 |
| God, how we miss this man. And this level of clarity about reality. |
We posted someone else's brilliant rejoinder to the usual Boomer bashing that suffices for rational thought around the 'net, and you would have thought that the bare naked facts of historical reality would be enough to quell the usual Slacker rants about Boomers pretty conclusively.
We even remonstrated at length to the commenter in question, hoping against hope that the metaphorical light of truth would somehow eventually dawn in the darkened recesses yet unlit by wisdom or knowledge.
But there is nothing so unquenchable as the exact whiny sense of entitlement of the generation(s) who were raised thinking they were Special Snowflakes, and had even their soiled baby diapers hung on the refrigerator as art, because everything they did was magnificent.
The children of Lake Wobegone , "all of them above average", described by Garrison Keillor live on, as in this magnificent example:
"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." - kill all boomers
1) Why yes, I rub my hands in glee at seeing todays X-ers, Slackers, and Millenials skewered and twisting over the fire, as I contemplate all those Social Security payments which I'll never see a dime of either. But some of those at the early end of the generational pig-in-a-python who are the Boomers might actually collect a check or two. The nerve of those bastards!
And the fact that their average life expectancy for the first Boomers is about 71, so for their forty-plus years' contributions, they'll earn payments for a blazing six years, ought to give you pause.
The fact that the last Boomers turn 71 in 2036, two years after the whole Social Security Ponzi scheme explodes (if illegals who never paid anything into it don't suck it dry even faster!) should probably have been a major clue to slither off, and STFU with that sagging pantload of your economic brilliance. Did the Boomers hide math from you too? Were there no calculators in Slacker-land when you grew up? Did they burn all the books as well?
And while we're on it, I suppose you were also sick the day they covered that Social Security payments to you, even if the program was miraculously fiscally viable forever, would only cover a few hundred $$/month, but that you'd probably need 2-5X that amount just to live on by the time you retire, so that if you were expecting it to be much more than a supplement to your retirement income, exactly like it was always intended to be, you're already a World-Class Financial Fucktard, who should be laying in a supply of long-shelf-life dog food for your declining years, and saving one bullet to off yourself when you're too physically decrepit to pry open the cans any longer. What's that? You didn't get that memo either??
But I've got it. By taking payments for a few years from a system they've paid into all their lives, Boomers are ACTUALLY NAZI DEATH CAMP GUARDS, because it inconveniences you.
Mike Godwin 1, kab 0.
2) Accepting those payments is "pillaging the economy for their own benefit." In Bizarro World.
I mean, it isn't like perhaps the Congress tapping the Social Security funds the minute they're contributed, like they've been doing since about ever has anything to do with the bulk of the problem.
Other than because it was a giant con from Day One in 1934, and could never work, no matter what.
So, you're now crying because
A) Socialism steals
B) Socialism lies
C) Socialism never works
If this is news to you just now, life for you is going to stay very hard and uncomfortable.
Did the Boomers hide the Soviet Union from you too?
East Germany?
North Korea?
Cuba?
Venezuela?
New York F###ing City?
3) Since you asked, I'm conversant in most of history back to about 4000 B.C. Before that, it runs to speculation, so unless it matters and I have to look up the details, I'm a little hazy on placing the geologic periods in the proper order without a refresher.
Curiously, in none of the times since 4000 B.C., accepting repayment of government's promised payments, made since decades before you were born, and guaranteed with the force of law, and which you forcibly paid into in good faith for upwards of 50 years, is cashing the promised checks seen as "pillaging the economy for your own benefit".
The fact that the whole thing was always a Ponzi scheme, and never going to last, however, has been well-known since at least the 1970s, if not actually the 1930s. Not having read all the financial pages from the era of its origin, I'm spitballing it was probably clearly identified as such from the get-go. Yet again, sorry this wasn't stapled to your forehead facing you back around high school, when you first started getting paychecks with withholding pre-removed.
4) What you'll do for your children when they're helpless and you're not is commendable, on a doing-your-fucking-parenting-job level.
