Thursday, January 10, 2019

Facts Are Stubborn Things




























In reply on another blog to the usual witless wonder Boomer-hater screeds, I present the following nominee for Comment Of The Year:
...to the “Boomer Haters” out there it is important that you understand the following.
Everything that hit that generation was a product of social engineering, just like yours regardless of whether you are an X’er, Millenial or from “Z.” Virtually everything that influenced them was set in place by the “Greatest” and “Silent” generations – socially, academically, culturally, economically. For that matter, the two seemingly worshipped generations that preceeded the Boomers had certain circumstances set in place for them by generations that never were given identifying monikers. After all, when was The Federal Reserve and the Income Tax put in place? 
1913, when the so-called “Greatests” were kids and the “Silents” were not even yet born.
The Frankfurt School and it’s destructive effects on social science academia? In the 1930’s. So-called “Equal Rights”, the deracination of this country and the onset of “Second Wave Feminism?” 1950’s. The 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act? 1965. All done by Greatests and Silents, well before Boomers could vote on a damn thing. The oldest of the Boomers couldn’t vote until 1967 (the voting age was 21 back then) and even if they knew anything besides what they had been taught (ringing a bell here?) by the “teachers” from the Greatests and Silents, what difference does the vote of a single year of a demographic cohort mean? 
Nothing. 
Who was importing the drugs back then? Greatests and Silents. Are you so stupid you think teenagers were international drug smugglers? Who introduced The Pill in 1960? Greatests/Silents. Who legalized abortion in 1973? Greatests and Silents. Rock and Roll? Greatests and Silents (Google up Dave McGowan’s series “Inside the L.C.” for a mind-blower on that topic, folks). Who led the “Counter-Culture” of the 1960’s? Not Boomers. It was Greatests and Silents. Check the ages of “The Chicago Seven” for a wake-up call, not to mention those running the SDS and The Black Panthers back then. Acid-Guru Timothy Leary was born in 1920, people. The folks who created the underground cells in 12 different major cities to to spread and begin the move to “normalize” and then legalize homosexuality set that up network up in the 1950’s and one of them was good old “Grandpa Walton” from “The Walton’s” television series. 
Not Boomers.
And who owned those movie studios and the television networks that introduced the filth on the screen? And the radio stations which played that “Rock and Roll?” Profit-seeking, cultural “Change Agents” form the “Greatest” and “Silent” generations. Who started to mainstream “Porn?” Hugh Hefner was born in 1926 and the first “Playboy Magazine” hit the stands “unnamed” in December of 1953. It sold so well to Greatests and Silents during the ’53 “Christmas Season” that the January of 1954 issue came out with the name “Playboy” emblazoned on its cover. I wasn’t even born yet and the rest is history.
During all of this the Boomers were literally nothing but kids, most not even a part of the late ’60’s “cultural revolution”,  itself the peak of a wave created “by others” quite deliberately built to crash the edifice of this civilization hard onto shore.

(P.S. Note that there were a mere three television networks plus perhaps PBS during that era, depending on where you lived. There was no “cable” or satellite television. There was no “internet” and no way to communicate viewpoints and/or observations contrary to what the gods of the media, academia and government wanted you to know/think. Use your tools and do so wisely.)

In short, suck it, whiny Millenial bitchez.
You've been barking at the moon, because you can't read, and you won't learn without having The 2x4 Of Knowledge applied to the back of your head.

You've had your opinions pre-formed and pre-digested into pablum by the same counter-culture hippie idiots (look and see which Silent Gen Weather Underground terrorists were programming Obozo) who fucked things up royally in this country before the first Boomer was even old enough to vote.
And they're still doing it, and you're still falling for it, because you never learned to think, or study, or crack a friggin' book.

And for the most part, you still can't.

But soon, you're going to get that 2x4 applied, with gusto.

Middle age (thirty-three to fifty three, cupcakes) is a helluva time to finally get your education, but maybe better late than never.

39 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant summation of the history of the problems that have festered during my life. Working to refine and instill the crap-detectors in my progeny. My library, workbench and arms room are my legacies to them.
BG

kill all boomers said...

Yeah yeah Mr. Joel, we get that you didn't start the fire.

Boomers sure as hell poured the gasoline on it, though. Or at best, stood by and made some comments about getting some water someday.

Everything wrong that the Greatests and Silents put into motion? Boomers double down and do it harder. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that cold hard math shows the entire system coming off the rails in a fiery explosion just about the time your generation shuffles off to the hereafter.

