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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Open Thread: Generation Envy

Open Thread: Generation Envy

by Anne Laurie|  September 12, 20101:26 am| 87 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Flash Mob of Hate, Fucked-up-edness

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Commentor Davis X. Machina posted a comment earlier today, on those members of the Boomer Generation (and IMO the Gen-Xers can be just as guilty) whose entire political philosophies are based on spite, anger, and “punishing” everyone who is not exactly like them:

… [G]enerational envy. The people who survived the Depression and WWII are leaving from our midst.
__
There are a lot of neo-Crusaders who au fond are really motivated by nothing more than an unwillingness to confront the decided fact that their lives aren’t harnessed to some larger cause, that their sacrifices—of their living standards, their civil rights, their sanity—aren’t made in the course of getting something better, something larger, in return. Say, a Global Titanic Manichean Struggle against Ultimate Evil.
__
Instead it’s the 9-5, becoming the 7:30-5, and Saturday if the boss asks, owning the oldest car in the cul-de-sac, driving the soccer bus, all the while getting older, grayer, and more worried. And that can’t possibly be all there is. Not for me. I am unique, wonderful, put here for a purpose. I am not meant for a Global Titanic Manichean Struggle against Male Pattern Baldness.
__
You wanna be Willy Loman, or Audie Murphy?
__
The Last Good War—now that was a purpose. But that was 70 years ago, and today there’s nothing—except the Pats on the wide-screen. Now you need a grand Crusade, just to avoid looking into the abyss. Sometimes you have to go crazy to keep from going mad.
__
Voltaire was right—‘Cela est bien dit,’ répondit Candide, ‘mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’
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Not enough, not nearly enough, cultivating of the jardins going on out there in suburbia…

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Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    P.B.

    September 12, 2010 at 1:36 am

    Weird – the site has appeared ‘down’ for days for me, but I go through a proxy and here it is. I wonder if Time Warner Cable in my region has banned your site as malicious or what.

  2. 2.

    freelancer

    September 12, 2010 at 1:37 am

    You wanna be Willy Loman, or Audie Murphy?

    Excellently put. Personally, I think this can be chalked up to too many Walter Mitty’s running around in their head, finding lost relics in fedoras and splashing deserving Luftwaffe from the skies. Voting Republican doesn’t retcon you into the medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars.

  3. 3.

    mattH

    September 12, 2010 at 1:37 am

    Health Care

    Gay Marriage

    Wage Gap

    Global Warming

    There’s plenty more to fight for. Might not be so manichean, not so focused, but there’s not much you can do about that.

  4. 4.

    Linkmeister

    September 12, 2010 at 1:41 am

    A lot of ’em (including me) are victims of that income inequality that’s been going around for thirty years. That “American Dream” started souring when the company laid ’em off and the next job was at a significantly lower salary.

    No, I don’t agree with their beliefs or their tactics, but I know some of the issues.

  5. 5.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 1:43 am

    Thomas Friedman also complains that we lack the Ben Franklinesque / Horatio Algerish values of the Greatest Generation, unlike India and China.

    Of course, it turns out to be all our fault, you know, us little people and all the people actually running the policies which have driven us into a trench.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 1:45 am

    Not. Getting. Off. The. Boat.

  7. 7.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 1:48 am

    @El Cid: No. You tormented me enough in the thread below with the snippet. Not gonna read the whole thread.

    And, honestly, I think there are good and shitty people of each generation. It just happens to be the Boomers who were in charge for the eight hell years of W.’s regime. I find these generational wars pretty tedious. ETA: I don’t think AL is fanning the flames; I am reacting to the earlier thread.

    @El Cid: There is NEVER any justification for subjecting me to the tortured ‘logic’ of Friedman. I’m just too fucking delicate for that.

  8. 8.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 1:49 am

    @asiangrrlMN: At least it was actually relevant to this thread. Not to mention that if something is printed in the New York Times it will be a feature story on NPR on Sunday or Monday.

  9. 9.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 1:50 am

    @Yutsano:

    Out of the boat. Don’t get out of the boat.

    You can get off the boat any time you want.

  10. 10.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 1:51 am

    One of the things that taught the Greatest Generation their values was to have come from families who repeatedly lost everything they had, and not just as individuals, but as entire segments of the population.

    So, in a way, we really are trying to teach a new generation the values of the Greatest Generation.

  11. 11.

    freelancer

    September 12, 2010 at 1:53 am

    @El Cid:

    Sheesh, but do old folks suck! Can I get a high five? Anyone? Bueller?

  12. 12.

    Restrung

    September 12, 2010 at 1:54 am

    I knew it was over when Reagan got shot. I was 14.

