@mhagle

Then we just got sucked up into the greed thing. It is true that the younger generations are suffering from our faults.

"We" didn't "just get sucked up into the greed thing". And the faults involved aren't most of ours, either. Our most corrupt and greedy members did all that, and the faults were theirs and theirs alone. And by the time passed that it always takes to expose that sort of corruption, we and our Millennial children were suffering from it alike.

The distinction where the real breakdown lies is economic class, not birthdate. Same as it ever was.

Don't blame yourself or any other innocent. Remain in solidarity against the genuinely guilty.

I don't know what to say . . . we started out on the right track with war protests and earth day. Then we just got sucked up into the greed thing. It is true that the younger generations are suffering from our faults.

@Raggedy Ann We didn't see the Vietnam War until it was broadcast into our homes at dinner hour. During our time there were civil rights fights for Blacks, women, health care and so much more. There were many actions against the war, and it affected almost every sector of our society.

I didn't understand the Deep State until last year. Only with the release of books, documents, letters and conversations on blogs like this one, could I have even come close.

During any particular time, it is really difficult to understand What Is Going On. Look at our discussions as we try to figure things out.

Even if we have things sorted, then what to do, when those we elect don't carry out our stated wishes. Or we don't have a set of goals and objectives, tactics to make them happen.

Small side bar here: I have the screen shots of Obama's website asking people to write what things they wanted fixed, didn't like about how things were going etc. People wrote in with eloquent requests for his administration, among high hopes that he meant what he said.

Then came the appointments to his cabinet especially the advisors and aids on finance. That was the tip off. Then the web site came down with nary a word. My DH and I were in Austin for that year's South X SW fest, which includes a tech portion. Members of Obama's IT team were there and many of us asked when the website would be back, and when we would get responses. We were all assured "soon, very soon". Nada, zip, nothing like it was ever seen again.

Those same priorities are still on peoples' minds.

During my working years, I saw the price people paid to have and keep jobs: long hours; salaried employees, which meant a cap on wages no matter how many hours a week; loss of dividends and stock purchases for employees; switch to 401k and a sudden need to spend a lot of time we didn't have, watching mutual funds and the stock market; more automation which meant a lot of us did our own copying, secretarial work, filing; loss of those same jobs and engineers spending endless weekly hours writing memos, meeting notes.

Heck my favorite job was as an old cord board operator job at a community college: it allowed me a swing shift job so I could go to school. Hands on, flexible and quick. I watched one of the first big privatization changes, the break up of AT&T, and didn't know what it meant. I hear people of France saying the same thing about the rail system, SNCF. How could they know? It happened to us, and we didn't know. Now it's happening to them and they are falling for the crumbs of problems like extended low fares to families and friends of employees and retire at 50. This is nothing compared to privatization, loss of union rights and privileges.

I still remember Ron Wyden putting his hand on my arm in front of cameras when I spoke about universal access to phone service and how the network is a national asset. He didn't want me to speak out on his panel. I thought I was Bella Abzug and wore a hat.

Boomers were two people working; aging parents, kids, still believing that what the 50s brought were available to us even though imperceptibly, the ground beneath our feet had shifted considerably.

We worked harder, for less; dreamed the same dreams our parents did; worked for our kids; tried to get and keep our homes.

We are still here and need to pass on what we now know. We are the elders. It's our chance.

Some people are at their most productive in their 70s, 80s and 90s. We can aspire the same.

It is difficult during the time we live to see and understand all that is going on; what could be done, and how to execute the changes.

It's easy to place the blame on someone - but it's hard to place the blame on the appropriate party. In this case, so many things were done by the oligarchs that none of us were aware of. Although we didn't trust our government, we thought it worked on our behalf, for the most part. We didn't know oligarchs were in charge, so we thought we had a fighting chance. Remember, the old fuckers were telling the boomers that we couldn't change things from the outside - we had to get into positions where we could change things from the inside. What they didn't tell us is that we had to compromise every value and ethic (become corrupt like them) we had in order to get into the inside. What has been discovered is that change only comes in the form of fatter pocketbooks for those who decided to play (look at the boomers in charge today - am I in that cabal? Hardly).

I think about credit cards coming about full force in the 80's. As a woman, I couldn't get credit without a husband or co-signer. The oligarchs found a way to enrich themselves by making credit accessible, cheap, and affordable. I used to buy big items using lay-away. Credit meant I could bring it home right away. Although I did not fall for this scheme, I watched my sister fall right into the trap.

When 9-ll happened, Bush told everyone to go shopping. I don't think only the boomers went shopping.

Obummer didn't do anything for us after the 2008 crash, either.

I'm grateful for Herr Drumpf getting elected. He has pulled back the cover so that we can all see what's going on.

What will the millenials and Gen Z do? Will they be able to do what we couldn't?

I certainly hope so.

@Wink

The way you wove the music through the times was especially interesting.

The only thing that maybe seemed unusual was how quickly it was unfolding, but that even seemed "normal." Then, of course, The Beatles arrived, which literally changed everything.
....Nobody expected anything as sinister as what we're experiencing now.... None of us expected this $h!t....