You're absolutely right that it sucks to finally get our education in our late 20s-early 30s. We had to fight through the machine gun fire of Boomer-run media and artillery strikes of 12 years of Boomer-run schools while getting hung up on the barbed wire of Boomer-inflated tuition costs and the barricades of Boomer-destroyed industries, only to emerge into a no-man's-land of Boomer-depressed wages, Boomer-offshored jobs, and Boomer-imported H1b visas - not to mention all too Goddamned many of you geriatric fucks refusing to retire and make room for us. There were casualties, and they were your children, and you do NOT get to escape culpability for that. You WILL be judged, and whining "we didn't start it tho :( :( :(" doesn't fly to a guy like me who's paying into the Ponzi scheme (at gunpoint) without any hope of benefiting from it.

As you retire to your big, reverse-mortgaged houses and buy another Harley to tow behind the Sunseeker on yet another vacation to a casino somewhere, know that I look forward to, at best, hard labor for my entire existence to maybe sustain some portion of Western Civilization to pass on to my children.

I can't wait until the last of your wretched cohort choke to death in a poorly-cleaned nursing home while uncaring mud colored savages stand by and laugh. Once you're out of the way, the survivors of my generation can get to the task of fixing the mess you did nothing about. I pray God my generation has the vision and fortitude that yours didn't. Maybe we succeed, maybe we fail, but sure as shit I won't be ragging on Gen Z + later for the shortcomings caused by my generation's failures.

Anonymous said...

I tried to explain this exact same point in a very polite manner to a bunch of Boomer haters when I was spending time on Gab. I was downvoted so quickly by so many people that I realized that these kids are just stupid as hell without an inkling of history, and they don't want to LEARN history. They just want to say they hate Boomers because it's trendy, apparently. I even tried to explain how some of the blame can be placed on Dr. Benjamin Spock's shoulders. They don't get it, they have no idea who he was. They read the name "Spock", and they only know of one.

If they finally get around to hating my Generation, X, X will do as we've always done - not give a shit, and keep making money even though we were told we couldn't make money. Unlike Millennials, we didn't take the term "slacker" to heart. So screw Millennials and their whining and their crap music, and if they want to get off their asses and contribute in a concrete manner instead of screeching everywhere, they can do so. If not, sit down, shut up, and let Z start to fill in some of the blanks, because they're NOT like their immediate Millennial predecessors.

Anonymous said...

Oh please kill all boomers, you blah blah blah in your post but you were a larger generation than the Boomers and have done WHAT with that? What?

You weren't smart enough to take STEM classes, you wouldn't get your hands dirty, in THIS blog you're telling what I believe to be another Xr ER nurse to retire to make way for your butt, while you have HALF the skills he does, and your generation is voting for freaking socialism, which DOES NOT WORK.

Xers were the first to know we were boned and would likely never see a dime of what we put into Social Security or Medicare. Unlike Millennials, we started saving young because of that. We're also called the "Latch-Key" generation for a reason - we weren't put into bubble wrap all our lives and we didn't get gold stars for breathing. Xers will take risks, we get our hands dirty, and know that no job is "beneath us" because we were making our own dinners half the time growing up and then cleaning the kitchens. Millennials come out of college with a degree in "Licking Postmodern Ass" and expect the world handed to them on a fucking platter, the best jobs, houses, everything.

They offshored our jobs too, our parents divorced at record rates, we were supposed to be screwed to hell. We figured it out. Do the same. You're still whining like this in your early 30s though, there's no hope for any of you mollycoddled babies. YOU had the numbers to turn this boat around and YOU didn't. So from X (the smallest generation for a LONG while), FUCK YOU.

kill all boomers said...

Sorry, that was too long.
I'll summarize:

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Life is hard!
I have to work!
I have to save!
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that I have to pay into (just like every-fucking-body else does)!
It's so UNFAAAAAAAAAAAIR!
And I couldn't absorb the material because there were no pictures!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Anonymous said...

kill all boomers -

So basically what every Millennial is saying? Because Xers don't whine or cry, we work hard, we make money, we save, and we don't require pictures to learn (that'd be you all). Might want to do some research on what generation has the skills and the balls, and what generation is still expecting a pat on the head from mommy. You fucked up. Hard. And now you have no comeback for that. In fact you say that anything over a paragraph is too long... proves my point. Can't do any research if it's not in a top 10 list?

It's ok, I'll let the Zers eat you for lunch. It'll be fun to watch.

kill all boomers said...

