The people writing about the need for the youngers to "buckup- show some backbone" ? They carry pistols because they're terrified of getting punched. They also refused to get vaccinated because they're afraid of needles.
The Kids These Days seem determined to be exactly like themselves which usually takes more courage than anything. Good for them!
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I'm not wording well lately, but this is excellent, Roy. Personally, I kinda like the kids, as long as they stay off my lawn and aren't too loud.
The letters to the editor in the local paper by suburbanites terrified of going into the big city are another example. And the police who have to shoot unarmed civilians because they're convinced everyone is just waiting to gun them down.
Of course, the irony of the Right’s “suck it up, cupcake” message to the Libs is today’s conservatives are some of the biggest crybabies of all time. You could quite easily flip those WWII memes: “your grandfather stormed the beach at Normandy, but you shriek and throw yourself to the ground in a tantrum because someone changed their pronouns.” And don’t get me started on the people who claim to revere history but want to burn books they don’t like.
Me being me, Like to think of the Greatest Generation as a bunch of Depression-unemployed conscripts and draftees forced to fight who came home to raise two exceptionally greedy, venal generations that have destroyed the future for their kids --a historic first in this nation.
LMFAO. If Hitler were alive today, Mein Kampf would be about him being forced to endure a masked and vaccinated barista every morning when he ordered his coffee.
Ah yes, the Battle of the End Cap of Arden Hills. It was cold that day… [drifts off, stares silently into space, remembering] The kids today don’t go through hell like that.
Ken Burns’ Civil War is a gift that keeps on giving: “Dear Penelope, this morning’s actions were a triumph for the Cause. I set fire to all the enemy’s Happy Holiday Banners at Walmart, then spray painted “put Christ back in Christmas” on a 52 inch TV in the electronics department. I fear, however, I may never make it home to our beloved McMansion. The Libs are advancing across the parking lot as I, hunched over in the bed of my trusty Dodge Ram, write what are possibly my last words to you...”
I hold out some modicum of hope that the prime law of conservatism, “It isn’t important unless it happens to me,” may function in the response to Biden’s call as it has in the shift on gay marriage. Lots of Fox viewers have family members with substance abuse issues and may realize Biden’s plea to Hunter is something they have done themselves, or wish they had. Hannity’s a ghoul in thrall to a heartless grifter, but despair over a loved one’s substance struggles knows no political boundaries.
Btw, the best novel about the GG is “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” the story of the transition from the horrors of WWII to the false refuge of 50’s suburbia.
There's Rebecca Solnit's position, so to speak (and of course not special to her) that one true way to get change is when, well, the masses' attitudes change.
Can't remember which one (and that may be a self-defense mechanism in my brain) but one of the Republicans running for Senate was blaming Biden for the opioid epidemic like the whole thing started on Jan. 20, 2021.
Would it be too much to ask for some Democrat, ANY Democrat, to point out that inflation is much worse in Britain and they're ruled by CONSERVATIVES? Or is that kind of argument seen as too sophisticated for the average voter, requiring them to take in new facts and information not already in their skulls, so we've got to stay with "Dr. Oz loves crudité" instead?
Right. Conservatives don't view government as an institution that can help improve lives, they only ask their leaders to tell them a feel-good story. This was explicitly the Reagan approach.
How can I put this with the least offense? Denominations or whatever of the religion that will be the foundation of the US Xian theocracy is opposed to anyone much making much of an effort to improve things. I suppose it’s a conclusion to Original Sin or can be. So, you know, when one’s religion tells you it’s okay for the world to turn to shit, that’s a problem.
But there’s the alternatives of getting the shit done without or despite them and do what one can to change the hearts and/or minds one can and create bottom up pressure for change (yet again, pace Solnit).
I do not share your modicum of hope. For conservatives, everything is an irregular verb.
They will pressure women they’ve impregnated to abort (and — chef’s kiss! — try to weasel out of paying for it), then turn around and, without missing a beat, bellow that all abortions must be banned and any woman having one executed. Similarly, they’ll demand compassion and government-paid rehab for their own oxycodone-ravaged spawn because drug prison is for black people, then turn around and demand that Hunter Biden be forced to through withdrawal naked on a live Fox TV broadcast before being crucified, and Sleepy Joe is a senile faggot loser who caused COVID, which doesn’t exist.
