Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-04-2016, 12:19 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-04-2016, 12:13 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-04-2016, 12:10 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-03-2016, 11:52 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-03-2016, 10:59 PM)Galen Wrote: That is because you are a nasty self-righteous totalitarian who likes to rule other people.  Sadly, your lack of knowledge on so many subjects makes you the least qualified person to do so.

You are not wrong there. From what i have seen he seem to think if you are for anything remotely to do with the 80s, not a new age hippy like person or anything that he believes in you are wrong and he is right and he sticks to it. Telling him others feel differently does not dissuade him. He is the most self centered person I have ever met. He even said he wishes he could get others to feel the way he does (regarding music.) I would not be surprised if this applies to his other beliefs. So much for being a lefty.

Now imagine growing up in the seventies surrounded by legions of idiots just like Eric the Obtuse.  Generation X should now make more sense to you.

were they all really like him?   that is a frightening thought. I am glad our kiwi boomers have more sense.

Yes, for the most part, and it never really ended.  What happened is that once the question of their fighting in the Vietnam war to their satisfaction and defeated the hated Nixon they then took the rest of the decade off in a cocaine fueled bout of hedonism.  By 1982 they all got religion and half of them went back to Christianity.  It was the perfect set up for the Culture Wars and the current situation.

First, any stereotype that mashes the blue and red boomers together is bogus.  The stagnation of the unravelling is dependent on large part on the stubborn refusal of either group to move.  I'd note that this isn't unique to the boomers.  While the younger generations reflect their opinions with different mannerisms, they are equally divided.

Woodstock and the Summer of Love reflected a very brief moment.  If you look back in history to the Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening, the emotional high of a revival lasts only a few years.  So it was with the blue boomer's brief moment.  It might have started as early as the Beatle's arrival, but by the time of Nixon's election there was a lot of disillusionment.  The fall of Saigon and Watergate definitely ended it.

The States after World War II was a place of a lot of optimistic energy.  The GI's lived President Kennedy's promise.  "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."  This involved a lot of burden bearing and tax paying.  Through the 1950s and 1960s there was a decent return on the effort.  As tax and spend liberalism was working quite well thank you, LBJ doubled down on it, taking it beyond a reasonable point.  The 1970s brought with it a bunch of failures.  Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the hostage crisis, the oil crisis, stagflation all lead to Carter's National Malaise.  This broke the nigh on endless optimism and energy not only of the blue boomers, but all generations that lived through the times, including even the GIs.  Reagan's call for lower taxes and smaller government was a major reflection of this loss of greatness,  There was also 'future shock'.  There had been too many changes in too short a time, and a lot of folk wanted stability and tradition.  Thus, the red boomers and red other generations checked the onrush of change  of the awakening, such as the women's movement and the civil rights movement.  While the blue boomers and other blue generations would rise in outrage should the red factions try to roll back the hard won gains of the awakening, the push for continued improvement and change was gone.  

Music also reflects the change.  During the peak of the awakening folk and rock music often involved itself in protest and idealism.  The Nixon disillusionment might be well marked by Carol King's Tapestry album.  Think through the various titles.  They were about self fulfillment and personal issues.  While the unravelling and the younger generations are about selfishness and self interest, this isn't altogether bad, has left behind some things that are worthy.  While I'm one to acknowledge that 95% of anything is garbage, except perhaps disco, which achieved a higher percentage, Tapestry reflects the non-garbage aspect of the supposed "cocaine based bout of hedonism".  People were stepping back from the intense emotion and trauma of the awakening, trying to find their own lives.  

While I admire and approve of what came out of the awakening time period in terms of things like civil rights, women's rights, the breaking of the domino theory and the environmental movement, you can't go all out petal to the floor indefinitely.  The awakening was intense.  The red boomers and red other generations had had enough.  It was time to abandon greatness and have a vacation.  This vacation, in my opinion, can't go on forever.

Galen and Eric tend to indulge in what I call 'vile stereotypes'.  They have spliced together the worst aspects of members of their opposite cultures into ugly caricatures, and will try to sell their venom as if it represents the culture of their political rivals.  They are highly partisan and as such are making no attempt to understand or sympathize with people who disagree with them.  If you are trying to understand the United States by splicing together Eric's vile stenotypes of red America and Galen's vile stenotypes of blue, you're not going to get a true impression.  You are going to get distorted lies and hate.  This will tell you a great deal about how partisan thinkers are full of lies and hate, but won't tell you all that much about Americans.  If you are going to pay attention to the vile stereotypes, at least balance it with what blue folk say about blue folk, and what red folk say about red folk.  You will get far better understanding of both groups if you listen to what they say about themselves rather than what is said about them by those who hate them.

The awakening was a brief though glorious dream time.  Eric is in some ways an echo of it.  Not a total echo.  Most blue boomers aren't into astrology or mysticism.  Eric has become something of a hawk of late, which is not representative of the old anti-war hippies.  Most blue boomers did grow out of the awakening mood, and got into wives, family, jobs and (shudder) disco.  They in time outgrew the disco as well.  As much as anyone on this forum, though, Eric might give you some impression of hippie culture.  I'm a blue boomer too, though.  Not all blue boomers are totally alike.  Beware vile stereotypes.  Don't judge the United States as a scrambled collection of hateful partisan propaganda.