Anonymous 11:58
I did get a STEM degree - mechanical engineering. And a trade - I'm a very capable machinist. I have my own one-man machine shop business that's doing ok. I bought cheap, hard-used manual machines twice my age, rebuilt them, converted them to CNC, wrote my own post processors to translate G code to work with them. I'll go toe to fucking toe with anybody here on hard STEM and getting dirty hands and working hard. I even found a well-raised Christian virgin, married her, and have kids by her. I've invested my profits in significant acreage on which I live and work and will be well positioned to ride out the coming storm. Having climbed through all the obstacles Boomers put in my way, I'm a Goddamned authority figure on exactly what's been put in front of Millenials. Yeah Gen X didn't have it easy either, but neither have you done anything to reverse the cancer. You're more or less in the same boat as us, quit shitting on us to make yourself feel better.

Anonymous 12:09
Hey Grampa, do me a favor and die already. You've fucked over your kids long enough, time to exit stage left and stop wasting oxygen. We've got work to do and you're dead weight.

kill all boomers said...

Because we're special.

kill all boomers said...

Anonymous 12:19
Oh look, another Gen Xer shitting on Millenials to make themselves feel better about being irrelevant. Boomers embraced the cancer, Gen X saw the face of evil and flinched, Millenials are starting the resistance. It's our job to keep the flame alive and win the beachhead for Gen Z and later so they can finish the job.

There's some serious fight in Gen Z. I'm seeing lots of kids in their late teens or early 20s already fully redpilled and ready to work.

I don't know what generation my children (4 and 2 this year) will be counted as part of, but rest assured they're going to be fucking dangerous.

And lest we forget the subject matter, fuck Boomers. It's very, very telling that the only comeback people have is "well Millenials are teh dumbles!1!one!". You know there's no defending the actions of the Boomer horde. Millenials are dumb, weak, and lazy? Look who raised us - great job!

Anonymous said...

kill all boomers -

Congrats on the machine shop and acreage. This Xer family did the same. My husband is a mechanical engineer and we own acreage to ride it out also. I did the unthinkable and stayed home to raise our kids, and I taught them at home also (no indoctrination for them). Sorry for blowing up at you - you're obviously not one of the stupid asshats out there getting a degree in gender studies and expecting a perfect home when you're 25. We had the same obstacles and did the same things to deal with it.

Xers didn't have the numbers to overturn SS... we're too damn small, our parents didn't want to have a bunch of kids. They were the "Me" generation, remember. I think they did us a favor by leaving us alone and nearly feral, but we don't have any political clout. Millennials have the numbers but half of your generation has gone into some pit of mental drool where they're voting for people like Occasional Cortex.

Quick question - are you still coding slower in G-Code or can you convert to MasterCam? Or is that your own post-processor? Because G-coding is slooooow ;) LOL!

Cranky Old Fart said...

Whole lotta generational generalizations happening in these here comments.

Lots of talk about how your generation is doing it right. Well, Chief, if you gotta say it, it usually means you ain't doin' it.

kill all boomers said...

Anonymous 12:37
I'd say something like 20% of Millenials are worth a shit, and it seems to be a sharp divide where there are high performance ass kickers, and glassy-eyed fishmouth retards, and not much middle ground in between. I'm seeing more like 40-50% out of Gen Z, but the Gen Z kids I'm in contact with/exposed to are overwhelmingly high performance self-starters with a hard entrepreneurial bent so I don't have a good cross section to look at.

I use commercial CAD/CAM for modeling and toolpaths, but "generic lathe" and "generic mill" G-code output doesn't work well on my DIY CNC machines so I wrote my own posts to optimize the programming and let me utilize my tool length checker/tool life management/adaptive feedrate parameters. The extra control affords me the safety to let them run "lights off" while I do other things, either productive work or gathering information from worthwhile blogs like this one.

Anonymous said...

One thing I blame the Boomers for is Norman Lear. I know he was born in 1922 but for GOD'S SAKES, the shows he made that everyone thought were so "edgy" did more to keep a bunch of families screwed up than almost anything else put out on TV.

"One Day At A Time" - Mom and Dad divorce because they "feel like it", she moves to another city and raises two daughters who have drug problems, pregnancies, but it's all ok because she's a good woman and such who just felt like being on her own and she's just trying to do the best she can (she could have worked it out with her husband until the kids left the nest, is what she could have freaking done).

In fact nearly every damn sitcom in the 70's was about some selfish Boomer getting divorced "just because", and single parent families were a-ok.

Yes a lot of Booomers are to blame for being so FREAKISHLY selfish, but I do blame their parents for influencing them to become the most selfish generation to ever exist at that point. EST and other cults, "Me", divorce rates skyrocketing, kids as afterthoughts, but it's all ok because it was about them. I lived through that as a kid. My parents didn't divorce and that was considered weird. They can be held to account for buying into the BS that's for sure.