  13. 13.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 1:57 am

    @freelancer: Snicker.

    @Steeplejack: But you can never leave.

  14. 14.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 1:58 am

    @freelancer: As a person who comes from a family in which some of the relatives would not use banks because the banks lost everything they had in the Great Depression, I can tell you that such events and their related bonebreaking poverty are key elements that assist in the formation in the noble character that Tom Friedman wants us to have. Along with a ton of emotional and psychological terrors, but, hey, omelets, eggs, etc.

  15. 15.

    Fang

    September 12, 2010 at 2:05 am

    I’d add something else – these are people who want a great cause but aren’t willing to deal with the challenge of it. They don’t want the stress, the chance of loss, or the chance of loss. They don’t want to loose their comforts (or what comforts they’ve managed to hold on to) – this includes the psychological comfort of not having to change their minds.

    They want all the glory with none of the work or psychological transformation.

  16. 16.

    srv

    September 12, 2010 at 2:12 am

    I forget how Soylent Green ended. Tasty?

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 2:13 am

    @srv: I’m thinking more Logan’s Run at this point. Course under that scenario I would have entered Carousel already, but nothing’s perfect.

  18. 18.

    freelancer

    September 12, 2010 at 2:14 am

    @Yutsano:

    Renew!

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 2:14 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    True dat.

    But I much prefer this. “Poisoned by these fairy tales . . .” Still true today.

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 2:17 am

    Again. Not. Getting. Out. Of. The. Boat.

    (happy SJ? :)

    Instead I give you a Dawg and a dog. Neither one looks very dangerous in that vid.

  21. 21.

    hilzoy

    September 12, 2010 at 2:19 am

    There is always a grand crusade available. It’s the struggle to be a genuinely good person. And last I checked, sorrow, hunger, poverty, ignorance, and cruelty had not yet been wiped out, so there can’t be any shortage of causes out there to work on.

    Of course, trying to be a good person can be tedious. All those annoying minor acts of decency that maybe no one will ever notice; all those times when you could say something devastating to someone who annoys you, but don’t; all those tedious attempts to actually fix your character flaws; all those occasions when the right thing to do isn’t to charge headlong into battle, but to keep on slogging at some unrewarding task — it doesn’t always feel like a grand heroic struggle. That doesn’t make it not the right thing to do, and it doesn’t make it not worth doing, often more worth doing than something more dramatic.

    Wanting a Grand Manichean Struggle that doesn’t just involve trying as hard as you can to do the right thing, but doing so in a theatrical way, with banners waving and swords clashing and (preferably) people cheering you on — that’s not about wanting something worth fighting for; that’s just self-indulgence.

  22. 22.

    Bill Murray

    September 12, 2010 at 2:20 am

    Sometimes you just have to tell the remnants of a generation to Suck. On. This.

    Sure it would help if we could define This. with any precision. But the hidden hand of the dictionary will never work without a hidden fist. There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research, but I did all my research for this using Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time. But then most of my other research usually comes from polling cabbies in Bangalore and Singapore and any other place that ends in ore.

  23. 23.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 2:24 am

    I thought Reagan taught all the young that the best way to help Amurka was to promote their own self interests.

  24. 24.

    freelancer

    September 12, 2010 at 2:26 am

    A wonkette operative has infiltrated Beckfest’s 9/11 Alaska Beertackular.

    ETA: best counterprotestor sign (aside from the LaRouche spoofs in guy fawkes gear and a bunny suit with a scream mask) “with patriots like these, who needs Al Qaeda?”

  25. 25.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 2:26 am

    @Steeplejack:

    Good live version. Damn, I’m getting all misty now.

    I loves me some Bruce Hornsby.

  26. 26.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 2:28 am

    @Steeplejack: I like both those songs very much. I also enjoy this one. And this one–though I would have preferred to find the actual video. Hm. I like songs by the Eagles and various members better than I do songs by the Beatles or the Stones. Interesting.

  27. 27.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 2:32 am

    @Yutsano: Squeeeee! Puppeh and puppeh! I love GSD (and the Dawg is cute, though young enough to be my son).

    @hilzoy: Not to get all stalker-y, fan-grrly on you, but is there any chance you’ll blog again any time soon?

  28. 28.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 2:44 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I like songs by the Eagles and various members better than I do songs by the Beatles or the Stones.

    It’s a very different sound that owes more to Elvis and the music of the south over the British Invasion. Plus the Stones don’t harmonize like the Eagles do.

    And yeah they’re both pups. :)

    Also: peanut butter and nutella on whole wheat bread. Nom.

