>>> dhenwood at panix.com 08/08/01 04:09PM >>>
Ian Murray wrote:
>Well it's tough to make generalizations about such a huge age group,
>but yeah this is precisely the 'complaint' of younger people;
>'Boomers' sold out.
Which boomers? There are plenty of us working for unions, defending the indigent accused, writing for tiny pubs at low rates of pay. And what about the conditions of daily life? Relations between men and women are radically different from what they were just 30 years ago; ditto the status of sexual minorities. The sold-out boomers had something to do with that, no?
((((((((
CB: Shouldn't we boomers have a high standard of self-criticism ? Sure there are a small minority of us who have remained loyal to the progressive cause. But I for one am extremely dissatisfied with the overall location of our polity and economy and culture compared to where one might expect us to be in the war on poverty, against racism, against U.S. militarism and imperialism etc when one considers where the young people's average attitudes and activities were in the 60's and 70's. It would seem that the Clintonians, the Bushites, the Bill Gateses, the stock marketeers , the silicon valleyers, are more representative of the mode for us now. For example, legal services for the indigent have been decimated compared to where they were in the early 70's and where they should be given the trend at that time. Affirmative action has been pretty much crushed compared to the early 70's. There was very little opposition to the wars on Panama, Yugoslavia and Iraq compared to the an! ti-war struggles against the Viet Nam and Central American wars.
Then as you point out below, look at our children. So many are business majors, dot.com CEO's and execs, money-firsters, "capitulators to the money-culture", gangster rap enthusiasts, material girls and boys. Aren't we boomers responsible for them some ? We have raised a new generation that is to the right of our position in our youth.
Of course, this is not a 100% thing in either the boomers or the X'ers, but I am only giving an honest impression of the general trend, and it is not entirely based on the monopoly media picture, but from alternative media and direct contacts. I am not happy to conclude this ,as I must include myself in the failure. But we can only start to turn it around by facing how dismal things are.
I could say that X'ers spent their prime years day trading - or I could cite Andrey Slivka's words from last week's NY Press:
>The dotcom era: a generation's-my generation's-complete capitulation
>to the money culture. This will be the dotcom sector's most lasting
>contribution to the world, and will be as difficult to extricate
>from the strands of our civilization, such as it is, as chewing gum
>is difficult to remove from hair: the concept of a money-culture
>bohemia.
But it'd be cheap to do that, since there are plenty of X'ers who didn't sign on to the money culture.
Doug