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Beaker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:43 PM
Original message
the "greatest generation"?
I always wince when I hear the generation that fought WWII being referred to as "The Greatest Generation"...didn't they also set the "keeping up with the Jones" tone that set us on the course to becoming the resource-hogging conspicuous consumers we are today on the world scene?
Their generation made a lot of the short-sighted decisions that made us the oil-dependent war-mongering pariah of the world.
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rkc3 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:47 PM
Response to Original message
1. Wouldn't it be nice if...
dumbya decided the best way to deal with terrorists is to eradicate our need for their oil?

Hybrid cars for all, incentives for recycling, and so on. It's too bad you're considered a environmental terrorist for even having these thoughts.
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mark414 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:48 PM
Response to Original message
2. i wouldn't say that
i think "the greatest generation," having grown up in the depression and fought world war II worked hard to give their kids (the baby boomers) everything they could, to make life better than it was for themselves. this in turn gave the baby boomers, as a whole, take on the "me me me" attitude.

we see this now in people talking about their "right" to drive low-mileage SUV's and all our cuts in social services in the name of less taxes, just to name a couple.

i once heard someone say that the greatest generation has yet to be born.

as a 19 year old, i believe the greatest generation will be that of my grandchildren. bigotry (passed down from the whole squeaky clean image of the 50's) will start to fade away (as evidenced by the difference in generations on the gay marriage debate). i believe that as we grow as a society we will become a more and more progressive, liberal country.
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Servo300 Donating Member (653 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:48 PM
Response to Original message
3. Every generation...
has its strong and weak points.
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Jack from Charlotte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:25 PM
Response to Reply #3
21. There's some good and some bad in almost everything....
Brokaw's made a bundle out of his "greatest generation" characterization. The went through the Depression and fought WWII. However, they also brought us Vietnam. Johnson, Nixon and all those WWII alums in congress sent my generation to that war. Someone from that Greatest Generation needs to own up to it.

Question..... Which was easier to do..... sign up and fight for your country after it was attacked or fight in the Viet Nam War especially when the VAN War?

Andy Rooney said his isn't eh Greatest Generation.... said the VAN War Generation never had the chance TO fight the "Good War." And had we had too, we'd have done as well.
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Terran Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 03:56 PM
Response to Reply #3
31. Yes, but
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 03:56 PM by dirk
Not every generation gets the opportunity to save the world from military domination by brutal fascist murders. The Greatest Generation is an entirely appropriate moniker, IMO. No one else has done anything like it since.
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slackmaster Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:50 PM
Response to Original message
4. They made it possible for their kids to be lazy
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 12:50 PM by slackmaster
People like me, age 46, who got a premium college education for next to nothing and have never had to fight very hard to have decent food and housing, a job, and a safe country to live in.

If you REALLY want to diminish the accomplishments of the World War II generation you have to consider what the world might be like if the allies had LOST the war, if the Nazis had kept control of Europe and developed the atomic bomb, etc.
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Mechatanketra Donating Member (903 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:55 PM
Response to Reply #4
38. Yeah, and what if we were invaded by aliens the year after?
If you REALLY want to diminish the accomplishments of the World War II generation you have to consider what the world might be like if the allies had LOST the war, if the Nazis had kept control of Europe and developed the atomic bomb, etc.

Fah. Essentially, Germany was doomed the moment they trashed the nonaggression pact. If America deserves any special credit for WWII, it's not saving Europe from a Nazi victory, but a Soviet victory.

It's kinda hard for me to romanticize WWII knowing that the same country credited with "saving the world from the Nazis" then saved a boatload of Nazis from the vengeful world, so they could spy on (and lie about) the Russians for us.

Ultimately, the "Greatest Generation" failed at the one worthwhile goal of WWII, the "war to end all wars": keeping it from happening again.
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Burma Jones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:52 PM
Response to Original message
5. Ummmmmmm
They did make it through the Depression without resorting to fascism, and then defeated Tojo and Hitler.

It seems to me that "keeping up with the Jonses" was a problem at least as far back as Moses, as there is a specific Commandment against it.

The "greatest" generation voted Democratic more often than subsequent generations. And they were not the generation that put Reagan in the White House, that would be the Boomers.

