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Tuesday, August 09, 2005
When in doubt . . .
. . . I blame the Baby Boomers. Er, well, the self-absorbed, "Big
Chill" Baby Boomers who think history begins with their generation, and
for whom modernist-secularist liberalism is an article of faith. More reason, here. If you need more proof, rent "The Big Chill."
(Cross-posted from Burkean Canuck).
Posted by Russ Kuykendall on August 9, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Russ:
What are you saying, man? You don't enjoy cranking up "I Heard it At the Grapevine" and sharing your feelings with friends at a primo coke party? You'll never make Hollywood's A-List with an attitude like that!
(Just kidding!)
www.grumpyyoungcrank.blogspot.com
Posted by: Grumpy Young Crank | 2005-08-10 12:16:13 AM
Hate to say it, but the folks profiled in this piece aren't Boomers. "Heading for 40", they're actually Gen-X, that despised demographic called "slackers" once, quite inaccurately, and mostly because they were having a hard time finding purchase in the job market after the Boomers took most of the plum posts. Today, they're not quite as affluent as their older brothers and sisters, but they're putting on a good face (thus the music fest you linked to) and trying to do a better job with their kids than their parents or Boomer siblings did. Unfortunately, the Boomers did set the tone for aging - or rather, altered it utterly - and now they're living in its slipstream.
Posted by: rick mcginnis | 2005-08-10 2:05:43 AM
Yeah, Rick . . . I should have said, "I blame the Baby Boomers and their post-GenX children." Same perspective on history's starting-point. Same articles of faith. Same self-absorption. Ugh.
Posted by: Russ Kuykendall | 2005-08-10 7:50:36 AM
Who is a Gen-X-er? Since Douglas Coupland's book, Generation X, it seems every post-Boomer wants to claim the distinction without "enjoying" the misfortune of actually being a Gen-X-er. What defines a Gen-X-er? Typically, it's anyone born at the tail end of the post-WWII baby boom from about 1961 to about 1967. This is the group that Rick McGinnis describes, above, as having difficulty "finding purchase in the job market." Typically, too, they're the first generation saddled with high student debt, partly due to higher tuition costs, partly because the inability to find jobs commensurate with their educations led them to graduate school. Or, they sought unskilled labour market jobs which led to MA's working at McDonald's. As a result, they tended to delay marriage and family and buying a home.
But, "enough already." This is starting to sound like Baby Boomer whining . . .
Posted by: Russ Kuykendall | 2005-08-10 8:15:02 AM
What generation are you Russ? The one that failed to impart their values to the Boomers?
Are you part of the generation who failed to impart their values, to the ones who failed to impart their values, to the Boomers?
What generation were Pierre Trudeau, Marc Lalonde, and Jean Chretien? How about Tommy Douglas?
What about Stephen Harper? Mr. Harper is a Boomer.
Rick, do you think the better educated Boomers should have just quit their jobs, wasted all their skills and experiance, and retired just to let the 'Xers' have them? Do you know that a skilled labour shortage exists in this country?
When the NEP threw me out of construction work here in Calgary in '81, I scratched around looking for any work I could find for almost a decade. I enrolled in Mount Royal College and everyone had to take a writing test to show they could produce college level material. All of the people, except me, were 'Xers', but I was the only one who wasn't required to take a remedial writing course.
Posted by: Speller | 2005-08-10 8:33:43 AM
There was no rancour implied in my post, Speller - just an attempt to point out that Russ was probably wasting some perfectly good Boomer rage against the wrong demographic. The economic short straw drawn by Xers (like myself) is a matter of simple fact, and like most economic facts, not something you can get too upset about, especially in retrospect. Sure, it sucked to realize that it would be years before I'd have a shot at a decent job, years that were filled in with retail drudgery and insecure freelancing. And yes, true to my demographic, I married and started a family late - what else could I do?
And if sometimes I wished that the Boomers would all gone "back to the garden" and left a few jobs open for me and my friends, who can blame me? As it stands, the raising of the retirement age in an attempt to keep boomers contributing taxes to the social security system that they're bleeding dry probably means I'll never really have a chance to enjoy true seniority and its privileges.
Okay, maybe now I'm sounding a bit peeved.
Posted by: rick mcginnis | 2005-08-10 9:56:46 AM
Rick, I bear you no ill. The Canada pension plan was created by the parents of the boomers. The pension plan is a Ponzi Scheme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
The money contributed to the Canada Pension Plan was not even invested in an interest bearing account. The contributions were put into general revenue.
The parents of the boomers had a lot of babies. This ever increasing Boom was supposed to keep paying out to each new generation.
Ottawa claims they're bringing in immigrants to help the Ponzi Scheme. With chain immigration, the demographic age of the average immigrant is older than the average Canadian.
The boomers didn't procreate as much as their parents. I'm a boomer and my reasons for not reproducing was that the future never looked as good to me as it did to my parents. They were born in '22. Studies show a lot of others haven't had kids for the same reason.
It's looking worse every year. I was born in '59 and I don't believe there will be a CPP when I need to retire.
Posted by: Speller | 2005-08-10 2:53:24 PM
Speller:
To answer your questions 2 and 3 you posed to me, "No" and "No." I'm a Gen-X-er, to answer your first.
Re. questions 4 and 5, "Hunh?" What do they have to do with the price of tea in China?
As for the remedial English test at Mount Royal High School, er, College, should I be surprised? Isn't that where all the motorheads and potheads who didn't matriculate and qualify for university entrance went? Just askin'.
And, yes, I once was one of those MA's driving school bus . . .
Posted by: Russ Kuykendall | 2005-08-10 9:02:08 PM
Russ, there were remedial writing courses in university at that time too.
Now the entrance standards have been lowered.
Questions 4&5 have to do with the accusation of secularist liberalism being the fault of the Baby Boomers, Russ. Maybe you should read up on the Club of Rome or the Humanist Manifesto. They have nothing to do with your tea or purchasing power commodities in China, but a whole lot to do with the history of secular liberalism predating my generation.
I posed those questions thiking you were from the generation prior to the Boomers because the Byfield boys liked to dump on us the same way with the same erroneous claims.
Posted by: Speller | 2005-08-10 10:17:24 PM
Hi Speller--
With respect to the Baby Boomers, I have in mind "1968," the demographically related preoccupations of Baby Boomers at any given time becoming the #1 priorities for public policy, their general self-absorption, their thinking history begins and ends with their generation, and holding MSM as an article of faith.
Re. the origins of modernism, um, "duh." Those go back at least 200 if not 300 years. But MSM reaches full bloom with the post-WWII generation, and all their attendant excesses. Things like lower public school standards, too, have much to do with Baby Boomer parents pressuring teachers and principals to engage in grade inflation "'cuz little Johnny and Sally need a high grade point to make it into a good university, dontcha know."
Now, are ALL Baby Boomers "that way?" I want to say, "Yes!" . . . but, then, there are exceptions like Link Byfield (at least, I think he's demographically a Boomer).
Posted by: Russ Kuykendall | 2005-08-11 9:05:37 AM
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