  29. 29.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 2:47 am

    @Yutsano: So I’m a Southern grrl at heart? How very strange. Maybe that’s why I’m on a country tear. Yee Haw!

  30. 30.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 2:55 am

    @asiangrrlMN: Maybe that’s the issue. Your parents bitch you out in Taiwanese when they should be using Cantonese. Hallelujah I’m a genius!

  31. 31.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 3:01 am

    @Yutsano: Hahahahahaha! You crack me the fuck up. They did meet in Tennessee….

  32. 32.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 3:05 am

    @asiangrrlMN: I of course love spouting off a line that makes at least a couple folks reach for teh Google. I should get a royalty from them or something.

    Just out of curiosity, are you a big fan of ribs?

  33. 33.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 3:07 am

    @Yutsano: Well, if you had said they should cuss you out in Taiwanese in stead of Mandarin, you would have have been more accurate with the Southern/Brits analogy.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 3:10 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Then you (and Yutsano) will like this: Buffalo Springfield, “Kind Woman.”

    Got to this via Gordon Lightfoot’s “Beautiful,” which seemed like a nice bookend to “End of the Innocence.”

    I’m going down the Floyd hole in full maudlin mode tonight.

  35. 35.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 3:21 am

    @Steeplejack: Mmm. Not feeling those songs. I like this song, though. Heartwrenching. As for Floyd, don’t do it, man. It’s hard to climb out of that particular abyss.

    @Yutsano: True. However, to be accurate, Taiwanese is the language of the south of Taiwan (home country) while Mandarin is the official language of China (“motherland”), so my comparison is more apt.

    And, I am out. Night, bitchez.

  36. 36.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 3:21 am

    @asiangrrlMN: Canton was about as far south as I could think for a dialect. It’s all a flipping mish-mash anyway, plus I don’t speak a lick of Cantonese.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 3:30 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Always like Emmylou.

    I’m clocking out with this gifted amateur’s version of Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.”

    (I can give you the Dwight Yoakam version if you want. I know how you like him.)

    Can’t believe you don’t get “Kind Woman.” Awesome steel guitar solo at 2:20. And awesome, churchy piano, too.

    ETA: But I appreciate your dismal honesty.

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 3:33 am

    @Steeplejack:

    And awesome, churchy piano, too.

    I can do that. Though the song is more nostalgic than maudlin.

  39. 39.

    Suffern ACE

    September 12, 2010 at 3:37 am

    @El Cid: Egads. There is nothing that says “doddering elitist old fart” like blaming the youth for the poor economic performance relative to China and India. Fortunately, these problems can be solved through admonishment by columnists, which is relatively cheap. The sacrifice will be evenly shared, I’m sure.

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 3:49 am

    @Yutsano:

    That is ver’ nice. Some good twangy guitar in there too.

    Here is the old school churchy piano. Eric Burdon, he got the charisma.

    Perfect sound here, but I like watching the video.

    ETA: And, yes, it’s a Sam Cooke song, but the Animals do it very well.

  41. 41.

    Yutsano

    September 12, 2010 at 3:56 am

    @Steeplejack: Now we can do maudlin, though things like this make me want to emigrate to Australia. I r just a lowly gubmint tax sucker now though.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 4:13 am

    @Yutsano:

    Hey, don’t get too close. Nicole scratch your eyes out!

    In the meantime, I struck go-go dancer gold! Too bad AGMN has left the scene. That phat bass is to die for, and that was before there even was phat bass.

    I keep searching periodically for Mitch Ryder videos, and they are scarce as hen’s teeth. He was one of the great white soul voices of the ’60s. Don’t know how long this one will be around, but it is awesome, despite the sucky sound. Ultimate dance/sweat/party music back in the day. I can almost taste Donna Winter’s hairspray at the Episcopal church dance. Oops, have I shared too much?

    And, yes, Mitch Ryder does appear to be Jimmy Smits’s long-lost illegitimate father.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 4:28 am

    @Steeplejack:

    The Animals’ take on the same song. Eric Burdon was another great white soul shouter of the ’60s.

  44. 44.

    Tattoosydney

    September 12, 2010 at 4:32 am

    Bowie – Space Oddity (Live)

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    September 12, 2010 at 4:41 am

    As a fan of Judging Amy, these photos make me wonder if Pam Gellar is the illegitimate half-sister Tyne Daly was too ashamed to tell Amy Brenneman about…

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 4:50 am

    @Anne Laurie:

    And Michele Bachmann could be their semi-illegitimate older “cousin” (sister).

    Forget it, Anne Laurie. It’s Teatardtown.

  47. 47.

