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General chat thread

Reader mode
Say what you will about The Greatest Generation (American term for people born between 1901 and 1927), I can't deny they really earned that moniker.

God knows how they produced the Baby Boomers.
 
Treble said:
Say what you will about The Greatest Generation (American term for people born between 1901 and 1927), I can't deny they really earned that moniker.

God knows how they produced the Baby Boomers.
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Rise and Fall of Civilizations or something

Plus, a tendency to borrow against the future to fund the now and even do big yet stupid gambles for said future, aren't just limited to them

A "time of plenty" doesn't necessarily have to be a post scarcity paradise, it just has to make it so that it can keep failing yet "succeed" enough to make due till someone else has to pick up the bill

"That's a problem for Tomorrow Homer, glad I'm not him"
 
Treble said:
God knows how they produced the Baby Boomers.
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Oh, gee, I wonder why a generation that was ripped away from their homes at more or less the most important formative point for learning how to interact with other adults as an adult, then forced through one of the most traumatic experiences the human species has ever managed to inflict upon itself.

Might maybe not be in the best position to be parents.

Also: the cold war and all the paranoia it fostered didn't help.
 
TanaNari said:
Oh, gee, I wonder why a generation that was ripped away from their homes at more or less the most important formative point for learning how to interact with other adults as an adult, then forced through one of the most traumatic experiences the human species has ever managed to inflict upon itself.
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Didn't stop them from beating Hitler and Hirohito, then rebuilding the free world, and then creating the golden age of capitalism, but not before having more babies in better households than ever before.

So clearly, there must be other reasons. One must just accept that the GGs were the type of people that got going when the going got tough. They somehow tanked the Great Depression, The New Deal, then the Second World War, and then the Atomic Age without falling apart.
 
Yeah, my grandfather was of that generation and he had trauma from the Pacific War part of WWII until the day he died.
 
My great-grandfather. European theater. To my knowledge he never breathed a word of his experiences to anyone. If it weren't for a couple old photos and his involvement with the VFW, we'd never have known he was in the service.

Which is fair enough. If anyone's earned the right to forget, it's those who lived it.
 
TanaNari said:
My great-grandfather. European theater. To my knowledge he never breathed a word of his experiences to anyone. If it weren't for a couple old photos and his involvement with the VFW, we'd never have known he was in the service.

Which is fair enough. If anyone's earned the right to forget, it's those who lived it.
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Yeah. Papa only really talked about it once. He told me and my brother about Guadalcanal and it was less like a narrative and more like a flashback. Other than that? He told "stories" that weren't really about the war and more like some half made up stories of hijinks.
 
TanaNari said:
Oh, gee, I wonder why a generation that was ripped away from their homes at more or less the most important formative point for learning how to interact with other adults as an adult, then forced through one of the most traumatic experiences the human species has ever managed to inflict upon itself.

Might maybe not be in the best position to be parents.

Also: the cold war and all the paranoia it fostered didn't help.
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In some ways, I would say It's almost the opposite. Those of the "Greatest Generation" did in fact manage to get through to the other side of the single greatest period of violent death in human history, spanning effectively the whole world, and decided to focus on living as comfortably as possible for themselves and the children they brought into a world that was, in many senses, more peaceful than it had ever been. They focused forward, built a world with an emphasis on growth and comfort and a better future, and raised their kids to inherit it and control of it as soon as they were able. This meant that the Baby Boomers were guided into incredible prosperity while in the prime periods of their lives (in general, anyway) and reaped the Greatest benefit of their parent's investments.

The big issue is, to me, a form of entitlement. Specifically? Baby Boomers got the highest levels of wealth and power when young due to getting the benefits of what their parent's gave them and the world reordering itself. And they have never stepped down.

Our wealthiest, our politicians, and our cultural leaders are still way, way overrepresented by Baby Boomers. And since they got the earliest benefits of many forms of life extending medical science, they have lived longer and held onto their wealth and power to a degree utterly unprecedented in history for a single age group.
 
Spoiling the shit out of your kids seems like 'failure to parent' to me.
 
evildice said:
TanaNari: "They went through some really bad trauma which made them shitty parents."

Treble: "Didn't stop them from going through trauma."

This is why people think you're an idiot.
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Because they deliberately misread my words? Cause my point was that they clearly did well anyway. So it wasn't exactly crippling for them.

