer in unions, supported civil rights for African Americans, and absolutely detested people like Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. From very early on he taught me about the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, the Red Scare and warned me about demagoguery from elements of the extreme right wing. He got me started on my &quot;career&quot; as a progressive.
It&#039;s waaaaay too easy to bash Reed or make fun of him or whatever, so let me just try to say something positive about him: <i>He got a real purty mouth, ain&#039;t he?</i>
So the Boomers only turned conservative when they &quot;got theirs&quot;. Does that imply that at SOME fucking point in time, WE can &quot;get OURS&quot;? Cause I just got sacked after two years at a shitjob, and yeah, I wouldn&#039;t go full &#039;Phobe, but for a decent living I might be willing to turn a little . . . I dunno. Spiteful, maybe.
<i>&ldquo;But a lot of the people, who in the 60s and 70s were protesting the Vietnam war, and for legalizing drugs, were voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and &rsquo;84. People change.&rdquo; </i>
In fairness to those people, Reagan wasn&#039;t campaigning on a &quot;let&#039;s re-invade Vietnam&quot; platform by then.
Also, the college profs of that generation were getting the history and intel to the poor boomer kids who were going to lose their deferments and end up as cannon fodder. They were a significant force behind the anti war movement. which is why the minute Ronnie Raygun got in, he and his pals started attacking tenure and dismantling college funding programs.
Carlos Santana, john Lydon, Elton John, Steve Winwood, Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen, Pat Benatar, John Bonham, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Tom Petty, Tom Morello ....
Where is a good hypocrito-religious sex scandal when you need one?
<blockquote>Basically, Reed&rsquo;s entire political gamble rests upon the idea that since the Boomer generation contracted into conservative motherfuckers after they got theirs [...]</blockquote> Wait, what?
In reality there were always a helluva lot of conservatives in my generation. I know, because a whole lot of them were in my high school when I was there. Yes, perhaps we might have had a higher proportion of the socially-conscious than in previous generations. (Although that is disputable -- our parent&#039;s &quot;Greatest&quot; generation, and our cousins&#039; and older siblings&#039; &quot;Silent&quot; generation, both had their share of activists, with the former in particular having remarkably communitarian values. It was, after all, from them that we learned them.) We had our share of opportunities to put that idealism into action and we certainly had plenty of reasons to do so, plus we benefited from greater media coverage.
But just as in previous generations (including those that I just mentioned), we had our share of conservatives and reactionaries. Most of the right wing assholes I knew in high school grew up to be right wing assholes as adults, and just about every liberal progressive I knew back then has remained so in the decades since then. Many of the latter (and even some of the former) became community organizers, social workers, doctors and nurses in free clinics, Peace Corps volunteers, addictions counselors, and advocates for the poor, the disabled, the mistreated and abused, the wounded and the forgotten.
Also too, it&#039;s true that by 1980 and &#039;84 most Boomers were of voting age, but that doesn&#039;t mean that it was them who swung the elections in favor of Reagan/Bush. My generation, the bulk of whose members were in their 20s and early 30s at the time (the oldest were 34 in 1980; the youngest were 16-18 and still in high school) was far from the only group that voted in those elections. In fact, we were still in the minority then. So we were not responsible for the Reagan Revolution, at least not solely. You can&#039;t put that on us.
We were far more numerous as voters in the Aughts, but remember that Bush didn&#039;t actually win the 2000 election (at least in the conventional sense) and hardly received any kind of mandate in 2004. Since then we have elected the liberal candidate, with absolute majorities, twice.
During the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, Boomers ranged in age from having just been born (or not even yet) to attending grade school and high school. So yeah, we didn&#039;t have any major role in it.
The oldest Boomers are in their mid to late 60s and the youngest of them are in their late 40s. (Just a year or so ahead of the oldest Gen Xers.)
The &quot;Silent Generation&quot; is composed of people born between approx. 1925 and 1945. I have two siblings from that generation. Its members include nearly all of the best-known leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements, the writers and poets of the Beat period and the singers and songwriters of the Folk Revival, the majority of the troops who fought in Vietnam, most of the protesters who burned draft cards and fought the police in Chicago in 1968, nearly all of the pioneers of and greatest bands in rock music in the 1960s, a significant number of the &quot;second wave&quot; feminists and the organizers of, the bands who played at and the bulk of the people who attended Woodstock, among many others. Holden Caulfield was a Silent. All of the employees at Cooper Sterling Draper Pryce in &quot;Mad Men&quot; who are younger than Roger Sterling and Don Draper are members of that generation. (Don Draper&#039;s children are Boomers.)
Since this is a generation of people with impressive accomplishments, I have no idea why it is called &quot;Silent&quot; unless that name was chosen to be ironic.
