Outside the Asylum

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Reelin' In The Years

Over the last few years, I've tried to avoid casting political issues in generational terms, even as age has become a greater and greater influence in our politics. One reason I've done so is that, obviously, not all Boomers (or Silents, or any other age group) share the same views. This site is populated with Boomers who emphatically don't share the views of many of their compatriots. That's why they're here and not watching Rachel Maddow or Wolf Blitzer--or Tucker Carlson. There seems no way to talk about the widening chasm between most people younger than 45 and most people older than 55 without making people feel attacked, and I have no desire to attack people with whom (IMO) I stand in solidarity.

Another problem with talking about the political division between the generations is that the media are already talking about it--with venom, as they talk about most things. At this point, the "mainstream" media are basically a large network of machines whose purpose is to destroy and distort ideas inconvenient to their owners, while advancing ideas that maximize the control their owners have over society. The owners are trying to create a world in which no one can tell them "no," and they've figured out that the best way to do that is to control human perception so that alternatives to their wishes are inconceivable.

The amount of damage the media do to an idea--or to a set of interrelated ideas--depends on how much that idea threatens their owners' venture. The amount of damage they do to a person, the same. It is, by the way, on these grounds that they feel the need to destroy Bernie Sanders. Where he is powerful against them is not so much at the ballot box, which the elites control pretty well, but in the internal ballot box of the American mind. It seems apt that one of their chief talking heads is named Blitzer, since their activities resemble a cultural Blitz. After the 2016 election, our culture, to my eye, looked like this:

17-Air-raid-damage-during-the-Blitz-London-Sep-10-1940-01.jpg

Of course, they--or their bosses, which comes to the same thing--want to fracture the American public along every conceivable axis. This allows them to cry crocodile tears over the divided electorate, blaming it for our political ills, while they profit on every level from the American people's diminished ability to stand together. The way they've been discussing age is possibly even more toxic than the way they discuss right vs left. At least there are some shreds of truth in their discussion of right vs left ideology, even if they are scant. Their linguistic assault on "the millennials" has about as much substantive reality as the Dean scream.

But this attempt to set generations against one another has more motivating it than a general desire to poison the civic well. They know that large percentages of the young--or of everyone under 50, who are now defined as "young" (!)--do not go to the Big Five media corporations for their news. They know that large percentages of people under 50 believe that "the news" is thinly veiled bunk. In 2018, the median age of a CNN viewer was 60. The median age of a MSNBC or Fox viewer was 65. It's essential, therefore, that they gaslight the "young," or their perception management project will fail.

You've been telling me you're a genius since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean


The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand

I bring this up because of a discussion that arose in the comments of Stephen D's excellent diary on Chris Matthews (https://caucus99percent.com/content/chris-matthews-compares-bernie-commu...). It's the first time (I think) that I've been able to articulate what really bothers me about the way so many people over 60 have been reacting to politics since late 2015. It may not be politic to say so, but many of them are practically foaming at the mouth about an existential threat to the country--Trump, right-wing rednecks, neo-Nazis (apparently the last two became threats only with the advent of Trump). Yet the two existential threats that haunt nearly every waking moment for me appear to barely dent their consciousness. They can apparently navigate the threats of climate change and nuclear war with aplomb, while freaking out about the fact that Donald Trump is a bullying bigot (as if he were the first bully or bigot to occupy his position).

To paraphrase Steely Dan, The things you think are scary I can't understand.

Here's how many liberals over 60 deal with climate catastrophe. The people I'm talking about are loyal Democrats. A loyal Democrat stating a belief in climate change is like a Catholic genuflecting when he enters a church. It's a way of signalling which faith one belongs to, and has a lot less to do with rationalism, science, and material change than it has to do with group identity. Rather than implementing rational climate policy, which might get them into trouble with their donors, Democratic politicians have made belief in climate change into an expression of team spirit. Good people (Democrats) are rationalists and believe scientists. Bad people (Republicans) are faith-based and believe preachers and talk radio hosts.

So liberals loyal to the Democratic party intone "I believe the science" with all the piety of a six-year-old learning her catechism. (The idea that faith without works is empty appears not to have occurred to them). But there seems to be no sense among them that we are facing the end of human civilization, billions of needless deaths, an 80% extinction rate. No real fear. What fear there is is, sadly, not based on a rational apprehension of the science, because no rational apprehension of the science could result in the following statement: "Worried about climate change? Then you'd better vote Blue, because Trump won't let us sign onto the Paris Accords."