These people cannot be reasoned with. At best, they can be driven back down into the sewers they slithered up from.
Actually, the fuckers need to be ignored as much as possible.
And people being hardwired to be submissive (exacerbated by an ever more extractive economy), I expect the likeliest endgame is some sort of fascistic one-party state. Not saying that's assured of happening, just that it's the likeliest.
Something I've been thinking about since an earlier Substack is how what seems like simple hypocrisy is really Wilhoit's Law. The anti-abortion politician who gets the mistress pregnant and then buys her a plane ticket to the nearest Blue state for the abortion is a hypocrite for sure, but he's probably also a believer in massive social inequality and "Of course the law is for THEM and not US."
When Jim-Crow-era racists said they should be able to vote but others shouldn't nobody accused them of hypocrisy, it was understood this was a fully consistent belief in White Supremacy. Are their other beliefs that we see as hypocritical or inconsistent but are really something much worse?
In a general sense, I agree that people seem softer -- well, weaker -- than years gone by.
But there's a mix of stuff in that stew: A tendency, in decline since the 60s/70s Let it all hang out era, now amplified with all the reality TV horseshit, to engage in TMI and to no longer do as the olds did and suppress all the shit. Instead of complaining and whining about how life's shit and appear weak, show some real strength and hit the bottle and/or one's spouse. Or show the submissive side of Stoicism and just accept the abuse.
Put like that, sure, maybe it's not actually toughness going on there, just something misperceived as being tough. Most likely submission (again) and willing suppression instead of, you know, facing and addressing a problem. (of course, a factor there is the stresses, so to speak, of our awesome, feral economic system.)
Aside: I moved into Manhattan during the darkest before the dawn late 70s when only the main streets and avenues were safe to walk in the dark. OTOH, took a brief walk during the 77 blackout and nothing scary was seen let alone experienced.
As for the youngs with their sensitivities, gender fluidity, etc., etc., etc.: Given what a fucked up world we're leaving them, I give them all a pass for everything as long as no innocents get hurt.
And as for Hunter, I'm hardcore Team Hunter: To go through what he's gone through, cleaned up his act and now (of course my favorite) to have zero fucks to give the Republicans' bullshit. And re Hunter, recommended is the Marc Maron interview.
My god as a small child he was in a crash that killed his mother and sister, then his co-survivor and protector died young of cancer. That's a fuck ton of trauma. He may or may not be something of a hot mess (and if he is, he came to it honestly), but to the extent that he is functional, credit due to his parents, bio and step. Compare and contrast: Donny Jr.
To survive that and among much other stuff -- the Maron interview and a Times profile from a year or two ago cover a lot of it -- says a lot. And, again, takes a real piece of shit to attack him.
Among the wealthy, I imagine it's pretty common to think "Well, we can AFFORD our drug habits." This was certainly a common attitude during prohibition when it was well understood among the upper classes that the law was to keep the lower orders in place, because a poor man might become a drunk and then abandon the wife and kids to the care of the state, but if a rich man becomes a drunk there will be enough to support the family without public assistance.
Just on the general trend toward softness, it's worth looking at the historical data on the truly staggering amount of alcohol 19th Century Americans consumed. Yeah, they put up with some hard times, often through the simple expedient of being shitfaced for a large part of the day.
And on the subject of "the good old days" when everyone worked hard, families stuck together, and we were all united under Jesus in that Manifest Destiny kind of way, I always recommend Wisconsin Death Trip.
I think there's a whole lot of "my life sucked--and YOUR's should too!" going on with conservatives. The whole underlying concept of "standing athwart history yelling STOP!" is that you're determined to prevent life from getting better. Which is a sentiment I find frankly bizarre.
OTOH, I'm also absolutely amazed (and not in a good way) at the number of parents I've heard about who do not want their kids to succeed at anything because then the kids "will be better than me and look down on me." As one proud parent said at a school board meeting, "My son's gonna cut down trees when he grows up, and he don't need to read or write to cut down trees."
There's the moral panic of "we're makin' it too easy", but in a simple, practical sense, making life less painful for people costs money, and sometimes it costs a LOT of money. And where's that money gonna come from, huh? Not ME, that's for sure!
What I mean is that "toughen up" could just be an easy moral pose for cheapskates. "Here's some whiskey and a bullet to bite on, we don't got money for that fancy-pants anesthetic!"
