२९ जानेवारी, २०२१

"The Conservative Case Against the Boomers/For bleakness, scope, and entropic finality, the progressive critique of the generation has nothing on the social-conservative one."

A column by Benjamin Wallace-Wells (in The New Yorker). 
In the view of an increasingly prominent cohort of Catholic intellectuals, Americans have, in the long span of the boomer generation, gone from public-spirited to narcotized, porn-addicted, and profoundly narcissistic, incapable not only of the headline acts of idealism to which boomers once aspired, such as changing the relations between the races or the sexes, but also of the mundane ones, such as raising children with discipline and care.... 
[Conservative writer Helen] Andrews... sums up the boomer legacy: “Drugged up, divorced, ignorant, and indebted, but at least they did it out of idealism.” This story, at least the way Andrews tells it, is about the establishment of a new aristocracy, and she structures it through six stories of prominent boomers: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor. 
Her view is top-down: these people engineered the boomer revolution, and their mistake was confusing their own wants and desires for universal ones. In particular, Paglia, a feminist and sex theorist, earns Andrews’s intellectual admiration and moral contempt, for defending pornography as virtuous... Andrews quotes Paglia, who notes that she sometimes sees prostitutes while walking to work. “ ‘Pagan goddess!’ I want to call out as I sidle reverently by.”...  
At the end of her chapter on Steve Jobs, Andrews mentions Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, from 1997, which Jobs seems to have conceived as a corporate, and perhaps even a personal, manifesto. Andrews quotes the script: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.” 
The insistence of incredibly powerful people that they are really outsiders, the optimism so grandiose it verges on predestination—this probably sounds recognizably like the boomers to you. But it also might more simply sound perfectly American. Untangling these two identities, boomer and American, isn’t much of a problem for Andrews, who seems convinced that both the country and the generation are headed for the Bad Place. ...

Here's the book, "Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster." I put that in my Kindle. 

ADDED: Excerpt from "Boomers": 
“When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde,” Camille Paglia writes in the introduction to her first essay collection. “His battles are my battles, and there are echoes of his strategies and formulations throughout my work.” She wrote truer than she knew, for she has reenacted not only his battles but also his tragedy. Like Wilde, Paglia has dabbled in decadence as if it were a game. The pithy paradoxes, the valorization of glamour, the celebration of sexual daring, have to her been a way of striking a pose, a way to annoy all the academic frumps and feminist scolds who considered Madonna’s Sex book beneath their attention. Paglia’s tragedy, like that of her fin de siècle forebears, is that she toyed with forces that were much more dangerous than she imagined them to be, and they turned on her in the end.

११९ टिप्पण्या:

JZ म्हणाले...

The New Yorker should know. They employed Jeffrey Toobin for a decade.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Steve Jobs - killed himself through NewAge cult means. Camille Paglia - acknowledged she was once a NewAge cultist. Al Sharpton - a religious charlatan. That's half of the Boomers, fucked-up, right from Jump Street. All of them used, as examples we ought to live by, in my lifetime.

After a lifetime of being made to worship Martin Luther King's rape-y ass - and watching the Democrats avoiding to prosecute Bill Clinton's for the rest - we are one fucked-up nation now.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

“Drugged up, divorced, ignorant, and indebted, but at least they did it out of idealism.”

Shouldn't a Catholic intellectual be familiar with the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? The idea that ideals matter at all when judging actions and results was a major wrong turn responsible for a good deal of our current failures as a culture.

What does seem fully Catholic (though, to me, equally objectionable) is the top down notion that the masses can be explained through a few thought leaders. Popes everywhere.

Mitch Sondreaal म्हणाले...

She credits Steve Jobs with “Think Different”.
It was an art director at Chiat Day that came up with the slogan.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhanlon/2015/12/06/meet-the-man-who-saved-apple/?sh=17acbabf3112

I knew Craig back then so it was easy to find the supporting link.

Mikey NTH म्हणाले...

Wants to change the world.
Can't pick up after himself.

Lucien म्हणाले...

Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster? Boomers helped get rid of LBJ, honest-to-god racism, sexism & other actual discrimination, created the tech revolution, reduced air & water pollution, suffered through and then killed off (for about 35 years at least) inflation, led a revolution in sexual relations, and questioned authority. The world has far more people living far better lives with far fewer wars and famines than 50 years ago.
What disaster?

peacelovewoodstock म्हणाले...

New Yorker engages in virtual signaling by suggesting that conservatives are more critical of boomers than progressives.

What a load of codswallop.

Like the protagonists in "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead", I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoying the ride. (h/t Barlow, Weir, Mydland).

iowan2 म्हणाले...

Who are the Boomers and why?

Jeff Brokaw म्हणाले...

As a social conservative boomer I applaud any and all criticisms of those particular excesses of my generation.

The worst trait of boomers though: hubris. It enables the “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” b.s. that opens the door to one stupid idea after another based on the ridiculous notion that only WE have the answers and everyone before our generation of geniuses was an idiot.

wendybar म्हणाले...

Al Sharpton should be laughed at and shunned, but he is a GREAT Progressive leader...who spews racial hate, violence and lies.....He fits right in!!

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"She credits Steve Jobs with “Think Different”..."

Does she?

I'll check the book. It just says:

"Rebellion, more than any other concept, was the pillar of the Apple brand. The theme reached its apotheosis in a 1997 commercial that has become so identified with Jobs that a recording of it was played at his memorial service: 'Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.' Jobs’s greatest rebellion was against his own generation."

It just says he was "identified with" it, not that he wrote it or conceived it.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Lucien said...

"The world has far more people living far better lives with far fewer wars and famines than 50 years ago.
What disaster?"