May I use a metaphor? Imagine that climate change is lung cancer, and the use of fossil fuels is smoking cigarettes. The Paris Accords, in this analogy, would be equivalent to telling the doctor you intend to cut back from three packs a day to one or two. You may not actually do that--there is nothing binding you to do it--but you intend to, and probably will, smoke fewer than your current three packs a day. When the doctor tells you that your plan is insufficient, and will leave you likely to die of lung cancer, you get mad and accuse him of being a purist. Then you get very upset because a bully busts into the doctor's office and tells you you aren't allowed to say that you might reduce your smoking by a pack or two.

The bully may indeed be a peremptory egotistical shithead. But his perfidy does not make the patient's behavior remotely rational.

Boomers, Silents and Greatest Generation can say, quite accurately, that they are not the only ones behaving in this way. But it is undeniable that, just as there are many more people over 60 watching corporate news, there are many more people over 60 believing in one or the other corporate party line. If you look at the group of liberals over 60, you will find many more people who believe something along the lines of the "Think Green Vote Blue" bumper sticker I saw recently, many more who make a big deal out of Trump's refusal to sign onto the Paris Accords, who basically draft the climate change issue, rather mendaciously, into the service of Democratic party politics. Are all people over 60, or all left-wing people over 60, like this? Observably, provably not! It's quite possible to note a trend without tarring every individual in a group with the same brush. But that doesn't stop me asking myself "What the hell happened to those older people I used to march with in the 80s?"

It gets even worse when you look at the behavior of corporate-minded Boomers in regard to nuclear war. And here I do broaden my focus to include some of my own generation, GenX, in my critique. Everyone who was of age during the Cold War shares the responsibility to remember its lessons. For the two generations who were born and came of age during the Cold War (Baby Boomers and GenX), the obligation is particularly keen. It is an abdication of responsibility for us to flush every lesson of the Cold War down a memory hole. In fact, it's shocking that it's the young, who never experienced the Cold War, who are more often getting this issue right. It should be us!

A lot of Boomers act like lining up NATO troops--including German troops!--on Russia's western border while our politicians constantly talk up what a threat Russia is and even say that we should treat "cyberattacks" the same as military attacks--is a correct and patriotic way to conduct ourselves in the world. Here we are, the people who remember what it was like to fear the end of the world and our lives in a missile attack, ignoring the reckless endangerment that comes from such behavior and rhetoric. How can so many of us ignore the way this political rhetoric and behavior inches the world closer to World War III, how likely it makes it that we will end up being shadows painted on the wall of some building?

You wouldn't even know a diamond if you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious I can't understand

earthfromspace.jpg
Here's an example of what I'm talking about--but this sort of politics has not diminished since the 2016 election. Not at all.

This sort of shit would have been shoved to the margins as extremist nonsense even in the eighties--unless it came directly out of the mouth of Reagan himself, whose Teflon qualities made it impossible to criticize him for some reason (he was such a nice guy, dontcha know). This is Pat Buchanan-level bullshit! I know what rightists were saying back in the 80s about Russia, because I had a friend who was one. We had many debates on the Cold War, on nuclear arms, on proxy wars. But his position on nuclear arms was deterrence! His (horrible) position on proxy wars was that it made it possible for us not to have a catastrophic hot war between Russia and the U.S.! Nobody was arguing that nuclear superpowers should go to war, and nobody (except doofus Reagan, who thought it was funny to joke that he'd picked up the red phone and called in a nuclear strike on Moscow--on a live mike), was saying or doing shit that might upset the apple cart and bring about the end of human civilization! To do or say such shit immediately marginalized a person as a dangerous extremist.

Now, apparently, lots of the people who stood against such nonsense--and even against Reagan's "there's a bear in the woods" paranoid xenophobia--, people who spoke out against the gigantic military budgets, are advocating for worse than what their 80s opponents supported!

Are you gathering up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

lotlizard's picture

Aloha from Dresden, where it’s already 2 p.m.

You’ve been telling me you’re Resistance ever since 2016
And all the time I’ve known you I still don’t know what you mean
The Iowa Dem caucus didn’t turn out like you planned
The things that pass for liberal, I can’t understand

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@lotlizard

The trip we made to Philly is etched upon my mind
After all the things we've done and seen
You sell out to the man
The things you think are useful I can't understand

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

to supporting this

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9 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

just how does one from the era of the 60's wrap their minds around and get on board with the new McCarthyism? I cannot fathom how many people can't see through the propaganda that they did see through back in the Bush years or even further back. Just Cannot understand it.

