"Were the trans-generational argument less outrageous, it would be amusing."
Ummmm, and which "trans-generational argument" would that be?
"It sounds like a hundred tracts of the older generation blaming the next, just like the ones from Nixon's Agnew, Hitler, Rome, and Greece."
Thanks for the list, you made three quarters of my point for me. You see, at least in Alcibiades' "Greece" (I think you mean Athens), Trajan's Rome and Hitler's Germany, the older generation was mostly correct in blaming the next, because the younger generation really did bring ruin on them all. But hey, "It's not our fault."
"The creators of <<the high-point of the American Dream>> also created a generation of vipers whose nature was to bite the breast that succors them and the hand that feeds them."
Ummmm, yeah. I think I already made that point, although less insultingly. Which side are you arguing anyway?
"Maybe that greatest generation really did miss something that their offspring were continuing in tradition to correct.(sic)"
Huh?
"<<the nation's apparent success and plenty ...had been built on the exploitation of our environment and people.>> Who was supporting the Establisment methods, the 60ers(sic)? The racial and environmental movements were peopled by these you denigrate."
Ummm, that was my point. The system was already flawed. I never said or meant to imply that the boomers are always wrong, simply that they tend to want it all now, think they're smarter than everyone else, and believe that nothing is their fault.
"<<they attacked the system that had given them the plenty they had enjoyed. >> The 60ers(sic) were dangerous with their symbolic protest, dangerous enough for an expansion of police and military unseen before in peace."
Either this is well-concealed sarcasm or you've switched sides again.
"The 60s movement had immature strategies, but the substance was against exploitation of our people of color and our poor..."
Is that why they took their student deferments and let the poor and the minorities go to Vietnam?
"...against sexual customs that hadn't fit biology for 300 years..."
Which customs were those? Why 300 years?
"...and against obsessive-compulsiveness that they'd seen ruin their parents lives."
Did they bother to ask their parents if they thought their lives had been ruined?
"Accusing them for having little idea what to substitute is a meanness beyond my understanding."
Do you really mean "for?" If you meant "Accusing them of having little idea...," then I don't understand how it's a "meanness" since it's true. They obviously had no idea what to do next; that's where the 70's came from. If you really meant "Accusing them for having little idea...," then the word "accusing" is inappropriate and would have to be replaced by something like, maybe, "condemning them for..." But hey, I guess it's all moot anyway since "It's not their fault."
"And to do it by force is unconscionable."
To do what by force?
"The yippie to yuppie change disgusts me, but there is a limit to how often one will risk the choice of death in the jungle or living death in prison."
This one really threw me. At first it sounded like you had switched sides again, but then you brought us back to the familiar refrain of "It's not their fault," so...
"The previous American Generation with demographics similar to the Boomers [numbers, family size, prosperity, ...] was the Generation of the Civil War. America should count itself blessed with the generation it got. We brought modern protest to history, the last brought modern warfare."
You know, for these kind of comparisons my dad used to just say "Well, it beats a sharp stick in the eye."
"To those facing Depression and War, the niceties of long-range and externalities are luxuries."
Again I have to say, "huh?"
"Their children set off to correct these overlooked things in ourselves, our culture, our world."
By tearing them down and replacing them with free sex and disco?
"The balance was seen as a threat, and the old ways resurfaced: Force and single-mindedness, legitimatized by morality, crushed the nascent generation, and its purpose."
What old ways? It seems to me that "force and single-mindedness" only resurfaced briefly with Kent State, Chicago, Nixon, etc. And they lost that war; they didn't "crush" anyone. The boomers bailed on their own, because they were too busy doing lines in the bathrooms of Studio 54 and balling each other. That "Force and single-mindedness" didn't reassert itself until Reagan, and by then the "nascent generation," frightened by herpes and AIDS and their newly found sense of mortality decided that their "purpose" was to get married, get a good job and make as much money as possible.
"Look to that greatest generation for the legacy."
What generation? What legacy?
"A world with customs shattered..."
Yes.
"...and the reformers scattered like rats against the farmer."
Huh?
"Look to your own hubris, not to our disintegration that you caused."
"It's not our fault."
Besides, I didn't cause anything. I was just a baby.
-BLT
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