Final Thoughts on the Baby Boom: You get what you pay for

I smile as all these Boomers looking to escape their lives and embrace a third or fourth act.  That is a lie.  I find myself wanting to throat-punch them, but I ought to be a detached enough observer to meet them with a smile so I try to "fake it until I make it."

Their first act was the hippy phase.  They spawned Gen X during this time.  Now we all question our sanity regarding the decision to have children from time to time but most of us go out of our way to 1) hide this fact from our children and 2) blame ourselves and our own character for failing to rise to the task. 

Boomers emotions about parenthood came out sideways

This was probably the experience of most Boomers as they raised Gen X and their own internal venting at parenthood and the demands of children can be seen in the movies which they wrote, produced, and paid good money to see.  The problem arose from their ideology of child rearing, which was notable in believing children did not need to be protected from their own venting.  So many of us watched Rosemary's Baby, Firestarter, Poltergeist, Children of the Corn and a plethora of lesser movies featuring demonic children when we ourselves were children. 

Exhibit A) Our parents our very busy living their own lives and leave us as the latchkey kids.  Exhibit B) Children are portrayed as demons in movies.  Exhibit C) They seem very anxious to see me find my own games to play and things to do so long as it away from them.  The lesson we learned, this is what adults see when they look at us.  The truth was more complicated, they were young and often in difficult financial straits as they and the nation recovered from the inflation of the seventies and early eighties.

The hippie ideology was discarded as Boomers got richer and older and the opportunities of money and maturity become available to them.  They became "yuppies," gave birth to Gen Y, and changed their parenting practice.  Tipper Gore led the public charge for protecting children from adult music lyrics.  No doubt the campaign that followed only slowed the cultural trend but it did reflect the attitude change among parents, an attitude that may have only impacted media on the margins but denoted a change in how parents thought about and, as a result, treated their children. 

More movies were increasingly made specifically for children so the change in theme was marked.  There began talk of cleaning up prime time television.  Supervised after school activities were organized and paid for.   Being a generation Y kid had its own dangers however.  In the seventies and early eighties a child who was just a little too feral would just blame himself for his father's drinking and go explore the Playboy collection the farmer next door kept hidden in the barn.  Millennials, if they persisted in being too feral, too non-compliant, would find themselves medicated for their disorder.  

Child impeding your freedom?  There is a pill for that.

From one extreme to another, first children were treated as threat to freedom, later children were made the center of the universe with the impact that adolescence was extended into a person's twenties.  God forbid they have to buy their own health insurance until age 26!  Now some Boomers are asking themselves how to get their kids to stop asking them for money.  Well, when you tell someone they are the center of the universe and deserving of the best from early childhood, they tend to believe you.

Must Miss TV

The irony should not be lost, however, to hear how the most self-absorbed generation is complaining about how self-absorbed their children are.  Really?  I remember what the Boomers were like in midlife.  If it were possible to set up a scale of generational self-absorption, could anything top "thirtysomething"?  

Kidding aside, there is a subtle difference that should be emphasized.  The Boomers were self-absorbed with themselves as a cohort, in part because so few of them as individuals actually took part in the great accomplishments attributed to the generation.  Only so many were at Woodstock, or actually marched with Martin Luther King Jr.  There sense of greatness is a kind of Boomer Exceptionalism that, like American Exceptionalism, credits the individual with a portion of the accomplishments of a few.   

To the extent Millennials are self-absorbed, they are absorbed in their own existential experience of the present and I find they are largely aware of the fact and even seek to push back against that impulse.  Only time will tell but it strikes me as entirely possible that millennials could "flip" and become quite the cohesive cohort.   If I would voice any concern it would be how quickly they feel stuck in the limited options presented before them.  They are too easily made "helpless" and believe the choices offered to them are the only options available.  They've rarely had to make their own games, organize their own teams, pick, let alone win their own fights.  Like the Greatest Generation, I expect once adequately inspired, they will be great at following orders and working as a team.  Resistance to their hegemony will not be futile but it may feel like it for a time. 

How Boomers viewed the GI generation when they were "in the way"

and after they were safely marginalized.

Before the Boomers lauded their parents as the "Greatest Generation" they were attacking them as the source of oppression and colonialism, both at home and abroad.  Some of that criticism was warranted, it is the change of attitude that I find interesting.  In the years of attack, the generation that won the Second World War was portrayed as Archie Bunker.  Once cultural and political power was assumed, Boomers than swapped that image for one closer to Captain John Miller's in Saving Private Ryan. 