What you'll do when you're helpless and they're not, not so much.
Imagining that your elders should willingly be turned into Soylent Green protein crackers to fill your belly long after you hit adulthood is the rankest flight of delusional dystopian fantasy.
And what people who are not you chose to do with their money, including not leaving you any inheritance, is frankly none of your damned business, regardless of how sick it makes you. But it does couple the whininess and sense of entitlement to other people's money rather conveniently for the stereotype of your generation. Maybe you should make some bare attempt not to live up to the caricature so faithfully. Just saying.
Also, a short primer on how the estate belongs to the owners, who actually earned it, and not to their children, might be in order, as this has been common law everywhere since, o, sh*t!, about 4000 B.C. There's that whole history-before-you-started-paying-attention thing, kicking your ass. Again. Like it does.
But please, turn the story on its head and tell us the parable of The Prodigal Parent, rather than learning the actual one about the Prodigal Son.
5) Then explain to the class how Boomers, then ranging from age 25 to 45, "shipped manufacturing and tech jobs overseas" in the 1990s. Which 25-45 year olds were those CEOs and executive board members who made those decisions? Not generalities, but actual names. Name the companies, and tell me the Boomers responsible, for which fantasy you're cheerfully tarring 76,000,000(!) others, the vast overwhelmingly huge majority of them just making a living.
But I'm sporting about this: I'll give you $1 for every one who fits the Boomer demographic, if you'll give me $1 for every one of them who doesn't. Do we have a deal, or will you welch out on that bullshit statement when reality dawns on your poorly-constructed scapegoating fantasies? I could get odds on how that'll go, but in case you beat the odds, I'll happily take your money.
6) Those underwater basketweaving degrees? Taught by con-artists, to gullible morons, who never paid attention to anything worthwhile, were of legal age, and sold the family cow for Magic Beans. (Look, if you never figured out your high school guidance counselor, making about $35k/yr. with a degree in Underwater Basketweaving, was full of more shit than a Christmas Goose about college solving everything long before you got out of 10th grade, that's frankly your problem, not all of society's.) I don't know about you, but I heard the tale of Jack and The Beanstalk in grade school, and probably grasped the moral significance before 5th grade. Buddha On A Pogo Stick, Walt Disney even made a cartoon about it - in 1947. When Boomers were at most 2 years old. It was also an episode of Gilligan's Island, broadcast in the late 1960s, and in syndication continuously worldwide for the last 50 years. Sorry if Sesame Street didn't fill in the cavernous gaps in your education, and you never got that memo, because it wasn't in a video game. Noted.
Boo frickin' hoo.
And hey, great work infantilizing your entire generation as "children" past the age of moral and legal responsibility. You've made all my arguments for repealing the XXVIth Amendment without any further help from me. And when the college tuition bubble doesn't just pop, but rather, explodes, like it will, that'll be Boomer's fault too, in your fever-swamp delusions. You just couldn't help yourselves, because that worm looked so inviting, you couldn't see the hook, line, or sinker, and multiple generations couldn't figure it out until you were all landed in the net.
 |
| Another cartoon tip-off you obviously didn't see, nor grasp. |
7) Let them flip burgers isn't "Let them eat cake", it's called "let Reality slap you in the back of the head, real hard." Religion is quite out of vogue in your generation, looking at actual demographics on the topic, but read the The Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verses 11 through 32, and then tell the class how Jesus was really the same as Marie Antoinette. I'll wait while you formulate that rejoinder. This will be exegesis on the level of economic wisdom from Evita Guevara-Castro.
8) Your powerless threat is worthless to me, because seeing who and what your generation (and mine, and every other one before and since) was decades ago, I made my own provisions, and can rely on the love of family, rather than the reliability of slacker strangers spending twice the work to shift blame onto everyone but themselves for falling flat on their faces, as it would've taken to just suck up that life is life for everybody, and moving on. I stopped believing government was going to do anything good for me before high school, about the time I learned to do higher math.
