05-15-2019, 01:10 AM
(05-14-2019, 09:16 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Really worse than a Nomad childhood?
GI childhood was hardscrabble, except among elite families, compared to anything that later generations knew. Not until the end of WWII did GI life get good. Then again, the GI generation was the muscle behind rebuilding America in the Depression and obviously in defeating the Axis. The GI Generation earned everythhing it got by making America materially better.
If it is a matter of warmth in families and clear structure, GI's got the right direction. The Sexual Revolution messed up Generation X badly due to the epidemic of divorce.
The Boom Generation got it good, but Boom leadership has largely been the pigs who devoured the perals cast in front of them. Although there are some good analogues between Boomers and earlier generations in culture (Stephen King against Edgar Allan Poe), it is hard to see any Boom political leaders analogous to Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, Abraham Lincoln, or FDR. We have as two of 'our' Presidents the awful George W. Bush and the abominable Donald Trump.
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.