Lizzietish81,
The Boomers (my gen.) had little to do with <i>&quot;creating&quot;</i> the 1960s and only had a small role in the events of the 1970s. The importance of those decades to the Boomers was that these were the years in which we <b>grew up</b> and <b>came of age.</b> As a result the tumultuous events of those decades had a big impact on us. We weren&#039;t the creators or motivators of those events; rather, we were witnesses to them and they left a lasting imprint on us. That is why they are so significant to us.
And who, or should I say, what straw men, are alleging that again?
Anyone who makes such claims is either a) ignorant of the actual history (as opposed to invented history that originated in the 1980s and was the creation of Reaganauts and their ilk; see, e.g., PJ O&#039;Rourke) or b) is unable to read a calendar and calculate dates (and is therefore unable to plot out the infant, pre-school, grade school, high school, college, etc. dates of people born between the years 1946 and 1965) or c) is just bullshitting.
As I mentioned before, and you apparently missed, the elections of 1980 and 1984 were not determined by the votes of a cohort that was comprised of people who were just finishing high school, in or just out of college, or were working minimum wage jobs (when they could find work) while they were struggling to launch careers and become financially self-sufficient. They were not anywhere close to being a significant portion of the electorate yet in those years.
A little bit of insight into human nature would also have helped you to understand that humanity is not neatly divided up into generations that are All Good and generations that are All Bad. In fact, every generation is a mixed bag, including yours. I went into this in some detail in my earlier comment, when I described the dickwads who I attended high school with.
And when I described the Silents, I was focusing on the positive. By no means was that generation free of its shady characters. People such as James Earl Ray, Lee Oswald, Jerry Falwell, Lt. William Calley, and a fellow named Richard B. Cheney, to name just a few, were all members of the Silent Generation. As were many of the Chicago PD who fought with those protesters in 1968.
If, as you seem to feel, it only takes one bastard to cast ignominy over an entire generation, then we are all destined for the dustbin. I don&#039;t want to devote so much energy dealing with fratricidal feuds over which of my allies is more morally or politically &quot;pure,&quot; when there are far bigger things that we, together, need to fight for.
&quot;mtn&quot; as in &quot;(Appalachian / Allegheny) mountain.&quot;
I was a big fan of Abbie when I was in high school, and I read all of his books. My friends and I took much inspiration from him and others. We were active in the anti-war movement, and marched in protest during the October 1969 Moratorium, participated in and led teach-ins in the November Moratorium, marched in and attended rallies during May Day 1971, etc.
I started my political activist &quot;career&quot; passing out flyers on the street and stuffing mailboxes as a Johnson volunteer in Detroit in &#039;64 (when I was all of 10 years old). As a 10th grader I volunteered for Bobby in 1968 (and actually got to meet him briefly during the campaign), and then later that year for Humphrey. I did so again for George McGovern in 1972, making phone calls and recruiting volunteers. Owing to the just-ratified 26th Amendment, I was also able to actually vote for the first time in that election and I have not missed an election since then.
My father was a great admirer of Franklin Roosevelt, who he credited with saving America during the Great Depression, especially ordinary working people like us. My dad worked for a Democratic governor in in Michigan state government early on, then served in WWII. After the war he was an auto worker for many years and he was a great believer in unions, supported civil rights for African Americans, and absolutely detested people like Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. From very early on he taught me about the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, the Red Scare and warned me about demagoguery from elements of the extreme right wing. He got me started on my &quot;career&quot; as a progressive.
It&#039;s waaaaay too easy to bash Reed or make fun of him or whatever, so let me just try to say something positive about him: <i>He got a real purty mouth, ain&#039;t he?</i>
Jack Abramoff on line one
People change, though Ralph Reed remains the same old sack of walking fertilizer he&#039;s always been.
So the Boomers only turned conservative when they &quot;got theirs&quot;. Does that imply that at SOME fucking point in time, WE can &quot;get OURS&quot;? Cause I just got sacked after two years at a shitjob, and yeah, I wouldn&#039;t go full &#039;Phobe, but for a decent living I might be willing to turn a little . . . I dunno. Spiteful, maybe.
<i>&ldquo;But a lot of the people, who in the 60s and 70s were protesting the Vietnam war, and for legalizing drugs, were voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and &rsquo;84. People change.&rdquo; </i>
In fairness to those people, Reagan wasn&#039;t campaigning on a &quot;let&#039;s re-invade Vietnam&quot; platform by then.
Also, the college profs of that generation were getting the history and intel to the poor boomer kids who were going to lose their deferments and end up as cannon fodder. They were a significant force behind the anti war movement. which is why the minute Ronnie Raygun got in, he and his pals started attacking tenure and dismantling college funding programs.
Yes! Someday I&#039;d like to hear or read the rest of that story...
&quot;Casino Jack and the United States of Money&quot; was a good start but it was just a tease.
Disco gets a bum rap. It&#039;s like any genre: it had its good and its bad, and it&#039;s good was as good as anything else.
Carlos Santana, john Lydon, Elton John, Steve Winwood, Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen, Pat Benatar, John Bonham, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Tom Petty, Tom Morello ....
Care to generalize some more?