The baby boom generation which started with so much promise when it came of age in the 1960s has ended up a colossal failure. It has turned America into a bloody imperial hegemon [abroad] and a bankrupt Spy State at home where financialization and the 1% thrive, half the populations lives off the state and real main street prosperity has virtually disappeared from the land. Quite a deplorable legacy, that. And all the while Hillary has been our class president. God help the world if she becomes our nation’s President. She has betrayed all that was right about the baby boomers in the 1960s; and has embraced all the wrong they did during their subsequent years in power.[1]
Mr. Stockman's views are well worth reading but his ideas that there was anything promising about the Boomers who "came of age in the 1960s" is laughable. The enthusiasm for peace evidenced by those high-minded poseurs was in direct relation to how low their draft lottery number was. Never was there such a rush to enroll in divinity school as in those heady times. PBS must have aired a series on the Reformation.
And that "nationalism" had anything to with the "the deadly cycle of war that had started a half-century earlier in the bloody trenches of northern France" is equally silly. Nationalism is a simple preference for one's own land, people, laws, customs, and culture. It no more "inexorably" gives rise to a desire for world conquest than that it is inexorable that a surgeon will spontaneously turn into an axe murderer. Pre-Obamacare anyway.
Similarly, his idea that WWI extended into the Cold War because the "victors" refused to demobilize after WWII and together brought about "the nuclear nightmare of the Cold War" is drivel beloved of leftists and moral equivalence zealots. Nixon was a man with a "megalomaniacal will-to-power" that was "terrifying," "cold war hysteria" was "bull," and "the defeat and retreat of the American Imperium by the idealism and defiance of the baby boomers was interrupted by the Reagan defense and Cold War revival" which was an "historical error."
America's Sweetheart.
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By "the idealism and defiance of the baby boomers" I presume he means their ardent participation in the communist-funded and -inspired anti-Vietnam War movement and the successful effort of America-haters to turn the Democrat Party into an ultra-left, communist advance guard.
MAJ Arthur D. Nicholson Jr.
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OK. Stockman thinks that we should have just sat back behind our nuclear shield and waited for the Soviets to implode. Good to go where a long-term strategy is concerned but I recall the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was by eminently conventional means, news of which I received in the back of a truck while an infantry Officer Candidate at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Too, Charlie in the tree lines of the Mekong Delta fired plenty of tracers that were green and seemed to have plenty at hand. No one was thinking then about any abstract notions of mutually assured destruction and Soviet economic collapse in the distant future.
Moreover, the Soviets still held onto American POWs from WWII and Korea and either executed them or worked them to death, not to mention they shot down our planes over international waters and imprisoned the crews. MAJ Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. was shot down like a dog while acting as an official observer in East Germany which I will never forget. His NCO was prevented from attending to him and no medical aid was offered or summoned.
Not Ferguson
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At what point
do you stack arms when you know your Soviet enemy is responsible for 30-66 million Russian deaths by torture, starvation, execution, exposure, slave labor, etc.? What did the narcissistic, Boomer party animals know or care about this?
Off the pigs, maaan!
Stockman doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. The Soviets were constrained but they were still active and murderous in what they did to oppose us. What seems clear to Stockman in hindsight – Soviet decrepitude – wasn't appreciated at the time, no one in the entire government having predicted the Soviet collapse when it came, as I recall.
One of these days maybe they'll send us Lee Harvey's real KGB file.
Hi!
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Well, all right then. A groovy, shopworn, threadbare "analysis" that only clouds any person's attempt to understand the long civilizational struggle between the total Soviet and Chinese states (with all their crimes, lies, and terrible pathologies) and the enlightened, civil, decent, productive, and rational Western world. Military-industrial complex carries bit of water these days but back then they were providing what was needed to intimidate the hell out of Ivan.
Facing down the Soviets and accelerating their demise was one of the finest things that Reagan did, though many of like mind preceded him and made their own contribution. The Reagan military buildup was a righteous effort.
Stockman's animus toward the military-industrial complex is well worth trying to understand. I also have little disagreement with his idea of the missed opportunities of the Clinton(s) and absolutely everyone's fiscal irresponsibility. Perhaps Stockman can favor us later with his views on the matters of Supreme Court evisceration of the Constitution (and ruling class complicity in that) and of communist infiltration of American government, media, and universities. Evisceration of the Constitution goes a long way to explaining how we have ended up on a runaway train that is the federal Leviathan. The military-industrial complex wasn't laid down over something even remotely resembling a constitutional republic. I ask once again, what did the Boomers know or care about this?