    Steeplejack

    September 12, 2010 at 4:57 am

    @Steeplejack:

    And what is the deal with everyone misspelling Pam Geller’s name? It’s pretty clear on her Web site, and it’s not weird, like, say, “Michele Bachmann.”

  48. 48.

    SRW1

    September 12, 2010 at 6:11 am

    @hilzoy:

    Thanks hilzoy. As a male, I’d like to add the question why the need to be part of and fight in a great cause seems to be overwhelmingly such a fixation for bearers of the Y chromosome (though there’s no doubt that the Tea Party phenomenon has its fair share of females that fancy themselves as the second coming of the Maid of Orleans).

    Is it because tending to our own shortcomings is perceived as a mark of unmanly weakness worse than having to confess to the status of a combatant in the ‘Global Titanic Manichean Struggle against Male Pattern Baldness’?

    And if I may, I’d like to second asiangrrlMN plea: would be great to see your thoughts more often.

  49. 49.

    Tancrudo

    September 12, 2010 at 7:10 am

    I see the force behind the Tea Party (the part that isn’t the Koch brothers, mind you) as uncomprehending anger – these are people who thought they were doing things right but then their lives ended up totally fucked anyway. They were playing the game, and the game was leverage, and then somebody pulled the rug out from under them. They were the most special generation, and everything was for them, and they got away with every damn thing so far, and they wanted to pull off just one last trick and then boom: the bill came due. They believed they were entitled to buy all this crap, and that 12-foot ceilings were their due, and feel personally betrayed that the bill ever came due. They need to blame someone and they are incapable of understanding what they did wrong and who really fucked them over (themselves). It’s so much easier to blame someone else and to imagine some nefarious agency of an outgroup president than it is to accept that what we have here is the inevitable result of a simple home economics failure. Like Mark Twain said, “slowly at first, then all of a sudden.”

    It’s not just the Baby Boomers who are in this bind, but they’re in worse than others. Many of their children never learned how to manage either, but there may be a second act for those who fall down in their thirties or forties. Those who fell down just as they were thinking of retiring find themselves on the ugly side of the fence and no way back over. How hard the realization that they’ve been setting this trap up for themselves over decades with simple failure to keep track of their finances and ritual electoral kowtowing to the acolytes of Voodoo Economics (which is just the same basic failure of home ec writ large, a game with only one play – the punt). We’ve been paying our dues, they claim, and somebody must have stolen them from us! But no, that’s not what paying your dues looks like, buying second homes and boats with loans, gleefully shelling out 75 bucks a person to go skiing. Dues aren’t something you pay once in some great moral drama when you stop being a hippie and take that job for money. Dues are something you pay again and again and again so that when things go fucked, as they inevitably do, you have something there to take care of you, be it your investments or your community or your union or your government.

    And this is how the Republican party became the anti-responsibility party, the anti-reality party. No need to pay dues! Toss us a bone and we’ll punt for you! No need to build up the infrastructure on a sunny day – government spending on infrastructure is a Socialist Plot! No need to save for a down payment – if you’re a Player, you’ll maximize your Leverage! No need to pay taxes, just put that all on the National Credit Card! No need to manufacture domestically, we can outsource that to China! No need to maintain a middle class, only losers are middle class, and you’re going to be a Winner! No need to work seriously on your marriage, just get divorced again!

    Why keep fighting the small fight day after day, year after year, when you can fight a Holy War against reality for huge stakes? And when the bill comes due, and you are well and truly fucked, when the Party is over and you’re hung over and left to clean up the puke and mess and pay the bills, it’s just proof of what we’ve been telling you – Those People are conspiring against you. So when you finish with that mop and bucket, get your gun.

  50. 50.

    Quiddity

    September 12, 2010 at 7:11 am

    @El Cid: According to Friedman, we need to sacrifice more. I guess we should take even less vacation time and work more hours per year.

    Friedman’s latest op-ed is yet another instance where he comes off as an idiot. And I mean that literally.

  51. 51.

    Quiddity

    September 12, 2010 at 7:14 am

    @El Cid: During the Greatest Generation period, while fighting Germany and Japan, the marginal tax rates were very high on top incomes. Ronald Reagan said that during that time, when he reached some income threshold, he simply stopped working that year because the rest would be taxed away. That’s my kind of American. (He said that in an interview back in the 1908’s and it struck me then as an astonishing statement to make.)

  52. 52.

    WereBear

    September 12, 2010 at 8:18 am

    @Tancrudo: If I’m reading your post correctly, it was people who believed the Reagan lies who are the most startled about recent turns of events.

