	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Jan-07
Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!

Web Log - January, 2007

Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!

Most Boomers don't realize how much Gen-Xers hate us.

According to a a New York Times article on Sunday, Barack Obama believes that Americans are sick of feuding Boomers, and ready to turn to Generation X, "after the campus culture wars between freaks and straights, and after young people had given up on what überboomer Hillary Rodham Clinton called in a 1969 commencement address a search for 'a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.'"

"In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004," writes Obama, "I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage."

No question he's right about that. Boomers are arrogant and narcissistic, as I've said many times. They have no skills except the ability to argue with each other. A lot of people are, like Obama, sick of them.

Unfortunately, what Obama doesn't mention is that Gen-Xers aren't any better.

The reason that Xers don't like Boomers is that Xers grew up in Boomers' shadows for decades.

Here's what Democratic Party strategist and Clinton aide Paul Begala said in an article he wrote in Esquire in 2000, entitled "The Worst Generation" (a different and free version is available here):

"I hate the Baby Boomers. They're the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history. As they enter late middle age, the Boomers still can't grow up. Guys who once dropped acid are now downing Viagra; women who once eschewed lipstick are now getting liposuction.

I know it's a sin to hate, so let me put it this way: If they were animals, they'd be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving but a wasteland. If they were plants, they'd be kudzu, choking off ever other living thing with their sheer mass. If they were artists, they'd be abstract expressionists, interested only in the emotions of that moment -- not in the lasting result of the creative process. If they were a baseball club, they'd be the Florida Marlins: prefab prima donnas who bought their way to prominence, then disbanded -- a temporary association but not a team."

He concludes his article as follows:

"Greatest Generation chronicler Tom Brokaw has the difference pegged: "The World War II generation did what was expected of them. But they never talked about it. It was part of the Code. There's no more telling metaphor than a guy in a football game who does what's expected of him -- makes an open-field tackle -- then gets up and dances around. When Jerry Kramer threw the block that won the Ice Bowl in '67, he just got up and walked off the field."

That kind of self-effacing dignity is wholly alien to the Boomer elite. But when that day comes, when they finally walk off the field -- or what's left of the field -- a few of us who've been trailing behind them will be doing a little dance of our own."

So, it looks like Obama is consciously or subconsciously taking advice from his pal, Paul Begala.

What they don't realize is that Xers are even worse than Boomers.

There's no question that we Boomers are can't do anything but argue, but we're good-hearted folks who care about individuals.

But Xers have no skills either. Since they're so frustrated and furious with Boomers' inaction, Xers are ready to charge in and get things done. But how do they know what to do if they have no skills? Easy. Since they hate the Boomers, they just do the opposite of whatever the Boomers would like to do. And that's not always the best thing.

In a generational Crisis period, like the one America is in today, there's a tremendous amount of craziness and insanity around.

As I've said before, it's amazing what the survivors of World War II did. They carefully set up worldwide organizations -- the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, etc. -- whose purpose was, most of all, to prevent another world war. They accomplished huge things. They set up country boundaries, set up world monetary policies, as well as trade and commerce policies. They made sure everyone would be fed. They attacked all of the miseries of the World Wars -- poverty, famine, disease and war -- so that nothing like World War II would ever happen to their children or grandchildren.

But those people are all gone now, and what we have for leadership today are the Boomers and Xers -- the blind leading the blind.

Obama is obviously making this advance to contrast himself with Boomer Hillary Clinton.

So now you have a choice if you're a Democrat: a confused, arrogant Boomer fanatic, or a furious, hysterical Gen-Xer fanatic.

The bad news is that these leaders will stumble around and get us into a new Clash of Civilizations World War.

The good news is that once the war is over, the survivors will have a brand new, saner world in which to start over. (23-Jan-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Jan-07 Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Jan-07
Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!