C+ for Stockman for not noticing that the Constitution has been trashed, that we've been invaded by the third world, and that we've been in a 30-year race war in which whites haven't been doing much fighting.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what the Boomers have given us is imperfectly but aptly described by the 118 words above. We aren't in Kansas anymore where the direction of the country is concerned. There are some delusional or treasonous people at work in our midst and what they are doing has nothing to do with any kind of misjudgment or failure of the intelligence community.
Something has gone very wrong and we are badly in need of a serious Trumping.
Notes
[1] "Hillary Clinton: Class President Of A Failed Generation." By David Stockman, 4/13/15.
H/t: American Freedom Union.
12 comments:
As an OPFOR officer and instructor for the Army (1978 - 1987), I am horrified by the shallow views of Mr Stockman. Financially he gets it. His projections of our long-term debts and obligations inspire more fear and loathing than solutions, but in these subjects he seems spot on.
What did I see/learn/experience that he did not? OK, he was not in the military, and I never served in combat, but there seems to be just a bit of bifurcation in his financial worldview versus his interpretation of our own surrender to the third-world invasion (ongoing, and apparently accelerating) as well as the composting of our founding documents by each administration since Reagan left office.
Excellent swordsmanship with the pen, Col Bunny.
J F Ponder
That all seemed pretty confused.
Thanks, Mr. Ponder. There's a curious hole in his approach. His financial insights are good but I don't get his idea that Boomers were some kind of a vanguard who were destined to do great things but didn't. The Vietnam War was confused and confusing but, like the Korean War, it represented a line drawn in the sand when it was clear the Soviets were intent on operating in the area where nuclear weapons simply would not be used. Much moralizing took place over it but it's clear that micromanaging the war, absurd rules of engagement, congressional betrayal, and the deliberate hamstringing of Nixon and his conduct of the war. A military victory was in fact achieved as Frank Snepp made clear in his book. It was a war worth fighting and victory was thrown away by the Democrats in Congress. Stockman is oblivious to all of this and sees the Boomer anti-war activities as something wonderful.
I like where he ended up v-a-v our current predicament but he sure left out a lot of things and seems just another anti-war naif when it comes to Cold War realities. When your opponent is a homicidal regime adept at subversion and obviously arming itself to the teeth while occupying Eastern Europe, military preparations rise to the top of one's to do list, to my way of thinking.
Sorry, Dr.D, but that's too vague for me to be able to respond.
The Boomers have been a disgrace and not just for the fact that they failed to reduce military spending. Stockman's is a strangely blinkered view that smacks of the lunacy of the left's analysis of events. If you have any thoughts on why my post is confused I'd be happy to respond to them.
As a Boomer, I'd like to say that we have been vilified just as Jews are vilified because there are bad Jews (Soros, Schumer, etc.). Yes, there were many bad Boomers - the bulk of which were young college students, seduced by Communist agitators. Quite a few of us back then ignored our draft status and enlisted in military service. We knew the war protest was fueled by Communist funds and trained agitators - kind of like we saw in a young drug-using "community organizer" (aka Communist agitator) whom this country was depraved enough to place in the highest office in our land.
Many of the parents of those Boomers had - as did my father (B-17s over Germany and B-52s around the world in the fifties and early sixties) served in the military too, and were hoping to keep there sons from dying overseas, but they supported them when they entered service themselves. Dale Snodgrass, arguably one of the best F-14 pilots ever, was the son of a friend of my father's, Ruben Snodgrass, a test pilot at Grumman, who built the F-14.
I'm not saying there weren't a lot Boomers who were bad, even beyond being misled. I just am bothered when an entire generation is blamed for the ills we are currently facing. Just as I am bothered when all Jews are blamed for the Soros, Rothschild, banking fraternity, and other power-mad elite groups.
And yes, Col., we're still friends :-)
Glad to hear that, Reg T. Loss of even one commenter would amount to a 33% reduction! :-)
I prize highly the friends I made in the service but there's no getting around the fact that they were a small minority in my life's experience. Then as now I know few who were willing to serve. I always considered it a rite of passage, not to mention its being just what any man should do. Many who did not serve were also patriots but I think most people whom I've met as an adult were almost all positively averse to it. In my law school class after Nam there were two maybe three other guys who were vets. And I was startled then to see how the hair had grown long and the drugs had proliferated. These were a different breed of cat, though not of course Boomers.
Bob Whitaker was the first person I ever heard trash the Greatest Generation. He thought they had presided over a trashing of our country and wholesale subversion thereof without uttering a peep of resistance. Think too of all the state bar associations and courts out there who are similarly silent when it comes to the basics. The NFIB case was a constitutional travesty but did lawyers speak out en masse? Nope. Has there ever been any resistance to the egregious expansion of federal powers under the Commerce Clause from lawyers? Nope.
Even before Obama was elected I knew he had started his career in the living room of two communist terrorists and was a drug-taking, Islamophilic freak. This was knowable to anyone with a smidgen of curiosity but millions of all generations voted for him, not just Boomers.