I am only beginning to see how powerful the forces were that suppressed the truth from reaching the people about what the US was really doing to seize power and control over the entire planet. Because that manipulation of the people's awareness and the impoverishing spending of the people's money for use in creating global conflicts as cause for attacking other nations is at the root of all of our problems.

Millennials would wonder how we Boomers so obviously dropped the ball on our watch. But what's not so obvious, behind the curtain, is how subtle and under the radar the Corporate coup was (and still is). Remember this soft coup had been going on since before FDR died. We Boomers were Very Lucky to have grown up in the prosperous '50s and '60s, but as "we" were growing up it all just seemed so normal. All the "modern day" tv shows of the time depicted exactly what "we" were experiencing, so why wouldn't we think "this is normal, how America is s'posed to be." Be it Andy of Mayberry or Leave it to Beaver or Captain Kangaroo... it all seemed a reflection of what we were experiencing growing up. Then, of course, The Beatles arrived, which literally changed everything. Not overnight, as is often written, but by 1969 Vietnam was in our consciousness, if not our face; we landed on the moon in July, then Woodstock happened a month later. Not a bad summer (except for the Vietnam part)! So, in the six short years since the JFK assassination America had transformed from the Leave it to Beaver '50s to the hippie dippy '60s. "We" slowly left the '50s in the dust as every three or four months the rock'n'roll records kept evolving. From Little Deuce Coupe (talking about a '32 Ford) to 2525 and Fortunate Son and Purple Haze. In the summer of '67 they were playing the hit, Carrie Ann at the local stock car race track on Sat. night. All summer long. Just a great '60s pop song! Quintessential 1967! Just two years later Graham Nash had teamed with Crosby and Stills (and Neil Young) and played Suite: Judy Blue Eyes at Woodstock. Point being, both music and pop culture quickly evolved throughout the '60s, and we Boomers were just riding that wave, along for the ride. The only thing that maybe seemed unusual was how quickly it was unfolding, but that even seemed "normal." We were 12, going on 13 when The Beatles arrived in '64. By the summer of '69 we were graduating from H.S., spending our last summer before college and, lucky us, all this stuff was going on! (alas, the bad stuff of Vietnam, too). So it all just seemed normal. The Stones' Brown Sugar blasting away on campus. What's more normal than that?! We somehow survived the '70s and by the '80s had kids in school. Yes, Reagan had somehow gotten himself elected - and maybe that in itself should have been a clue - but we were busy raising kids and climbing that mythical corporate ladder. I went from making a lowly (even for its day) $6 an hour in '78 to a respectable $15 an hour ten years later. Enough to afford a decent car, decent apartment, yada yada. But, yeah, Reagan maybe should have gotten our attention. But by 1992 Bubba emerged to save the day! Or so we thought. I damn near wet my pants on the way home from work when they announced on the radio that Bubba had won! I was literally jumping for joy inside my Honda Civic going 65 mph down the Interstate! Couldn't Wait to get home - just 8, 9 mins. away - to turn on the teevee! And, yeah, Bubba's "Welfare Reform" should have been another clue. Was a clue we missed. But it was like O'bummer's eleven dimensional chess. Just a bone to throw the Repubs to get even better stuff! Except "better stuff" never happened. And, later, the Repubs took up Bubba's second term with Monicagate. So, yeah, we missed some clues. But, truly, there's not a Boomer alive that saw this $h!t coming we're experiencing today! Nobody saw this coming. It wasn't until G. Dubya unfurled "Homeland Security" on our Boomer asses that we started to get a clue. I mean, how Nazi sounding is Homeland Security for gawds sake?! So, that, really, was maybe the first clue we actually picked up on, went hmmmm... Not that the other clues weren't there. Just that none of us expected anything as sinister as what we're experiencing now, becuz everything we'd experienced up to Bubba (and even during Bubba) appeared "normal," what we had known for 40, 45 years. Then Dubya hits us right between the eyes with this $h!t. Dubya's "War on Terra" the moment we knew we were being played, that America wasn't what it seemed. So, yeah, we Boomers are guilty of missing the clues. But none of us expected this $h!t, where even the M$M we had grown up with, with Walter Cronkite et al, were now betraying America, and "Liberals" like Rachel Madcow were selling us down the river. No, none of us saw this coming. We grew up when everything we saw on teevee and pop culture confirmed what we knew to be true in America. 9/11 changed all that, but it still took some time to come to the conclusion, "they're all out to fuck the 99%," every last one of us! A brilliant stealth campaign by the 1% !

@dkmich

We are in the US now because a relative of theirs had the courage to make the leap to a new country when times were bad or threatening. That's how it is supposed to work. They didn't waste their lives lingering to fight overwhelming times and forces. They jumped for the sake of their young people.

You gave that amazing option to your grandchildren. You are an inspiration. Thanks for sharing your story.

The 24 yo graduated with a masters degree in environmental science about a year ago. He got free tuition and a stipend for teaching from Colorado University so he paid for 99% of his degree and living expenses. I paid for his undergrad and housing, and he worked to earn what he could. He's currently working in his field in Stockholm, traveling absolutely everywhere on every continent on their dime, likely to get a free Ph.D. through his job, and happy in his new socialist home even if he is somewhat house poor. Stockholm is an expensive place to live, and a Research Associate doesn't make a lot of money.

