Article...George Bush and the Dot-Commie Generation..
By Lewis A. Fein
frontpagemag.com
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 30, 2001
OF THE MANY GROUPS hurling invectives about George W. Bush’s "theft" of the recent presidential election, gay activists, abortion extremists and that paragon of fidelity (marital and political) Jesse Jackson, one constituency remains relatively unexplored: "dot-commers."
The dot-commers, young professionals generally disengaged from daily political discourse, view President Bush’s election – and his attendant promises of compassionate conservatism – as the first smoke signal of impending doom. And, as a dot-com executive myself, I constantly hear words like "Nazi," "anti-Semite" and "racist" when the topic of President Bush or the Republican Party arises.
How did one of the more successful elements of my generation, not to mention one of the most educated groups in history, arrive at so many uninformed opinions? For many, the road from campus newspaper editor to non-profit employee to Internet millionaire is surprisingly short, devoid of any political beliefs beyond reflexive liberal thoughts. Imagine Whittaker Chambers having forsaken his core principles, only to have become an anonymous editor at Time. Or, to frame things more contemporaneously, imagine David Horowitz as someone too busy to expose the hypocrisy of Huey Newton or Angela Davis.
No, greed or an unhealthy preoccupation with money does not explain my generation’s ignorance of politics. Besides, greed and selfishness – mind you, these are standby accusations in liberalism’s verbal arsenal – are allegedly conservative traits. Rather, the dot-com generation considers politics worthless, a blue-collar conversational topic where talk inevitably turns to race or religion. For my generation, the cultural renegades are Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, not Robert Downey, Jr. or Eminem.
More disturbing is the chasm between paranoia and reality among my peers. For example, accusations by dot-commers that Bush is secretly anti-Semitic, and that his victory is a triumph among America’s burgeoning population of neo-Nazis – after all, it was Congressman Jerrold Nadler who spoke about a "whiff of fascism" governing Bush’s tactics – ignore one inconvenient fact: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman won the popular vote! So, for all the hysteria among my recently minted JD- or MBA-colleagues that Americans would never vote for a Jew . . . well, next year in Jerusalem.
Now, it is not so much paranoia about anti-Semitism that motivates my fellow mouse-clickers and Netizens as it is a false belief that President Bush is simply a destructive force. That taxes may not appreciably drop, for many they may actually increase, is another nuisance when my peers discuss Bush’s dreaded economics, for example. Or that Bush continues to distance himself from the House Republican leadership.
What angers my peers is that Bush is not a meritocrat. Bush neither won a National Merit Scholarship nor a fellowship to Oxford. Simply stated, Bush partied. Yet Bush’s upbringing – from his father’s early sacrifices as a naval pilot to his family’s emphasis on humility and teamwork – seem to better qualify him for the presidency than Bill Clinton, a bona fide meritocrat and Rhodes Scholar who also stands inconveniently accused of multiple felonies.
Thus stands the most annoying characteristic about Bush among dot-commers: he stopped partying. Unlike Bill Clinton, Bush grew up. My fellow dot-commers hate this, because Bush’s example is a hard rebuke against two popular beliefs among my generation – that youth and "youthful indiscretions" are immortal.
Bush would be a better person, so the generational calculus assumes, if he emulated Bill Clinton. Between swigs of alcohol and fistfuls of ecstasy, my peers would, lamentably, welcome some adultery or addiction within the Oval Office. For dot-commers, Bill Clinton – no, Elvis – has left the building--disco ball and all. |