But, Greatest Generation was some bullshit from some Marketing asshole to help Tom Brokaw make more money......
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:56 PM
Response to Reply #5
8. That's the thing that bugs me, the trademarking of social phenemona
Why do we need to label everything and turn it into a commodity? We've diminished our history because of it. Referring to a whole generation with a superlative like "greatest" is an insult to every other generation, whether or not they deserve it.
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Burma Jones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:55 PM
Response to Reply #8
14. It's an insult to me too
But, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public (that goes pretty much worldwide)
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DNA Donating Member (443 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 03:56 PM
Response to Reply #5
32. Ummm
Where did you get the notion "they" did not resort to fascism? Some of them didn't. Some of them were the very fascists of... well, their generation, which was the generation of fascism, as I recall. Don't get me wrong. Fascism is alive and well today, but let's not oversimplify the past and reduce it to soundbites. The McCarthy Era, Cointelpro, fascism, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Japanese internment, Tuskegee, the KKK... These all belong to the "greatest" generation too. Not just the heroic stuff.
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Burma Jones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 07:04 PM
Response to Reply #32
39. And that same generation Humiliated McCarthy
Passed the Voting Rights Act too.

I would put Japanese internment at the feet of an earlier generation

The steps we took against Communism in the immediate postwar era were understandable in light of the massacres under Stalin and Mao.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well, nothing particularly fascist about dropping the bomb. I can't say that I wouldn't have done it at the time.
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DNA Donating Member (443 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 08:06 PM
Response to Reply #39
44. You don't get it.
The fascists were a part of the same generation as the anti-fascists.
As a group, they did some great things and some not so great things and some really awful things.

And your rationalizations do not make what the generation in question did right. They only prove you are willing to rationalize in order to not have to change your opinion.
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cally Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:52 PM
Response to Original message
6. Thank you!
They were not the "greatest generation." The phrase drives me crazy. I honor them for surviving the depression and the WWs. It's also the generation who allowed the exploitation of the environment, passing on huge debt, mass media exploitation, and allowing the women who gave to the war effort to be marginalized a few years later. I sure hope they are not the greatest generation.
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happynewyear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 07:54 PM
Response to Reply #6
43. well it doesn't seem they did women any good
Just in general I am speaking. The women of this generation have been very repressed. Those still alive are a bit more forthcoming but tend to live in the shadow of a husband if one is still around.

The "greatest generation" was indeed a great generation - a patriotic people that wanted to soar above the despair of depression and poverty (which was only for some btw). Roosevelt drove their dream home for them, make no mistake.

All in all, a hard working batch of folks that didn't do one thing for women's rights and not a whole lot for minorities either. That is my biggest complaint - a very closeted lifestyle and sense of being IMO. It could not persist as we now are seeing.
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jdsmith Donating Member (612 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 12:53 PM
Response to Original message
7. Joseph Ellis: there's something to be said for the generation of 1776
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tom_paine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:59 PM
Response to Reply #7
15. The current generation of Amerikan Imperial Subjects aren't worthy
to lick the boots of the 1776 Generation.

Or the WWII Generation, considering the Imperial Subjects are now engrossed in playing the Good Germans to Bushevik Hitler "kinder and gentler".

Come to think of it, I know know which generations were the Greatest of American History, but we who handed our Liberty and Constitution to Imperial Tyrants, are the WORST GENERATION(S).
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Feanorcurufinwe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:00 PM
Response to Original message
9. It is an example of self-congratulation.
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 01:03 PM by Feanorcurufinwe
If in order to feel good about themselves, they have to feel like they are better than every other generation, that is their problem, not mine.

And if others want to sycophantically kiss up to their elders, I don't have a problem with that, either.

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jdsmith Donating Member (612 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:06 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. I'm not certain that it's their doing
From many appearances, the "greatest gen" stuff began in the early/mid-nineties when some middle-aged guys (Brokaw, Spielberg) notinced that their dads and men of their dads' generation were dying--so it has always seemed to me a sort of "let's make up before you die" thing (like the game of catch at the end of _Field of Dreams_) that the WW2 generation latched onto.
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Feanorcurufinwe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:14 PM
Response to Reply #11
13. I agree. The sycophants started it. nt
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Media_Lies_Daily Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:59 PM
Response to Reply #11
16. Bingo.
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DrWeird Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:02 PM
Response to Original message
10. Ever notice how ads on network news are for...
Centrum Silver and adult diapers?