Hatless Nuance said:
In some ways, I would say It's almost the opposite. Those of the "Greatest Generation" did in fact manage to get through to the other side of the single greatest period of violent death in human history, spanning effectively the whole world, and decided to focus on living as comfortably as possible for themselves and the children they brought into a world that was, in many senses, more peaceful than it had ever been. They focused forward, built a world with an emphasis on growth and comfort and a better future, and raised their kids to inherit it and control of it as soon as they were able. This meant that the Baby Boomers were guided into incredible prosperity while in the prime periods of their lives (in general, anyway) and reaped the Greatest benefit of their parent's investments
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This feels like a better answer. They went through some really tough times, and decided their children shouldn't go through the same. I've seen that before.

Hell, all my grandparents and great-grandparents are the same. They went through some really bad times, but that just seemed to make them more stubborn about doing their best for their children. And they succeeded.
 
TanaNari said:
Spoiling the shit out of your kids seems like 'failure to parent' to me.
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They (The GG people) parented okay, I think, but the collective act of laying peace and prosperity in the laps of a single group while letting them be in charge from the earliest moment they could be doesn't breed thinking that they should ever not be in power. After all, they presided over the Cold War, which compared to WWII and almost everything before really did have a lot less death by violence and related issues. Even with the spectre of nuclear war.

In effect, the Baby Boomers are an entire generation that collectively got really lucky in when the grew up, decided it was because they were "talented" instead of anything having to do with the past generations, and thus have been refusing to hand the reins of control to anyone younger because they are comparing them to fundamentally-impossible-in-the-current-time environmental and social standards.

No matter how people parented, that was a society-wide paradigm and expectation shift we still can't get past to this day.
 
Fondly remembering how there's an episode of Monk where Monk has to investigate a thinly veiled allegory for Diddy using a car bomb to kill a thinly veiled allegory for Biggie Smalls and then blames it on a thinly veiled allegory for Snoop Dogg, who was literally played by Snoop Dogg. This also happened several years before the actual real life Diddy used an actual real life car bomb to try to kill Kid Cudi.

Glad that freaky ass motherfucker is locked up, finally.
 
I'm sorry, but this is coming across more as a hatred of the boomers than any objective review of the situation.

No generation has ever willingly given up power. Now, the occasional individual has, but a generation as a whole? Never, not once, in human history.

You're right about the Boomers being able to take power earlier (mainly because there were a lot of them, and the two prior generations were small and/or had killed an awful lot of themselves) and are retaining it longer (medical technology), but that power was not "handed over".

The boomers fought for power. It was a big part of the whole Civil Rights Movement, actually. The hippy movement. Several major cults. All of that. Was the boomers wresting political and economic power away from the Greatest and Silent/Traditionalist (the ones born right before and/or during WW2) generations.

They were successful at it because of sheer numbers more than anything else, but it wasn't "given" to them. Except luck. Boomers certainly lucked into a perfect storm, and I won't for a second deny it.
 
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Longtimelurker said:
Fools, clearly I should have all the power and not anyone else
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...You know what? Sure. I can't imagine that the average person could screw things up as badly as those who currently have the power, even if they're being actively malicious about it. All in favor of granting all power to Longtimelurker, say aye.
 
Hyp3rB14d3 said:
...You know what? Sure. I can't imagine that the average person could screw things up as badly as those who currently have the power, even if they're being actively malicious about it. All in favor of granting all power to Longtimelurker, say aye.
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Aye.
Though that means I'd actually be in charge of anything, which is a crushing amount of responsibility I am definitely not able to bear.
Nay! Nay! Nay!
 
I'll take the job.

My first day in office will be to illegalize commercials that are louder than the shows they're surrounded by. Punishable by castration.

Clickbait and/or misleading titles, screenshots, and news headlines. Also punishable by castration.

And animal experimentation still by castration.

To compensate, child and animal abusers will replace lab animals.
 
TanaNari said:
I'm sorry, but this is coming across more as a hatred of the boomers than any objective review of the situation.

No generation has ever willingly given up power. Now, the occasional individual has, but a generation as a whole? Never, not once, in human history.

You're right about the Boomers being able to take power earlier (mainly because there were a lot of them, and the two prior generations were small and/or had killed an awful lot of themselves) and are retaining it longer (medical technology), but that power was not "handed over".

The boomers fought for power. It was a big part of the whole Civil Rights Movement, actually. The hippy movement. Several major cults. All of that. Was the boomers wresting political and economic power away from the Greatest and Silent/Traditionalist (the ones born right before and/or during WW2) generations.

They were successful at it because of sheer numbers more than anything else, but it wasn't "given" to them. Except luck. Boomers certainly lucked into a perfect storm, and I won't for a second deny it.
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Well, either because of luck or other factors, that is more my point. Baby Boomers are not inherently evil or anything, but as a generation, they got power earlier than usual, and held on to power way, way longer than usual. We're three full 20 year generations past the youngest of them, and yet they still have a vast majority of the clout in society.

Generation X never really had a chance.
 
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