My life has been destroyed by NewAge cults and this fool sees nothing.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Chiat is credited -- to this extent:

"John Sculley, former president of Pepsi-Cola and chief executive of Apple from 1983 to 1993... is remembered as an epically bad CEO, the man who fired Steve Jobs and brought Apple to the edge of bankruptcy. In 1986, he took the Apple advertising account away from Chiat/Day, the provocative Los Angeles agency that had made the “1984” Super Bowl ad, and gave it instead to the upbeat and orthodox New York firm BBDO, which Sculley had used at Pepsi. His signature product was the Newton, the buggy stylus-operated personal assistant that was supposed to sell a million units its first year and ended up selling only eighty-five thousand."

Andrews, Helen. Boomers (pp. 24-25). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Mr. Forward म्हणाले...

Save the dog.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The world has been ruined by leftist magazines.

Kay म्हणाले...

Sounds interesting. Might make a good companion to the upcoming Adam Curtis doc, which seems to be about almost the same thing.

Paco Wové म्हणाले...

"What disaster?"

Yep, everything's fine. OK, Boomer!

Birches म्हणाले...

I listened to her on the Federalist Radio Hour last week. I thought the book sounded great but Joy Pullman is not a great interviewer.

Kate म्हणाले...

Judging by her photograph Andrews is a Millennial. Kick Boomers to the curb and let the next generation take a turn. Fine by me. I'm exhausted. Put Newt in charge.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

@Lucien said...

"Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster?"

No. The last 20 have been a disaster. I'm from generation war. My buddies and I, especially those I served with, have pretty much concluded Dot-com, Hanging Chad, and 9/11 were the high-water mark of American civilization.

The last 20 years have been an ongoing psychological wakeup call in managing expectations.

Birches म्हणाले...

One thing Andrews mentioned in the interview was that she was not ragging on these 6 because she hated them, but because she respected them. I thought her theory on drug culture was especially relevant.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Lucien said...What disaster?

Ehh, if credit is to be given, most of the credit for the things on your list belong to the 50's generation--children of the depression and WWII--who created the intellectual environment in which those things were able to grow. The boomers were too young to be anything more than a supporting cast--not reaching college age until the late 60's and adulthood in the 70's when these phenomena were already well underway.

wildswan म्हणाले...

A Masque enacted in DC

Boomers are bad. Catholics think so. Progressives think so. Unity.
Biden is a boomer. Catholics think so. Progressives think so. Unity.
Biden is bad. Catholics think so. Progressives think so. Unity.

Biden was bad. Now we have Harris. The Pope thinks she's good. Progressives think she's good. Unity

American Catholics are boomers. The Pope thinks so. Progressives think so. Unity
American Catholics are like Biden. The Pope thinks so. Progressives think so. Unity
American Catholics are bad. The Pope thinks so. Progressives think so. Unity

Silence.
Drums.
From many, only one is left. A more perfect Unity

What's that noise outside?

Sebastian म्हणाले...

The diagnosis misses the triumph of woke.

The criticism of Paglia seems a bit off:

"she toyed with forces that were much more dangerous than she imagined them to be, and they turned on her in the end."

She didn't just "toy" with them, she also challenged them--incoherently and ineffectively, perhaps, but she is by no means the culture warrior responsible for our present predicament.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

@Lucien said...

"Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster?"

Further to previous...

It's logarithmic. If you aren't blind, you've probably noticed something called 'accelerationism' occurring? Specifically, how things have really gone schizo in the last 10 years or so. The pace of change is changing.

Change is good in small doses - it happens anyway - but humans are not biologically or psychologically designed to have their log raft continually rearranged every day, which is where we're headed.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

You'll be okay, Crack. You just have to believe you can find the right crystals.

Lucien म्हणाले...

Lucid-ideas: If you want to focus on the last ten years, the people 35-45 were born after 1975. But in that time we had a long economic recovery, not much by way of military conflict, increasing quality of many products, new delivery systems like Amazon, decreasing crime, and no new medical issues until COVID-19. People differ over the merits of Brexit and Trump’s election.

Howard म्हणाले...

The pace of change Over the last couple decades is nothing compared to the first couple decades of the 20th century. Your being brainwarshed by algorithms to be nervous Verclempt afraid angst ridden. Us normal folks avoid this psyops trap.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Kay said...

"Sounds interesting. Might make a good companion to the upcoming Adam Curtis doc, which seems to be about almost the same thing."

I love Adam Curtis, but - while highly entertaining - he gets almost everything wrong, in hindsight.

walk don't run म्हणाले...

“Drugged up, divorced, ignorant, and indebted, but at least they did it out of idealism.”

Yet further proof that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Bob Boyd said...

"You'll be okay, Crack. You just have to believe you can find the right crystals."

I'm almost out of people to talk to - they're ALL NewAge cultists, in the end, now. They think they aren't - like someone going to Whole Foods, but thinking she's not NewAge because she avoids the homeopathy aisle - when I wouldn't be caught dead giving them my money, to invest in more things, like that rape-y "Spiritual advisor" they had.

The lunatics took over the asylum, in the 80s, and this nation has been a cork in the ocean ever since.

rehajm म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
rehajm म्हणाले...

Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster?

There's truth in this. The boomers that led to all the good stuff don't get the appropriate level of attention compared to their rockstar rebel peers who receive too much in relation to their contributions. Jobs par example made cool functional products but that's as far as it goes. He was kind of a shit human being in many ways, stupid in a few fatal ways. You could say the same about Gates, too, except he bought a really good product instead of making it. He's shitty at his second life, not much to show for his efforts but still gets the rockstar treatment...

I'm okay with the self indulgence. Live and let live. Just don't expect me to worship it.

rehajm म्हणाले...