    Even though it’s pretty simple to poke holes in the Republican lies, it takes a certain amount of knowledge; knowledge they are intent on flushing out of the culture. Warring on science and special knowledge and sheer competence doesn’t just work to keep the rubes ignorant; it’s what the rubes want to believe.

  53. 53.

    geg6

    September 12, 2010 at 8:21 am

    As I mentioned in another thread, the Teatard anger here is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the so-called “Greatest” Generation. IMHO, it is based on race. I know for a fact that many of these people are former USW members who once voted reliably Dem and who, if you asked them, would happily tell you of their love for FDR and JFK. They are stupid racist fucks who only got angry when the dusky guy made it into the Oval Office. Yes, there are a few Boomers and GenXers (actually more of them) among the crowd which those of us in Beaver County Blue counter protest, but it is overwhelmingly a bunch of WWII era assholes who populate the Teatard Party around here. As for us Beaver County Blue-ers, we are about 60% Boomers, with the rest being made up of GenY and Millenials. Perhaps Friedman would like to explain that for me.

  54. 54.

    Linda Featheringill

    September 12, 2010 at 8:25 am

    Good morning guys.

    Generational wars:

    According to Eric Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development [yes, I’m referring to him again], folks who fail their last developmental task face old age with rigidity, resentment, and low-level hatred of younger people.

    Some of this I understand. I have found that change has not become any easier with time. I’ll admit that life is frequently a bitch. I also think that I deserve better than all this shit. And sometimes those younger people are rather loud and their music hurts my ears.

    HOWEVER . . .. .
    One of the real advantages of being a soshulist [a real one, not just a liberal person] is that it teaches you to look for the root of the problem and to look for the real enemy.

    Those young people with their loud music are not the enemy. A lot of my problems result from my good-paying job being outsourced to South Africa about 7.5 years ago. I became collateral damage to an international trend. Nothing personal.

    Dealing with change is difficult. I have a piece of graphic art in my office that says:

    It is not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent but the most responsive to change.

    That gives me comfort on days when I am neither strong nor smart.

    Life is difficult. It is also very, very interesting.

    [and some older people are real jerks]

  55. 55.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 8:28 am

    @Quiddity: I don’t know how to find the data again, but those high marginal tax rates — though they did collect much more than now — were effectively far, far lower through loopholes.

    In fact, the biggest corporate tax hike ever was imposed under Reagan’s 1986 reforms, as it eliminated tons of loopholes.

    But of course, there are no such things as marginal tax rates, as soon as you make a certain amount of money, the government comes and takes it all away and makes you stand on the corner naked and in a barrel. It’s clear.

  56. 56.

    Southern Beale

    September 12, 2010 at 8:30 am

    Good point. “Generation Envy” I kinda like that. I think the media has something to do with that, the way the tiniest thing is overinflated to Great Signifcant Importance. Feeds the narcissistic strain in American culture.

    I still think, however, that what I wrote back in January is correct: that for a big bunch of these people it’s not just Generation Envy it’s Generation Inferiority Complex.

    For a big group of people on the right they can’t get past the idea that their political successes haven’t been matched on the cultural front. Hollywood is still pointing and laughing at them, Sarah Palin is still mocked by New York “elites” and the idea that being a rube from the sticks clinging to guns and God is culturally admirable hasn’t sold.

  57. 57.

    WereBear

    September 12, 2010 at 8:48 am

    @Southern Beale: Well, in a way, the conservative’s very success is breeding contempt; Bush’s reign was supposed to be a conservative paradise, the apogee of all their striving and dreams.

    For it all to go so terribly wrong; someone (not them!) must be blamed.

  58. 58.

    Boudica

    September 12, 2010 at 8:50 am

    We keep talking about Greatest Gen versus Boomers, but there is a group in between which comprises my parents and in-laws which I think make up a lot of the Tea Partiers. They were too young for WWII but born before the boomers. These are the people who are already retired but not yet too old to be housebound. These are the Silent Generation. (So called in 1951 in Time magazine: Youth today is waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders, meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today’s younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestos, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the “Silent Generation.” from Wikipedia.)

  59. 59.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 9:02 am

    @Southern Beale: Yes, there’s the cultural resentment.

    But I think one big thing Democrats and liberals get wrong about the period under the Bush Jr. Republican triumvirate is that conservatives do not feel that they had gotten what they wanted under that complete Republican control.

    From our point of view or a political commentator’s point of view, the Republicans ‘got everything they wanted’.

    But for your average grassroots right winger, that’s completely untrue.

    What kinds of things were they always promised if the dreamed-of right wing takeover of the whole government took place?

    Not just loosening this or that regulation or this or that giant rich or corporate tax break.

