05-31-2019, 08:54 PM
(05-31-2019, 07:08 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Their childhood is protected better than the Nomads' one, but still freer than the Artists' one. I know of Nomads whose parents (mind: rich parents!) wouldn't even care when their kids were molested or worse by teachers in school. They dismissed it like this: "Eh, the kid has a lot of fantasy." - If your parents ordered you around a bit - see it as the insurance for not being molested.
It is hardly surprising that the crackdown on molestation begins just as Reactive generations start approaching adulthood. Here is one of the earliest examples of the crackdown. Notice the birthdate.
Quote:Their burden as young soldiers or workers is admittedly hard - but at least they have something to be proud of which nobody can steal from them. (Admittedly, this was true for former Civics. For Millennials, not so much.)
It could be that most world leaders are scared $#!+less of the atomic bomb. The risks are not worth it unless one has absolutely nothing to lose (think of Adolf Hitler as the world, including Parkinsonism that would have killed him, using an atom bomb to wreak revenge upon a world full of enemies closing in on him). Even the vilest leaders live well enough that they do not want to die of a direct strike of an atomic bomb... or especially a near miss that imposes upon one an agonizing death if one avoids the effects of the blast and heat only to die of the radiation.
Quote:In mid-life, they had a lot of work - but also made good money. A lot of money was taken by the state from Losts and given the G.I.s.
But the sacrifices that they made in young adulthood ensured that they would not be slaves or serfs of German or Japanese overlords who would have worked them to exhaustion on starvation rations. The (largely) Gilded who survived the Civil War often used the bonuses that they got from the war to buy cheap land in the West or start businesses. The Lost got practically nothing and found themselves with (largely Missionary) moralizers who denied them even a small glass of legal wine or a legal drink of weak beer. As WWII came to its obvious beginning of the end, America's Lost came to recognize what might happen if America's war veterans got a raw economic deal as they did -- or the European contemporaries of America's Lost. Thus the GI bill. Getting inexpensive education and low-interest loans on the tract houses seeming to blossom in the new suburbs was good for having better-paying jobs and more of a stake in the capitalist system -- even if one was 'only' an industrial worker.
Quote:Their high age when they were criticized by their "Prophet" kids sucked of course. But we should consider that the G.I.s made mistakes themselves, when they spoilt their Boomer kids rotten. They should have known better, but I guess they dismissed the Nomads who warned them as old fogeys.
GIs pushed critical thinking upon Boom kids, and it worked to keep most of them from becoming narcissistic fascists -- well, there is Donald Trump.
Quote:And that's a mistake I don't forgive them: After they spoilt their Boomer kids rotten, and said kids rebelled against them, they joined in punishing the Xers (for their own failing!). Why are Xers even considered the generation of "lost civic virtue"? It's the Boomers who should be identified as that. When did they ever do something civic?
Well established -- and true. Education became more expensive, and kids were expected to work their way through college in dead-end jobs that prepared them for nothing -- and then be stuck with huge amounts of debt.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.