And I'd still like to know what sets the many of us that do apart? It seems that it is mostly people who supported Bernie see through while those who supported Obama and Her do not. Just mind boggling.

Great essay!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

travelerxxx's picture

@snoopydawg

just how does one from the era of the 60's wrap their minds around and get on board with the new McCarthyism?

Often, especially with folks who did not live through the 1960s, there is a view that practically all Boomers were hippies, everyone wanted to live at a commune, everyone's hair was down to the middle of their backs, and we all ate bean sprout sandwiches while we marched in mass on the dean's office. Often that is the view seen in movies and television, perhaps to a lesser degree in books. That view is false.

I urge people to go view some videos of, for instance, late 1969's Woodstock music festival. While there are some long-haired folks, the majority are not. Anti-war sentiment was high – something that evaporated once people's butts were not on the line to become unwilling cannon fodder. Hair length is not an accurate indicator of one's political leanings – especially since the mid 1970s, but in the 60s it was a type of badge and often did give one a clue.

While anti-war protests and marches received plenty of news airtime, it's not like the campuses and workplaces emptied out to join in to these events. Rather, the vast majority did not participate. It was always a minority, with the possible exceptions being a handful of universities. Labor unions largely did not support the anti-war movement, and if fact huge mobs of hard-hat doffing union men were called out in '68 by Chicago's mayor Daley to beat hippie protesters senseless at the Democratic convention. Not all those hard-hats (as we called them) were middle aged; if you view films taken at the time, there are a good number of Boomers in their midst.

Films often portray scenes of the 1960s with everyone riding in their VW minibuses and bugs, all painted with flower-power motifs. There were damn few of these. Rather, Detroit was busy setting records selling muscle cars powered by massive gas-guzzler V-8 engines. That trend continued well into the 1970s, stopped only by the OPEC oil embargo and high insurance rates. Grandfathers and grandmothers weren't buying those GTOs.

I distinctly remember the first Earth Day, in the spring of 1970. I was living in a midwestern town, home to a very large state university. Driving through town, I saw a group of – maybe – 100 people gathered. Only later did I find that it was for something called "Earth Day," of which I was unaware. Mind you, the university I mentioned had an enrollment of around 30,000, nearly every one a Boomer. That's single digit representation for the first Earth Day. Doubtless some present at that first Earth Day gathering were not university students. Still, where were all these idealistic Boomers we hear about?

My answer to that question is: By and large, they didn't give a damn then, and they still don't. Some were exceptional. In fact, relatively speaking, possibly quite a few were, and those who were exceptional left a much stronger wake than you might expect. Certainly those few got the attention of capitalist leaders of the day. Witness the Powell Memo. I'd say that a fair number of Boomers who left that strong wake are right here on C99.

It seems to me there is a type of Boomer exceptionalism, and it's just as false as American exceptionalism. From having lived through it, my experience is that the so-called Boomer generation is little different than those preceding it and those following it. Assigning some great expectations to Boomers is largely fiction. It does sell movies, though. It's also handy for propagandists wishing to split the 99 percent and have us fighting among ourselves.

Jeff Baxter is just a typical Boomer who happened to be a very good musician and took knowledge gleaned from musical/recording technology and flipped it into another career. Probably owns a Mustang GT.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@travelerxxx

And it's a really good reminder. There were plenty of people in their teens and twenties in the sixties and early seventies who were not left wing at all, and certainly weren't anti-establishment.

What weirds me out is that the people in my personal life, my local community, that the people I'm talking about here:

It's the first time (I think) that I've been able to articulate what really bothers me about the way so many people over 60 have been reacting to politics since late 2015. It may not be politic to say so, but many of them are practically foaming at the mouth about an existential threat to the country--Trump, right-wing rednecks, neo-Nazis (apparently the last two became threats only with the advent of Trump). Yet the two existential threats that haunt nearly every waking moment for me appear to barely dent their consciousness. They can apparently navigate the threats of climate change and nuclear war with aplomb, while freaking out about the fact that Donald Trump is a bullying bigot (as if he were the first bully or bigot to occupy his position).