But please, do tell me where those born from 1965 to (anytime you can name) have miraculously turned the country around, ended Social Security, and choked off the entire monstrous Leviathan that is the U.S. Welfare State. Wait, you mean that hasn't happened? How unfortunate for your mythos.
I've seen no such evidence of any such thing here in real life, but it sounds like a fascinating work of fiction, and I'm a sucker for a good novel about imaginary worlds.
The Welfare State will die off all right, but neither you nor anyone else will have Jack and Shit to do with doing it, or fixing it. You will "fix" it the same way flotsam "fixes" a tsunami.
It's going to crash because of mathematics applied to economics, and sheer demographic gravity: that which cannot continue, won't. And once again, just as you weren't responsible for your predicament, you won't be responsible for your salvation.
But the 2x4 Of Knowledge upside the back of your heads at that point is absolutely going to be a cast-iron bitch. And your misplaced misanthropy towards your elders won't help you out, feed you, or keep you warm. But it will amuse the hell out of me and everyone who watches your impotent tantrums until the end of our days, and yours. Well-played.
So congratulations, you got a post.
Because you're special.
And for the benefit of those who never got them, here are a salient few of Life's Basic Realities in case your parents didn't pass them along to you by writing them backwards on your foreheads with a woodburning stylus, as they clearly should have in some cases:
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.
Addendum - To All Hands on the 1MC:
Word to your mother:
Maybe I was too soft, and tender, and gentle above.
Maybe some of you have never had someone, anyone, raise their voices at you, or point out your malfunctions in depth and detail, and you couldn't hear me through the wet feeling in your underpants when your bladder spontaneously evacuated, and not having mommy here to change your wet pampers, you don't know what to do next but lay there and cry. For some of you, for your entire wasted life.
So hug your teddy bear, and take this to heart.
If all you've got to come back with is another butt-hurt rant about how Boomers got to the trough before you could get your snouts in, and Wah! Waah! Waaaaahhhhh! It's all their fault you're cold and wet, expect your anonymous shitposting BMW (Bitch, Moan, and Whine) comment to experience the life expectancy of a fruit fly in a terrarium full of insecticide.
Take that sorry sh*t over to Oprah. Or Ellen. Or The View Spew. Where it belongs.
No. One. Cares. If. Your. Pussy. Hurts.
For all possible values of "no one".
Suck it up, buttercup.
If you think a prior generation - any prior generation - that you don't like, has or ever had some magical ability you don't have yourselves, you're too stupid to be posting on anyone's blog. Ditto if you think it's anyone else's job to wipe your nose and ass for your entire life.
If you're over 18, the shit's on you. Act accordingly, and if necessary, unf##k yourselves.
If this is news to you, "Welcome to life. Since ever."
You have agency, and responsibility.
Save the drama for your momma, and stop suckin' on her teat and hiding in her apron.
Or wishing you could.
When I hear anyone say "I'm going to stop bellyaching, which accomplishes nothing except showing the world what a whiny little crybaby bitch I am, and fix this all by myself, for myself, because it's no one else's JOB to save me" you've arrived at Step One of the solution.
This evolution is a Go/No Go station.
Pink pussyhats will be issued to the No-Gos as you leave.
Some of you should probably staple them to your heads for life.
Maybe you think they're bulletproof or something.
Good luck, and keep working that plan.
In the meantime, Life put you here, now. In the landing craft. Headed for a really shitty day.
What you do after that is your problem. I'll see the rest of you on the beach.
And btw, I just saved you spending days over on websites like Dave Ramsey or The Motley Fool (special bonus: go to their sites, and search for their pages on Why Everything In Your Life Is Boomers' Fault. They're both fantastic reads!), let alone squandering a whole $11.49 on Personal Finance For Dummies or even, God forbid, paying $250K for an MBA from Harvard Business School.
You're welcome.
And remember, blaming everyone else for what happens to you is like the Lottery: it's a tax on stupid people.
