We're dying off, that's all. Our peak cohorts were larger, but sex, drugs and rock-and-roll ...Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough
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We're dying off, that's all. Our peak cohorts were larger, but sex, drugs and rock-and-roll ...
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Which likely made them materialistic. But that materialism at least came with productivity as a result. There's a big difference in studying the engine of a farm tractor when it needs repair and exploring one's personal interior to see what the world needs.
People get materialistic when almost all happiness and even semblance of security depends upon income. At the extreme, think of how precarious life could be in a shtetl in Ukraine around 1900. The Jews of the fictional Anatevka seem good and decent enough -- but even the young women who know that life will almost certainly be unrelenting toil for bare sustenance figure that they must look into the economic capacities of a prospective husband. Their American grandchildren would never see the world this way
... and this is the "American dream" as understood by Tevye, the milkman who doesn't quite know what America is all about but is going to end up there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBHZFYpQ6nc
(Regrettably I can place only one video in a post. Zero Mostel isn't as attractive, so he gets cut).
Human dignity in Anatevka, beyond any doubt, has a price tag attached, and that price tag is too high for almost everyone.
GIs and Boomers may have gone to some of the same places when about 20 -- but GIs went as soldiers to war zones and places that had recently been war zones; Boomers who went for a Junior Year in France saw places fully repaired to pre-war splendor. Also, World War II made exotic ideas suspect because strange ideas in two countries with which America shares much of its cultural origin messed up the world. GIs and Boomers were not going to see the world the same way even if Boomers had some respect for GIs. GIs saw safety in blandness; Boomers saw boredom in blandness.
Some Boomers could, and some couldn't. Some who saw the consequences of improvidence, rage, drugs, and reckless sexuality chose to avoid them. What Boomers could avoid about GIs was the sort of culture that GIs often chose for blandness, like the infamous "easy-listening" music. Do you want a return to that empty 'music'? Big Band? OK -- but that was before my time. It is still enjoyable, and I even encouraged a (then teenage) Millennial to hear the New Glenn Miller Band. She enjoyed it greatly.If that meant sacrificing airy goals, so be it. The Boomers were born into the security and stability created by the GIs (and Lost, it should be said, who led during that time), so they took it for granted and started chasing after Utopian fantasies of one stripe or another, while seeking self-absorbed "fulfillment" - which often means satisfying their selfish desires at the expense of others.
Cultural achievement, scientific discovery, and material endowment all seem closely linked to the generational cycle, at least in America. I have observed very consistently that people seek in adulthood what they missed in childhood and cast off what they found in excess in childhood. The alternative is that our world wallows in tradition devoid of imagination and wholesome change. America today could hardly be confused with the
America of 200 years ago in the sense that Imperial Rome changed little except for rot in any analogous time-period. But America is still going strong because people can re-invent themselves by not latching onto traditions whose existence nobody understands or questions. Obviously I am in no position to place or collect bets, but in all likelihood the United States will be around until some calamitous event (gamma ray burst, meteor collision, or supervolcano eruption) decimates Humanity.
It may surprise you, but we Americans have the second-oldest political order on Earth. Only one political order is now older -- the Hanoverian (Windsor) dynasty in the UK. Both have proved extremely adaptable and resilient.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
An old, and possibly now ex, friend was livid about the last round of attacks from Gaza. I pointed out the inconvenient fact that the missiles killed 3 Israelis, but the Israeli response killed 1,800 Palestinians. She called me a Jew hater for taking their side. I told her, and I'm telling you, that the only side I was taking was the side of humanitarian arithmetic. Killing 600 to compensate for the loss of one is out of rational proportion.
We have no place in this fight. It's cousin against cousin. The most we can do effectively is help the best side(s) with logistics and take-in displaced civilians. Apparently, you think blowing them all to hell is better.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Nice try. No points. The two were quite parallel and addressed the same issue. I'm not much on using the Nazis as examples, but Daesh and the Nazis are pretty similar philosophically, and their actions equally brutal.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
JPT, I am a Boomer. As a teenager, I noticed that many of my friends Silent parents were the ones having their midlife crises and getting divorced. my parents never did; my mother used to joke that my Dad missed his midlife crisis because he was reading the New York Times while watching college football in the background. FWIW.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Absolutely. The majority of today's Jews in Israel support this kind of state terrorism and oppression. We are roped into supporting it, and it's one of the major causes of the turmoil in the region. Even the creation and existence of Israel, supported by Europe, is a major cause. Arabs and Muslims were tolerant and lived alongside Jews in their countries with no problem, until Israel was created. Then all the Jews were expelled, while many Arabs were expelled and dispossessed from Israel. I don't disagree with the existence of Israel, but our support for its current policies remains one of the main causes of the winds we are reaping now, and which Republicans hope to calm by shouting slogans about words and refugees.