    No, it was things like that the IRS would be dissolved; the Bible would be put back into the schools; the Army would round up all the ‘Mexicans’ and throw them out; no more signs or instructions if they weren’t in English; there’d be some ways of figuring out how to keep the blacks away from the whites, or at least from whites’ kids; Hollywood and newspaper types wouldn’t show or say anything positive about homosexuals, and homosexuality would be outlawed; all the welfare they imagined poor people to be stealing from hard working folk would be cut off, and poor lazy blacks and other racial inferiors would have to get a job instantly or face some sort of awful consequences like prison or something; we need bigger prisons and we need to arrest more of all the criminals, especially violent young blacks and Mexicans; local development regulations would stop interfering with people building out their sheds and lawns and stuff; etc…

    You know, huge, gigantic, super-transformational changes.

    I hear a lot of people mocking liberals for being unrealistic about what would happen if Democrats took all branches of government.

    But whatever lack of realism existed on that side doesn’t compare at all to what I’ve heard right wingers say about what would happen if ‘conservatives’ ever took power. When that right wing takeover happened, to them the changes looked like weak tea. They were ‘supposed’ to get more, much much more.

    It’s what they were always promised. It’s the excuse for why Ronald Reagan didn’t simply wave his arm and change America into their fantasized 1950s/1920s/1890s white wonderworld mix.

    We forget that. We think they ‘got everything they wanted’ and this is the complete opposite of the truth. They are fucking pissed that they gave all the power to the people who had been promising this counter-revolution and they didn’t get it. It has to be somebody’s fault. Including Republicans for being too sane.

  60. 60.

    Linda Featheringill

    September 12, 2010 at 9:07 am

    @El Cid:

    Wow. Excellent analysis.

  61. 61.

    Cermet

    September 12, 2010 at 9:26 am

    The people who have envy of the greediest generation are just nuts – those bastards didn’t save the world – that was the Russians who basically fought the Germans nearly alone (with some help from the Brits and their empire – we mattered little.)

    Did the greediest Gen do anything for the world but help second rate dictators murder their own people so American corporations could profit – yes; or help blacks achieve equality – no; or rebuild the world – no (what we did for Europe was make money for US corporations and protect out own ass’s from the terrible Reds.)

    Remember the gen’s efforts to protect the French empire and that little war we fought to save the Vietnamese by killing a million plus of them while killing off 50,000 plus American boys?

    Envy those low life fuckers? Hell, just glad they are dying off so maybe, something good can be done with their estates – no, that is a death tax that needs to be passed onto worthless lazy kids who know they’re entitled because they are white privileged fuckers given everything (believing like bush whack-off that being born on second base, or third, entitled them) and their voting for Ray-gun just made amerika stronger (for their kind, not those lazy welfare blacks … .)

  62. 62.

    Napoleon

    September 12, 2010 at 9:30 am

    @Quiddity:

    Ronald Reagan said that during that time, when he reached some income threshold, he simply stopped working that year because the rest would be taxed away. That’s my kind of American. (He said that in an interview back in the 1908’s and it struck me then as an astonishing statement to make.)

    I don’t recall him saying that but if he did I say it was 100% bull shit. If you work in entertainment it would seem to me that it would be an insane to turn down good projects and that it would destroy your career. Plus to the extent you are paid on what a film made you may not even know when the paycheck is going to come in.

  63. 63.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 9:31 am

    @Cermet: Note that our idiot news and pundit and analyst media complex uniformly portray Venezuela as a complete dictatorship with a completely failed economy. Debate the first, but the second compared to both its pre-Chavez state and many other South American states’ economic performance for its poor majority is among the leaders.

  64. 64.

    beltane

    September 12, 2010 at 9:34 am

    @Boudica: I think you’re right about the Silent Generation vs. the Baby Boomers. My 96 year old grandmother is a member of the Greatest Generation having experienced the Great Depression in her late teens and WWII in her late twenties. There are very few of these people left, and most are far too frail to be part of the Teabagging movement. The median age of Fox’s viewership is 65 which tells me the prime demographic for teabagging is the group who missed out both on the “glories” of WWII (Europeans would see this differently) and the pleasures of Woodstock. This is the group that was seduced by Ronald Reagan’s sweet promises. Rather than lash our in anger at the ones who betrayed them, they are choosing to adhere ever more tightly to the gospel of their false prophet.

  65. 65.

    beltane

    September 12, 2010 at 9:36 am

    @El Cid: Chavez is clearly failing to sufficiently stuff the pockets of the upper 1% as any proper South American dictator should do. Shame on him.