Aesop said...

You flunk the math portion of today's lecture.
The Boomers in One Day At A Time were the kids.
Bonnie Franklin (mom) was born to the Silent Generation, not a Boomer at all.
So were most all the other stars of 70s sit-coms you loathe. Only Meathead and Gloria made the Boomer cut, barely. No one on M*A*S*H* was born after WWII, nor from Mary Tyler Moore, or The Jeffersons, or Maude. You have to get to shows with actual kids, like The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, or late 70s-early 80s sitcoms like Three's Company and Taxi to even find a Boomer.

You keep confusing viewers with the problem actors you mention. In 1970, Boomers were between 5 and 25 years of age. In 1980, they were 15-35. They weren't doing a lot of 1970s sitcoms unless it was a kid show, or about kids, or starred kids.
Which is almost none of the sitcoms you loathed.

What you mentally defectively associate with Boomers is the so-called "Greatest" Generation and the Silent Generation yawping about all the things that fucked the country up.

Boomers were the ones who were raised one way, and had all the rules changed on them just as they hit the world as adults. Not the ones who made it that way.

So thanks for proving the commenter's rant was spot-on, and demonstrating Boomer haters are nearly universally calendar-challenged whiners.

The whole bitch-fest phenomenon is about the stupidest thing I've ever seen or heard, and that includes Congressweasel Evita Guevara-Castro, which is saying something.

Anonymous said...

Nope. I'm an Xer, born in '70. The sitcoms I'm talking about like One Day at a Time were on when Xers were in their teens. We grew up knowing all about Bertinelli and Van Halen (both Boomers, I understand that), all of that. Thing is, we were raised in that world where we were told it was a-ok to do that crap by people like Lear AND by the older Boomers.

More math, which I don't fail at (hardly): My parents were born in '45 and '46. My father, born in '45, was the last year of the Greatest Generation. My mother, born in '46, was the first year of the Boomers. By 1976 my mother was 30 - QUITE old enough to have involved herself in that garbage like EST and "Me Me Me Me" and all the bullshit that the older Boomers engaged in. In terms of luck for me, she was too intelligent for that, but I was SURROUNDED by parents her same age in the 80s who were some of the most self-indulgent, narcissistic pieces of garbage until the Millennials rolled around.

Are you too young to remember that crap? Because I'm not.

Night driver said...

TECHNICALLY a boomer (1951) but more a tweener than anything. Dad was born in 08 mom in 24, both Gen 1 Immigrants (Italian and Dutch respectively). I learned about things like Manhood and Gentleman hood from them. What a real live LADY looks, acts and talks like as well.
I learned about decorum, and Manners, and Politeness and such from them. Ain't seen a resurgence in most of that lately.

So what Gen is going to figure out that all that sissy-prissy polite crap is actually NEEDED?

Likely the survivors of what we're headed in to.

God bless and ROTSA-RUCK!

Anonymous said...

As previously noted, lotta generalizing and finger-pointing going on. To those who succeeded, good on ya. Those who haven't; it's never too late to get your act together. Link up with quality people regardless of their age or "generation " we all have plenty of work to do.
Boat Guy

Roy said...

Someone born in 1945 was not a member of the so called "Greatest Generation".** They would be right at the tail end of the "Silent Generation". But who cares, really.

A greater point is that generations, whatever your definition, do not "do" anything. Only individuals do. And as Aesop has so aptly pointed out, the trend that the boomer-haters hate started long before any of the boomers - or most of their parents - were even born.

However, I also believe that since the beginning of civilization, the older generations tend to criticize the younger ones for not measuring up, and the younger ones blame the older ones for screwing everything up before they came along. For you millennials, just wait till you get into your 60's and you will see what I mean.

**PS: Who says they were the "Greatest Generation" anyway. Tom Brokaw? Who the hell is he - some stupid "journalist". And greatest compared to what? The generation of the American revolution, the generation that trekked west in covered wagons and handcarts before there were even any roads? Or the Civil War? (There were a lot more American casualties in the CW then there were in WWII.)

Wxtwxtr said...

Forgotten here is the depression. No, not that one.
1971 union carpenter $12/hr, house costs $25k.
Add seven years of college, marvel at gas prices only doubling, graduate.
1978 architect $6/hr, same house costs $75k. Progress!