And when they do, I will refuse to acknowledge that it even happened. Like Craig T. Nelson once said, "Nobody helped us when I was growing up poor, we were on foodstamps."
The whole underlying concept of "standing athwart history yelling STOP!" is that you're determined to prevent life from getting better.
from getting better for other people. There's a lot of zero sum thinking out there, causing those that had it a little better to think that the bit that will make it better for other people will come out of their bit. Which may not be all that wrong based upon how our economy works now. Of course voting for sides that might take that bit out of someone richer or maybe grow the pie; but they can't do that, because they have been told their whole remembered lives that it is the others fault
I'm 64 (late boomer, recently read somewhere that makes me "Generation Jones" lol). I can tell you quite honestly that nothing sets me off quite like those never-ending memes on FB, posted by my own contemporaries, that a) long for the "good old days", b) call younger people weak, stupid, and "woke" (like they even understand the term), and c) blame every societal ill on immigrants, the poor, or other disenfranchised. I mean, really, the good old days when we were racist and sexist and homophobic? Friends I've gotten drunk and high with while collecting unemployment benefits together in younger days are now calling for drug tests for those hoping to get the same benefits today. Those same friends all retired earlier than me, either because they made their cash or they've been too sick to work and are collecting benefits from the fucking government (Satan himself, according to them). And these are Canadians!
The past has always sucked. I can accept that knowing that gradually it began to suck less. Bringing back the shitty parts are not going to help us now or in the future
I think previous generations didn't have a never-ending, 24 hour-a-day blue light stream of conflicting, contradictory messages telling you 'who to be' and fucking with *any* sense of self they were developing growing up, regardless of where they stood politically, economically, racially, what-have-you. When you have a solid starting point, at least you have a stance from which to see the world and form opinions that are based on actual experience.
On a positive note, the youngs are in a much better place today to feel good about expressing themselves in non-binary ways and I salute that, even if they're being nudged by manufactured pop icons. Bullying survivors know what I mean, the 'burbs of Detroit in the 70s were no place to be weird.
Hell, yes. I don't know for sure, but I like to hope that, among the beneficiaries of the gay-rights movement are cishet teen boys who wear glasses, like books and don't like sports.
Forgot to note the nihilistic (or is that psychopathic?) response to Covid. You know; one person’s self-perceived toughness in the face of a deadly global pandemic and disregard for dying and spreading the disease, well, is something much different than toughness.
"Oh, they were old, they were gonna die soon anyway!"
Which makes me wonder, if you look back through human history, and on one side of the scale you put all the problems caused by being *overly* sensitive to human suffering, and then on the other side put all the problems caused by being insensitive to the suffering of others, which side weighs more? Has caring *too much* about our fellow humans ever really been a problem to compare with "Eh, dunno where those trains full of Jews are going, but none of my business."
I contend that people are as "tough" as circumstances dictate. My parents generation survived (well, mostly) the horrors of the Great Depression and WW2, not because they were intrinsically superior in toughitude, but because they had no fucking choice. And making life easier for their kids than it was for them was, like, the whole point of raising them.
Yes, exactly. Just finished Timothy Egan's book on the dust bowl, and as you say, what choice did they have? (actually lots committed suicide instead of "toughing it out"). But for most, it was a choice between starving in a sod house in Nebraska or starving in a migrant camp in California. Shame on us that those were the only options on offer.
that sounds like a tweet from someone who's just heard 'mother's little helper' for the first time.
as an oldster who was whelped in the first half of the 20th century, I kind of resist the sense that I've gotten softer. what I have definitely become is more tired. you just can't work at the same rate--at least in the raw physical sense of the work I've done all my life--without that feeling overwhelming you.
I don't know as the kids have gotten softer, but what I do observe is that they are a lot more sedentary. they may very well be mentally tougher, having had more to contend with than I did back in the halcyon days of peace, love, and understanding, but I see less of an interaction with the natural world.
Dunno, in my upbringing, running was something guys on the football team did, and something not done at all by girls. We've made great strides in the idea that exercise isn't just for athletes.
Another excellent piece. I wonder, do callers to the Hannity clown still stroke each other with "You're a great American, Sean," "You're a great American, my friend"? I always loved how callers were always "great Americans" simply by dint of being his fans. Of course, Sean being a great American was a given, due to his heroic patriotism, moral superiority, and net worth.
