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Podcast: The Baby Boomers weren't heroes


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2017 Apr 16, 2:47am   4,419 views  20 comments

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My father had a low draft number and always told me he couldn’t see himself trudging through the jungle with a machete. It was the early ‘70s and Vietnam would be over soon, but young Americans were still dying in Southeast Asia. So dad joined the Navy and served aboard the USS Enterprise. Unlike a lot of the other men of his generation and demographic, dad did his duty.

While dad sweated on the Pacific Ocean and learned the joys of monsoon season, millions of other American men protested the unjust, expensive and bloody war and helped bring it to an end. The popular conception of that period is one of free love and political turmoil. It was an era when old men started unpopular wars and the righteous stayed behind.

But that’s not an accurate picture, according to this week’s War College guest, Bruce Cannon Gibney. He lays out the case against the Boomer’s collective memory in his new book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.”

Gibney shows Boomers overwhelmingly supported the war until they had to serve in it. Worse, most who wanted to avoid the war could seek conscientious objector status but instead abused the deferment system. From dodging down, class privilege to officer bounties, Gibney busts the myths of one of America’s favorite sacred cows.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-warcollege-13apr-idUSKBN17F22U

#War #Boomers

Funny thing - just like the Boomers we have a lot of PatNet posters today who support bombing everything and everyone until they or a family member have to serve - why is that ?

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1   NDrLoR   2017 Apr 16, 7:52am  

anonymous says

Bruce Cannon Gibney. He lays out the case against the Boomer’s collective memory in his new book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.”

Great book--I'm reading page 64. Just finished the draft dodging part.

2   Ceffer   2017 Apr 16, 9:50am  

KILL THE BOOMFUCKS! KILL THEM ALL!

3   MisdemeanorRebel   2017 Apr 16, 12:25pm  

jazz music says

International polls findings show that America is seen as the number one threat to world peace.

Or simple propaganda, like babies in incubators and WMDs.

anonymous says

Make sure to repeat daily if necessary how much skin all of the congress and other officials families have in the game and let's not forget the CEOs etc. of the Arms Manufacturers and DoD contractors.

That's the problem with no draft. And a fair draft, that takes no consideration of education. In fact, in anything, college students should be picked first. And definitely females.

4   marcus   2017 Apr 16, 1:06pm  

Great. Another article and thread generalizing about how much baby boomer suck.

Wait, is the author saying citizens are more likely to support a war if they don't have to actually go fight in it ? Wow ! Who would have thought.

5   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 1:10pm  

anonymous says

Boomers overwhelmingly supported the war until they had to serve in it

...and then started loving every war when they no longer were subject to the draft.

Boomers are the biggest generation of hypocrites. As bad as many Millennials SJW are, at least that generation overall is much better than the Boomers.

6   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 1:15pm  

anonymous says

So dad joined the Navy and served aboard the USS Enterprise.

OMG! Awesome!

www.youtube.com/embed/R-oREAaj-HA

7   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 1:34pm  

anonymous says

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-warcollege-13apr-idUSKBN17F22U

Damn good podcast. I learned a lot. It's amazing how much the 1960s and 1970s are whitewashed.

8   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 1:41pm  

Holy shit, "fragging" is a term that comes from Baby Boomer soldiers traitor-killing their lieutenants. And I thought that term started with first person shooter games.

9   marcus   2017 Apr 16, 1:51pm  

Dan8267 says

Boomers are the biggest generation of hypocrites

I still take issue with such generalizations about boomers, although I must admit that with the election of Donald Trump as President, I have less ground to stand on.

10   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 1:55pm  

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TlsbP3AZL.SX329_BO1,204,203,200.jpg

What an awesome title of a book. The fact that it got three stars on Amazon despite every self-centered Baby Boomer downvoting it says a lot. Whenever you have half the votes being 5-stars and half the votes being 1-stars, you know the detractors are pissed off about the content and the content must be compelling.