Right now I'd take a handful of indulgent boomers over the current lot of corrupt, race baiting, world destroying Obama grifters...

Will Cate म्हणाले...

The book sounds interesting. As a "tweener" (b. 1960) it has always looked to me like the boomers were (and still are) overrated in ways both positive and negative.

Strange that Camille Paglia is included among "the six" ... does she really have as prominent a cultural footprint as the other five? Guess I should read the book.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

Howard talks about brainwashing.
Lions lay down with lambs.
Pot apologizes to kettle.
Flying pigs ride bicycles instead.
Heaven freezes over.

Jeff Brokaw म्हणाले...

Lucid Ideas is 100% spot on with that “acceleration” comment.

The pace of change is important to effect actual, organic, lasting changes in society.

Social changes have a natural pace that works, and that takes generations. At least two, I would say. That’s 50-75 years.

This “hurry up and adapt to the opposite of what you grew up with” thing is not just ineffective, it’s bordering on cultural suicide / civil war.

Foster and Ives म्हणाले...

I don't think this one really understands the breadth and depth of Camille Paglia's intellect and erudition, or her outlook. Paglia ticks off everyone at some point. Means she's over the target.

Rick म्हणाले...

"Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster."

There's a key problem with this narrative. Boomers didn't start or control the movements for freedom and equal rights for race or sex. This is obvious in the case of civil rights since the ideological battle was in the 50s when even the oldest boomers were juveniles and other boomers hadn't been born. But even feminism was well underway in the 60s. Steinem for example was born in 1934, part of the silent generation. Politically oriented Boomers seem largely envious of these accomplishments and desperate to claim their share of the glory. But the effect has been to trivialize these movements by insisting the judgement apply to ever smaller issues like high heels being sexist.

Instead of the Boomers self-image of delivering these freedoms in fact they were the first to come of age in a world focused on those freedoms as delivered by older generations. Instead of crediting Boomers with this achievement we should ask what they did when handed this unprecedented opportunity. And the answer is...they turned into the most self-righteous generation in world history.

Ice Nine म्हणाले...

I understand how the numbers work but trying to picture Al Sharpton as a Boomer -- especially as a "Boomerness" peer of those other five -- grinds some gears nonetheless.

Howard म्हणाले...

The human world has always been confusing, dangerous and unfair. You people have lost all sense of scale and proportion. Embrace the Suck. Keep working the problem. Stop blaming others or "the system". What happened to the Gary Cooper Republican?

Big Mike म्हणाले...

[John Sculley's] signature product was the Newton, the buggy stylus-operated personal assistant that was supposed to sell a million units its first year and ended up selling only eighty-five thousand.

My own Newton never worked worth a crap. I found it when we moved, placed back in its original box and stuck on a shelf in the back of our closet. Into the trash with it.

What was strange about the episode was how hard Jobs worked to get Sculley to join Apple, only to have him (1) fire Jobs himself, and (2) run the corporation into the ground. There's a famous quote associated with the recruitment of Sculley. Jobs is supposed to have said to him “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” What saved Apple corp. was Jobs coming back in 1997.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

I agree with Foster and Ives, above. Paglia is, and has always been, marvelous.

Nonapod म्हणाले...

The problem with the past 20 or so years is that human behavior hasn't caught up to all the technological transformations. Social media hit us like a gigaton bomb. We simply weren't ready to see into each others minds all at once like that. We didn't understand the Pandora's box we opened. We couldn't have anticipated how removing vritually all the barriers of mass communication at once could possibly be detrimental to mental health and our percieptions of our fellow human beings.

Now we're paying the price. We're in the midst of a civil cold war. People are picking sides and making lists.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

But has Helen Andrews taken a hard look at the little creeps who follow the Boomers?

Sure, she can tote up the wreckage of the Boomers because we're old (our apotheosis? Clinton/Bush43/Obama/Trump--Biden isn't even a Boomer)--but it is going down from here. And the generations that preceded us accomplished were WWI, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler and Stalin, WWII, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc.

But the little snowflakey SJW scolds are even worse...a lot worse.

Yeah. Put not your trust in people. They are the worst.

Or, you could just do your best to lead a decent life. I vote for that.

Mike (MJB Wolf) म्हणाले...

It is in no way conservative to build a “case against” any group, even us deplorable boomers. No good American should even want to build a “case against” any particular age group of their fellow Americans. I might see an exception for The Case Against Septu- and Octo-generian “Leaders” in DC.

daskol म्हणाले...

We are all boomers now, except the millennials and whatever we're calling the generation coming up after them.

glenn म्हणाले...

The problem for the Boomers is that the idealism was a pose. The rest of it was RealBoomer. Watch daytime TV. On any cable network you will be inundated with commercials for drugs with euphonious names. Public TV has been a haven for charlatans of all lefty stripes. Watch the rock and roll shows, what do you see? A bunch of slack jawed Boomers. Fat, dumb and happy.

rehajm म्हणाले...

Strange that Camille Paglia is included among "the six" ... does she really have as prominent a cultural footprint as the other five?

She was on Donahue a bunch...

rehajm म्हणाले...

Watch the rock and roll shows, what do you see? A bunch of slack jawed Boomers. Fat, dumb and happy.

(COUGHSpringsteenCOUGH)

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

Howard doesn't seem to understand that you can keep working the problem, actually are working the problem, while acknowledging the problem, realizing it's different from previous problems, and talking about the problem, which is actually the way people solve problems.

Problem solving is Howard's problem.

rehajm म्हणाले...

Change is good in small doses - it happens anyway - but humans are not biologically or psychologically designed to have their log raft continually rearranged every day

There's the constructive and the destructive. Bring me as much of the former as you want. I can take it.

DavidUW म्हणाले...

There's a key problem with this narrative. Boomers didn't start or control the movements for freedom and equal rights for race or sex. This is obvious in the case of civil rights since the ideological battle was in the 50s when even the oldest boomers were juveniles and other boomers hadn't been born. But even feminism was well underway in the 60s. Steinem for example was born in 1934, part of the silent generation. Politically oriented Boomers seem largely envious of these accomplishments and desperate to claim their share of the glory. But the effect has been to trivialize these movements by insisting the judgement apply to ever smaller issues like high heels being sexist.
>>
This *10^1000000.

Boomers grew up looking up to their parents' accomplishments (winning WW2, civil rights, etc) and looked at their own empty consumer&sex driven lives and by middle age realized they were morally and culturally inferior to their direct antecedents. They then proceeded to try to instill a "change the world" bullshit ethos in their snowflake children to "make them better." Boomers have a generational inferiority complex after being told they were the most special in the world ever. So they proceeded to try to (with their snowflake children) destroy the world that gave them the bad feelz.

This is mass rolling cultural suicide. It began in Europe in WWI. and washed upon our shores a couple generations later.


Howard म्हणाले...

That's exactly what the elites want you to think, Lucid: Become overwhelmed with noise. You Trumpers have been taught to give up blame everyone and everything but yourself. Look at the Georgia Senate runoff races where your guys laid down.

That's what happens when you put all your huevos in one basket. And you wonder why skinny little woke girls like AOC are kicking ass and taking names.

Being overwhelmed by reality is not the way through.

Howard म्हणाले...

Problems are opportunities.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Ehh, if credit is to be given, most of the credit for the things on your list belong to the 50's generation--children of the depression and WWII--who created the intellectual environment in which those things were able to grow.

Yes, although I may be a bit prejudiced having been born before WWII. The WWII and Depression educated generation came home from the war and decided their kids would have a much easier life than they had had. They spoiled the kids rotten and that is "The Boomer Generation." I grew up with no help from parents, college and medical school on scholarships and spoiled my kids. Three are leftists. The richer we got as a nation, the worse the kids became.

There's a lesson there. After the crash, after the progs have crashed the economy, the kids may improve as they learn all over again that life is work, not play.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

The Boomers are the last generation that had first-hand exposure to people (our parents and grandparents) who suffered real hardship--WWII and the Great Depression. Younger people have no idea what real hard times are like, we Boomers only heard about them from people who lived through them.

I'm Not Sure म्हणाले...

"Boomers grew up looking up to their parents' accomplishments (winning WW2, civil rights, etc) and looked at their own empty consumer&sex driven lives and by middle age realized they were morally and culturally inferior to their direct antecedents. They then proceeded to try to instill a "change the world" bullshit ethos in their snowflake children to "make them better." Boomers have a generational inferiority complex after being told they were the most special in the world ever. So they proceeded to try to (with their snowflake children) destroy the world that gave them the bad feelz."

Really? I'm a boomer. I didn't think or do any of those things and none of my (boomer) friends or family did, either. No doubt, some boomers did- just as some from the generations who came before them and after them did, but the boomer generation comprises 73 million people. The idea that they (or any other generation, for that matter) all think and act alike leads to non-productive conclusions.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

"Problems are opportunities."

You better believe it.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

What happened to the Gary Cooper Republican?

@Howard, none of them can be bothered to work on artificial problems created out of whole cloth by Democrats so they can keep pointing to problems that need to be worked. Think of yourself as one of the townspeople looking at the badge in the dirt while Gary Cooper gets up on his buckboard with Grace Kelly while you folks try to figure out what you’re going to do now.

Mattman26 म्हणाले...

Sounds intriguing. Ann, I hope you'll keep us posted on the book.

In the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others department, Sotomayor stands out for me. A mediocre lefty hack who achieved a prominent position and provides a reliable prog vote, but I suspect the world will little note nor long remember her.

rcocean म्हणाले...

The Boomers were/are the most selfish Generation the USA has ever had. They had more advantages than any Generation before them, and their parents and grandparents had made sure they passed on a better society to the succeeding generations.

The Boomers, OTOH, don't give a shit. They have no patriotism and didn't lift a finger to make sure their children inherited a better country. They tore down the old values and had nothing to replace them and didn't care. Now we have old boomers, many of them women, cheering on America 2.0, and the destruction of the working class. Because why not? They're Ok. And they're almost dead. So who cares?

rcocean म्हणाले...

Its amazing watching old movies or reading old novels, and the adults are constantly sacrificing for their kids. They doing this or that, because "its for the children". Or we need to make this land a park for "Future generations". then when the boomers come, its' just "we want to do this, fuck you".

We now have the powerful elements of society cheering on Dangerous and unhealthy narcotic use. "Hey if people want to damage or kill themselves with cocaine, MJ or heroin so what"? Just throw a few more shekels into Medicare or Welfare and its taken care of. Besides, we're well-to-do, and if causes more poverty or crime, we're insulated. All those "losers" at the bottom of society can just die off.

Bilwick म्हणाले...

I'm a Boomer, and although I tend to be a loner (is that a boomer thing, I wonder?), I tend to like the Boomers I associate with. At least we read books.

rcocean म्हणाले...

As for Steve Jobs or Gates or the other tech Giants. They did nothing remarkable. Does anyone remember that most of these guy had partners? Or that their subordinates were the ones who thought up all these inventions? Or that they stole a lot of it from their competitors? It was inevitable that we would get personal computers. These guys were just the ones in the right place at the right time.

people just need to hero worship, I suppose. in any case, just because someone know how to organize a company or make $$ doesn't' mean they have good values or can do anything else. President Bloomberg anyone?

mikee म्हणाले...

Big Mike, I always like to recall that John Wayne refused the lead role in High Noon, with a critique of the plot as unrealistic. The entire town would have joined in shooting the bad guys dead at the train station.

Those Boomer kids who listened to the old guys from WWII who hung out with their dads aren't like the doomsayers of today.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

The Boomers are merely illustrating the Second Law of Entropy: Sooner or later everything turns to shit.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, Millennials: It tolls for thee.

Narr म्हणाले...

I was just about to say "entropy" myself!

The great thing about all these screeds--from the papist authoress, the critic, and commenters here--is that none of them touch my boomer ass. Generational analysis on the basis of six arbitrarily chosen individuals is not even marginally persuasive.

Boomers, like every other cohort of people, run the gamut. (Personally I get confused and am never quite sure what is a Millennial or Gen-Xer, and what the significance might be.)

Narr
Oh yeah, congrats Crack on the music deal!

PM म्हणाले...

Always enjoy reading or listening to Paglia - sharp, funny, welcome brutality.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"the effect has been to trivialize these movements by insisting the judgement apply to ever smaller issues like high heels being sexist."

Althouse's famous miniskirt story is emblematic: insisting on her autonomy and her right to express it as she saw fit, a girl opposed a principal enforcing standards for the good of the community--then used it as motivation for a new wave of "feminism" and stewed about it with resentment for decades after.

The smaller issues didn't stay small, they contributed to the transvaluation of values. And when it suits prog purposes, any small issue can now be made big--as in "systemic racism."

Luke Lea म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Luke Lea म्हणाले...

I blame it all on LSD, a cultural solvent, widely imbibed by today's political and cultural elites in their youth.

It's what caused John Lennon's song, "Imagine," to replace The Star Spangled Banner as their anthem of choice.

effinayright म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
effinayright म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
effinayright म्हणाले...

Boomers are ignorant?

BOOMERS are ignorant?

Has anyone actually tried to intellectually engage those under 40?

Anyone ever watch Dave Letterman, Jay Leno or Jesse Watters interview the average man-on-the-street or (shudder) college students?

DERP to the nth power!

effinayright म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Tina Trent म्हणाले...

Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ take is just dishonest. It’s the Hilton Als-era New Yorker game: long-windedly misrepresent your opponent’s arguments, then call them prejudiced. This behavior — I won’t call it “reviewing” — is especially bad in his read of the Sharpton chapter.

Helen Andrews is a smart cookie. Too bad the insufferable Rod Dreher is ruining American Conservative magazine. She should stick to writing. Their podcasts are awful.

effinayright म्हणाले...

The Crack Emcee said...
Lucien said...

"The world has far more people living far better lives with far fewer wars and famines than 50 years ago.
What disaster?"

My life has been destroyed by NewAge cults and this fool sees nothing.
*******************

Crack, you are confusing YOUR experiences with those of others.

There's an entire universe out there, with billions of people whose lives have NOT been destroyed by "New Age cults", even though they don't accept them.

No rational person would attempt to conflate HIS experience with those of billions of others. It is undeniable that the world is much richer and most people much better off than they were when Boomers were first being born.

Just who is the fool here?

mccullough म्हणाले...

Why do we accept stereotyping of age groups?

ALP म्हणाले...

“Drugged up, divorced, ignorant, and indebted,...."

I only have drugged up covered - but I suspect they mean pharmaceuticals here. Wow I had no idea I was such a shitty excuse for a Boomer! Never married, not a pushover, no debt...

"..their mistake was confusing their own wants and desires for universal ones."

An error only made by Boomers. Riiiiight....

Crack's comment on MLK's "rapey-ass" is the THREAD WINNER and probably the funniest thing I'll read all day.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

“Drugged up, divorced, ignorant, and indebted..."

Shit, except for the divorced part that pretty much describes my Millennial step-kids.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

Why pigeonhole everything as conservative or progressive/liberal?

Is it about generations or about class? Look at where privileged college-educated upper-middle class Greatests and Silents were in the early Sixties and you can see where the privileged college-educated upper-middle class Boomers got their start. By the Seventies the Greatest generation came to be seen as the ethnic or small town blue collar, hard hat, Middle American alternative to the privileged college kid Boomers, but those kids had parents and teachers who may not have fit the new image of the hard-working traditionalist GI Generation.

Also, much more than other generations, Boomers split into subgenerations. If you were born in 1946 or 1955 or 1964 your experiences growing up and the world you lived in when you came of age looked very different.

Known Unknown म्हणाले...

"She credits Steve Jobs with “Think Different”.
It was an art director at Chiat Day that came up with the slogan.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhanlon/2015/12/06/meet-the-man-who-saved-apple/?sh=17acbabf3112
"

It is generally understood that Jobs wrote most of the script highlighted. Chiat Day was responsible for the new tagline.

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Lucid-Ideas said...
[@Lucien said...

"Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster?"]

"Further to previous...

It's logarithmic. If you aren't blind, you've probably noticed something called 'accelerationism' occurring? Specifically, how things have really gone schizo in the last 10 years or so. The pace of change is changing.
"

It starts out with incremental change, but as it picks up momentum, it's easier to speed it up.

Known Unknown म्हणाले...

"She didn't just "toy" with them, she also challenged them--incoherently and ineffectively, perhaps, but she is by no means the culture warrior responsible for our present predicament."

Paglia is an anti-post-modernist. How does that fit in with her place in the six?

William म्हणाले...

I'm with Lucien. What disaster? The election of Biden is not tantamount to WWI or the Mongol Conquest. Maybe after the first hundred days, but not yet. By just about every objective measure, the world that I will leave is a better place than the world into which I was born. It's a kinder, gentler place with far more creature comforts. I'm not just referring to internet porn and Amazon Prime. I recently had an MRI that saved me the need for undergoing an exploratory laparoscopy......There has been no cataclysmic war, and the various economic crises have been manageable. I don't know if any of this is due to the ethos and efforts of the boomers, but, at the very least, they didn't irrevocably screw things up like, for example, all those assholes who blundered into WWI. (Those assholes, incidentally, all went to church on Sunday, read good books, and some of them were even faithful to their wives. So much for conservative values.)

William म्हणाले...

We avoided a catastrophic war simply because one Russian submarine officer made the right decision. Dumb luck has played a huge part in the fate of the world.

PM म्हणाले...

The way WWII vets saw longhair Boomer kids so do Boomers now view the Incel Generation.

pacwest म्हणाले...

It starts out with incremental change, but as it picks up momentum, it's easier to speed it up.

Its logarithmic. Kurzweil covers the technical rate of change and touches on the inability of social change to keep up. Human societies can't adapt at that rate with any consistency. The two rates of change are at odds with each other. Humans can adapt. Social structure can't. Authoritarian structures offer the easiest solutions.

tommyesq म्हणाले...

Anyone ever watch Dave Letterman, Jay Leno or Jesse Watters interview the average man-on-the-street or (shudder) college students?

Of course, there could not be any editing going on that removed the bright, knowledgable and engaged sub-40-year-olds, clearly what Letterman/Leno/Watters put on TV is exactly representative.

Also, who do you think educated that group of people?

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

wholelottasplainin' said...

"Crack, you are confusing YOUR experiences with those of others.

There's an entire universe out there, with billions of people whose lives have NOT been destroyed by "New Age cults", even though they don't accept them."

Like you know. As far as we know, this last election was stolen by the Democrats again, and your dumb ass is denying it. Don't forget: you accepted the Democrat's lie about Dan White and Harvey Milk, and happily live under it, and none of you said shit when Obama showed up with Oprah - all you saw was black skin and socialism - NOT POLITICAL CULTISM.

You don't read the credible books about what Hillary and them have been doing in the NewAge Movement so you can't speak on it.

You don't take Oprah seriously when she has her own damn production company and is using it to rewrite history.

You don't take cults or culture seriously, even when Andrew Breitbart told you to.

You talk - you all talk, talk, talk - but you KNOW nothing.

Look - cults in Silicon Valley. And what are you doing about it?

You're letting cults rule our lives by listening to your own voices.

I lived amongst these people for 30 years.

You know nothing.

n.n म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
n.n म्हणाले...

So, our Posterity conceived and born in the 50s and 60s, who reached the age of majority and major influence in the 70s and 80s and liberalized generations since. How did the Greatest Generation miss this monotonic divergence and fail to steer their functional evolution?

From what I recall of Paglia, she has a balanced perspective of human life and lives, beginning with the normal distribution and her peculiar exception, and normalization, tolerance, and rejection thereof.

That said, a pride parade: lion, lionesses, and their cubs who have a father and diverse mothers, oh my.

No color blocs, no color quotas, no affirmative discrimination. Diversity of individuals, minority of one.

The Rainbow of exclusion of black, brown, and a featuring an unapologetic gay reverence for the shredded remains of white. A weird choice.

From the Great Leap (i.e. planned population) to one-child (i.e. final solution) to selective-child (i.e. wicked solution) and concentration/re-education camps. Witch hunts, warlock trials, JournoListic braying, and protests, too. Progress is notoriously one step forward, two steps backward.

Semantic games. Conceptual corruption. Conflation of logical domains.

Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

A separation of Progressive Church/Synagogue/Mosque/Temple/Office/Clinic/Chamber/etc. and State. Lose your Pro-Choice selective, opportunistic, relativistic (e.g. "ethical"), politically congruent ("=") quasi-religion.

Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature.

Libertarianism is self-organizing. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is unqualified monotonic change. Conservativism is moderating. Pro-Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Principles matter. The left-right nexus is leftist (i.e. single/central/monopolistic governance).

Individual dignity. Intrinsic value. Inordinate worth. Natural imperatives. Go forth and reconcile.

Michael K म्हणाले...

all those assholes who blundered into WWI. (Those assholes, incidentally, all went to church on Sunday, read good books, and some of them were even faithful to their wives. So much for conservative values.)

I could give you a reading list but you wouldn't read it.

Britain allied with France, their traditional enemy, against Germany their traditional ally, because Bertie, the Prince of Wales, like drinking and whoring in Paris. There is more.

Michael K म्हणाले...

You Trumpers have been taught to give up blame everyone and everything but yourself.

Howard, try to stop projecting. You just look ridiculous. Can you imagine the pandemonium if the left had NOT stolen the election? We are the law abiding. Your side are the criminals. Try to remember that when they are burning down your house because they can't read street signs and went to the wrong house.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

I knew about NXIVM in 2007 - you discovered them in 2019. I knew about the danger of Tech in the heat of the 1995-2000 bubble - you just discovered it when you were forced to switch to Gab.

You know nothing.

Iman म्हणाले...

Us normal folks avoid this psyops trap.

If Howard is normal, call me Abby.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

As I've said, I got more in common with Michael K than Michael Moore:

Michael K said...

You Trumpers have been taught to give up blame everyone and everything but yourself.

"Howard, try to stop projecting."

That's precisely what they're doing. As a cover for blaming Trump for everything - a man only in politics for 4 years vs. their guys - who have all been destroying things for decades. I keep repeating that Biden, alone, has been wrongly locking up millions of blacks for 26 years, and these defenders of Civil Rights all shrug. All that injustice was worth rewarding Joe for. Sure.

"You just look ridiculous. Can you imagine the pandemonium if the left had NOT stolen the election?"

We're dealing with cultism, and a bit of mass hysteria, launched when Rachel Maddow said "Hell" on national television on Election Night 2016.

"We are the law abiding. Your side are the criminals."

We're back to Dan White and Harvey Milk. Dan White was a Cop, a Firefighter, and was trying to become a City Supervisor to serve the people. He gave to gay causes and his Chief Aide was gay. Harvey Milk was a creep who, when he wasn't getting enough votes in a campaign, blew up his own store and blamed homophobia. He helped Jim Jones kidnap a child from his parents - by lying to President Jimmy Carter - and that child died with Jim Jones. Using Jim Jones' cult, Harvey Milk helped steal an election, betrayed Dan White, and got himself killed for it. Like everyone trying to figure out th-s last election, Dan White never discovered the web he was trapped in, but he knew how to make the spider's stop spinning, though. Harvey Milk didn't count on that. The Democrat Party's been capitalizing on it ever since. They ARE criminals.

"Try to remember that when they are burning down your house because they can't read street signs and went to the wrong house."

I feel for liberals when more blacks catch on to what they've been doing,...my friends listen to me *real close* now. The few who can't stomach what they've done walk away, silently, but the rest are shaking their heads in disgust. This election has become something concrete, solidifying around them, so they can't escape it any longer. Everything they've done - not for the last four years, but the last 40, with Trump's administration as just a jump-off point - is now fair game for the rest of us. And it's a shooting gallery.

I mean that, metaphorically, of course. Right, Michael K?

William म्हणाले...

@Michael K: During the centennial, I read many books about the origins and progress of WWI, including Dreadnought. I have read the great arguments of doctors and saints but evermore went out the same door by I went in. The fact remains that the assorted leaders of Europe blundered into WWI and continued murdering their children on an industrial scale long after it was obvious that the game wasn't worth the candle.....Bismarck cautioned against taking over Alsace-Lorraine at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. He said that it would make France Prussia's intractable enemy, but the Junkers and the Kaiser had different ideas. If Queen Victoria had been a more affectionate and attentive mother, many of her progeny wouldn't have been so fragile and damaged.....You can list thousands of reasons, but it all boils down to the fact that mankind is intractably irrational.....I'm just grateful that during my time on earth, the damn fools who run the place didn't kill me....As noted earlier, my survival was at one point dependent on the good judgment of some Russian submarine officer.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

A meme making the rounds now:

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Good times may not necessarily be good for us.

narciso म्हणाले...

Jeffrey Sachs helped create the oligarch class, through his lieutenant Schrieber, who in turn pushed for the first Chechen war, that led to Putin's rise,

Balfegor म्हणाले...

“When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde,” Camille Paglia writes in the introduction to her first essay collection. “His battles are my battles,

I somehow doubt Paglia is foolish enough to charge someone with libel over an accusation that she knows to be true in substance and provides evidence of her own criminal offense. Polite society might have averted its eyes, but police aren't gentlemen. I enjoy Wilde's plays but the actual battles he picked were incredibly stupid.

Readering म्हणाले...

A couple of generations earlier it was assumed that WASPS ruled. Strachey's eminent Victorians were white Christians and ostensibly straight, although some or many perhaps closeted.

Here we have 2 Jewish men, a black man, a man who was the son of a Syrian Muslim, a wise Latina and a very out lesbian.

Robt C म्हणाले...

What I think is ironic about Apple's "Think Different" campaign back in the day is how the Rebels Who Thought Different then have morphed into the most unquestioning bunch of customers ever. Apple customers are sheep, blindingly ingesting whatever is churned out from Cupertino.

KellyM म्हणाले...

@The Crack Emcee re Dan White/Harvey Milk:

This is one of those crazy political events which has fascinated me since moving to SF. I knew about the Jonestown scandal though I was only about 10 or 11 years old at the time, but not how its roots were here in the Bay Area or folded in with Harvey Milk. Any info I've been able to find always paints Dan White as nuts but that never sat right with me.

What's quite interesting is that Jackie Speier, long time US Rep from San Mateo County, never had the mud from that event splashed on her, despite her involvement.

And as for that "increasingly prominent cohort of Catholic intellectuals": if the New Yorker is speaking of them in reverential tones, thanks but no thanks. And I'm Catholic.

Michael K म्हणाले...

If Queen Victoria had been a more affectionate and attentive mother, many of her progeny wouldn't have been so fragile and damaged...

One of many reasons was that English medicine was far inferior to German then and for decades to come. The old Kaiser, Wilhelm's grandfather, was nearing the end and had hopes for his son, Frederick, who was married to Victoria's daughter, also Victoria. Frederick was an Anglophile, unlike his erratic son, Wilhelm. Wilhelm, among other things, was born with Erb's Palsy, a birth injury that was not rare at the time. It was the result of what is called "Shoulder Dystocia" in which the infant's shoulder is not delivered properly and the nerves to arm are disrupted leaving a "withered arm."

Frederick, a smoker like 99% of men at the time, developed a small cancer of the vocal cord. The diagnosis was made by an English physician, named MacKenzie, who had become well known for his use of the laryngoscope. He was, however, not a surgeon. German surgeons had developed techniques far more effective than English surgeons, many of whom still did not accept the "Germ Theory" and refused to use asepsis in surgery.

To make a long story short (The Wiki article is unreliable in this instance), Victoria the wife insisted on English doctors who not only botched his treatment but lied about it. English newspapers bought the lies and added to the nationalist furor. Frederick died of the cancer, which had been curable early, leaving his son Wilhelm hating all things English. Wilhelm became Kaiser, fired Bismarck and the rest we know.

gilbar म्हणाले...

here's a run thought experimental poll

Which would you rather have running the country....

The Crack Emcee, with J Farmer as VP
or..
Igna, and some Life Long Liberal Boomer as VP
???????????????????

stand up and place your bets folks!

अनामित म्हणाले...

Dr. K- life is work, not play.

I'm a boomer. 7 years in. Had a Davey Crockett hat with the raccoon tail. Maybe it was Daniel Boone. I forget, now. Dad gave me my first pocket knife when I was 7. I've carried one ever since. Mom got me my first handkerchief. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Dad said the handkerchief could also be used for a bandage when you skinned your knuckles or got a gash on your arm being a boy. He was right. I've carried one ever since. If it's clean, you can dry a woman's tears.

Got my first Fedora when I was 8, because men wore hats. Not everyday. Church, Baptisms, Weddings, Funerals. Baptisms, Weddings, Funerals. The flow of life.

"life is work, not play." It's both. Dr K knows that. Work first, play after.





Josephbleau म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Josephbleau म्हणाले...

It’s not just boomers, it’s all
generations. I believe in the good generation bad generation meme. From shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve in three generations. It may be that no matter what, youth rebels against the parent and will tend to seek the opposite. The generationally rich families succeed by learning how to train the next generation to focus on maintaining wealth, by allowing hedonistic behavior, starting them in high level business young, and cruelly side tracking any who fall short.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Some other Hercules said....
If it's clean, you can dry a woman's tears.


That's WHY you should Always carry TWO handkerchiefs. The one you're using.. and the spare

Then, when a damsel needs one; you hand her the spare.
Technically, this is one of the reasons coats have more than one pocket. One is for the spare

Caligula म्हणाले...

""Rebellion, more than any other concept, was the pillar of the Apple brand."

And yet there's always been a deep contradiction at the heart of Apple's "We're all rebels here, don't you want to join us?" branding in that Apple has and continues to be obnoxiously authoritarian in dictating what the owners of its products may do with them.

Would it be entirely amiss to extend this critique to the entire Boomer "we're all rebels here" mystique? For if they have been rebels they have been remarkably conformist rebels, rebels always ready to punish any who stray from the (constantly shifting) Approved Rebel positions.

For what is "Woke" if not a metastasis of Boomer Rebellion (tm) among the Echo-of-the-boom generations? Does it not promote the same lockstep "we're all rebels here and we will punish you if you stray!" that has always been at the core of Boomer Rebellion-ism, just more of the same but now in new, more virulent, intolerant, and punitive forms? What is Woke if not Marcusian Repressive Tolerance in action? And what is Marcuse if not a Boomer?

Could Woke have come into existence without Long March of radical Boomers through the institutions, or without Liberal-Left Boomers capturing much of the culture industry?

Of course, revolutions eat their own. And now it is Boomers themselves who must be denounced by these new radicals, the very radicals the Boomers enabled.

It's less extreme (so far), but are there not echoes of Stalin's purge of the Old Bolsheviks here, or Mao's purge of the Old Guard, the Old Guard who had brought him to power but now had become all too comfortable in the institutions they created for themselves?

dreams म्हणाले...

"Gee, have the last 55 years really been a disaster? Boomers helped get rid of LBJ, honest-to-god racism, sexism & other actual discrimination, created the tech revolution, reduced air & water pollution, suffered through and then killed off (for about 35 years at least) inflation, led a revolution in sexual relations, and questioned authority. The world has far more people living far better lives with far fewer wars and famines than 50 years ago."

The Vietnam War was the undoing of LBJ.

dreams म्हणाले...

Agree or disagree, but I'm on record here at Althouse of stating multiple times my characterization of the Boomer generation as the sorriest generation. It remains an apt description.

Michelle Dulak Thomson म्हणाले...

Lucid-Ideas,

Howard talks about brainwashing.

Actually, Howard talked about "brainwarshing." No doubt some subtle difference is involved.

Pssst, Howard, the word is "verklemmt," and it isn't capitalized, not being a noun.

Readering, if Camille Paglia is the "very out lesbian" on your list, I think you're wrong; Paglia has always claimed to be bisexual, and I see no reason not to believe what she says about herself.

Michelle Dulak Thomson म्हणाले...

Anent "verklemmt," just did what I should've done in the first place and checked the dictionary meaning, which these days is rendered "prudish" or "uptight." I had always understood it as "stifled, suffocated" which is something like the above, but in practice very different. In music, you find it in the middle of the Cavatina of Beethoven's Op. 130 Quartet, where the music suddenly shifts key by a third and the first violin line is reduced to an almost-literal stammering. "Prudish" is not the word for that.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

wholelottasplainin' said...

"Crack, you are confusing YOUR experiences with those of others.

There's an entire universe out there, with billions of people whose lives have NOT been destroyed by "New Age cults", even though they don't accept them."


Keep talking:

How A Cult Built The O-Rings That Failed On The Space Shuttle Challenger

Josephbleau म्हणाले...

As the article says, the cult was not responsible for NASA's use of the O rings outside of tested temperature ranges.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Gilbar- "That's WHY you should Always carry TWO handkerchiefs"

No. A man cannot live his life catering to women. When you have a handkerchief, a man uses it for the moment. Cover a sneeze. Use as a bandage. Dry a woman's tears.

A woman is a helpmeet, and a blessing to a man. She's not a soldier. She's not a policeman. Lesbians, with a lot of time on their hands call themselves 'women' and fight with God. That's their fight. Ignore them.