*are* people who used to be hippies. When I mention the folks I used to march with in the 80s, I mean that literally. People who have been doing left-wing politics in my hometown since I was 12 are now Resisting, saying things like "Gee, I kind of miss George W. Bush," and supporting Buttigieg. And, in fact, my boyfriend's mom and stepdad, who were, if not hippies, at least left-wing anti-war protesters, are in the tank for Biden and have been from the beginning.

That said, it's good to remember that not everybody was Angela Davis--or even Jerry Garcia.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

travelerxxx's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

...the people I'm talking about here: [explanation] ...*are* people who used to be hippies.

Yes, I've seen that. My blurb was, of course, more general. But there is something, and it's something I can't fully explain, that seems to cause a type of blindness, a moral blindness. I've often dismissed it as simply human nature, but I'll bet there are those who have explored this and have expounded on it. Personally, I've never run into a good answer, but I would like to.

Why some get stuck on one side, unable to smell the odor of rot when it is so apparent to others? Do they actually see the corruption, see the mold growing, and simply find it too mentally challenging to call it out? Too many friends to lose? Too much of a realignment or paradigm shift in one's life to be forced to admit that what you've believed is the right course may indeed be a ship headed for the rocks?

In my case, it comes down to truth and/or facts. When I see a thing that is no longer true, or I find that what I believed is false, I force myself to make the change in my life and admit it. Maybe some are unable to do that. I'm guessing that it's far easier to just go with the flow. I just can't do that. And, yes, I've certainly lost friends over it – I suspect many of us here have.

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@travelerxxx

But there is something, and it's something I can't fully explain, that seems to cause a type of blindness, a moral blindness. I've often dismissed it as simply human nature, but I'll bet there are those who have explored this and have expounded on it. Personally, I've never run into a good answer, but I would like to.

For whatever it's worth this thing you describe usually scans to me as a form of arrested development, like a lot of adults never grew all the way up and are still stuck in much earlier developmental phases. Mostly they seem stuck in the phases that come before critical thinking and moral clarity become the primary oars used to row one's personal character boat.

So adults will seem ok, they might seem smart, they might seem decent or whatever, and all that could be true, kinda, but if they're developmentally still children then as soon as they're challenged in a serious way by a problem that's above whatever level they're stuck at, they can't handle it any better than your average preschooler/gradeschooler and the behavorial responses are the same: uncontrolled anger, denial, deflection, lashing out/tantrum, making shit up, blaming the wrong party, etc.

From my pov, literally everywhere I go, most of the adults seem to be stuck somewhere in the toddler to adolescent stage. I very very rarely encounter people who seem, to me, to have grown all the way up.

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travelerxxx's picture

@Reverend Jane Ignatowski

I remember reading somewhere once that most people are stuck in high school forever, and life pretty much continues in that mode. Maybe it goes even lower than that ...junior high school? The various cliques and odd alliances certainly remind me of those social scenes. Uck.

Was I ever glad to get away from that. Could be that some folks never really made it.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg

but as far as what makes some of us vulnerable to propaganda more than others--well, I think we need to dig deeper for the reason. Because I *did* support Obama! I was an early member of OFA. I busted my ass knocking on doors in Fairfax County, VA. I bet a lot of us were the same. The difference between us and the "Obama wing" is that sometime during his first term, we noticed that he was simply expanding on Bush policies (and Romney policies). Most of his foreign and domestic policy is an extension of the right-wing agenda that began with Reagan and came to a crescendo with George W. Bush. The Iran agreement was, perhaps, the most notable exception, because I think Obama, Kerry, and the others in their "wing" of the Democratic party draw the line at global thermonuclear war. It's the one distinction I see between them and the Clinton wing.

Sometimes I think it's just because some of us watch corporate news more than others. I certainly don't think it's because we belong to generation or another. I don't think age is the cause. I think age is related somehow to whatever it is that's making a large portion of the electorate think remarkably differently than another large portion of the electorate. It's not just that they have different opinions about the same data--it's like they see different data. Also, they seem to be thinking quite differently than they themselves have in the recent past--and apparently not noticing they're doing anything different than they ever did.

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8 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

in Obama.

The difference between us and the "Obama wing" is that sometime during his first term, we noticed that he was simply expanding on Bush policies (and Romney policies).

I'm sure you remember being called racist or worse when you mentioned anything bad about his policies. I woke up during the FISA vote he had promised to filibuster, but remember his first FU was having Rick Wilson (?) do the opening prayer at his inauguration. The homophobic pastor who was a darling of the right wing.