You are right to protest that not all X or like some of them who are Y but, bottom line, I think that the Boomers as a whole have showed remarkable passivity while this great nation has come under determined attack after the Democrats were taken over by the treasonous left. Boomers were The Passive Generation. And more often than not were likely to spout the nonsense about Nixon the Megalomaniac or the lie that the bombing of Cambodia brought the Khmer Rouge to power propagated by that ass Shawcross. Asininity on matters of human nature and the realities of international politics might be their hallmark characteristic.
Looking at Europe one sees the same phenomenon that vexes me so. That is this accursed passivity. It's astonishing. They will not lift even a finger to reverse the deadly tide of events and, as I say ad nauseam, starve the salvationist parties of oxygen when at the polls.
Sweden is a positively lunatic country that has taken oikaphobia to the stage of self mutilation. Europeans and the Boomer generation (and its progeny) have just suddenly become brain dead or lost their spines. There's no fight in us at all apart from the patriot minority.
Here at home there are millions who cheered sacramentalization of sodomy by the Supremes recently. Young people were especially giddy about it. The center cannot hold indeed, a la Yeats, and the Boomer generation can justly be said not to have protested much. For an image of real protest, recall the Vietnam War protests. That got people into the streets. Over immigration and constitutional betrayal it's basically ho hum.
I too enlisted and served in Vietnam. In my case, it was after a year spent as a freshman at UC Berkeley. I saw the free speech and early anti-war demonstrations first-hand, but my decision to enlist wasn't really based on much more than I thought it was the right thing to do.
I interpret the overall generational contempt for "Boomers" as similar to that held for Muslims. If they're a religion of peace, why aren't they stopping the terrorists? We "other" Boomers didn't work hard enough to stop the left (or statists in general) from taking over education, media and government and its bureaucracies.
By the way, I notice this blog is now using my google name. In keeping with Fran's policy of having the guys to say who you are when you post, I'm Tim Turner.
Oops. While I was typing, Bunny made my point much better than I did.
Tim Turner
I can't really argue with your analysis, Col. Having been a military brat and in the service myself (USN), even in college I didn't hang with the protesters and the manipulated fools who joined the SDS. I'll admit I did have a number of college "friends" who thought _I_ was the fool for enlisting.
I never hung out with lawyers - or those even interested in law school, so I missed whatever dynamic was occurring there. Somehow I see most folks who went into law as liberals of one stripe or another, definitely _not_ a subset of conservatism. So many politicians began as lawyers, that I tend to see that group - of which both Shakespeare and Robert A Heinlein wrote - as a group desperately in need of elimination. Even though I have also known a (very) few who were decent, worthy individuals.
I do agree the Boomers tended to be silent (those not caught up as young, impressionable students). But I submit (IMHO) that none of the generations as far back as during Wilson's administration fought against Wilson's socialist push that FDR went on to increase by an order of magnitude. I think the greatest reaction has occurred here since the advent of the Internet, where information has become available without being censored or distorted by the mainstream media, nor propagandized in our schools and universities.
I believe many of my Boomer generation, who knew some remaining vestiges of freedom, have awakened to what is going on around us - _has_ been going on around us. It is this ability to reach out and communicate with like minds all over the country that has served to make so many of us, who would indeed otherwise continue to be silent, speak out and begin to forge bonds with others who also see how desperate are the straits in which we find ourselves.
Thanks, Mr. Turner.
On the war, that was a lot of my motivation at the time. You served when you came of age. Was there another option? It wasn't for me to question how the military might be used because I trust the political leadership to have the interests of the country at heart.
Naive in retrospect but I did think that Johnson was more misguided and opportunistic than actively seeking the destruction of the country. Nixon was a great wartime leader and his Cambodian incursion was a stroke of common sense if not genius. It made a huge difference to us in the Delta but, natch, it drove the anti-war scum bananas. As Sbepp made clear, the N. Vietnamese were scared to death that Nixon would renew the bombing. Only Congress's obsession with bringing Nixon down caused the war to be lost. Politically!
... Snepp.
Reg T, it's as you say. The problems took root before the Boomers were a reality. Wilson himself was not on board with the constitutional scheme and thought that all power should be in the hands of an enlightened president. Sieg Heil and no kidding about that. He, Wilson, knew better than the previous generations about how much we had to have an all-powerful executive.
The internet has been a great eyeopener for millions and since I started blogging in 2005 I've seen a real shift in how frankly people express themselves on race, Islam, the ruling class, the media, globalism, immigration, etc. Black-on-white crime would not be the issue it is today but for Paul Kersey and Colin Flaherty, among others. Without them it would be covered up totally.
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