Monday, July 12, 2010
Paybacks are a bitch
Obamacare, Cap and Trade, illegal immigration, deficit spending, terrorism, and castration of the space program are all part of the paybacks to the boomer generation and its parents. As they now face a future with rationed medical care, high taxes, reduced pensions and income, and the possibility of dying in a terrorist attack here in the US, they need to understand that this is what they asked for.
Though the roots of today's problems really started 160 years ago [a topic for another post], the major creation of them started about 80 years ago, when the country first bought into the pie-in-the-sky of FDR, and continued to believe the myths about his saving the country, long after historians and economists had debunked them. FDR created the illusion that the government could spend the country into recovery. Never mind that everytime the government meddled things got worse and they had to back off. The boomer parents remember FDR as saving the country.
After WW II, the boomer's parents remembered how hard life was during the depression and didn't want their kids to have to be deprived. Life did become easier during the fifties when they had the boomer generation, and between easier living, urbanization, and Dr. Spock, the boomers were raised with relatively little discipline, little necessity to work to survive, allowances and privilege. Additionally the parents paid little or no attention to what their children were being taught in school, trusting the schools to still be the same institutions that they attended. This last was only partly true, and under the surface, all the various forms of educational baloney were taking root.
The first payback was when the boomers became the children of the sixties, foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed, equating license with freedom. They actually believed the socialist crap they were handed in both high school and college. Mostly they thought whatever they wanted was to come to them, and that they should have the power to run things and destroy. The less obvious sixties children joined unions and believed that whatever they could get from their employers was deserved, under the belief in class warfare premises. They had not learned any economics in school. The ones that became managers simply thought the increased costs could be passed on, also ignoring economics and productivity.
The prolonged economic progress from the sixties to the end of the century hid the consequences of their actions from them. Regardless of warnings they could point to the Cassandras and say it's not happening.
By the time the boomer's kids were in school, the utopians had taken over social studies and were rapidly invading the science curriculum. The parents were taught how Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations was a failed dream, when in actuality, the Senate really had more sense. The parents were also taught that the UN was to be what the League of Nations could not become. So the lions, the lambs, the predators and prey, and the suckers to pay for it, all came together. The lions and the predators didn't have to chase their lunch, and got paid for it at the same time. Peace was presented, not as the result of winning wars, but as something that would avoid war. That peace at any price was to be the goal, and peace came to be defined as the absence of overt war, with no concerns for rights or justice.
At the same time multiculturalism reared its ugly head. Not the kind of multiculturalism that enjoys other people's clothing, songs, and activities, but the nasty, vicious, subversive kind that refuses to judge right from wrong, calling all cultures as equally valid. Along with it came political correctness--never say or do anything that might offend someone, unless it is the unfavored ones (Jews, Christians, Caucasian Males). Politics became the power wars of blocks, not the preferences of individual voters. Ideological dogma and cant replaced principle and platform.
By this point, it wasn't a matter of the parents trusting the schools, they simply didn't care as long as their child got into college. Grade inflation led to the the inanity of 14 Valedictorians in a class of 200. The only way that happens is when percentage grades are converted into letters. Where before it was possible to distinguish the best, next best and so forth, now all these poor little egos would be protected by having a meaningless distinction. Instead of being the top student, the best that could be gotten was in the top x%.
Even worse the content of those A's was meaningless. Political science was either non-existent or turned into ideological indoctrination. Science had become a celebration of diversity and the memorization of facts, not the requirement evaluate data and form conclusions, or to understand the principles by which things worked.
Politics for fifty years had nothing to do with what was best for the country, but with how much money could one state steal from the others. The grand champion of this just died last week, Robert Byrd. (I've ridden on one of his roads to nowhere, and seen an even more elaborate one under construction.) Along with the emphasis on getting with both hands was the idea that anything could be paid for by taxing the rich. This was a double failure in teaching in the schools, first because they were never taught that it requires riches to create the means to riches, and second because they had been taught that personal wealth was available cash, not invested money. With the failure to properly teach science, came the gullibility to accept any preposterous alarmist crap and believe it could be prevented by passing laws.
Just as they got whatever they wanted from their parents, so people thought they could get whatever they wanted from the government. Those in power loved it. Whether they delivered or not, they had the power.
So there you have it. We got what we asked for, whether we thought we were asking or not. It is a bit late to learn that there are no mulligans in life, everything is always for keeps. It is too late to do over, but not too late to undo, and do differently. Let's hope our attention span is long enough to get it done.