11   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 2:08pm  

marcus says

I still take issue with such generalizations about boomers

Without generalizations, no book on any subject matter could ever be written. A generalization does not state that every single person in the group fits the generalization. That's a straw man argument. A generalization states that the group overall behaves with certain attributes.

It is prejudice to judge an individual based on a group. It is wisdom to judge a group based on the aggregated behavior of its members.

Don't tell me that you don't negatively judge Nazis as a group. Sure, an individual Nazi soldier or commander could strongly object to Hitler and may only be trying to defend his country, but it's reasonable to overall judge Nazis as the bad guys.

Baby Boomers don't like how they are now going down in history. Tough shit. They had their entire lifetimes to choose to make the world a better place, and they always and continue to be selfish and self-centered. They wiped out half of all wildlife on the planet. They polluted the Earth like a toilet. They started countless wars after draft-dodging their own. They sold out the entire middle class and the infrastructure of our economy just to make a quick buck. Every one of their leaders has been corrupt and evil and hypocritical. Yet they like to paint themselves as the saviors of humanity. Never before or since has there been such a despicable generation. And, of course, there are individual Baby Boomers who are not vile, some even great people, but overall the generation is the worst ever, and hopefully there will never again be such a selfish generation. They deserve to go down in history as the deplorable and selfish crooks they are.

I don't have a high opinion of my generation as it is too close to the Boomers, but at least Gen X isn't as bad. The Millennials are a bit better. So I have hope that the poison the Boomers created is slowly being removed from society. I'm quite hopeful of the next generation, people who have been born in the past 10 years. I may live long enough to see them come into power, and as long as we haven't destroyed humanity before that happens, I think they'll do a lot better job than anyone born in the 20th century did.

12   marcus   2017 Apr 16, 2:10pm  

Dan8267 says

What an awesome title of a book

Coincidence, I just read this, by the same guy.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html

I wouldn't downvote it, he makes a compelling argument. But arguments could be constructed saying the opposite, cting endless examples of great works in technology and social spheres by boomers. We're talking an entire generation. My thesis is that on the one hand there is something to this:

Boomers weren’t genetically predestined to be dysfunctional; they were conditioned to be. They were the first generation to be raised permissively, the first reared on television and subject to its developmental harms, and the only living group raised in an era of seemingly effortless prosperity. Can too much license, TV, and unearned wealth distort personalities? May I suggest looking south toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

And there are surely other causes too, having to do with many social transformations occurring at the time. But ultimately some of this must have to do with the level of wealth and prosperity, and that any generation put in the some place would likely fuck it up. People live in bubbles of family and friends and are too easy to manipulate, when it comes to issues such as government policies.

He argues that a lot of boomers are sociopaths. I would argue that a lot of boomer politicians are sociopaths, and that a lot of boomers are gullible. But both are probably just as true for other generations.

Btw, I didn't read his book, but from the article, I would probably give it a medium number of stars, even if I dissagree with his thesis.

13   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 2:20pm  

jazz music says

It's traditional for USA to concoct a false flag operation to reduce popular outrage and force our country to war.

False flag operations should be considered capital war crimes. Not only are they crimes against humanity, but also they completely destroy the ability of the public to ever accept anything the military or president says as being truthful. This has an enormous negative impact on our national security. For example, if Assad has used chemical weapons on civilians, the recent military actions are justified, but how can the American public believe what our government is saying? And if there is any doubt, the American people must err on the side of safety and oppose all military actions by our government. False flag operations make it impossible for the public to support the military when a real threat occurs. It's the boy who cried wolf principle. False flag operations compromise our national security and should therefore be considered treason.

14   Dan8267   2017 Apr 16, 2:21pm  

jazz music says

America is the most fearful country in the world.

Violence is the most used tool of the coward.

15   marcus   2017 Apr 16, 2:27pm  

Dan8267 says

Baby Boomers don't like how they are now going down in history. Tough shit.

