The Greatest Generation?

[Trathena]

They were 60 and 70 when Reagan was elected, so it's not quite fair to say that.

Well, maybe early 60s right? If they were in their 20s in the 1940s, then they'd be in their 60s. And I was mostly referring to the (slightly) younger men who put Reagan in office.

Also this generation raised the next one, and it was them Brock was referring to.  The ones who joined with their parents to put Reagan in office and keep him there for eight years (and another four with Bush).

AIDS may not have started here, but fucking Reagan ignored it for almost ten years, and let it become a plague, and we ALL know why. I know you didn't mention AIDS, but had to mention that, dammit.

All I said was that people always overlook the good that come out of every generation.

Yes, I do.  I admit it.  I kind of have a blind spot when it comes to the Greatest Generation.  I think I'm biased, and so not the best person to have a reasonable conversation with.

[TheRuleofThree]

I don't look over the people who got us through a depression and two world wars, not by a long shot.  I'd take them over these guys any day.  At least they PAID for their wars.

[BuddyGoodness]

heh, true that.

[Gnomad]

Hasn't every generation done something in excess? Like our excessive neglect for our own education that, regardless of what most assholes want to believe, is available. Don't get me wrong, stupid is totally cool. I mean, that's what school is about. Getting good grades based on lackluster effort rather than actual proof of an intellectual foundation. Ignorance about world events aside; the Greatest Generation? To blame for a few things. Baby boomers? To blame for a few things. At this point, every generation will be to blame because no one wants to clean up the mess. I'm just saying... excess can't be the downfall of society... it's always been there.

[cribble]

Surely we shouldn't dwell on the previous generations greatness/badness - we should be focusing on now, and making the changes for the present and future.

[/epic speech]

[TheRuleofThree]

Absolutely.  I just always find it ironic to hear older people complaining about our generation's choices and preferences.  I recall an argument I got into once with my mother in law about the "indecency" of everything on TV.  She was naming off all these things (Janet Jackson's boob, sex on TV, etc.) and talking about how when she was a kid it wasn't nearly that bad.  I remember just looking at her and saying "Well my generation doesn't choose what goes on TV.  People from YOUR generation who program and run those channels do."  And then she told me it didn't matter, because we watched it.

So then it went back to an argument about me saying as long as there's war on TV I think there should be sex too, at which point it devolved.

[cyrinic]

I think that's where this train of thought started for me.  I was having a conversation with my family - you know, the "what is this world coming to" conversation - and I found myself discouraged by the current state of the world and, especially now in the wake of a few horrible college shootings in a very short time, specifically discouraged by our generation.  I was trying to find a reason, and traced it back to our parents' and grandparents' generations - we are a product of them.  That's how this bitterness all started.

On a similar note, does anyone else feel like our society tries to blame other forces for things like school shootings - TV, video games, music - anything BUT parents?  I feel like the role of the parent is being forgotten and its influence devalued.

[TheRuleofThree]

I think that's where this train of thought started for me.  I was having a conversation with my family - you know, the "what is this world coming to" conversation - and I found myself discouraged by the current state of the world and, especially now in the wake of a few horrible college shootings in a very short time, specifically discouraged by our generation.  I was trying to find a reason, and traced it back to our parents' and grandparents' generations - we are a product of them.  That's how this bitterness all started.

On a similar note, does anyone else feel like our society tries to blame other forces for things like school shootings - TV, video games, music - anything BUT parents?  I feel like the role of the parent is being forgotten and its influence devalued.

Yes, but I think it's the result of parts of society trying to create a monopoly on what a "family" exactly is.  There's an active movement in this nation to continue to expect the "ideal family environment" to be two married, opposite sex parents.  But people divorce, people get pregnant and stay single, kids can sometimes be raised by their sisters or brothers, and there are lots of gay parents out there as well.  It seems that people on the conservative side seem to suggest that the role of family is dying because of secularism and liberal values, when the reality is that giving minorities like women and blacks an equal footing in society caused a shift in the dialog of our country.  And the growth of media and journalism which shined a light on a lot of parts of our population we didn't know about or had tried to avoid.

I read a really interesting article at The Atlantic a few months ago that really laid out how everything that has happened in this country in the past 60 years or so has been defined by the same divisions that arose during the Cold War, around Vietnam.  The "hawks" vs. the "doves" if you will.  It makes sense when you consider that the majority demographic right now, the baby boomers, is in charge of our media, our politics, our churches and our economy.  Every part of our interaction is defined by the arguments THEY grew up having.  

In some ways this gives me hope for the future in the sense that our generation grew up in a much more diverse setting, and it seems that we are maybe a bit more realistic about the difference of opinion in the world.  The voting seems to reflect that right now too.  But we'll have our own drawbacks, I'm sure, just like every generation does.

[cyrinic]

That is really interesting - I took a class on the Vietnam War last semester, and a veteran came to our classroom and in his presentation made the remark that our grandparents grew up fearing another Great Depression, and our parents have grown up fearing another Cold War.

What have we grown up fearing - terrorism?  In some ways I think our generation doesn't quite have the same formative experience that the older generations had.  Sure, 9/11 changed the world drastically, shifted our domestic and foreign policy, but I'm not sure it will have the same impact as the Great Depression, WWII, Cold War, Vietnam War, and all the shit that happened in the 60's.  Unless there's another terrorist attack (we all know the war in iraq isn't for terrorism), or something really drastic happens, I don't think terrorism will be the formative issue of our generation - will it?

[cribble]

On a similar note, does anyone else feel like our society tries to blame other forces for things like school shootings - TV, video games, music - anything BUT parents?  I feel like the role of the parent is being forgotten and its influence devalued.

Come to the UK, where everything is the parents fault... and the listed stuff aswell... whatever you do is BAD for your kids!