We, the Baby boomers, are going to have to give up some things in order to keep the nation going. I understood this before I read “That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World it Invented” but the book reinforced my belief.
I can hear the yelling and can see the reddened faces. Yeah, we earned our Social Security and Medicare. We did. That’s true. We supported and continue to support the retirement of the so-called Greatest Generation so we should get ours. Makes sense, in part.
Many in the Greatest Generation were squeezed, and worse, by the Great Depression and then they fell into the hell of WWII. There were many many patriots (real ones, not the selfish screamers of today) and good people in my parents generation. It can be argued that they saved the free world, worked hard, saved, and are reaping some rewards from their younger lives. I’m all for it.
We Boomers, many of us, grew up in a fairly idyllic world. I come from a family that was very working class. My dad and mom never had a new car, a new house, or a foreign vacation. We ate a lot of beans, cornbread, lunch meat, and food that my dad brought home from hunting and fishing. No big deal. I was safe and happy and enjoyed my life. Got my first job, assisting on a paper route, when I was 12. I’ve had a job ever since except for on 6 week period when I had to go on a field class in college. Always paid my taxes, never got fired, gave honest work. Many of us did the same. I know that almost all of my friends and acquaintances did so.
So why should we give up what we feel that we’ve earned?
The bottom line answer is because we have to. There’s no real choice. We’re going to have to give in order to preserve the nation for our kids. No amount of complaining nor feeling cheated will change that. We know that we had “off-budget” wars and that millionaires and billionaires made off with more billions after committing criminal acts in banking, real estate, and defense contracts. That makes me angry. I feel the unfairness.
The Greatest Generation (GG) and the right-wing talk radio types like to say that we Baby Boomers (BB) have a sense of entitlement and that we never gave to the nation. I’d like to address that a little although it’s sort of like arguing against myself. We were buzzing along in the early 1960’s, scandalizing our parents as all generations do. Then the GG decided that there was a huge threat to our security in Vietnam and began to send we BB off to fight their war for them. It was folly and insanity from day one. Both political parties magnified our involvement in the war. It was the first war in which the enemy wore the clothing of the civilians and exactly blended in with the civilians. That fact alone makes a war unwinnable. (A lesson we have not learned, by the way.)
We BB were frightened and angry and we rebelled. Reason had no value. Protest and rebellion were the way we would save ourselves. Remember … we were drafted and sent off to die. Most of us know many friends who died in Vietnam and of others who came home damaged. I avoided the war by being in the Army Reserve. I was extremely lucky. A month later and I would not have been allowed in. I have two dead friends who didn’t make that cut.
My generation did give. We did contribute. That’s not the only time or way. We worked and paid our taxes. There have been other, smaller wars. We suffered through the lies of Nixon and the worship of the false idol Reagan and the weakness of Carter and more.
But now we’re watching our nation falter and we can choose to suck it dry or we can choose to let go of a little of what we earned. But … BUT .. we have to insist that this be balanced. It cannot fall just to we who worked for an honest wage to support the nation. Big business, the wealthy, unions, government workers, all of us will have to grow up and drop our armor and reward the nation that underlies it all.
Someone, it seems, has to go first … to be the first to give. Show me a fair plan Congress or Mr. President. Make it airtight, simple and brief … no escape, no loopholes, no bull. If it’s over 10 pages long that’s too many words … too much legalese intended to loosen the weave to allow those who rule the nation to escape. We all have to sacrifice or we will allow the country to fall to second world status.
![I know that the loving “Christian” hateful will come out in force now. There are people hungry and suffering in Washington but gathering signatures is far more important to the narrow-minded.
thedailywhat:
Same-Sex Marriage News of the Day: Washington’s House of Representatives voted today 55-43 in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in the state.
This makes the bill effectively a law: The state Senate passed it last week, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has already stated publicly that she intends to sign it right away.
However, same-sex couples would have to wait at least until June before they can get married — and that’s only if opponents of gay rights are unsuccessful in obtaining the required number of signatures necessary for a referendum.
If they succeed, same-sex couples in Washington will have to wait until the state’s voters decide their fate at the ballot in November. The latest poll numbers show an near-even split between those would approve same-sex marriages and those who would ban them.
Today’s vote in Washington comes 24 hours after California’s 9th Circuit Court upheld a previous ruling declaring the state’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional.
[king5 / photo: gg.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz3nf0DYow1qzpwi0o1_1280.jpg)
![thedailywhat:
Unfriendly Policy of the Day: Richard Metzger @ Dangerous Minds recently received a rather puzzling e-mail from Facebook, informing him that a photo his site posted on Facebook had been removed for violating “Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” which prohibits “shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content.”
The photo in question? Two men kissing (above).
It gets worse: The photo was associated with a post on his site concerning a London-based “kiss-in” organized to protest the mistreatment of two gay patrons of The John Snow pub — a protest which originated on Facebook. The John Snow protest page has since been removed as well.
Facebook, by the way, does not respond to violation reports with an automatic removal. According to the Facebook Help Center, an administrator “looks into each report thoroughly in order to decide the appropriate course of action,” only removing the offending content if a violation has occurred. So make of that what you will.
[d|m / gawker.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljtlrbow7C1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