WE have developed entire systems that are fucked up, and a lot of it can be traced back to individual assholes that happened to be members of the so called "greatest generation." Many of our countries questionable deeds in banana republics, middle east and elsewhere can be traced back to the pre-boomer times, as can much of what bankers get blamed for. How much of pre-boomer wars can be blamed on manipulation by the 1%, banks and other powerful and ENTRENCHED interests ?

Was the third reich the fault of a particular generation of Germans ? OR was it some combination of conditions, small groups of powerful corrupt interests, and human nature ? I would argue that it's more about the latter. Who knows, maybe even interests outside of Germany were a factor.

Correlation is easy to confuse with causation. But yes, the are a lot of bad developments in the U.S. that one particular cohort born within a certain 18 year time window did not single handedly prevent. That much I will agree with.

16   marcus   2017 Apr 16, 2:48pm  

Keep in mind, boomers are defined as those born in a specific 18 year time frame, whereas at any given time there is about a 60 year age range of voters. The ones that vote in the highest percentages are those in the senior group, say aged 60 to 80. Boomers are not even in that age window yet (they are now 53 - 71) and you might notice that many people think Bernie could have won. I question this, although I think he could have gotten the democratic nomination.

Millennial or gen X historians may be able to somehow successfully blame the boomers for a lot, probably becasue of how much they envy the timing boomers had (which is over rated). But the truth is that some of the highest political influence that boomers will have, is still in the future.

17   NDrLoR   2017 Apr 16, 3:47pm  

marcus says

pre-boomer wars can be blamed on manipulation by the 1%, banks and other powerful and ENTRENCHED interests

And the so-called Greatest Generation. That name came about only because the mists of time have dimmed memory, many if not most are at least in their late 80's and older and are dying right and left and aren't perceived as being very harmful. Every one instrumental in Vietnam were of the generation born roughly between 1905 and 1925--LBJ, 1908, Robert "Rimless glassed fool" McNamara, 1917; Gen. William "I think we can win this thing if I have just 25,000 more boots on the ground" Westmoreland, 1912,

marcus says

Was the third reich the fault of a particular generation of Germans ? OR was it some combination of conditions, small groups of powerful corrupt interests, and human nature ?

Probably a bit of all combined. I've always understood that it was the demand for reparations following the First World War that so devastated their economy with the hyper-inflation that planted the seeds of resentment caused Hitler to rise in the early 1930's--he had his famous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 at the worst of inflation. They seemed to have gotten it under control fairly quickly, though. Some say there's something inherent in the German personality that tends towards authoritarianism much more than other races. There's the 1925 story that has been re-published called Monsters of Weimar, one about Fritz Haarman, a sexual sadist who savagely murdered some 30 or more young men between about 1918 and 1924 and was hanged in 1925. Then there was the child predator Peter Kurten, the Vampire of Dusseldorf, whose story was told in a 1931 German film in which Peter Lorre played Kurten.

This is a black and white silent film made of a day in 1927 Berlin from dawn to dusk, showing people going about their every day lives. It could as easily be any large American city of 1927--it's hard to believe the nightmare that they'll be facing in just ten years time and you have to wonder how many lost their lives in the ensuing horror, especially the male children as they will be the ones most susceptible to the dangers of the war or if they'll be among that infamous number of young Nazis who were "just following orders", or that a 37 year old Hitler could be walking among the crowd:

www.youtube.com/embed/7VWRBvre4ak

18   HEY YOU   2017 Apr 16, 8:31pm  

anonymous says

Gibney shows Boomers overwhelmingly supported the war until they had to serve in it.

Know anyone that got 5 deferments?
......
"How the baby boomers destroyed everything"
Voting Democratic or Republican.

marcus says

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html

19   Ceffer   2017 Apr 17, 10:29am  

Ironman says

Ceffer says

KILL THE BOOMFUCKS! KILL THEM ALL!

But then who's basement will you be able to live in?

I will always have a basement to live in. My Momeee luvs me!

20   Blurtman   2017 Apr 17, 11:28am  

Send the BOOMFUCKS to a realtor re-education camp in Pyongyang!

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