There is no secret Boomer conspiracy.  None of these developments were preplanned.  It all happened at the level of emergent order as people of a similar age and life experience react, uncritically, to the world around them. In the real world, however, the WW2 hero and 1964's old white man reactionary were the same person.

The source of my surprise is how I can still hear Boomers complaining about and discounting either their parents' experiences, (and that refrain was getting old in the seventies), or those who have followed them.  Just this month I heard a Boomer talking about how great the "Greatest Generation" had it.  Really?  Last time I checked a good percentage of them grew up hungry and had to work to support their families.  Even those that were well fed, knew deprivation of various sorts unknown to any generation since.  Vietnam was a tragedy but the casualties were 20% of that of World War II.   Yes, it sucks not winning and all, go tell how bad it was to the veterans of the Korean War.  Even the few cultural reflections of the Korean War that took place were used as a sideways way to talk about Vietnam.

Every time a Boomer complains about generations X or Y, however, I just remind them that we are largely the children of Boomers and ask, "Was it nature or nurture that made the problem you deride?

Boomer's Don Henley and Glenn Frey seemed to have a succinct description of the Boomer mindset as early as 1973,

Now it seems to me, some fine things
have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

It is a treadmill, and to their credit many a Boomer has stepped off of it at one stage of their journey or another.  Good for them.  Hopefully we will all mature as much as we age.  Many Boomers, however, are still the knee-jerk pontificators of their own myths that they were in adolescence.   Generational exceptionalism is cute when you are twenty but at sixty or seventy in makes you a reactionary boor.  Those are the Boomers looking for a third or fourth act and getting their boob jobs, leaving their third wives because they feel unfulfilled, chasing another adventure while lamenting feeling estranged from their childhood home, grandchildren or the absence of settled roots.  Still chasing a new trinket to satisfy a hunger based in a promise which is a phantasm: that freedom is found in freedom from constraints.

That poet of the silent generation was closer to the mark,

"Freedom's just another word
for 'nothing left to lose.'
Freedom ain't worth nothin'
 but its free."

Freedom is not found in freedom from constraints but rather through self-discipline.  The disciplined individual can disagree vehemently with another on a policy issue and not hate them as an individual.  That too is a consequence of a discipline that recognizes the question is almost never an issue of pure good versus evil.  Staying committed to a community and a home, scrimping dollars and living on less, that will allow us, fate willing, to have our home paid off in less than twenty years from the date we purchased it and before the oldest goes to college.  During the majority of the time this will be accomplished with one spouse working while the other homeschools three children.  That is parental freedom and will be  financial freedom, both born through discipline.  My family is not alone in this respect and it is not because we are not facing challenges.We are, however, willing to pay a cost for the freedom we desire.

Gen X learned of natural consequences the fun way.

As a member of generation X, I am fortunate.  There were few expectations from either Boomer or Millennial.  We were not taught to expect a utopian future, but a nuclear cloud, so every day appears as a gift.  from the crib we've been told by the actuaries that the social safety net will be unable to provide for us.  We met this information with the knowledge that no one was going to take care of us, so we had better do it ourselves.  Our parents let us play in the street way back when we were cute.  No one is going to bail us out as our skin sags and our ideas, such as they are, are eclipsed by the larger, hipper, and better organized Generation Y.

Is my generation without its vices?  Of course not, but believing our own press releases about ourselves is not one of them.  Like the Silent Generation support for the Boomers, the best we can hope to do is influence the cultural program of the rising Millennials.  Frequently omitted from public consciousness and cultural power, our vices, along with our virtues, are more private.

As of today, I resolve to drop generational generalization, at least so far as it applies to my gripes with Baby Boomers.  Where individuals, organizations or movements need to be critiqued or resisted, of course I will still act unto my best understanding of virtue, but let me bury the Baby Boom complaint right here.  Acceptance of the present is as much discipline as it is interior state of mind.  Hopefully the latter can follow from the former.

If I become "that guy," please slap me.

Milleniels

They'll be alright.  Nothing a little time under pressure can't fix.

The Welfare-Warfare State

Continuing with yesterday's theme David Brooks chirps in on the problems we face and the institutions that need to be reformed.  Oligarchic corporations are one half of the problem but the other is comprised of the redistributionist-government worker complex: those who receive benefits of government spending and those who make their livelihoods as tools of that redistribution.  This is not to say that these institutions or the people who run them are evil (as the left-wing trope would characterize calls for reform) or that they should disappear (another oft-proffered straw man) but a call for sober assessment and reform. 

 The members of the Obama administration have many fine talents, but making adept historical analogies may not be among them.

When the administration came to office in the depths of the financial crisis, many of its leading figures concluded that the moment was analogous to the Great Depression. They read books about the New Deal and sought to learn from F.D.R.