That book was a major coup from a network anchor for ratings.
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 01:08 PM
Response to Reply #10
12. Excellent observation, doctor!
:toast:
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LibDemAlways Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 07:27 PM
Response to Reply #10
41. Media people will tell you that
"news skews old" - meaning news programs attract an older audience - thus the ads for geriatric products.
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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:02 PM
Response to Original message
17. Compared to greedy, self-absorbed baby-boomers...
They made a lot more sacrifices for their country and lived more frugally.

I think the WW2 generation felt like living a little after 4 years of austerity & grief, but no generation was ever as self-indulgent as the boomers. They're the ones who made Reagan happen.
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:08 PM
Response to Reply #17
18. You're demonstrating why this phony title is socially irresponsible.
Under the guise of making a "positive" statement about his parent's generation, Brokaw contributed to creating the conditions for trashing every other generation--particularly the one that changed the world in its own radical way in 1968.
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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:13 PM
Response to Reply #18
19. Sorry, I wasn't aware that anything really changed in 68.
Some people protested, some people partied, some got shot by the national guard, but it wasn't long before they were every bit as greedy and establishment as their parents...

The system stayed the same - unfettered capitalism, the military industrial complex - exactly WHAT changed in 1968, other than fashions?
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:21 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. Consider race relations before and after 1968
consider relations bewteen men and women, between generations, bewteen heterosexuals and homosexuals, anglos and hispanics, etc. ... 1968 represented a revolution in power relationships--those who had been in power were forced to yield it or share it.

Reagan was a reaction to 1968. Bush Jr. is a reaction to 1968. But 1968 will probably ultimately prevail because it's very difficult to shove liberation back into the bottle.
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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:27 PM
Response to Reply #20
23. The rich had all the power then, they have all the power now.
All the other stuff was to manipulate poor whites to think that they had some sort of importance. Our cities are still segregated... Sure there are a few blacks and women in positions of power - but they screw the little guy just as eagerly as old white men.
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:29 PM
Response to Reply #23
24. And the "greatest" generation weren't just as good at screwing the poor?
They screwed the poor a little more "greatly," I suppose.
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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:34 PM
Response to Reply #24
25. During WWII, the top tax rate was 90+%
EVERYBODY participated in rationing, not just the poor. There were fewer ways to get out of the draft. Taxation was more equitable, progress WAS being made on civil rights.

It was the boomers who decided it was necessary to slash taxes for the super-rich and raise payroll, state and local taxes on poor people. The boomer generation is all pious talk, and no follow-through. I pray my generation will be better, but I doubt it...
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:39 PM
Response to Reply #25
27. The Greatest Generation wasn't in power during WWII.
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 02:39 PM by BurtWorm
That was Roosevelt's generation. The so-called Greatest Generation is the one that came of age during the depression and fought the Second World War. Give them credit for fighting the war, but not for the progressive income tax rate. It was the Greatest Generation (Reagan, Bush I, O'Neill, Dole) that lowered the rate on the highest incomes.

Your ire is really misplaced. I don't get it.

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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 03:42 PM
Response to Reply #27
28. It was the boomers who voted in force for the Raygun disaster.
It was the boomers who started the American tradition of divorce at the drop of a hat - leaving latchkey kids alone while playing tennis & networking - they made self-indulgence socially acceptable and self - sacrifice "uncool".
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DNA Donating Member (443 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 03:50 PM
Response to Reply #28
29. Please, Delano
The problem is you can't label an entire generation. The so-called "greatest" generation is no greater than any other, and the so-called baby-boom generation has its share of heroes and villains. The whole generation is not the awful lot you claim it (us) to be. In fact, many things have improved under the current generation, yet you choose to overlook it. I don't think the families of blacks and voting rights workers killed in the Deep South during the tenure of the "greatest" generation would agree with your assessment of the terrible baby-boomers. Many, many, many things happen during a generation (in theory, 15 years). Some of those things are good. Some of those things are, to quote Shrub, downright evil.
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Delano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 03:56 PM
Response to Reply #29
30. Okayfine. I haven't called the WWII generation the "greatest"
But I do think they were more conscientious than the boomers. The boomers were my parents and parent's friends. In general nice people, but VERY self-indulgent and neglectful of their children. I grew up in an upper & middle-class neighborhood, so that may not be the norm for all socioeconomic strata, but I was NOT IMPRESSED.
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Bridget Burke Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:04 PM
Response to Reply #30
34. A lot of us "Boomers" didn't live in your neighborhood.
You obviously haven't gotten out much.