Also invisible, Jan Irvin and Joe Atwill talk about CIA Subproject 58 (or whatever, along side MKUltra, late 1940’s) to introduce permissiveness with children, feminism, free love, FM radio, the Grateful Dead, rock n roll, the drug culture, and rampant social disintegration ... weaponized anthropology, just to see if it would work.

I can't find the cite, but was just reading that the Soviets were doing the exact same thing, cultural demolition, to us, of course.

So literally all the complaints and whining about the Boomers are blaming the victim for the results of acts of war. Against us. Genius.

And that "greatest" generation? Pretty good at dying for the Banker's Wars.

Aesop said...

Exactly.

Trying to pin trends on a group of people born over a twenty year span is asinine horseshit.

The ONLY thing being born to a given generation tells me about someone is that they belong to a given generation.

The 1960s were over before the Boomers could vote, mostly.
So all the happy horseshit Anonymous would like to pin on them was founded and pioneered by the Boomers' predecessors. The EST crapola was pioneered by (who else?) a refugee from the 1960s, himself born in 1935. Silent generation for the win, again.

Every fad that's tried to be pinned on Boomers turns out, in nearly every case, to be owned wholesale by the shitbags of the Silent Generation (roughly 1925-1945), or even earlier.

Because that's who was doing the things the Millenials and Xers are so down on, at a time when over half of the Boomers were still somewhere between junior high school and junior college.

And the similarities between someone born in 1946, and someone born in 1964 are, for all intents, non-existent, save for their common parents.

Go pull any yearbook, and describe for me the similarities between the high school classes of 1964, and those of 1983.
They're both full of Boomers, and that's all that tells you about them, by itself.
The former were old enough to get drafted into Vietnam, and the later had no draft, and the few who served did so in Grenada, Lebanon, and Panama, worlds different than doing a tour in I Corps RVN in 1967.

And that's only one item on a veritable laundry list of items about a generation that shares nothing in common from head to tail except membership in the same two-decade demographic bulge.

The entire construct is purely artificial, and conveys no information whatsoever, and those who pretend otherwise are quite succinctly nothing but simpletons looking in the wrong place for a scapegoat.

You've had exactly four Boomer presidents - Clinton and Obozo, and Dubbya and Trump. Throw in the sole two Boomer veeps: Gore and Pence.
And Obozo spent most of his formative years not even in the effing U.S. of A., so shares exactly zero cultural touchstones with any of the other five.

So now, tell me something about those six people that applies equally well to all six of them, standing in as they are for the other 76M Americans who share utterly nothing else in common but being born into that same vague demographic.

You cannot do it, because it doesn't exist, and never has.

It gets worse if I throw Rob Reiner and Ann Coulter into that same mix.
Worse still if I make you apply it to Rush Limbaugh and Meryl Streep.
Remember, anything you want to try and palm off has to apply to all of them.

Now imagine trying that -saying something that applies to all of them - with the other 75,999,990 members (some of them quite dead already) of the American Baby Boomer generation thrown into the mix.

You've got exactly Jack, and Shit.
A more diverse generation you'll never see again.

And that's everything you need to know about Baby Boomers, other than the fact that they mostly aren't you.

Take personal responsibility for your own life, and STFU about what imaginary Boogeymen have done to help or hurt you. Generations don't vote, think, buy, go into business, eat, or shit monolithically. They do it like everything else in life, one person at a time. Fuck anyone sideways with a rusty chainsaw who thinks 76,000,000 people in America are all the same.

When someone was born tells you what experiences they might have shared with those born the same year or so, but by and large, all you know about someone based on when they were born is exactly one thing, and one thing only: how old they are.

Get over it.

Nicus said...

Jeez. If I hear one more youngster of any generation whine about social security, then in their next breath suggest we should "try" socialism... I'm gonna get up in a tower and start hurtin' some people.

RSR said...

In focusing on generational labels, you can't see the forest for the trees.

The point that's being made is that young folks have been served a buffet of shit sandwiches by old folks, and that is detrimental to their ability to build a better life than previous geneations, which traditionally is a core component of the American Dream. The fact that even those preceding generations now admit that future generations are unlikely to have a better life is an ahistorical and statistically significant occurrence.

And this affects every aspect of young folks' life, and there are very real economic costs and penalties that continue to harm young folks' ability to provide themselves and their children with a better life, as elected leaders have shifted the costs of previous generations' repeated literal passing of the buck as far as they're able -- America's fully leveraged and since the buck can't be passed further, it now sits fully on younger generations' shoulders.
Effectively, previous generations lived for decades like teenagers with a high limit credit card they knew they'd never have to pay off, and now their kids, grandkids, and generations further are forced to pay the tab...

And to your complaint about whining, etc, insults -- young folks recognize that there's jack they can do to remedy the situation as the old folks who created the mess remain America's largest and most powerful political special interest group.

Allen said...

Who benefits? If there is inter-generational strife who benefits from it? Think back over all the times someone has rubbed grievances raw, and who has benefitted politically? Maybe, just maybe, your anger is being used for someone else's purposes.

Every generation gets to wipe the ass of the next generation, and the previous one when they can no longer do it for themselves.

Death, taxes, and shit.

Aesop said...

@RSR
Another calendar fail conflation turdball.

"young folks recognize that there's jack they can do to remedy the situation as the old folks who created the mess remain America's largest and most powerful political special interest group."

Social Security was created in 1935; so anyone born after 1914 had fuck-all to do with "creating" it. As the generation that did is now 105 and up, and comprises less than 0.1% of the population, they are most certainly not "America's largest and most powerful political special interest group".
Those who "created" the mess are cold and dead, and long departed.
Trying to conflate people born thirty years after it was enacted as its creators is simply specious horseshit.

Medicare and Medicaid was enacted (as a Social Security expansion) in 1965, one to two years before even the first Boomer could even cast a vote for anything.
So once again, your gripe is with people who are now 85 and older. For reference, that's even older than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and just a tad bit younger than John McCain.

Well-played demographic rant there; you're railing at those who got the whole Ponzi scheme shoved down their throats, from one to three decades before they were even born, while your actual beef is with those dead, or with one foot in the grave.

Re-read the title of this post, and get back to me.

Young folks piss and moan, because they're ignorant assholes, and some of them like staying that way. (The ones who don't, STFU and drive on. The latter generally turn out OK.) But they've always been fuck-ups since Adam & Eve raised Cain.

Witness Socrates' rant from 400 B.C.:
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners,
contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders
and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now
tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no
longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict
their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.


Or Hesiod's, from 700 B.C.:
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are
dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all
youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were
taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present
youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.
"

Attempts to explain or pass off ahistorical B.S. belong on the manure heap, or spread amongst the rose bushes, where that sort of thing will do some productive good.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

From 1914 to today has the government stopped growing? We are all to blame.

Not giving my exact age but I was disadvantaged entering the workforce by just luck of when I was born. The size of the boomers all being ahead of me holding a lot of jobs slowed my advancement but I did pretty well for myself inspite of that. These younguns well be working their way into a large void over time so they have an advantage but they must take advantage of that.

kurt9 said...

About every six months or so, Vox Day posts a screed on his website about how the boomers destroyed America. Something like the response that aesop posted here usually gets posted in response and the discussion ends shortly after. Then the process repeats itself about 6 months later.

My response is that bickering between the generations has been a known phenomenon since Roman times.

Tal Hartsfeld said...

Social Engineering (the concept, not the term itself necessarily) was alive and present in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt
...EVERYWHERE since the beginning of time.

The practice is older than Biblical.

Aesop said...

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain

So, evidently, we're just waiting for the Millenials to get to the mental age of 21...

Kill all boomers said...

Aesop, you continue to miss the specific reason for my millennial anger at the boomers.

Yes, boomers were born after social security was enacted.
Yes, boomers paid into social security their whole lives.

HOWEVER, boomers are set to be the last generation to benefit from social security. By the government's own publicly released estimate the game stops in 2037. The real collapse will assuredly come sooner. Regardless of the exact moment, it comes as the last of the boomer cohort dies.

Everyone younger, gen x, millenial, gen z, will have paid into the scam and will get no benefit from it.

The winners of any pyramid scheme are the early entrants. The losers are the ones who pay in right before the collapse.

We millennials are cognizant of being the suckers left on deck as the ship sinks.
Boomers are also aware that social security is a ponzi scheme, but you go along with it because you're going to cash out in time and benefit from the scam.
What kind of parent intentionally screws over their kids? A boomer.
If boomers had any shred of morals, they'd take a knee and tighten their belts and keep the system going so their children could benefit from it. But they don't, and many of them can't because they never saved for their retirement and depend on social security.
And then boomers have the chutzpah, the absolute gall to turn around and shit on their kids for noticing and protesting.

"Millenials are whiny and entitled" says the boomer who draws down social security "because I'm entitled to it".

"Millenials need to learn to save money " says the boomer who bought mcmansions and harleys and RVs instead of saving.

"Millenials don't want to work" says the boomer who offshored and outsourced every job possible.

"Millenials should have known better than to go into debt for a useless degree" says the boomer who beat into their kids' heads the necessity of going to college.