The ones who watch the corporate news only are the ones who have swallowed Russia Gate whole and especially if they only get their news from MSNBC and Rachel Moscow. Some used to read alternative websites such as consortium news and Robert Parry, but he destructed Russia Gate and they refused to read him anymore. This is also when Greenwald and Assange became persons non grata. I once thought that if people heard the other side of the story on Ukraine people would see how they had made up their minds without all of the facts, but Lindsay Graham said that people had lied to the FISA court and boy did he get hammered for it. But it's exactly what the Horowitz report stated. Even the FISA court itself said it had been lied to, but still they don't believe it. Now that is just being willfully blind and closed to the truth. This is what I don't understand.

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8 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  
https://lite.qwant.com/?q=rick+warren+obama&t=web

Comedian Flip Wilson had, alas, already passed away ten years before Obama’s election.

https://lite.qwant.com/?q=flip+wilson&client=opensearch

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@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal , very sophisticated propaganda designed to control the perceptions and reality of the public. There are now areas of academia that are dedicated to understanding how to alter the minds and opinions of people; it's highly developed, and the practitioners can become quite good at it. The idea of "socially constructed reality" is accepted in academic circles. (BTW, if you dare use terms like "propaganda" or "truth," professors will jump down your throat.) Trump-hatred, Russiagate, the rehabilitation of the Bushes -- it has all been conscious, deliberate, and successful. Rush Limbaugh was given the medal of freedom for creating the now unbudgeable mindset of what Hills calls "deplorables." Thanks to Rush, rightwingers fear government itself.

Part of what plays into it is group think, and the persuaders are aware of that and use it to their advantage. When a meme gets established in the minds of enough people, those who don't buy into it are viewed with suspicion. This is quite visible with Trump-hatred and Russiagate. If you don't hate Trump enough, you are considered a rightwinger. If you question Russiagate, you are a bad person, possibly treasonous, not to be trusted.

Like you, I've seen some my friends fall prey to clever rhetoric. It's almost like watching them lose their mind. If it's someone I'm close to, I just tell them it's bullshit and suggest alternative sources of news and opinion.

The people that create these propaganda campaigns are very highly paid and clearly without conscience.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

that Reagan wasn't crazy enough to actually want a nuclear war. Apparently in the seventies he said "If we conservatives have nothing better to offer than inevitable nuclear war, we don't deserve to be elected."

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

[video:https://youtu.be/SlCeGEkWApk]

US Rep. and Democratic Party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard joins today's Liberty Report to discuss the real resonance of her antiwar message among New Hampshire voters. But why is the corporate media and even her own party doing its best to make sure that her voice is not heard? How did she come to turn against US foreign interventionism, after enlisting in the military early in the 2000s?

It's a pain to see how much this woman has to fight. Makes me angry and humble to watch her.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@mimi

It's a weird world...Back in 2000, I was not yet a socialist, yet I could not have imagined ever sharing political ground with a libertarian. In 2020, I am a socialist, about as far away from libertarianism as you can get, yet I find more common political ground with them now than then.

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10 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
and made a u-turn running into libertarians at their street tables' displays. When I understood what Social Democrats were in the US during the nineties and during the next decade, I started to think of myself as a democratic Socialist. At no time I would have considered libertarianism as an ideology that is not actually a dangerous one. They just were not considered as being very influential, I remember. I couldn't understand them. I hadn't seen this ideology in Germany and was unable to figure them out. Basically I looked at them and asked myself what kind of strange 'freedomers' this group of people were.

Well, it's just a culturally different upbringing I had that made it difficult for me.

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mimi's picture

[video:https://youtu.be/-6pJuX6WWwQ]

I think it should.

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lotlizard's picture

@mimi  
everyone involved was a government civil servant sworn to uphold a constitution-level legal guarantee of the secrecy of private communications (Postgeheimnis) as a quasi sacred duty.

A far cry from what we have now, where it’s a data-mining and surveillance free-for-all, under the motto “may the most unscrupulous disrupter-liar win.”

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
today is a very disappointing too, compared to what I remember it was in the seventies. The most astonishing to me is that with all those 'technological advancements to manage and process medical data' the services are very slow and more complicated logistically for the patients to get an appointment and procedures done. Weird.