According to some posts I see on social media, much of the younger generations' disrespectful wokeness supposedly results from parents' aversion to hitting their offspring.
As The Onion wrote the other day: Condemning the “woke left” for what he called the “modern evisceration of masculinity,” local conservative man Hank Daniels confirmed Monday that he was never going to stop being proudly frightened of everything.
The people writing about the need for the youngers to "buckup- show some backbone" ? They carry pistols because they're terrified of getting punched. They also refused to get vaccinated because they're afraid of needles.
The Kids These Days seem determined to be exactly like themselves which usually takes more courage than anything. Good for them!
Nice column!
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I'm not wording well lately, but this is excellent, Roy. Personally, I kinda like the kids, as long as they stay off my lawn and aren't too loud.
The letters to the editor in the local paper by suburbanites terrified of going into the big city are another example. And the police who have to shoot unarmed civilians because they're convinced everyone is just waiting to gun them down.
Of course, the irony of the Right’s “suck it up, cupcake” message to the Libs is today’s conservatives are some of the biggest crybabies of all time. You could quite easily flip those WWII memes: “your grandfather stormed the beach at Normandy, but you shriek and throw yourself to the ground in a tantrum because someone changed their pronouns.” And don’t get me started on the people who claim to revere history but want to burn books they don’t like.
No one's a greater snowflake than one who seeks to be seen as a victim of an imaginary problem.
"Grandpa had to wear a helmet and the same pair of underwear for a month, dug in on a beach at Tarawa, but you can't wear a fucking mask."
Me being me, Like to think of the Greatest Generation as a bunch of Depression-unemployed conscripts and draftees forced to fight who came home to raise two exceptionally greedy, venal generations that have destroyed the future for their kids --a historic first in this nation.
Grampa may have parachuted behind enemy lines in France, but in My War I busted up an end-cap display in Target cuz other people were wearing masks.
LMFAO. If Hitler were alive today, Mein Kampf would be about him being forced to endure a masked and vaccinated barista every morning when he ordered his coffee.
Oh, the kampf is real, believe me.
“I was cancelled when the üntermenchen wouldn’t buy my paintings!”
He couldn't tell if she was smiling , ... or hot
Ah yes, the Battle of the End Cap of Arden Hills. It was cold that day… [drifts off, stares silently into space, remembering] The kids today don’t go through hell like that.
My husband and I once, on a long driving trip, basically scripted Ken Burns' War On Christmas. Epic.
Which, by the way, is right around the corner! Where does the time go! Better lay in a stockpile of secular decorations...
Ken Burns’ Civil War is a gift that keeps on giving: “Dear Penelope, this morning’s actions were a triumph for the Cause. I set fire to all the enemy’s Happy Holiday Banners at Walmart, then spray painted “put Christ back in Christmas” on a 52 inch TV in the electronics department. I fear, however, I may never make it home to our beloved McMansion. The Libs are advancing across the parking lot as I, hunched over in the bed of my trusty Dodge Ram, write what are possibly my last words to you...”
"And if the soft breeze of a passing F-350 fans your cheek, it shall be my breath"
"And don’t get me started on the people who claim to revere history but want to burn books they don’t like."
Because in those books? They're the bad guys.
Hey, even the WWII generation freaked out when young men started wearing their hair in bangs.
And don’t get me started on the people who claim to revere history but want to burn books they don’t like.
In history, the Nazis did this
"We've got to burn all these books that tell people about that time when we burned all those books!"
I hold out some modicum of hope that the prime law of conservatism, “It isn’t important unless it happens to me,” may function in the response to Biden’s call as it has in the shift on gay marriage. Lots of Fox viewers have family members with substance abuse issues and may realize Biden’s plea to Hunter is something they have done themselves, or wish they had. Hannity’s a ghoul in thrall to a heartless grifter, but despair over a loved one’s substance struggles knows no political boundaries.
Btw, the best novel about the GG is “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” the story of the transition from the horrors of WWII to the false refuge of 50’s suburbia.
There's Rebecca Solnit's position, so to speak (and of course not special to her) that one true way to get change is when, well, the masses' attitudes change.