Trump thinks so. The clown car has little to offer. Trump doesn't even have a foreign policy team. Bombing alone will achieve very little. The IS just rebuilds and moves around. If we just kill all the people there, we become terrorists ourselves, and cause more militants to emerge and rise against us.We have no place in this fight. It's cousin against cousin. The most we can do effectively is help the best side(s) with logistics and take-in displaced civilians. Apparently, you think blowing them all to hell is better.
Unfortunately, it IS our fight; we have made it so, and so have the Europeans. And now we are being attacked too. We must defend ourselves against attack. It is not going to be easy and quick. But we need to quicken it as much as we can. What can we do? I'm not sure, it requires thought from us, instead of reaction and bowing down to slogans emitted from our crazy right-wing.
Maybe all this:
Create safe zones so that many refugees can return or stay. That requires a NATO no-fly zone, and troops to patrol and guard it (mainly rebels and Turks, I guess, I hope).
Support negotiations to stop Assad's war and rebuild the nation of Syria under new leadership. Continue negotiating with all the backers of the Syrian proxy war (thank you John Kerry). Keep the pressure on Iran and Russia by supporting the moderate rebels, until agreement is reached to depose Assad without revolution as the Russians want, and set up a new regime with broad support, and new elections once the people return. To end the IS, we need to end the chaos caused by Assad.
Counter Islamic jihadist propaganda with our own, and close down web sites, communications and mosques that actually promote and spread Islamic jihadist propaganda. Local governments need to eliminate local jihadist cells.
Close the Turkish/Syria border. We are making progress in this, but the Turks must help more, along with the Kurds and our own advisors and special forces and rebel forces.
Get a massive coalition together-- local, European and American, and invade the IS with overwhelming numbers of troops as well as planes. A hundred thousand at least. Take the roads and the oil fields. Isolate them in cities. It will take time to flush out all the cities, and some civilians will die. But it can be done, as it was done recently in Kirkuk. While the IS is under siege, they will be less able to export terror.
Establish zones of occupation after the troops leave, emphasizing local troops and authorities assisted by NATO forces, with the aim of returning control soon to Iraq and Syria, with autonomy in Kurdish areas. This problem took a long time to grow and fester, and it received our help in doing so through many of our actions and mistakes. We broke it; we own it.
It is unfortunate that turning our backs on this hell hole will not work. But this is a 4T, and we'd better start thinking like it. Gen Xers need to start playing their 4T roles, and not just reacting as they typically do in other turnings.
I'm not saying I'm right or that I know it all. Far from it. But we need to do better than shout slogans, and instead contribute to ideas of what to do, or not do.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 11-19-2015 at 02:24 PM.
Right, and it is generally agreed the boomers were good parents, interested in their families and children and largely respected by them.
Start citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and respectable company expects you to leave. People fully rooted in the West associate disparagement of Jews with shooting pits, Zyklon-B, and bodies stacked like cordwood.
Aside from the sociopathic characters in fascist movements in the West, themselves typically as anti-Muslim as they are anti-Jewish (KKK and Nazi types), you are right about Muslim communities that are comparatively new in Europe, largely having missed the Second World War. But know well -- the Great Mosque of Paris was a good place for safe passage of French Jews who typically got Muslim garb, fake documents, and well-hidden passage (basically an Underground Railroad) to Muslim countries like Morocco and Algeria which were far safer than France at the time.Which happens to be the people the Muslims most want to wipe off the face of the earth, which everyone knows unless they jam their fingers in their ears, blind themselves and listen to Boomer nonsense instead of looking at what's in front of them.
People and politicians are suspicious of Muslims because of the Infernal State, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Note well -- many Muslims want nothing to do with those, just as almost all Christians want nothing to do with the Klan, Nazis, and similar scum. I have no problem comparing ISIS to Nazis. Guess what? Neither does mainstream Islam.Not only that, you are implying that countries rightly suspicious of Muslims are the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany.
We are on the same side as Iran on ISIS, which the reigning leadership of Iran considers an abomination for what it does to Shiites in Iraq. With this Obama more resembles Churchill cutting a deal with Stalin against Hitler. If I am to compare any contemporary cause with Nazis it is the Infernal State.The left wing governments and politicians that continue to prioritize this kind of twisted political correctness and identity politics over the security of their citizens are the modern equivalent of... Neville Chamberlain. The US has a president who just agreed to a treaty with Iran. Expect the same results.