Though the roots of today's problems really started 160 years ago [a topic for another post], the major creation of them started about 80 years ago, when the country first bought into the pie-in-the-sky of FDR, and continued to believe the myths about his saving the country, long after historians and economists had debunked them. FDR created the illusion that the government could spend the country into recovery. Never mind that everytime the government meddled things got worse and they had to back off. The boomer parents remember FDR as saving the country.
After WW II, the boomer's parents remembered how hard life was during the depression and didn't want their kids to have to be deprived. Life did become easier during the fifties when they had the boomer generation, and between easier living, urbanization, and Dr. Spock, the boomers were raised with relatively little discipline, little necessity to work to survive, allowances and privilege. Additionally the parents paid little or no attention to what their children were being taught in school, trusting the schools to still be the same institutions that they attended. This last was only partly true, and under the surface, all the various forms of educational baloney were taking root.
The first payback was when the boomers became the children of the sixties, foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed, equating license with freedom. They actually believed the socialist crap they were handed in both high school and college. Mostly they thought whatever they wanted was to come to them, and that they should have the power to run things and destroy. The less obvious sixties children joined unions and believed that whatever they could get from their employers was deserved, under the belief in class warfare premises. They had not learned any economics in school. The ones that became managers simply thought the increased costs could be passed on, also ignoring economics and productivity.
The prolonged economic progress from the sixties to the end of the century hid the consequences of their actions from them. Regardless of warnings they could point to the Cassandras and say it's not happening.
By the time the boomer's kids were in school, the utopians had taken over social studies and were rapidly invading the science curriculum. The parents were taught how Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations was a failed dream, when in actuality, the Senate really had more sense. The parents were also taught that the UN was to be what the League of Nations could not become. So the lions, the lambs, the predators and prey, and the suckers to pay for it, all came together. The lions and the predators didn't have to chase their lunch, and got paid for it at the same time. Peace was presented, not as the result of winning wars, but as something that would avoid war. That peace at any price was to be the goal, and peace came to be defined as the absence of overt war, with no concerns for rights or justice.
At the same time multiculturalism reared its ugly head. Not the kind of multiculturalism that enjoys other people's clothing, songs, and activities, but the nasty, vicious, subversive kind that refuses to judge right from wrong, calling all cultures as equally valid. Along with it came political correctness--never say or do anything that might offend someone, unless it is the unfavored ones (Jews, Christians, Caucasian Males). Politics became the power wars of blocks, not the preferences of individual voters. Ideological dogma and cant replaced principle and platform.
By this point, it wasn't a matter of the parents trusting the schools, they simply didn't care as long as their child got into college. Grade inflation led to the the inanity of 14 Valedictorians in a class of 200. The only way that happens is when percentage grades are converted into letters. Where before it was possible to distinguish the best, next best and so forth, now all these poor little egos would be protected by having a meaningless distinction. Instead of being the top student, the best that could be gotten was in the top x%.
Even worse the content of those A's was meaningless. Political science was either non-existent or turned into ideological indoctrination. Science had become a celebration of diversity and the memorization of facts, not the requirement evaluate data and form conclusions, or to understand the principles by which things worked.
Politics for fifty years had nothing to do with what was best for the country, but with how much money could one state steal from the others. The grand champion of this just died last week, Robert Byrd. (I've ridden on one of his roads to nowhere, and seen an even more elaborate one under construction.) Along with the emphasis on getting with both hands was the idea that anything could be paid for by taxing the rich. This was a double failure in teaching in the schools, first because they were never taught that it requires riches to create the means to riches, and second because they had been taught that personal wealth was available cash, not invested money. With the failure to properly teach science, came the gullibility to accept any preposterous alarmist crap and believe it could be prevented by passing laws.
Just as they got whatever they wanted from their parents, so people thought they could get whatever they wanted from the government. Those in power loved it. Whether they delivered or not, they had the power.
So there you have it. We got what we asked for, whether we thought we were asking or not. It is a bit late to learn that there are no mulligans in life, everything is always for keeps. It is too late to do over, but not too late to undo, and do differently. Let's hope our attention span is long enough to get it done.
// posted by Bill @ 12:34 PM 
Comments:
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This is a great piece. I clicked your name in your Belmont Club comment and found it.
Kudos to you for blogging even though you get few if any comments. Maybe future historians will be able to use it to glean something about our era.
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Kudos to you for blogging even though you get few if any comments. Maybe future historians will be able to use it to glean something about our era.
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