THAT'S why we hate boomers. You know you're fucking us over and you're doing it anyway with a sneer on your face. I hate you more than I hate the Greatests who put the system in place, because at least they didn't know they were going to be fucking over their grandchildren.

Aesop said...

Gentle Reader,

I cannot put this any more plainly.
The people who fucked over your generation died twenty years ago.
And they knew exactly what they were doing, before, during, and after.
Mostly, they were wondering if they'd have anything to eat tomorrow, or whether they'd survive the War, and not particularly concerned with what their grandkids might think, or feel.
Sucks to be you.
Worse, to have to wise you up to that reality so late in your life.

I've paid into SS my whole life.
I'll never see a dollar.

This is not soccer, or basketball.
Social Security payouts are not Boomers' fault just because it touched them last before it went out of bounds.

It's a Ponzi scheme.
You got screwed by your great-grandparents, and your government. Not by your parents. Nor by any other Boomers. Join the club.

Half the Boomers will get nothing from SS either, or at best, vastly less than even what they paid into it (and forget interest on any of that).
Don't like that? Take a fucking number. You'll be #276,000,001, and we're currently only up to #200,000,000.

Should they have voluntarily jumped in front of the bullet for you, and volunteered to retire to dog food in their dotage, because your asses are so much special-er?
The government looted the piggy bank decades ago, before Boomers even had any say in that either. If that's news to you, sorry to have to catch you up on things that happened before you were born, but like most of history, anything before MTV is treated like Greco-Roman mythology by all y'all. (After seeing this first hand a few thousand times, I feel safe in generalizing thusly.) Everything from the moon landings to Pickett's charge to the Stone Age gets lumped by your generation into "everything that happened before I started paying attention".

Now you're getting older, and starting to give a fuck, because it's dawned on the Baby Duck generation that all those dollars you pay to Uncle with every paycheck are coming right out of your ass, and you're chapped about that. Well, Hallelujah! Me too! Start by apologizing for the Clinton years, and we can share a beer and a steak.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
Millenials are whiny and entitled.
And here you are bawling "I'm not whiny!"
QED

Anybody who spent instead of saving - from any generation - is going to get an education in retirement.
The Road Warrior wasn't the first nor last person who ever ate dog food.

Off-shoring and outsourcing is what happens everywhere, in every generation.
Look up who built the Trans-Continental railroad. I'll wait. That was in 1868.

People who borrowed to go to college, in ridiculous amounts, and got degrees in Underwater Basketweaving, Grievance Studies, and the Art History of Ghana, deserve all the shit in the sandwich they're eating, on their breaks from being a barrista or WalMart greeter. People who got degrees in the professions, business, or STEM will do just fine, overall. Doubly so if they didn't pay $200K for it (by borrowing $190K of that) for a degree that nets $60K/yr. Or less.

You fucked yourselves over.
If you have daddy issues, take them up with a therapist.

Prior generations put food on your table and a roof over your head.
At 18, you're on your fucking own, chief.

My father grew up in the South side of Chicago when Capone ruled.
He graduated right into the Great Depression. He got drafted into WWII at age 31(!), despite being the sole support for his elderly mother at the time.
He worked at about 20 different jobs between high school and retirement, bought and paid for one house in all that time, lived on a modest salary, and earned a modest pension. But his three sons had food on their plates, shoes on their feet, and a roof over their heads, and not one fucking dime of that came from the government.
I can't remember one day in my entire life growing up he ever called in sick.
And he was a world-class asshole, let me assure you. But I cannot lay an iota of blame on him for failing to take care of his family.

If you had that much when you hit the pavement after high school, you got everything in life you had coming, and probably one helluva lot more.

Qwitcherbitchin', STFU, and make something of yourself on your own, and stop sniveling about how you've been oppressed by your elders.

From your comments, it sounds like you've done all right.
Be a man about it, and stop crybabing about how the evil government is fucking you over, because Boomers. It's unseemly, and embarrasses decent folks to see it.

Life Lesson #1: The government fucks everyone over, and has since Hammurabi.
Shitting in your diapers and crying about that won't get it done.

Write these other life lessons on your hand with a laundry marker if it'll help:

Life is hard.
Life isn’t fair.
Nothing is free.
Nothing worthwhile is easy.
No one cares if your pussy hurts.
You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.


Those that ignore that only need to remember one phrase:
"Would you like fries with that?"

Which category people are in is entirely up to them.

kurt9 said...

Aesop,

I love your style! This is friggin great!

Baldrick said...