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It's the first time (I think) that I've been able to articulate what really bothers me about the way so many people over 60 have been reacting to politics since late 2015. It may not be politic to say so, but many of them are practically foaming at the mouth about an existential threat to the country--Trump, right-wing rednecks, neo-Nazis (apparently the last two became threats only with the advent of Trump). Yet the two existential threats that haunt nearly every waking moment for me appear to barely dent their consciousness. They can apparently navigate the threats of climate change and nuclear war with aplomb, while freaking out about the fact that Donald Trump is a bullying bigot (as if he were the first bully or bigot to occupy his position).

Have you seen the video posted right after Iowa of some protesters at a Biden rally? I really couldn't even hear or tell what the (younger) protesters were protesting, but one thing really struck me. There were about 5 or 6 Biden supporters who matched your description so well. Boomers, looked better off, and oh man, they were pissed. You know how when someone gets so mad they're shaking and spitting and their face turns red, etc.? That was these people, in defense of Joe Biden!

Wait, here's where I saw it:

[video:https://youtu.be/mZQRVTblTeU]

Trigger warning: There's a Mayo Pete protest video ahead of this, but it's an interesting contrast. The Pete people were annoyed, but you can't feel the visceral hatred coming off his supporters. The Pete folks seemed more of the standard boos and "sit down" calls (combined with their leader's empty corporate BS attempts at engaging the protestors.) But those Biden people were ready to tear those protesters apart! I think it's an uncomfortable video to watch.

For some reason, that Biden clip has really been bothering me. I haven't been able to articulate why, but I think all you've written here kind of hits it. Just wanted to share.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

I am putting off watching the video because I can't handle Buttigieg and his supporters right now. But I will come back to it tomorrow, because I'm interested. Butt vs Biden?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

We have a boomer aged customer who during the impeachment hearings would come into the store following what I could only assume was a morning of picketing on the streets somewhere, with buttons pinned to her body and a large sign in her hand that read IMPEACH TRUMP! After the inevitable acquittal was handed down, she merely changed her message. Now the buttons read VOTE BLUE 2020 and the picture on the sign is a caricature of herself in a Munch-like scream.

I firmly believe that the media's message, along with its high pitched tenor, has had significant effects on the minds of those who saturate themselves in it day after day, hour after hour, until one could make a convincing argument that this level of messaging has actually altered the brain patterns of these viewers in such a way it could be diagnosed as a psychological impairment. For the families watching their parents behavior change in such a drastic way, it must be deeply upsetting.

Great essay today CStMS.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz

It's almost like the way people think shifts, more than what they think.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

edg's picture

Boomers Coolest.jpg

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edg's picture

As a 64 year old Boomer, I agree with your essay to an extent. Where I disagree is your characterization that "there seems to be no sense among them that we are facing the end of human civilization, billions of needless deaths, an 80% extinction rate. No real fear."

What you're neglecting because you didn't live through it is that Boomers have been facing the end of human civilization since we were born. We're the generation that was taught to duck-n-cover when we saw a nuclear mushroom cloud in the distance. We practiced hiding under our classroom desks when the emergency alert sirens went off. We were schooled and went to work in buildings equipped with fallout shelters.

In the 1970s, we were told to prepare for global cooling caused by aerosols and refrigerants containing CFCs. We were the guinea pigs for the first non-CFC aerosol sprays (they sucked) and the reduced efficiency of non-R12 refrigerants in our air conditioners.

Because of those and other hair-on-fire, end-of-the-world crises we've been lectured about since our diaper days, we're not as alarmist about climate change as you'd like us to be. And that's okay. You can carry the torch for us as you fight the good fight against the latest world-killing disaster about to strike us all dead. As the comedian Red Green says, "We're pulling for you."

[video:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&...

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Anja Geitz's picture

@edg

So, where did CStMS say this in her essay?

we're not as alarmist about climate change as you'd like us to be

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

edg's picture

@Anja Geitz

Perhaps you didn't read the essay? Here are 3 examples:

It's the first time (I think) that I've been able to articulate what really bothers me about the way so many people over 60 have been reacting to politics since late 2015. ... the two existential threats that haunt nearly every waking moment for me appear to barely dent their consciousness.

But there seems to be no sense among them that we are facing the end of human civilization, billions of needless deaths, an 80% extinction rate. No real fear.

But that doesn't stop me asking myself "What the hell happened to those older people I used to march with in the 80s?"

