You know, we should have seen this coming - GOP is the party of

[zbdent]

the "Me Generation" - the Baby Boomers.

Everything was "Me, me, me." It's all about themselves.

"Screw saving the world, I want my BMW" seems to be the attitude (or now "my SUV"). Notice how many of the fancy cars are leased, not owned? Gotta have the new one.

Most of the Repuke legislation seems to be placating the few, not trying to resolve the problems of the masses. Watch almost every piece of legislation that comes out.

Hell, we had a "charter school" student in the Cleveland/Akron/Canton area who was whining about not being allowed to join the district swim team. He lost his case. Instantly, Repug Kevin Coughlin takes up the kid's case and introduces legislation to try to allow "charter students" the access. Well, with similar logic, then, any business that gets federal funding, should allow me to waltz through their doors at any time, right?

After many years of putting my home and wife ahead of my wishes, I was able to afford MY TOY - a 1976 Corvette, with the original moter and tranny and low mileage. But I made my sacrifices for the greater good - making sure my home was not going to fall apart, making sure it was paid for (so now we will retire with no major bills), making the home more amenable to Mrs. ZBDents' physical limitations.

I could have been a "Me Generation" poster boy - and I would probably have had fond memories of the year or so when I owned "my Corvette".

Republicans are the living embodiment of the "Me Generation". All these people who scoffed at the idea of a president asking for people to put country ahead of self in some cases.

[Pachamama]

1. Good summary....GOP- Party of the Me Generation - Everybody else be damned

:hi:

[coloradodem2005]

2. What happened to the baby boomers?

The same ones who protested Nixon and Vietnam in the 1960's and early 1970's. What the hell happened.

[China_cat]

Most of us have seen our retirements

wiped out in the last few years, our jobs sent overseas and any savings we might have had gone trying to save our homes...or our lives when we've been left with no health insurance.

A lot of us don't have the stamina or the funds to do what we did then. Ok, scratch that about the funds as most of us didn't have diddly then, but we didn't need much, either.

[Zensea]

8. this happens to Every generation

This idea is as old as history, regarding youth protesting and then becoming selfish when they get older.

The boomers aren't any different.

Not all boomers turned into me me me me, either.

I should know, I'm one of them. (1956)
If you are under 30 wait until you're 50 and remember what you thought on this day today.

[starroute]

13. Early boomers not the same as. late boomers

It was the early boomers -- those born between 1946 and about 1953 or 1954 -- who were at the forefront of the 1960's.

It was the late boomers, born from the early 50's to the early 60's, who were raised on 70's self-indulgence and 80's greed and still think they can have it all without paying.

Calling a bunch of people born over an 18 year span a generation doesn't make them one.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. I read an excellent LTTE

not long ago that said the baby boomer's parents' generation is just the opposite. They focused on making the world a better place for their children. Now their children - baby boomers - are not doing the same thing for THEIR children.

[Career Prole]

4. I'm a boomer, and it ain't never been about "me, me, me"...

Are we generalizing a bit here, or has the GOP been statistically shown to be the party of the baby boomers?

[mark414]

5. the baby boomers had a chance to make this country into something great

but you're right, as a whole, it's all about me me me

[Tansy_Gold]

15. the boomers were also the generation sent to Vietnam

and came back to be hated and spit on, remember?

I'm an early boomer -- 1948 -- and I personally find the OP just about as bigoted and closed-minded as any racist crap anywhere else.

Our parents' generation -- mine were born in 26 and 29, hubby's in 22 and 26 -- grew up during the Depression. Some of them had really hard times. Just as they were getting back on their feet economically, they got hit with WW2. My dad and my father in law served; they were in their 20s and had their whole lives ahead of them, but they went. And they came back members of "the greatest generation." They had GI benefits out the wazoo, enough to make the 50s a time of material prosperity for folks who never had it so good before. Plus the benefits of a booming consumer economy.

So they had dreams for their kids, to have it better than the Depression. And those kids, like me and hubby (1946) grew up in a country that was struggling to come to terms with segregation and gender discrimination and fears of nuclear annihilation and then a sucky, sucky war that seemed to be eating us alive with no reason.

We weren't in power in the 60s. We did what we could. A lot of us "dropped out" in the 70s, went counter-culture and stayed there. And some of us never did go over to the left side of the aisle. There were a lot of boooooshes and john o'neills and other chickenhawks even back then, and they had the backing from then onward of the folks in power, the daddy booooshes and the whole neocon machine that was building and building and building under the radar.

The boomers didn't operate in secret. We were out there, never hiding, never making excuses. And now you're blaming us for what was put in motion at least as early as 1964, when not even my husband was old enough to vote? (His dad, an army air corps pilot, came home to Indiana on Christmas Eve, 1945; hubby was born 11 October 1946. You do the math.) Much of the rightwing agenda was in place when Joe McCarthy hald center stage; that wasn't our doing.

Methinks that people who want to paint any one group as "responsible" for what happens are generally looking for easy answers. Why not blame the Gen Xers who didn't vote in 2000? We know the younger voters got out in 2004, but they weren't there in 2000. Maybe we should blame them.