But, in the 1930s, people genuinely looked to government to ease their fears and restore their confidence. Today, Americans are more likely to fear government than be reassured by it.

According to a Gallup survey, 64 percent of Americans polled said they believed that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only 26 percent believed that big business is the biggest threat. As a result, the public has reacted to Obama’s activism with fear and anxiety. The Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 elections.

Everything else is building up for the Iowa caucuses in a week and the news is slow in anticipation. 

If you're looking for something a little more intellectual let me recommend this classic essay from 1967 which identifies the problem not as the "welfare state" or the "warfare state" but the "welfare-warfare state" which rewards corporations and the self-appointed guardians of the poor at a cost to society as a whole.  It is as timely today as it was 44 years ago.

The Great Society is the lineal descendant and the intensification of those other pretentiously named policies of 20th-century America: the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the New Era, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier. All of these assorted Deals constituted a basic and fundamental shift in American life — a shift from a relatively laissez-faire economy and minimal state to a society in which the state is unquestionably king.[1]

In the previous century, the government could safely have been ignored by almost everyone; now we have become a country in which the government is the great and unending source of power and privilege. Once a country in which each man could by and large make the decisions for his own life, we have become a land where the state holds and exercises life-and-death power over every person, group, and institution. The great Moloch government, once confined and cabined, has burst its feeble bonds to dominate us all.

I think I'll break the monotony with some creative destruction to fix a closet and the floors in one of the bedrooms: pictures to follow.

Don't Worry. We'll build it again.

Don't worry.  We'll build it again.

Robert Samuelson is quickly becoming a favorite commentator of mine.  His no non-sense analysis, as opposed to the oft partisan prescriptions offered by other professional critics, is refreshing and helpful to those of us more interested in crafting a society that works rather than winning a fight.  Today's exemplar is no different.

WASHINGTON -- There are moments when our political system, whose essential job is to mediate conflicts in broadly acceptable and desirable ways, is simply not up to the task. It fails. This may be one of those moments. What we learned in 2011 is that the frustrating and confusing budget debate may never reach a workable conclusion. It may continue indefinitely until it's abruptly ended by a severe economic or financial crisis that wrenches control from elected leaders.
We are shifting from "give away politics" to "take away politics." Since World War II, presidents and Congresses have been in the enviable position of distributing more benefits to more people without requiring ever-steeper taxes. Now, this governing formula no longer works, and politicians face the opposite: taking away -- reducing benefits or raising taxes significantly -- to prevent government deficits from destabilizing the economy. It is not clear that either Democrats or Republicans can navigate the change.

Authors Neil Howe and William Strauss in their book The Fourth Turning (published 1997) have laid out a perspective on this unwinding of a settled political order that they term "unraveling" which occurs every 70 to 90 years.  The last time one order unraveled and another was built was through the Great Depression ending in the current "give away politics."  The previous unraveling/building was the Civil War and Reconstruction period.  Four score and seven years before that was the order resulting from the American revolution and Constitutional Congress.  

The changes we face in the coming decades is as likely to be as great as any of those that went before.  Whether they are as bloody depends upon us.  If the vested interests (corporations and recipients of income "redistributions") act like the slaveholders of two crises past and dig in their heels, it may be.  If they yield, like the industrial barons before FDR, then the violence can remain electoral and largely metaphorical.

Regardless, time keeps slipping into the future and the time is short to finish preparing to play our parts as individuals and members of communities during the decades of transitions before us.  Nothing insures individuals from extremism like a place of refuge in the midst of a storm.  History itself is too much for one individual or family guide but we can determine our role and place within history.  Communities can also determine their place within the broader narrative.  If a consensus grows, so can nations.

In other post-Christmas news the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries will be upon us soon and a season of electoral news will be unrelenting.

A users guide to Iowa and New Hampshire offered by the New Republic:

The Republican field is crowded and fluid right now, but it won’t be for long. By January 11th, there will be at most three remaining contenders, and we’ll have a much clearer understanding of how the race will develop.

There are seven candidates with a pulse, and only six of them—divided into two groups of three—are competing in Iowa. For two of the three denizens of the lower tier—Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum—failing to finish among the top three on January 3rd would spell the effective end of their candidacies. The third—Rick Perry—would probably have enough money left to stagger on to New Hampshire, but with the prospect of eventual success even further reduced from its current low level.

A Democrat, optimistically, foresees a repeat of Bush v. Gore:

The 2012 presidential race will be decided in a dozen swing states, and President Obama faces a hard road to victory in many of them.