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DNA Donating Member (443 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:05 PM
Response to Reply #30
35. Some were more conscientious.
Some were less conscientious. The men who harassed Rosa Parks were members of the greatest generation. The men who killed and intimidated voting rights workers in the South were members of the greatest generation. The men who killed Emmett Till and carved his eyes out for allegedly whistling at a white woman were members of the greatest generation. While the greatest generation was in power, juries would routinely blame rape victims for the crime committed against them, gay bars were regularly raided just for the thrill of tormenting queers, and if you were black or Latino, you could forget about buying a house in a white neighborhood. It wasn't until the unconscientious baby-boomers started creating a stir that many of these social attitudes started to change.
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:05 PM
Response to Reply #29
36. Well said. This labelling of generations is an oversimplification
and a disservice and insult to Americans of all ages.
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Beaker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:01 PM
Response to Reply #17
33. BUT-
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 04:04 PM by Beaker
it was the supposed "Greatest Generation" that gave birth to the baby boomers, and raised them, molded them and instilled in them the set of (non-)values and arrogant world view that made them what they are, and gave us the reputation we now have.

they may have "won the war" but they failed miserably at preparing the next generation for it's stewardship.
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Az Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:26 PM
Response to Original message
22. Nostalgia and the absense of awareness
People wax nostalgic for past times because the nature of our society is to continually dismantle precepts held in previous generations. Thus what once seemed and easier time is now seen as one built upon repression. But those that lived the privileged life during those times did not experience the oppression. Instead they experienced a time of harmony and happiness. They were not aware of the horrors that kept their happiness in place.

Thus when people examine the current social condition they see it as topsy turvy and chaotic. They remember the positive aspects of the society of old and having never experienced the negative exclude it from their memories.

Progress brings change. Change is uncomfortable to those not experiencing oppression. Thus when the change introduces discomfort where they were comfortable they view the change as negative. When enough hostility builds up the society begins to reject progress and longs for a return to good old fashion values. And if those that benefitted from oppressing others out number the minorities enough they can force their return to the old ways.
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ScreamingMeemie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 02:38 PM
Response to Original message
26. Each generation has its heroes. I give my grandparents' generation
kudos for survival, for teamwork, for resilience. :hi:
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theboss Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 04:20 PM
Response to Original message
37. It wasn't just the war
It was what happened afterwards thanks largely to the GI Bill (still probably the single greatest piece of legislation this country ever passed). The economic output, the rise in standards of living, the comfort level of life, the assimilation of numerous ethnic groups, the education of the population. All these things happened at a rate unpredented after the war.
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ikojo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 07:10 PM
Response to Original message
40. They are also the generation that allegedly raised the most
SPOILED and CATERED to generation....the baby boomers. How can they be so great if they foisted a bunch of overgrown kids on the world? George W's daddy is considered to be part of that demographic and he didn't do such a good job of raising the next generation of Bushes...

Neil...S&L thief
Jeb....aided in the theft of a presidential election
Shrub..I think we all know his crimes....


A must read on Bush family values....

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1992/09/bushboys.html
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Piperay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-07-04 07:35 PM
Response to Original message
42. That is such a bunch of BS...
Edited on Mon Jun-07-04 07:37 PM by Piperay
so insulting to all the generations that came before and since. What about the generation that formed the USA or the one that fought to make it an independent nation or the one that preseved the nation during the Civil War, also the immigrant generation that left their homes to come to a foreign nation and how about the WWI generation which has became over shadowed by the WWII ones. :argh: Plenty of generations have gone through rough times it stinks to put one above another. :mad:
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