Do Civics get anything good in the cycle?

[pbrower2a]

(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.

Boomers still got some protection as children, and were nearly adults, at the least, when the destructive Sexual Revolution began. Sex became a focus of many lives instead of a supplement. X children often became objects of abuse. what had been sleazy became seductive. Add to that, X were children at the time of the divorce epidemic when old family structures broke down (for which sex was not the sole reason).

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.)

The one good thing that GI kids got despite being delayed in economic adulthood was good habits. Anyone who got through the Great Depression without experiencing the worst tragedies came out of it with more trust in institutions, with more respect for tradition and procedure, and with more civic spirit than did later generations. Sure, GI kids missed out on the cultural richness that Boomers (and in a way X) got to enjoy, but they also avoided the mind-numbing bilge so much of post-WWII  American pop culture.

But even with pop culture, Boomers got to see some structure by well-meaning GI's in the creation of media. If you are of a certain age you may remember the clubhouse shows that kids got to see when they got home from school. Sch was safe and relevant programming for children -- a party-like get-together in which some benign host (let us say "Ranger Jim" on WJIM-TV [get it?] offered some safe introductions to cartoons for the kiddies). Those shows allowed children to be children. In the mid-'70s those shows disappeared in favor of such variety programming more intellectually suited to adults (I think of the Mike Douglas Show), and eventually for talk shows that were often completely unsuited to children due to subject matter.

I see that as a huge divide between Boom and X. Broadcast television went from family went from family-friendly to a moral risk. Maybe those clubhouse programs weren't profitable enough. Tough! Profitable as television is, we could use those again.

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.

The Lost never fully trusted the government to do much good for them. They started seeing reforms to make childhood safer about as their childhood ended. They saw lax regulation by government of Big Business culminating in the Great Depression, when most of the Lost were in prime years for earning money. Lost veterans of WWI got few government benefits in contrast to what surviving Gilded got for Civil War service (the Gilded may have had Reactive childhoods but taken on Civic traits after the Civil War) or what the unambiguously Civic GI generation got. The Lost were more likely to have resentments  in America or elsewhere that led to participation in some of the vilest causes ever (Fascisti, Nazism, Bolshevism, Iron Guard, Arrow Cross, Ustase, the thug military regime in Japan, and the second -- and most dangerous -- Ku Klux Klan) worldwide. We Americans are just lucky that we did not get the KKK ruling us, or we would have had the equivalents of the Soviet Gulag or the KZ-Lager of the demonic Third Reich.

But the American Lost expected the government to serve younger people either after having made noble sacrifices to save the world or after that, simply needing to avoid the same neglect that heedless adults had imposed upon them.  The Lost were more likely to depend upon their own enterprise, and the high taxes that the Lost tolerated for fiscal reasons were graduated taxes that promoted small business over monopolistic, vertically-integrated behemoths that flourished after Reagan-era tax cuts. Those tax cuts that appeared after the Lost had practically faded from the political scene (when the youngest Lost were in their eighties) created a climate better suited to enriching extant elites than to fostering small business.

If the GI generation got government benefits such as cheap loans and post-secondary education, then the GI young-to-midlife adults
were often spending the benefits of better lives in small businesses owned and operated by Lost entrepreneurs.

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.

The Boomers could grow up not knowing how dangerous the world could be. The 'friendly stranger' offering them bliss may have been offering heroin. Boomers could extend childhood privilege and irresponsibility much deeper into life than could any earlier generation -- but those who ended up with children often failed to terminate their extended childhood when they had children.

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?

GI's did big. Boomers at their best thought big. It could  be that the GI Generation made it impossible for a later generation to fill the GI role... until the GI Generation was off the scene. But note well -- X, especially if immigrant, has been starting small businesses as the Silent did not do at all. The Millennial Generation has the potential for reshaping the wreck of American political life when Donald Trump becomes irrelevant. I still see potential for political greatness in the Millennial Generation. We have yet to see them entering high political office in large numbers. They are still a young generation, their oldest approaching midlife. Donald Trump, the worst sort of Idealist leader possible (an exploiter and abuser who expects others to see his exploitation and abuse as beneficence), has left much to undo -- and it is obvious.