Presidential election, 2016

[Warren Dew]

(11-14-2016, 02:08 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 03:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 02:35 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 01:24 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 12:25 AM)Galen Wrote: That is because you are not being an idiot or condescending the way most Boomers are.  You must be one of the exceptions to the rule that I encounter occasionally.   My attitude toward Eric the Obtuse and some others is a product of me not suffering fools gladly.

Plenty of people of all generations are idiots, though boomers may be more insistent about any idiotic positions they hold.

Condescension, yes, though GIs also tended to be condescending.  Specifically, GIs tended to be condescending when taking positions that they knew - or perhaps "knew" - to be true, but when they didn't know the reasons why those positions were true.  Boomers may be condescending even when they do know the reasoning, but just can't be bothered to discuss it.

The GIs on the other hand were generally very competent and so I have fewer problems with their condescension.  When they were wrong is was rare and very spectacular.  In the end GIs tended respond to reality.  I rather liked them in spite of these flaws because of their basic sanity.

I'm curious where you got that impression; that wasn't my experience.  My experience was that GIs understood some things, but failed to understand other things despite their being obvious.  On the whole, they were probably comparably competent on a relative scale as their presidents were.  Johnson, Nixon, and Carter were incompetent to varying degrees; Reagan was exceptionally competent and Kennedy might have been competent had he had more time.  The overall average is probably slightly subpar relative to other generations.

With respect to political leaders, I think the primary difference with boomers was that GI presidents generally tried to improve things for the nation as a whole, even where they failed, and with the possible exception of Johnson; Boomer presidents to date were more interested in improving things for their political party at the cost of political opponents.  But I don't know if you're talking about political leaders or personal acquaintances.

I am curious as to what common things you think GIs did not understand.

I think it was different things for different GIs.

For Nixon, it was that price controls would fail, either through shortages or some other way.

For some GIs I knew, it was that cigarette butts could start fires.  They seemed to believe spontaneous combustion was pretty common and could not have been started by the cigarette butts involved in the situations.

I ran into a lot of other odd and not very consequential examples like the latter when I was a kid, but don't remember most of them now.  Maybe if I dredge some up from memory, I'll post them too.