  66. 66.

    oldfatherwilliam

    September 12, 2010 at 9:36 am

    Boudica’s got the generational thing right. People like me were children during ww2, ingested all that heroism, sacrifice and stuff from parents. we’re sure the US is the greatest, these colors don’t run, and Ronald R was not a frontman for sleaze and dishonesty. The t-baggers are largely of my age and a little younger, think Reaganoid “principles” have been sold out to the likes of Clinton and Obama and are damned mad about that. Luckily for me personally I didn’t get around to college until the ’60s, and caught some perspective. Luckily for most of you, we’re dying off rapidly.

  67. 67.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 9:41 am

    @beltane: What’s funny about the situation there is that many times there have been opens for a political opposition to make gains, but the only opposition there is this lunatic, irresponsible, ultra-right prissy rich and lighter-skinned bizarro group — funded to a gigantic degree by the US government, fuck them for it, bunch of interfering assholes — like how Cuban exile rightists in the US refused any approach to Cuba that wasn’t utterly revanchist and envisioned a complete utter takeover. A sane opposition would have made great gains.

  68. 68.

    beltane

    September 12, 2010 at 9:47 am

    @El Cid: A sane opposition would be just as, if not more unacceptable to to US. Nothing less than a brutal, far-right Plutocratic regime is acceptable. Being that center-left governments have been easier to topple than ideologically driven Marxist ones, we are stuck with Chavez and Castro.

  69. 69.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 9:50 am

    @beltane: Not quite. The US has also funded center-right opposition when those are the more prominent political forces — i.e., Eduardo Frei over Salvador Allende.

  70. 70.

    Tancrudo

    September 12, 2010 at 10:03 am

    @WereBear: Exactly. The tea-tards are people (of whichever generation) who have been fucked by thirty years of the Republican racket — Voodoo Economics, crony capitalism, union-busting, deregulation, and consumerism on credit. The unintelligent response to losing in a swindle is going double or nothing, which they’re doing with teabagging.

  71. 71.

    Southern Beale

    September 12, 2010 at 10:04 am

    conservatives do not feel that they had gotten what they wanted under that complete Republican control.

    Well they sure didn’t say anything about it at the time! All we heard during Bush II until the Great Crash of 2007 was CLAP LOUDER! Anytime a liberal would have the temerity to point out that all was not rosy under the so-called “Bush Boom” we were called “Negative Nellies” and “Whiners” and “blame America firsters” and told we suffered from “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

    Remember that? Remember “Bush Derangement Syndrome”? I sure do. When we were finally proved right when everything fell to pieces they STILL didn’t say a damn thing, instead it was always the revisionist history crap and “well, George Bush may not have been perfect but he was better than John Kerry.” Can’t tell you how often I heard that one.

    Look I live in Tennessee, we are where the Republican Party has gone to die. I live, eat and breathe this crap. It’s all around me.

    Conservatives may not have got what they wanted under Bush II but they didn’t start complaining until a black man was in the White House and the Democrats had control of Congress. THEN and only then, at the urging of Fox News and the corporate wing of the GOP, did they start “rallying.”

    Seriously, the conservatives do not know WHAT the fuck they want except maybe to not be told by the culture that everything they’ve believed all their lives has been wrong.

  72. 72.

    El Cid

    September 12, 2010 at 10:08 am

    @Southern Beale: Yeah, well the ordinary conservatives I know did do such bitching under Bush Jr. Particularly when Bush Jr. proposed maybe a compromise on immigration. Plenty of them said that they now hated Bush Jr. as a traitor to their cause, and the ones who didn’t say they would stop voting for him said the only reason they would was to keep the Democrats out of power.

  73. 73.

    Bisquits

    September 12, 2010 at 10:58 am

    All the glory none of the sacrifice. Sounds like W in his flight suit.

  74. 74.

    Bill Murray

    September 12, 2010 at 11:07 am

    @geg6: no matter how much you say it, it doesn’t make it true. The youngest greatest generation member is around 80. While many of them were likely quite racist, there are not many people over 80 in the tea masses. There are more silent generation types who would be 65-80 years old, but the leaves of tea I’ve seen are 35-60, so the tea groups are mainly Boomers and Gen-X no matter how much you would like this not to be true.

    @Southern Beale: You should remember they were also promised a permanent Republican majority, so they didn’t necessarily have to get everything right away. Women could be subjugated, brown people put back in their place, God brought back to prominence and the unworthy pulled from the government teat in their own good time. Anxiety started creeping in in 2006 with the congressional losses and Bush taking some problematic stands and then the election of Blacky Liberal McMuslim. Of course this was still unfocused anger and likely would have remained so since the anger was mainly located in the followers until the leaders decided to pull the genie from the bottle

  75. 75.