Barack Obama is definitely not a Boomer. The underworld-style hit on Osama bin Laden has the style of Al Capone on it. President Obama may be decent enough fellow and a competent leader, but he can learn from anyone. He could even learn from Chicago gangsters on how to dispose of an enemy. Lull the enemy into some inapt complacency, causing that enemy to think that he is charmed, and then strike when unexpected.Any government that prioritizes appeasing enemies or importing immigrants over the safety and well-being of its own citizens is illegitimate. And that is the Boomer "leadership" we now have. It cannot hold, any more than Chamberlain's "leadership" of the UK.
Germans and German-Americans interned in American detention camps were picked up for affiliation with the Third Reich, including membership in the German-American Bund. Around then about 15% of the American population was of German origin. With Japanese and Japanese-Americans was a venal desire to cause such people to have to sell off property dirt-cheap in the western United States. (General Douglas MacArthur, who knew the reality of Japanese-American sedition in Hawaii -- that is, none at all, banned any such effort in Hawaii because such would have disrupted the war effort.Now, if you want to find an analogy for Muslims in Western countries today, you would be on firmer ground to look at the treatment of German and Japanese citizens in those countries during WWII.
Historical hindsight is often 20/20, but the reality of the time is almost never so clear. There were alternatives, like requiring Japanese-language newspapers to be printed in Latin script so that Americans could have monitored them for seditious content and potential use in espionage or sabotage, and perhaps compelling Japanese and Japanese-Americans to sign loyalty oaths. Nobody denies the barbarity of the Japanese government of the time, and many Japanese war criminals were executed after the war. The two atom bombs reflect that Japan was fighting extremely hard. What American leadership did not know was that Japan was on the brink of economic collapse which would have caused military collapse. The Japanese had neglected farming while what otherwise would have been farm laborers while importing rice from occupied countries -- and the US armed forces had destroyed much of the Japanese merchant marine. The Japanese people were on the brink of starvation in the summer of 1945.Boomers have universally genuflected with remorse on behalf of the GIs and FDR for the fact that Japanese residents of the US were rounded up and put into internment camps. But go back in time to a circumstance where Japan had carried out a catastrophic sneak attack on US soil, starting a war of their own choosing, and it becomes more understandable. The West has likewise edged up under Boomer leadership towards condemning the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan. But when you consider that they started the war, and millions of US soldiers would have been subject to death under a continued conflict, in addition to those who had already been tortured, imprisoned, starved and died on forced marches after being captured by the Japanese, and that become more understandable as well.
...and the corrupt, incompetent gangster regime in Syria!...(I)f Muslims fleeing Syria don't find safe harbor in Western countries, those countries are not to blame, ISIS is.
Because we have the choice of the High Road that Assad and the Infernal State have rejected! The High Road is worthy of some sacrifice.Furthermore, WHY is it the responsibility of far off Western countries to take in these refugees, when neighboring Muslim countries are refusing them?
Non sequitur!It's all political correctness to the point of suicide.
You are on the same side as the Boomer Right and its vices.The Boomers may want to take us there, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't want to go along.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 11-19-2015 at 02:30 PM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I agree yes all extremists are dangerous. No disagreement here.
1984 Civic
ISFJ
Introvert(69%) Sensing(6%) Feeling(19%) Judging(22%)
Boomers on the whole were great parents and parental figures. Cannot speak for xers and will probably get hate from them because shock horror i am saying something nice about them but from my experience they wanted to pass on their knowledge, their vision and keep us millies safe. Now watch xers read this and let their heads explode.
1984 Civic
ISFJ
Introvert(69%) Sensing(6%) Feeling(19%) Judging(22%)
I was thinking the other day ... we should gift North Dakota to the Israelis, and convince them to all move there. Hardly anyone in the U.S. (except maybe Odin) would give a shit. Then they could frak for oil, build kibbutzes to their hearts content and be totally away from any of the radical Muslims. Has a lot going for it.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Oh ... we'd have to get the Disney people to come and build an reenactment of Jerusalem in Dickinson or whereve.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
These are the same kind of people who attacked Sikhs after 9/11 thinking they were Muslim terrorists.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I think we missed the window to do something like that when Anthony Dimond avoided that car accident. Considering they're there, the most powerful country in the region (with a de facto near veto power over US Middle Eastern policy), and that whole pesky religious component of Zionism, comments like this are basically useless.
You know, I'd hate to have my amygdala called into question, but I cannot help but feel there is a valid argument to be made that given the unemployment crisis in Europe for natives, much less immigrants, and the extent to which assimilation has been a wretched failure (see the whole Paris attackers being mainly EU residents if not citizens), importing millions more no questions asked may not be the most sensible of moves.
On the other hand I'm not European and their immigration policies, such as they are, aren't really any of my business.
I have no problems with restricting immigration for purely economic reasons as long as, and this to me is key, the restrictions do not favor any one ethnic group, race, or religion over another.