Clinton was a boomer -- shall we blame him? Or Hillary, who was probably at some of the same conference football games I was at in high school?

Our parents grew up in the aftermath of WW1, during the great Depression, and then the holocaust (lower case) of WW2, the atomic bomb, Korea. We got a reprieve, economically, in the 50s, but we then got sent to Vietnam for ten long bloody confusing years. We got the heart ripped out of us. We came back to be called baby killers. We came addicted to drugs and plagued by nightmares. Only when it was too late for a lot of us did someone say hey, these folks were only doing what their country told them to do. It wasn't their fault. Not all of them, anyway.

In spite of that, a lot of us continued to fight -- against Reagan and the crooks of Iran-contra, only to see the steady rise of the right. It sucked in our parents' generation and it sucked in some of us, and the kids coming up behind us didn't seem to care. They were the Alex P. Keatons of the world -- and they weren't boomers. They had easy college money and their boomer parents' expectations. Those born in 1970 didn't go to war, not as a generation. The army put on fancy fireworks shows in Baghdad, and mostly no one died. Abortion was available and the pill was practically free, and if you used some common sense, you could pretty much avoid the big scare, which was AIDS. Life was pretty good if you were born in 1970 and coming of age in the 80s and 90s. There weren't any wars.

There are a lot of us boomers still out there, still fighting, and the way to keep us in the fight when we should be looking forward to our "golden years" is not to bash us for letting *you* down.

And why didn't you follow when we were trying to lead? Huh?


Tansy Gold

(edited to add to rant)

[liberal N proud]

6. I agree,

I have seen this attitude from most of the repukes I come in contact with. I can usually tell a persons political persuasion by the way that talk, it is always what is in it for me and make sure I get mine, the hell with the rest of you.
I have also decided this last election period, I can tell the repukes on the road as well. They are the ones sitting in the left lane going 55 in a 65 zone. They are the ones that do the Slightly Tap On Pedal at the STOP signs, the one that will pull out in front of you just to go 5 under the speed limit.
The are usually the last one to give to the salvation army bell ringers or any other charity not assoicated with helping them aquire more stuff.
There are two Americas, the one that truly cares about the welfare of others and the one that cares about their own welfare only this one mostly made up of repukes by my observations.

[Solly Mack]

7. we called the idiots under Reagan the "me generation"

Solly: A "boomer" from the last of the Baby Booming years here...and it ain't never been about me.

but you make good points

[LeftHander]

9. "Boomeritis"

Ken Wilbur wrote a book on the narcisstic "boomers".

Here is some info on it.

http://www.wie.org/j22/debold.asp

"Boomeritis divides the soul: a desperately narcissistic reliance on the sophistication and comprehension of one's mind over the force of life that animates our hearts. And this division destroys the possibility of the spiritual transformation that our collective evolution demands. "

[Career Prole]

12. "Ken Wilbur wrote a book on the narcisstic 'boomers'... "

I'll let boomer icon Mr. Ed speak for me, "Ohhhh, Wilburrr...
that's horrrrseshit n' you know it." :eyes:

[scarletlib]

10. Sorry--I don't believe the boomers are anymore involved

proportionally speaking with the GOP than any other generation or group of people.

As for me I am a freakin boomer (1949) and I have spent my whole frickin life working for others. My whole life has been social work. Even now I could go to work in business but I chose not to.

I have never been pro big business, me first, gotta have it now, big car driving, more money for me, etc.

I have been green since the 60's, saving electricity and oil via energy conservation, etc.

So I guess you could say I resent your remarks.

[Zensea]

11. Right

"So I guess you could say I resent your remarks."

I don't go quite that far, (I try not to resent this kind of stuff) but I do think it's a very short sighted, ahistoric, naive view of things to blame the boomers, especially in the terms being used here regarding the me-generation. Americans have always been selfish, hell, humans have always been selfish. It didn't just start in the 70s.

[Cleita]

14. As I was born five years before the first baby boomer, I was able to

observe the boomers who came after me. There are actually two types of boomers. There are the ones who joined the peace corp, who fought for equal rights and later against the Vietnam war. These were the liberal boomers. Then there were the sex, drugs and rock n' roll boomers. They hitched on the activist wagon for a while for a ride.

They were the ones who begged on street corners, crashed in other peoples apartments and ate their food. Most of them came from affluent families. A girl I worked with had eight of these parasites crashing in her apartment, doing drugs and living out of her refrigerator, while she was at work, but they had convinced her that they were artists and anti-establishment so they were too good to go to work.

Once the freebies dried up they cut their hair went to work, joined the rat race and never looked back except to vote Republican, because who wants to pay taxes anyway? I do believe what you say about those boomers, but don't blame the ones who risked everything to make a difference and win us a lot of the freedoms, we are rapidly losing again.

[zbdent]

16. For the record

I'm 41 - born in 1963 - the tail end of the "boom".

As I understand it, the "Baby Boomers" are those that fall between:

Conception right after coming home from WWII

and

Conceived before 11/22/1963

Am I correct?