Can't remember which one (and that may be a self-defense mechanism in my brain) but one of the Republicans running for Senate was blaming Biden for the opioid epidemic like the whole thing started on Jan. 20, 2021.
That’s the kind of bullshit the base wants to hear. It’s not like they care about facts or reality let alone truth.
Also, inflation and high gas prices are a problem that ONLY HAPPENS IN AMERICA.
Would it be too much to ask for some Democrat, ANY Democrat, to point out that inflation is much worse in Britain and they're ruled by CONSERVATIVES? Or is that kind of argument seen as too sophisticated for the average voter, requiring them to take in new facts and information not already in their skulls, so we've got to stay with "Dr. Oz loves crudité" instead?
Right. Conservatives don't view government as an institution that can help improve lives, they only ask their leaders to tell them a feel-good story. This was explicitly the Reagan approach.
How can I put this with the least offense? Denominations or whatever of the religion that will be the foundation of the US Xian theocracy is opposed to anyone much making much of an effort to improve things. I suppose it’s a conclusion to Original Sin or can be. So, you know, when one’s religion tells you it’s okay for the world to turn to shit, that’s a problem.
But there’s the alternatives of getting the shit done without or despite them and do what one can to change the hearts and/or minds one can and create bottom up pressure for change (yet again, pace Solnit).
Certain religionists must have it both ways:
Way #1: No such thing as 'civil society', so do not expect gummint to help you. That's the church's job.
Way #2: No help from the church for you, you sinful loser!
Trying to prevent the total destruction of the biosphere is thwarting God's will! He WANTS Florida to be under water, don't ask why!
Don't tell the Laird o' Maga-o...
I do not share your modicum of hope. For conservatives, everything is an irregular verb.
They will pressure women they’ve impregnated to abort (and — chef’s kiss! — try to weasel out of paying for it), then turn around and, without missing a beat, bellow that all abortions must be banned and any woman having one executed. Similarly, they’ll demand compassion and government-paid rehab for their own oxycodone-ravaged spawn because drug prison is for black people, then turn around and demand that Hunter Biden be forced to through withdrawal naked on a live Fox TV broadcast before being crucified, and Sleepy Joe is a senile faggot loser who caused COVID, which doesn’t exist.
These people cannot be reasoned with. At best, they can be driven back down into the sewers they slithered up from.
Well, I certainly go along with that last part.
Actually, the fuckers need to be ignored as much as possible.
And people being hardwired to be submissive (exacerbated by an ever more extractive economy), I expect the likeliest endgame is some sort of fascistic one-party state. Not saying that's assured of happening, just that it's the likeliest.
Something I've been thinking about since an earlier Substack is how what seems like simple hypocrisy is really Wilhoit's Law. The anti-abortion politician who gets the mistress pregnant and then buys her a plane ticket to the nearest Blue state for the abortion is a hypocrite for sure, but he's probably also a believer in massive social inequality and "Of course the law is for THEM and not US."
When Jim-Crow-era racists said they should be able to vote but others shouldn't nobody accused them of hypocrisy, it was understood this was a fully consistent belief in White Supremacy. Are their other beliefs that we see as hypocritical or inconsistent but are really something much worse?
In a general sense, I agree that people seem softer -- well, weaker -- than years gone by.
But there's a mix of stuff in that stew: A tendency, in decline since the 60s/70s Let it all hang out era, now amplified with all the reality TV horseshit, to engage in TMI and to no longer do as the olds did and suppress all the shit. Instead of complaining and whining about how life's shit and appear weak, show some real strength and hit the bottle and/or one's spouse. Or show the submissive side of Stoicism and just accept the abuse.
Put like that, sure, maybe it's not actually toughness going on there, just something misperceived as being tough. Most likely submission (again) and willing suppression instead of, you know, facing and addressing a problem. (of course, a factor there is the stresses, so to speak, of our awesome, feral economic system.)
Aside: I moved into Manhattan during the darkest before the dawn late 70s when only the main streets and avenues were safe to walk in the dark. OTOH, took a brief walk during the 77 blackout and nothing scary was seen let alone experienced.
As for the youngs with their sensitivities, gender fluidity, etc., etc., etc.: Given what a fucked up world we're leaving them, I give them all a pass for everything as long as no innocents get hurt.