“It appears this election will be much more like Bush-Gore” in 2000, said Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, co-founder of Alexandria-based Purple Strategies. “The president ain’t gonna win by 95 electoral votes.”

In a development that creates mixed feelings in me, Newt Gingrich also sees this election in terms of epochal change and conflict.  If only his character and temperament were not so unpredictable, I'd have my candidate for 2012.  Maybe he'll wind up Energy Secretary or chief speech writer in a Romney administration.

WASHINGTON -- At a moment when the nation wonders whether politicians can agree on anything, here is something that unites the Republican presidential candidates -- and all of them with President Obama: Everyone agrees that the 2012 election will be a turning point involving one of the most momentous choices in American history.
True, candidates (and columnists) regularly cast the impending election as the most important ever. Campaigning last week in Pella, Iowa, Republican Rick Santorum acknowledged as much. But he insisted that this time, the choice really was that fundamental. "The debate," he said, "is about who we are."

 Speaking not far away in Mount Pleasant, Newt Gingrich went even further, and was more specific. "This is the most important election since 1860," he said, "because there's such a dramatic difference between the best food-stamp president in history and the best paycheck candidate." Thus did Gingrich combine historic sweep with a cheap and inaccurate attack. Nonetheless, it says a great deal that Gingrich chose to reach all the way back to the election that helped spark the Civil War.

New political orders can, I suppose, look a lot like those of the past.  Whatever else we might think of Ron Paul, he is the one Republican candidate which seems to garner support from both extremes of the current divide.  What remains is a catalyst to make him palatable to the vast middle.  Personally, I like his views.  I'm still, however, trying to overcome my fear of change before I could embrace a newly isolationist America.

In this year's GOP presidential track meet it seems that everyone gets a turn in front -- and this week Ron Paul is the lucky candidate. While still trailing in the national race numbers, recent poll results from Iowa suggest that, two weeks until caucus day, Paul has jumped into the lead there ahead of the water-treading Mitt Romney and the sinking Newt Gingrich.

Paul brings a unusual set of views to the Republican presidential sweepstakes -- on almost every core national security and foreign-policy issue he holds a position that is in fierce opposition to the views of mainstream Republicans.

Indeed, his entire philosophy is largely a renunciation of much of what Republicans believe about America's role in the world. He questions the popular notion of American exceptionalism and has argued in his recently published book, Liberty Defended, that the "United States is an empire by any definition, and quite possibly the most aggressive, extended, and expansionist in the history of the world." This is the kind of language that might cause Ronald Reagan to roll over in his grave.

Jon Huntsman is frequently observed as getting every issue right but can not seem to get his moment in the media spotlight.  I guess this just goes to show that life never deviates too far from Jr. High.  The bad boys get the girls and the class clowns get the attention.  The rich kids get encouraged to advanced placement and the quiet "good" kids gets to sit in the back, reading an encyclopedia for fun.  Whoops, am I projecting again?

Three years after the near implosion of the economy, the nation’s largest banks continue to exist as financial skyscrapers on the landscape, their collapse threatening to rain destruction on all the lesser players. The memory of that frightening September, when then-President George W. Bush was told by advisers that immediate government intervention was necessary, may be fading already. Yet the threat of the bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy of a handful of banks and insurance companies continues as the nation’s economy slowly recovers.

Among the abiding disagreements in my marriage is the role of the full moon in the number and severity of hospital admissions.  If your year did not involve enough math or you want another demonstration of a yes/no questions answered with a statistical "it depends," perhaps this series of blog posts from the Guardian is for you.

I was a particularly cowardly child. I'm not such a brave adult either, but the subjects of my cowardice have changed somewhat. As an adult I'm more scared of losing my job in a recession or having my identity stolen on the internet. As a child, I was terrified of werewolves. Every full moon I would worry about being on the wrong end of gnashing, razor-sharp teeth.
Of course I shouldn't have been any more worried when there was a full moon than on any other night. Or should I? A classic article in the British Medical Journal sought to answer a similar question: are crime rates higher when there's a full moon?

Science is all about formulating and testing hypotheses. In this case the hypothesis would be: "Crime rates are higher when there's a full moon." Often, scientists set out to test the "null hypothesis": the default statement that, if true, would indicate that their experiment had not detected any real effect. In the case in question, the null hypothesis could be expressed as: "There is no difference in crime rates when there is a full moon compared with other nights."
The problem with data like crime rates is that it contains random noise – patterns can appear and disappear by chance alone. So we first need to ask ourselves how sure we want to be that there is a real difference between crime rates on a full moon and those on any other night. Quite sure? Fairly sure? Almost certain?