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Anja Geitz's picture

@edg

In my interpretation of your comment has a pejorative tinge to it. While CStMS essay specifically spoke to the change in boomers concerns, along with her concerns as well. I found nothing that indicated boomers were not sufficiently “alarmist”.

Your phrase “as you’d like it be,” also did not, IMO, mirror the the tone of this essay. Which is why I posed the question thinking I may have misunderstood your reply to CStMS.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@edg

and I know that you are. And, in case I didn't make it clear enough, I am not speaking of all Boomers, but of the liberal (and left) Boomers who have continued to support the Democratic establishment.

But as for the following, all I can say is that you're wrong:

What you're neglecting because you didn't live through it is that Boomers have been facing the end of human civilization since we were born. We're the generation that was taught to duck-n-cover when we saw a nuclear mushroom cloud in the distance. We practiced hiding under our classroom desks when the emergency alert sirens went off. We were schooled and went to work in buildings equipped with fallout shelters.

GenX is the second Cold War generation. Meaning that, like the Boomers, we were born into it, grew up in it, and (most of us) came to adulthood in it. I was 21 when the Berlin Wall fell. I had nightmares about nuclear war through my teens. When the Wall fell, my first thought was, "My God. We made it."

We weren't taught duck-n-cover because, by that time, everyone knew duck-n-cover would do no good. And that's what we were taught. That if it happened, we would die, and there was nothing we could do. It has the advantage of at least being true, but it's a hell of a thing to learn when you're a kid.

As for wanting people to be more alarmist, the people I'm talking about ARE being alarmist. They're just being alarmist about rural rednecks, global neo-Nazism (except in the Ukraine for some reason), and Trump. The words "existential threat" keep getting used about a bigoted blowhard, and there's plenty of emotion and what might be called alarmist behavior directed at him and his supporters. I'm not saying I want people to be more alarmist; I'm saying that I don't understand how a person can be so freaked out over Trump and yet, somehow not freaked out about climate change.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

for some reason. Even Bibi is down with them. And there is lots of fear mongering happening from the Russia Gaters. Today one of them linked to a democrat who said that Trump put our national security at risk and that we were lucky nothing bad happened during the time he withheld the weapons.

Schiff went on and on about how Ukraine is fighting Russia over there so we don't have to fight them on our soil and lo and behold he was quoted verbatim by a few of the kids. It's actually scary seeing how people who used to think rationally aren't since Her lost. And it's CT to believe that Obama refused to send Ukraine the weapons because he did NOT want to increase tensions with Russia. Nice of him to stop there after you know overthrowing the president there and building up troop levels in countries that border Russia. Nuclear war was his stopping point? I'm not sure what he thought would happen if he tickled Russia too hard. It's weird seeing old anti war friends jumping on the war wagon.

And remember it was ole Obama who helped cook up Russia Gate in the first place. Now where is he? Making ads for Bloomberg. Doh!

Edited for missing word.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@edg

Have you read how our submarines are now loaded with mini nukes? And that some people in government think that they can survive using them? Yeah there have been lots of false flags scare tactics, but then this is the reason everyone is saying Russia is the boogeyman again. I'm not living in fear of a nuke going off, but I am worried about where we are heading.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Running for president could be the perfect grift. Get tens of millions in contributions then funnel them through appropriate campaign firms who skim off 10% or maybe lots more in fees. Then afterwards become a partner in the firm and legally get a cut of the pie. And by that time no one is looking any more. It works for folks who can't be as brazen as Yambo. Since Mayo Pettigrew is the main one taking in big bucks he seems like a possibility for this story id thing.

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Steely Dan guitarist has gone to the dark side. He's now a weapons expert in the intelligence community.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=277&v=HO9ufs9tr4c&feature=em...

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@artisan

art or music in the 60s and 70s who turned into some kind of...well, the polite term is "corporatist."

I wonder what Walter Becker thought of all that.

I always thought of SD as being Becker's and Fagan's project--certainly lyrically that was so--so this doesn't make me feel creepy at the thought of listening to their music. But it is sad.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

upthread here. I lived through it too and can attest to what he says. I ended up in the San Francisco Haight Ashbury district in the late 1960s not because I was SDS or Weather Underground (though I admired them) but because I had nowhere else to go and the hippies at that time were the nicest, kindest, most accepting people in the world, especially the Diggers and Jesus Freaks. Pretty much all my friends back home, even the politically aware ones, thought I'd drifted off the edge, though some understood.