On the other hand turning away refugees is inhuman, to me.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Some comments:
The thing is, and this is one of the key ideological differences between you and I, I don't actually think you have the right to make this decision for the countries in question. I personally don't really mind this sentiment, and don't think I don't recognize that Bernie Sanders has essentially come out in favor [fuck you, Canada, I don't care what your autocorrect says, I'm American, and you didn't adopt British conventions until the 90s anyways] of this as well.I have no problems with restricting immigration for purely economic reasons as long as, and this to me is key, the restrictions do not favor any one ethnic group, race, or religion over another.
I agree with this. On the other hand, I don't (and I have some legal justification here) think they retain their refugee status the moment they leave the war zone in question. Leaving Syria for [wherever] is one thing, but passing through Macedonia en route to Sweden or Germany because the benefits are better isn't the same thing.On the other hand turning away refugees is inhuman, to me.
Slow Motion Disaster
Well, yes. On a global level, there are more people looking for jobs than jobs. It is worse in less developed countries, but it is a problem everywhere. Tradition has us stuck with the 40 hour work week and a large amount of the wealth redirected to a few at the top. To employ as many as we do, we have to burn through resources that are becoming increasingly scarce. Division of wealth is a problem within a lot of cultures, and between cultures. When reasonable balance isn't found, the young, unemployed and locked out tend to get violent. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the violence contained to far away places.
An awful lot of crises include elements of the many and powerless allying with a new elite to quash an old elite that hoarded power and wealth. The question is when a new elite figures out it can gain a lot of power by sincerely representing the interests of the poor and powerless. The old elite seldom give up their status without a fight, but even they might eventually recognize a fight is coming.
All of this implies a vast perspective and values shift. One has to start with a need for a sustainable society that distributes wealth to a point where the violence can be kept under control. To achieve that end, many existing values will have to be thrown out the window. An awful lot of folk firmly believe they have a right to compete to gather as much wealth and resources as they possibly can. It's a no limit game that is played to the extreme. That can't stand, yet changing it at this point will seem inconceivable to many.
Crises can bring a total transformation in values. That is what is needed at this point. I'm not seeing new visions being proclaimed, though. There is no Jefferson or Marx clearly declaring entirely new perspectives. We have a division of wealth problem at home, immigration and refugee problems everywhere, global warming lurking to make things worse, failure of Agricultural Age autocratic cultures to avoid failed state status, and failures of democracy to represent the majority rather than the elite. We can talk about each of these problems in isolation indefinitely, but a plausible solution requires we look at them all as a comprehensive whole and be ready to radically turn everything upside down.
Which, given values lock, is utterly implausible. At this point any given individual will be perceiving not the whole, but the problems of his own class within his own culture. We're in unravelling mode still. We want what is best for ourselves rather than building something that would work for the collective whole. Thus, no regeneracy, no transformation, continued slow motion disaster.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. JFK
Yes, yes, by all means wave your hands about. I just wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a global regeneracy around a single set of values, particularly in the absence of any concrete vision of what that would look like.
This makes no sense with the analogy.
As I understand the the analogy Nazis=ISIS; Semites fleeing Germany = Semites fleeing Syria; those who kept Jews out = those who would keep Syrians out. Assuming JPT wants to keep refugees out , he would fit into the third category, not the first.
Leftist: "Human beings can fly! I promise you! If you don't believe me, you're a coward/racist/moron!"
*pushes the person next to them off a cliff to their death and runs away*
"They might have guns, but we have flowers".
Boomerism reigns supreme. The 60s have never ended. Any Islamists watching that video are rolling on the floor laughing with glee, rubbing their hands together and planning something bigger.
Last edited by JustPassingThrough; 11-19-2015 at 08:46 PM.
"I see you got your fist out, say your peace and get out. Yeah I get the gist of it, but it's alright." - Jerry Garcia, 1987
Too many people might mean too many competing for fewer jobs. On the other hand, countries with static or declining populations like Europe and Japan have a diminishing market. China's success is due to its almost limitless supply of people. Some people in Germany and Western Europe think that immigrants are needed.
You have a mental sickness. Seek help.
"I see you got your fist out, say your peace and get out. Yeah I get the gist of it, but it's alright." - Jerry Garcia, 1987
So what should we do about the Islamic State, then? Will using the right word really make a difference? Will stopping a few refugees end the threat? Instead of telling us we're crazy, come up with a plan. Let's hear it.
Reality Checks
You are still living in a world where the Generation Gap is a dominant political meme. A lot of us have values and perspectives that are way out and in conflict with one another. Yours, more so than most. It is tempting to label individuals that hold values in conflict with one's own as insane, evil or delusional. In general though, we're all relatively functional and not in need of professional help.
Reality checks, definitely. A lot of us need reality checks. Thing is, a lot of us seem to be immune to reality checks.