And as for Hunter, I'm hardcore Team Hunter: To go through what he's gone through, cleaned up his act and now (of course my favorite) to have zero fucks to give the Republicans' bullshit. And re Hunter, recommended is the Marc Maron interview.
My god as a small child he was in a crash that killed his mother and sister, then his co-survivor and protector died young of cancer. That's a fuck ton of trauma. He may or may not be something of a hot mess (and if he is, he came to it honestly), but to the extent that he is functional, credit due to his parents, bio and step. Compare and contrast: Donny Jr.
To survive that and among much other stuff -- the Maron interview and a Times profile from a year or two ago cover a lot of it -- says a lot. And, again, takes a real piece of shit to attack him.
"contrast: Donny Jr."
Among the wealthy, I imagine it's pretty common to think "Well, we can AFFORD our drug habits." This was certainly a common attitude during prohibition when it was well understood among the upper classes that the law was to keep the lower orders in place, because a poor man might become a drunk and then abandon the wife and kids to the care of the state, but if a rich man becomes a drunk there will be enough to support the family without public assistance.
All true. But I'm not just talking about his drug problem.
Just on the general trend toward softness, it's worth looking at the historical data on the truly staggering amount of alcohol 19th Century Americans consumed. Yeah, they put up with some hard times, often through the simple expedient of being shitfaced for a large part of the day.
What I said: shit ton of suppression and repression there with a lot of it fueled by booze.
And on Tarawa, &c., by all accounts
And on the subject of "the good old days" when everyone worked hard, families stuck together, and we were all united under Jesus in that Manifest Destiny kind of way, I always recommend Wisconsin Death Trip.
"Well, when I was saying Make America Great Again, I wasn't exactly thinking of THAT"
That was just the way people hydrated back then, when hydrating via drinking plain old water woulda got you sick for a week.
Spoken like a man who has some experience at coming up with excuses for drinking?
Excuses??!!
REASONS!!!
What are the units of measure for alcohol?
• handling
• tipple
• slur
• stagger
• truly stagger
I think there's a whole lot of "my life sucked--and YOUR's should too!" going on with conservatives. The whole underlying concept of "standing athwart history yelling STOP!" is that you're determined to prevent life from getting better. Which is a sentiment I find frankly bizarre.
OTOH, I'm also absolutely amazed (and not in a good way) at the number of parents I've heard about who do not want their kids to succeed at anything because then the kids "will be better than me and look down on me." As one proud parent said at a school board meeting, "My son's gonna cut down trees when he grows up, and he don't need to read or write to cut down trees."
There's the moral panic of "we're makin' it too easy", but in a simple, practical sense, making life less painful for people costs money, and sometimes it costs a LOT of money. And where's that money gonna come from, huh? Not ME, that's for sure!
What I mean is that "toughen up" could just be an easy moral pose for cheapskates. "Here's some whiskey and a bullet to bite on, we don't got money for that fancy-pants anesthetic!"
Oh no, I want the guvmint to make MY life easier, but not, you know, THEM.
And when they do, I will refuse to acknowledge that it even happened. Like Craig T. Nelson once said, "Nobody helped us when I was growing up poor, we were on foodstamps."
The nihilism and hatred of life that made America great for those willing to exploit those sentiments or pathologies.
"I *chose* for my life to suck, and I'm going to force yours to."
If you're worried about your kids looking down on you, chances are they already do.
The whole underlying concept of "standing athwart history yelling STOP!" is that you're determined to prevent life from getting better.
from getting better for other people. There's a lot of zero sum thinking out there, causing those that had it a little better to think that the bit that will make it better for other people will come out of their bit. Which may not be all that wrong based upon how our economy works now. Of course voting for sides that might take that bit out of someone richer or maybe grow the pie; but they can't do that, because they have been told their whole remembered lives that it is the others fault
I thought this was pretty good, it's easy to ask "What's wrong with these kids?", much harder to ask, "What are they saying about what's wrong with US?" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/11/opinion/teenagers-mental-health-america.html
When I was young, they were called "starry-eyed idealists". Now they're just called "soft". Sign of the times, I guess.
"Buncha egg-headed Commies."