Just to b e really snide, every time I see some comment about "letting your Boomer ass die in a nursing home being uncared for", I wonder what the hell kind of issues these people must have with their parents or grandparents.

What kind of spiteful, disgusting families are these people in that they would say such things? I'm happy I'm not in one, and I'm happy my children and grandchildren were raised to be decent, loving people. I never let my parents die in any nursing home - they were smart enough to get long term care insurance first of all - and they were looked after at home. I didn't care one whit if it ate the entire estate, I wanted my parents as comfortable and content as they could be, and it was THEIR estate. Same with my grandparents, who I also looked after. Who lets their elders suffer like what was said here? I'm truly just flabbergasted.

Some people have issues. I recommend family counseling or going to church or SOMETHING to open up your hearts to your own families. My GOD that's horrifying, to say such things.

Baldrick said...

And please excuse my bad typing and grammar, I am really just that shocked. I'm sorry.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

I knew years ago there probably would be no S.S. for me in the end never bitched about paying it would do no good. 92 year old father in law God Rest His Soul, for years would talk about how much SS money he was getting annually and would state that it wasn't right but he was not going to deny it. I read the statistics about them collecting what they paid in in the first seven years or so. He was 92 do the math. Like Aesop says government is designed to fuck you over so STFU K A B or you will be left out of your tribe if even they would accept you when SHTF. I hope they do you are evil.

kill all boomers said...

Bear Claw Chris:
Don't worry about my tribe. There's not enough of my family left to matter, and the ones who are left are scattered to every corner of the states. My tribe is a group of self-selecting, high-performing young dudes with young families. We met doing some militia shit back in the heyday of the prepping fad and we're tooled up for the serious shit that's on its way. All of us are heavily armed, fit, financially sound, and extremely well educated. No disagreement from among our ranks how raw a deal we're getting.

Aesop:
"it's not my fault, I'm just taking the payments I'm owed from my childrens' taxes" has the same moral validity as "I was only following orders". You may recall how well that defense flew in a certain military tribunal. I know I'm just a dumb soft-headed millenial, but boomers went to school back when they taught math, and the problem of boomers not having enough kids to prop the system up should have been blindingly obvious all the way back when - even BEFORE Boomers decided to pillage the economy for their own benefit. Or was that back in the "greco-roman myth era" before YOU started paying attention?
When I held my firstborn for the first time I was overwhelmed with the gravitas of having complete responsibility for the future of my child. It was a gut punch like I've never had in my life before. I would willingly eat cat food - or go hungry - for the rest of my life to better the lives of my children. If you wouldn't that's a sad commentary on you as a human being. I'm making plans and investments right now to guarantee (as best as possible... the best laid plans and all that) a secure future for my children and the other children of my community, at the explicit cost of my "toy and luxury" fund. Meanwhile Boomers are reverse-mortgaging their houses to fund another lavish cruise or bigger RV so when they finally shuffle off this mortal coil there is nothing left for their kids. It makes me sick.

I know very well who built the transcontinental railway. Coolies from the west, Irish from the east. "For bad food, hard liquor, and a dollar a day" as the song goes. I've been to Promontory Point, seen the replica golden spike, and one of the live steam model locomotives I've built is a 4-4-0 in the style of the Jupiter although in the livery of my business.
None of that changes how manufacturing and tech jobs were shipped overseas starting in the 1990s, by Boomers. The resurgence of US manufacturing is due to guys like me and by God I will pass it to my children intact or die trying.

Those underwater basket weaving degrees? Taught by Boomers, to the children of Boomers, who were told (by Boomers) throughout their entire lives by everyone they trusted that not only was it a good investment, it was a requirement to have a decent life. Good work pulling a con job on your own naive children - very impressive. "Let them flip burgers" is the new "let them eat cake", and you may recall the events which followed. There will be no executions, unfortunately. We're too busy cleaning up your mess and plugging holes in the dyke to bother with retribution. You'll die, alone and unloved, in whatever nursing home you can afford while we keep the flame of Western Civilization lit so our children will be armed to start reversing the damage you've allowed to happen.

Roy said...

Yeah, I agree with you, Baldrick. That guy, "Kill all boomers", he really does have issues.

Aesop said...

Hold my beer, I've got this...

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-seem-to-have-hit-nerve.html

Anonymous said...

Let me be the first to admit...it was all my fault!

Born in '46, Undergraduate Degree in 68 (public university, no tuition to speak of), Drove an E-type Jag, got laid a lot, started a small business, retired at 39...never hungry a day in my life. Been receiving Social Security payments for 10 years....

I sincerely apologize to those that came up short....