The 22 yo flunked out of college with zero debt and is managing a pizza place. He just got $15/hr and 40 hours. He's a good kid but sort of artsy and sort of lost. He has no realistic career interests and is not currently interested in school or training one bit. He shares an apt with a guy that used to be one of his good friends, but the friendship hit the rocks because he hates "living with him". Since he can't afford an apartment without a roommate, he appears to be stuck where he is for a while. My big worry is what about later if he's barely making it now? Everyone tells me to be patient and not to worry about him because 26 usually brings about big change.

The 20 yo will graduate with a BA next year and also with zero debt. He just changed career goals from astrophysics to actuary. He loves math and excels at it. He is the only one with a special girl in his life, and if things continue to work out for them, they will probably get jobs in the same city and live together after graduation. Unlike the other two, he is interested in earning big money.

I worry about each and every one of my grandsons. The middle one the most because he doesn't have a college degree. I know it doesn't guarantee a damn thing, but it at least checks off that box. To give them every advantage I could, I made damn sure that none of them would graduate with college debt and that predatory bank vultures would never get their hooks into my boys for student loans. Last but not least, I also got them (and me) dual Italian citizenship jus sanguinis. I wanted them to have an underground railroad just in case, and I wanted to preserve our family heritage before it was lost forever to the sands of time.

I did all of this for them because I'm an early boomer, and I/we never had it so good. My mom and dad wanted me to have a better life than they did, and I did. In turn, I want to do the same for my daughter and her sons, and I did. What we boomers had is what ALL Americans should have. The fact that they don't is criminal. Thugs like the Kochs, Trump, Gates, and Obama should be in jail for feathering their own nests at everyone else's expense.

So please, I don't want or need an apology from you or any other young person. If I were one of the young people so thoroughly screwed by events, I would be really pissed off too. In fact, I am so appalled at what happened to future generations that I wouldn't be a part of your generation for all the tea in China. A free education and a good job with a living wage on a healthy planet should be everyone's right.

Please know that this boomer never sold you out, so I took no offense. As I said, I have three grandsons and I care deeply about the future. I hope yours is as bright as it should be.

@dkmich @dkmich We're all related to someone of another generation, and we have to do what we can to support each other, no one else will. What generation do we blame HER and Trump for? Boomers aren't the biggest generation anymore. The answer is...that's the wrong question.

EDIT: meant for Strife Delivery

The 24 yo graduated with a masters degree in environmental science about a year ago. He got free tuition and a stipend for teaching from Colorado University so he paid for 99% of his degree and living expenses. I paid for his undergrad and housing, and he worked to earn what he could. He's currently working in his field in Stockholm, traveling absolutely everywhere on every continent on their dime, likely to get a free Ph.D. through his job, and happy in his new socialist home even if he is somewhat house poor. Stockholm is an expensive place to live, and a Research Associate doesn't make a lot of money.

The 22 yo flunked out of college with zero debt and is managing a pizza place. He just got $15/hr and 40 hours. He's a good kid but sort of artsy and sort of lost. He has no realistic career interests and is not currently interested in school or training one bit. He shares an apt with a guy that used to be one of his good friends, but the friendship hit the rocks because he hates "living with him". Since he can't afford an apartment without a roommate, he appears to be stuck where he is for a while. My big worry is what about later if he's barely making it now? Everyone tells me to be patient and not to worry about him because 26 usually brings about big change.

The 20 yo will graduate with a BA next year and also with zero debt. He just changed career goals from astrophysics to actuary. He loves math and excels at it. He is the only one with a special girl in his life, and if things continue to work out for them, they will probably get jobs in the same city and live together after graduation. Unlike the other two, he is interested in earning big money.

I worry about each and every one of my grandsons. The middle one the most because he doesn't have a college degree. I know it doesn't guarantee a damn thing, but it at least checks off that box. To give them every advantage I could, I made damn sure that none of them would graduate with college debt and that predatory bank vultures would never get their hooks into my boys for student loans. Last but not least, I also got them (and me) dual Italian citizenship jus sanguinis. I wanted them to have an underground railroad just in case, and I wanted to preserve our family heritage before it was lost forever to the sands of time.

I did all of this for them because I'm an early boomer, and I/we never had it so good. My mom and dad wanted me to have a better life than they did, and I did. In turn, I want to do the same for my daughter and her sons, and I did. What we boomers had is what ALL Americans should have. The fact that they don't is criminal. Thugs like the Kochs, Trump, Gates, and Obama should be in jail for feathering their own nests at everyone else's expense.

So please, I don't want or need an apology from you or any other young person. If I were one of the young people so thoroughly screwed by events, I would be really pissed off too. In fact, I am so appalled at what happened to future generations that I wouldn't be a part of your generation for all the tea in China. A free education and a good job with a living wage on a healthy planet should be everyone's right.

Please know that this boomer never sold you out, so I took no offense. As I said, I have three grandsons and I care deeply about the future. I hope yours is as bright as it should be.