    Nutella

    September 12, 2010 at 11:37 am

    a) General statements about whole generations of people are always inaccurate just like general statements about whole races of people.

    b) The collapse of the Evil Soviet Empire as an enemy meant that many people really needed and wanted a new enemy because they couldn’t imagine living without something to hate. For many now it’s the Evil Liberal Empire and they love hating it.

  76. 76.

    MollyMcRae

    September 12, 2010 at 11:51 am

    @Yutsano:

    Me. Neither.

  77. 77.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 12:05 pm

    @Steeplejack: Now this, this song hits my sweet spot. And, I will poke you harshly with my rusty pitchfork if you make me listen to the DY version. Sorry about the other songs. What can I say? I haz weird tastes.

    ETA: I need to poke myself severely with a rusty pitchfork because I just had to check out the DY version. EAR BLEACH!

  78. 78.

    hilzoy

    September 12, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    AsiangrrlMN: no — blogging for me is like crack. I love it. It eats my life. More to the point, I do it in a way that makes it hard to do my actual job — the one I get paid for. Sigh.

    But thanks. ;)

  79. 79.

    James E. Powell

    September 12, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    @Southern Beale:

    Seriously, the conservatives do not know WHAT the fuck they want except maybe to not be told by the culture that everything they’ve believed all their lives has been wrong.

    Agree completely. Most of what they express is not a desire for some policy or some future state of affairs, but rather fear and anxiety about the current state of affairs. They almost never talk about the future except in some vague description of a past that never was.

    And one of the failures of what passes for the left is to address the fear and anxiety of this group. As long as they have these feelings, they remain supporters of the corporate ruling class which promises, again vaguely, to defend the mythological past. As if we can return to the American dominance and prosperity of the post-WWII years.

  80. 80.

    rf80412

    September 12, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    @Restrung:

    I knew it was over when Reagan got shot. I was 14.

    Last I heard, Reagan’s would-be assassin had a hard-on for Jodie Foster, not that he was trying to slay the dragon and save the country … although maybe that says something appropriately meta and post-modernist about the death of lofty ideals or whatever.

  81. 81.

    MDC

    September 12, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    Boudica: Your description fits my xenophobic stepmother perfectly. She is of the Silent Generation.

  82. 82.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 12, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    @hilzoy: Aw, too bad. Still, hope springs eternal. If you ever decide you can just do it on the weekends, know that you’ll have one loyal reader from the start.

  83. 83.

    Ken Pidcock

    September 12, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    @Tancrudo: I thought that was well said and, at 56, I’m one of the fucked. (Believe me, you couldn’t have escaped the 401(k) debacle without having been way more conservative with your retirement savings than anyone would have advised.) I readily acknowledge belonging to a depraved generation. Reading that rats would choose cocaine over food until they starved to death, we decided that cocaine it was. That should have been a clue. We assumed that we knew more than, not only our parents, but anyone who counseled responsibility. We embraced the ownership society because we were damned certain we knew how to play it. Well, now we own it. With respect to generation wars, rest assured that boomers who deserve your respect understand why you aren’t offering it.

  84. 84.

    Quiddity

    September 12, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    @Napoleon: You may well be correct as a factual matter. But I distinctly remember Reagan saying that. Of course, he might have taken a marginal action he did way back (like saying no to a film he thought was a career-ender) and embellished the tale in order to make an argument against high taxes.

  85. 85.

    Quiddity

    September 12, 2010 at 11:40 pm

    @Napoleon: MORE: I’ve tried to chase this down but cannot find anything one way or another.

  86. 86.

    DW

    September 13, 2010 at 2:47 am

    For what it’s worth, the New York Times did a profile of the Tea Party supporters and they’re not economic losers. They’re older white relatively affluent people. They’re not angry because they think they’ve been robbed. Kind of the contrary – these are people who went through their working lives ahead of the baby boom and had relatively good careers and retirements supplemented by social security and medicare. They don’t want any of that cut. In so far as they are motivated by economic fear, it comes from looking at all the other people falling down and wanting to make damn sure they don’t join the losers, even if that means abandoning other people to the wolves. To put it another way, the Tea Party crowd are secure in the life boat. They just want to make sure no one else gets to climb on board.

  87. 87.

    Noel Kreissler

    September 17, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    Finally, I found the information I was searching for. I have been doing research on this subject, and for four days I keep finding sites that are supposed to have what I’m looking for, only to be discouraged with the lack of what I had to have. I wish I could have found your web-site quicker! I had about 25% of what I needed and your web-site has that, and the rest of what I had to have to finish my research. Thank you and keep up the good work!

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