“So, you kids think you should have something to hope for? THINK AGAIN, PUNKS!”
“Your leader isn’t going to do anything he pledged to do! Yeah, that’s right. Did you hear? Did you hear he didn’t say public option more than 2 times in his big health care speech? That means he’s not going to fight for it! Yeah, that’s right. You should just give up now. That’s what you get for not organizing and making Hillary Clinton the POTUS like we wanted you to. We want OUR OWN to be president, not some snotty little tweener/Gen X punk like Obama.”
“So what if the boat hasn’t even cleared the dock on this new administration? We’re jumping ship. Yeah, that’s right. We’re OUTTA HERE! You better bet that Obama loves the banks more than you! He’s sold out completely, just like we all did in the 80′s when we realized love and peace didn’t let us afford nice cars and pimp houses in nice neighborhoods. But we kept it real, man, we always smoked pot out in our BMW SUVs and in our perfectly manicured backyards, bought it from our buddy Gerrold from the health club after a furious game of squash.”
“You think he’s going to fight for you? THINK AGAIN! We know how things work. After all, we’re the epitome of selling our souls out. That’s just how things work now. We fought against the Vietnam War by smoking pot and drinking cheap wine in the park. Wearing flowers and dirty clothes. Pretending to be stereotypical Native Americans. Pretending how to play folk guitar. Yeah, we were keeping it real, and that’s why we could justify buying that SUV years later, complaining about capital gains taxes, and voting for Ronald Reagan. We set the rules, you silly little kids, and don’t you forget it.”
“Yeah, that’s right, college kids. You stay home, you shut up, and you better regret you did all that work for “that man” who wasn’t picked by us. We wanted to hold him up like an icon, like Jesse Jackson, so we could say “see? We have African-American heroes here on the left that ran for President! That justifies our WASPiness!” You get your heads back into the dirt and you think about what you did, because we didn’t approve of you turning some of us over and getting some of us to support your token leader. We wanted one of our types to promise us stuff and not deliver, just like we loved about Bill Clinton. But he sure could play a wicked sax!”
“You silly little kids with your “hope” and your “change”. We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen. It offends us. We got rid of our “hope” in the 1970′s when Nixon lied to us, even though we knew he was a phony. We lost our “hope” in the late 1970′s when Jimmy Carter was the Pres because of the recession that occurred around his time, even though those of us who were sensible knew it wasn’t his fault (paying back that Vietnam War debt had to be steep). We sold out and voted for Reagan. And frankly, at this point in our lives, change offends us. We don’t want that. We understand our parents now. We want to make this thing work for us as long as it can so that we can die comfortably. Whatever happens to you, well, ehhh, you can just cope.”
“So you stupid kids stay the hell home and don’t you DARE turn out and try to recreate that movement that you did last year. Don’t you DARE create a movement to push Obama to spend more money to try and right the ship. We’ve got ours. It’s not our problem if you don’t. What, you didn’t make a fortune off the dot coms? OOOH, so sorry. Well, these things happen. You stay the hell home and deal with it and stop risking what we’ve got. We want to live our golden days comfortably. We deserve it. After all, WE protested VIETNAM. That gives us the RIGHT.”
May 25th, 2010 at 1:28 PM
My grandpa is also a Baby Boomer and we love him a lot..~;
May 25th, 2010 at 2:31 PM
Not the point. I have parents that are Baby Boomers. Generally everyone has people that they love. You’re not getting it. I will explain the sarcasm and ruin the joke for you. The whole point isn’t about one or two people, it’s about the majority of a generation that had the most influence in this country for a few decades. Every generation has its time…this one that I am referring to, the Baby Boomer generation, the result of children born after WWII, held onto power longer than most. They gave us 30 years of lousy Presidents and lousy politics, mainly on their vote and their influence. All the while, they continued to beat a drum that their generation was somehow better than the next couple generations because they protested Vietnam. All the while, they turned into their parents who thought their generation was inferior because the previous generation fought in WWII to defend freedom. So currently, we’re sitting at the end of a 30 year run of insanely irresponsible politics. The notion that you can cut taxes 3 times over AND throw more money at wars than any other country in the world is pure lunacy. But that’s what they voted for, and that’s what they handed on as a legacy to the following generations to clean up.
Excuse me for being kind of pissed off that we, the generations that are now finally represented by a President that is from our generation, have been handed a big stinking mess to clean up. After the generation before the Baby Boomers handed them the most stable and most economically secure country on Earth. All because the majority of a generation of greedy, selfish, self-entitled people got it into their heads that they “din’t want to pay taxes” and put their own personal wealth far above the overall wealth and value of the country they passed on to their kids. That generation was that Baby Boomer generation, the generation that knew they were the reason why our social programs were being stretched to their limits, and instead of making those programs better, began demanding that they be cut leaving the next generations with NOTHING.
Even though I know you’re probably a spammer with an email address like that.
July 11th, 2010 at 12:55 PM
my grandfather is also a baby boomer and he is also a war veteran”*:
July 11th, 2010 at 4:32 PM
Hello, Abigail, if that’s your real name (and I’m sure you’re probably also a spammer). Allow me to explain something that you might have missed. This isn’t about individuals. This is about the repercussions that an entire generation, a generation that, by and large, prided itself on activism. Your grandfather is an individual. The dead simple point I tried to make with my previous reply is that it’s not about an individual, like your grandfather, like my parents, like the other spammer…I mean, commenter’s…grandfather. It’s about the damage, both economically and environmentally, a generation (not just your relatives, but what, in a broader political sense, an entire mass of people within a particular age group that could vote and essentially drove the economy) caused and what the next couple generations are going to be stuck cleaning up…or more likely, suffering under. When Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House, the Reagan administration, put in office by and large by a movement led heavily by the baby boom generation, TORE THOSE SOLAR PANELS DOWN. He defunded solar power and wind power and he poured money into corporate welfare for oil companies, removed regulations, and now we’ve got the Gulf of Mexico half filled up with oil. Corporations have more money now than they’ve ever had in our entire history, but we’ve got the highest unemployment rates and highest rates of poverty in 50 years. That is the big, steaming pile that the baby boom generation (and my generation didn’t do a much better job by staying home and giving up, refusing to vote out of cynicism) gave to all of us. If that doesn’t piss you off enough to try and do the right thing and try to fix things, I don’t know what would. But that generation really screwed things up badly, regardless of how you feel about your family members, and the ideals that generation eventually followed and grew to espouse need to be called out so future generations don’t make those same mistakes again.
The baby boomers, by and large, had the opportunity presented to them when they were young, when they were our age, to drive more economical vehicles. To do the right thing. To understand that short term economic gains aren’t as important as passing along long term wealth to their children and their children’s children. You think global warming is a new idea? Nope. Scientists were finding solid proof of it as far back as 1970. Instead, they opted for SUVs, big gas guzzlers, and savings and loan scandals. They voted to cut their own taxes…even though they knew that the next generations would have to be taxed to pay off the debt that they caused out of their fear of the Russians and the cold war. That generation really stuck it to their kids, and the bottom line is that someone’s got to point it out so that it never happens again. Get it?