I'm 64 (late boomer, recently read somewhere that makes me "Generation Jones" lol). I can tell you quite honestly that nothing sets me off quite like those never-ending memes on FB, posted by my own contemporaries, that a) long for the "good old days", b) call younger people weak, stupid, and "woke" (like they even understand the term), and c) blame every societal ill on immigrants, the poor, or other disenfranchised. I mean, really, the good old days when we were racist and sexist and homophobic? Friends I've gotten drunk and high with while collecting unemployment benefits together in younger days are now calling for drug tests for those hoping to get the same benefits today. Those same friends all retired earlier than me, either because they made their cash or they've been too sick to work and are collecting benefits from the fucking government (Satan himself, according to them). And these are Canadians!
The past has always sucked. I can accept that knowing that gradually it began to suck less. Bringing back the shitty parts are not going to help us now or in the future
The complaining has been going on since (at least) ancient Egypt.
"And these are Canadians" is comedy gold!
I think previous generations didn't have a never-ending, 24 hour-a-day blue light stream of conflicting, contradictory messages telling you 'who to be' and fucking with *any* sense of self they were developing growing up, regardless of where they stood politically, economically, racially, what-have-you. When you have a solid starting point, at least you have a stance from which to see the world and form opinions that are based on actual experience.
On a positive note, the youngs are in a much better place today to feel good about expressing themselves in non-binary ways and I salute that, even if they're being nudged by manufactured pop icons. Bullying survivors know what I mean, the 'burbs of Detroit in the 70s were no place to be weird.
Hell, yes. I don't know for sure, but I like to hope that, among the beneficiaries of the gay-rights movement are cishet teen boys who wear glasses, like books and don't like sports.
Oops!
Forgot to note the nihilistic (or is that psychopathic?) response to Covid. You know; one person’s self-perceived toughness in the face of a deadly global pandemic and disregard for dying and spreading the disease, well, is something much different than toughness.
"Oh, they were old, they were gonna die soon anyway!"
Which makes me wonder, if you look back through human history, and on one side of the scale you put all the problems caused by being *overly* sensitive to human suffering, and then on the other side put all the problems caused by being insensitive to the suffering of others, which side weighs more? Has caring *too much* about our fellow humans ever really been a problem to compare with "Eh, dunno where those trains full of Jews are going, but none of my business."
I contend that people are as "tough" as circumstances dictate. My parents generation survived (well, mostly) the horrors of the Great Depression and WW2, not because they were intrinsically superior in toughitude, but because they had no fucking choice. And making life easier for their kids than it was for them was, like, the whole point of raising them.
Yes, exactly. Just finished Timothy Egan's book on the dust bowl, and as you say, what choice did they have? (actually lots committed suicide instead of "toughing it out"). But for most, it was a choice between starving in a sod house in Nebraska or starving in a migrant camp in California. Shame on us that those were the only options on offer.
that sounds like a tweet from someone who's just heard 'mother's little helper' for the first time.
as an oldster who was whelped in the first half of the 20th century, I kind of resist the sense that I've gotten softer. what I have definitely become is more tired. you just can't work at the same rate--at least in the raw physical sense of the work I've done all my life--without that feeling overwhelming you.
I don't know as the kids have gotten softer, but what I do observe is that they are a lot more sedentary. they may very well be mentally tougher, having had more to contend with than I did back in the halcyon days of peace, love, and understanding, but I see less of an interaction with the natural world.
just my half-baked boomer $.02.
Dunno, in my upbringing, running was something guys on the football team did, and something not done at all by girls. We've made great strides in the idea that exercise isn't just for athletes.
We never had participation trophies when I was a kid. Oh wait, actually we did.
Yeah, they were around. YOU just never received one...
Another excellent piece. I wonder, do callers to the Hannity clown still stroke each other with "You're a great American, Sean," "You're a great American, my friend"? I always loved how callers were always "great Americans" simply by dint of being his fans. Of course, Sean being a great American was a given, due to his heroic patriotism, moral superiority, and net worth.
According to some posts I see on social media, much of the younger generations' disrespectful wokeness supposedly results from parents' aversion to hitting their offspring.
As The Onion wrote the other day: Condemning the “woke left” for what he called the “modern evisceration of masculinity,” local conservative man Hank Daniels confirmed Monday that he was never going to stop being proudly frightened of everything.
Link: https://www.theonion.com/conservative-man-proudly-frightened-of-everything-1849598211
Flower Mound! I hear there's a girl there...