The media had a hand in creating what we call the Sixties. What wasn't made clear is that the hippies were primarily a cultural, not a political, phenomenon; in fact the serious political activists didn't really want to waste their time with hippies and the hippies found the activists a bit too heavy on violence and bad (non-mellow) vibes -- although most of us sensed ourselves as part of a larger, very meaningful counter culture, and I think some of us felt that a kind of spirit within was moving us to try to change the world, to learn to live differently from those who went before, to connect more closely with the earth and live more mindfully. There was a lot of rethinking old habits and exploring our own psyches, perceptions, and spirituality. When it was time for a peace march or anti-war rally or free music event like Woodstock (or for me, alas) Altamont), the different varieties of counter culture coalesced in solidarity with one another. We also shared a general distrust of the older generation. "Don't trust anyone over thirty."

The most politically-minded people I encountered were mid-westerners who'd come out to S.F. to either go to school or get "the revolution" underway. For a while I shared a flat with a motley mixture of counter-culturalists from all over. We made bread, smoked dope, burned candles, bought food from a loosely organized food coop, etc. The St. Louis couple lined the main hallway with photos of Weather Underground members and the male half was into extremely provocative actions at demonstrations -- setting trash cans on fire, etc.

People had vastly different reasons for sharing in the culture. For some, it was just sex, drugs, and rock and roll, then back to normal life. For others, it was a genuine attempt at poltically challenging the establishment. The Port Huron Statement, a beautiful result of 1960s midwestern politics, created a blueprint for a government and society that, if it had been adopted, would have created a world radically different and infinitely more livable than what we have now. Others moved out to the country to get close to the land and live more naturally. Some from Steve Gaskins' Monday Night Class (which I regularly attended) left to set up a commune in Tennessee, called The Farm. I was basically seeking some kind of meaning in life, essentially a reason to live. During that period I developed a dislike bordering on fear of police, and the existence of Black Panthers actually made me feel safer because I associated the "straight" world with my family of origin. But my major political awakenings came later. My most intense activist phase was in the early 1980s in connection with NOW. A bit later in the 1990s my eyes gradually opened to the ongoing corporate takeover of America -- but for a while there I felt like a Cassandra because nothing in the news validated what I was seeing and most of my friends couldn't grasp how serious it was. The internet eventually helped with that.

But the counterculture itself was a minority of Boomers, although the music, art, styles and maybe a bit of consciousness spread out through the larger culture.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

lotlizard's picture

@laurel  
provided me with a mind-expanding lifeline for many years, with Brand’s Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolution Quarterly, and Kelly as editor of the Whole Earth Review (in which I sank a couple thousand dollars in an effort to keep it afloat before it folded).

https://lite.qwant.com/?q=Stewart+Brand&client=opensearch
https://lite.qwant.com/?q=Kevin+Kelly&client=opensearch

They both later seemed to have “made the big time,” going in a direction that was a lot more “corporatist” and deep-state / intelligence-community (Kelly especially with Wired magazine) than I would have liked.

I suppose corporations have become such powerful institutions in the modern material world that trying to change that world means engaging and mind-melding with the fantastically wealthy people who run them.

For many years I also toyed with the idea of joining a collective a bit like The Farm, though a lot less Buddhist and “psychedelic” oriented — Denmark’s Svanholm.

https://svanholm.dk/index.php?id=73

“Left” / “liberal” / “progressive” ideology never knew what to do with the spiritual side of the counterculture. For example, ideologically, the Hare Krishnas are ultra-fundamentalist Hindus and Stephen Gaskin and The Farm were/are dead-set (so to speak) against abortion, seeing nothing emancipatory in it. “Ladies, don’t kill your baby, come here to The Farm and have it under the care of our trained midwives.”

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@lotlizard into and out of the counterculture; I would browse through the Whole Earth Catalogue and Review with amazement. My partner at the time was enamored of Buckminster Fuller's ideas, particularly the geodesic dome. Gaskin's wife turned out to be a major mover and shaker at The Farm, and she is an accomplished midwife. So, if for her own reasons a woman did not want to bear and birth a child, she had to anyway? Even without that act of force, I could not have been happy in that or probably any commune. Just not cut out for it. Svanholm sounds very reasonable though, for those who wish to live communally. It's probably a healthy thing.

Corporations have a way of swallowing up independent creators. Without regulation, especially anti-trust, anti-monopoly regs, corporations can concentrate power (and wealth) to an extent that overpowers others.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl