"... for previous generations than it really was. They buy the broad outlines of the boomers’ nostalgia and take it to mean they are inheriting a desiccated society. Confronting injustice, they almost unthinkingly re-enact the outward forms and symbols of college protests of the 1960s, generally to no effect.... The vacuum of middle-aged leadership is palpable. There are some politicians of that middle generation... They have not made this moment their own, or found a way to loosen the grip of the postwar generation on the nation’s political imagination. A middle-aged mentality traditionally has its own vices. It can lack urgency, and at its worst it can be maddeningly immune to both hope and fear, which are essential spurs to action. But if our lot is always to choose among vices, wouldn’t the temperate sins of midlife serve us well just now?"
Writes Yuval Levin, in "Why Are We Still Governed by Baby Boomers and the Remarkably Old?" (NYT).
This gets my "gerontocracy" tag, which you can click to read what I've said about it. Hint: I don't like it. But Levin is making the additional point: It's not just that the old Boomers are clinging to power. It's that the generation after them is terribly weak and empty: "The vacuum of middle-aged leadership is palpable."
I was sad but also amused by the notion of a palpable vacuum. Can you palpate a vacuum? It reminds me of the old childhood revelation: Nothing... is... something.
"I like what one touches, what one tastes. I like rain when it has turned to snow and become palpable" — Virginia Woolf, "Waves" (1931).
Posts
