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

\| HOME \| WEB LOG \| COUNTRY WIKI \| COMMENT \| FORUM \| DOWNLOADS \| ABOUT \|

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Mar-08
NY Governor Elliot Spitzer: A Generation-Xer gets his comeuppance

Web Log - March, 2008

NY Governor Elliot Spitzer: A Generation-Xer gets his comeuppance

Rarely has someone's fall from grace been met with so much glee.

A grim-faced Silda Spitzer stands by her man, Elliott Spitzer, as a prop at Monday's press conference. Spitzer's three daughters were not present.

A grim-faced Silda Spitzer stands by her man, Elliott Spitzer, as a prop at Monday's press conference. Spitzer's three daughters were not present.

Like so many of the stories on this web site, this is so incredible it wouldn't even make believable fiction.

And it's not like NY Governor Elliott Spitzer simply gave in to momentary lust, or just needed to see a prostitute because his wife wouldn't do what he wanted in bed. Sins of the flesh are understandable, sometimes even forgiveable.

According to the complaint (excerpts here, full PDF file here), Spitzer illegally laundered money through overseas shell corporations to obtain the services of prostitutes who charged several thousand dollars per hour(!!!). He was "Client #9" of an international prostitution ring that obtained beautiful girls for wealthy men. He paid for these girls' travel expenses from New York to Washington, which itself is a federal crime (transporting a female across state lines for sex). This has been going on for six years.

Spitzer's hypocrisy and recklessness is astounding. He was using the services of an international prostitution ring at the same time that, as Attorney General, he was prosecuting prostitution rings and sending people like himself to jail.

He set himself up as a paragon of virtue and justice, and used his tremendous power as AG as a tool of extortion to jail people who were committing lesser crimes than he was.

Here's an example of one person he targeted, which a WSJ editorial says demonstrates the extortionary tactics regularly used by Spitzer:

Spitzer went on national television to accuse AIG founder Maurice "Hank" Greenberg (born 1925) of fraud and illegal behavior, before Greenberg even knew what he was alleged to have done.

Spitzer practiced extortion against the board of AIG by threatening to indict the entire corporation unless they fired Greenberg.

When John C. Whitehead (born 1922) wrote a letter to the editor titled "Mr. Spitzer has gone too far," Spitzer told Whitehead: "Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter."

In the end, Spitzer never even charged Greenberg, and never apologized.

And so you have this superstar Attorney General, declaring himself to be morally superior to everyone, using extortionary methods to attack and destroy people who, in the end, he never even charges, while he's committing the same kinds of crimes he was prosecuting others for.

And the sheer arrogance of it all: The complaint makes it clear that the girls knew that they were having sex with the Governor of New York -- it HAD to leak out sooner or later. But in Spitzer's mind, he was immune.

This is the contempt for the system that we've seen in Generation-X in other areas, especially the financial system.

(Update: I've received several questions about whether Spitzer, born in 1959, is a Boomer or a Gen-Xer. I consider people born in 1958 or 1959 or later to be Gen-Xers, although other people, including Strauss and Howe, put the cutoff at 1961. So I consider Spitzer to be an Xer, but in order to calm the waters, I'll concede that a Boomer might also have done what Spitzer did.) (This paragraph was added on March 12.)

As I discussed in "The nihilism and self-destructiveness of Generation X," and "Reader comments on the Nihilism of Generation-X," this is a generation whose contempt for the world financial system has destroyed it, bringing us to the edge of a worldwide financial crisis.

If you doubt the generational explanation, then you have to come up with another explanation for how some version of securities fraud occurred in almost every financial investment firm in North America and Europe. The pervasiveness of this fraud cannot be explained in any other way than the contempt of an entire generation for anything that came before them, and a reckless willingness to destroy it.

That's exactly the Elliott Spitzer attitude. To him, the entire criminal justice system was set up by people in older generations, people much stupider than he is. He would be able to manipulate the system so that he could prosecute and destroy anyone he chooses, while at the same time he could commit crimes at will, and remain immune to prosecution.

As Gen-Xers are learning, and will learn much more, these attitudes backfire. The reckless destruction of any system set up by people who came before them amounts to self-destruction.

The WSJ editorial referenced above said the following:

"Eliot Spitzer's self-destructive inability to recognize any limit on his compulsions was never more evident than his staff's enlistment of the New York State Police in a campaign to discredit the state's Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno. On any level, it was nuts. Somehow, Team Spitzer thought they could get by with it."

This phrase, "self-destructive inability to recognize any limit on his compulsions" describes many Gen-Xers in positions of power.

Boomers are just as much as fault as Gen-Xers, but for a different reason: Boomers let Gen-Xers commit fraud or perform other compulsive acts because the Boomers stood to gain as much from the Xers' acts as the Xer perpetrators. But there's a difference: Boomers are destructive only through inaction, while Gen-Xers are actively nihilistic, destructive, and self-destructive.

Gen-Xers ought to take serious note of Elliott Spitzer's comeuppance, because the worst retribution is yet to come. (12-Mar-08) Permanent Link
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Donate to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

Web Log Pages

Current Web Log

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Mar-08 NY Governor Elliot Spitzer: A Generation-Xer gets his comeuppance

Web Log Pages

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Mar-08
NY Governor Elliot Spitzer: A Generation-Xer gets his comeuppance