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Stop What You Are Doing And Read These Two Things
In an essay on the alleged crimes at Penn State, Iraq War veteran Thomas L. Day does the best job of anyone summing up why I am so frustrated with the generation that precedes my own:
A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.
They have failed us, over and over and over again.
I speak not specifically of our parents -- I have two loving ones -- but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”
They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.
Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.
For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.
We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.
Read the whole thing. Then go read Mark Bowden's wonderful -- and wonderfully balanced -- take on the attack at Wanat. It includes this brilliant passage:
The lieutenant’s battle was over. His bravery had little impact on the course of the fight. He could not rescue the men on Topside, and those who survived would have done so anyway. As it is with all soldiers who die heroically in battle, his final act would define him emphatically, completely, and forever. In those loud and terrifying minutes he had chosen to leave a place of relative safety, braving intense fire, and had run and scrambled uphill toward the most perilous point of the fight. A man does such a thing out of loyalty so consuming that it entirely crowds out consideration of self. In essence, Jon Brostrom had cast off his own life the instant he started running uphill, and only fate would determine if it would be given back to him when the shooting stopped. He died in the heat of that effort, living fully his best idea of himself.
I have rarely read a better tribute to a fallen officer.
Going shopping would be a big
Going shopping would be a big improvement for the 'Occupy' generation.
How about instead of
How about instead of bitching, you tell the generation that preceded you (the generation that you insist has fucked everything up) to withdraw from the stupidly fucking worthless conflict in Afghanistan instead of offering good for nothing solutions which will never, never work (read: moronic fucking worthless academic bullshit that makes you feel smart) While you're at it, could you possibly prevent the U.S from attacking Iran? Again, it's an utterly useless bone to pick.
Visitor 4:06 is a little
Visitor 4:06 is a little fired up.
@ Exum. Apologoies for too
@ Exum.
Apologoies for too many comments on this thread. You do realize that Tom Day did take the president's comment about going shopping out of context right? I would argue that it is the current administration that has failed us. Keynesian economics has its place, but it doesn't seem to working at this time. Either here or in Europe.
So the Administration that
So the Administration that told us to go shopping, and was taken out of context:
-Induced a massive tax cut to the wealthy, at the same time launching two wars that have cost trillions of dollars.
-Pushed forward a second tax cut, while engaged in those wars (paying for them out of debt)
-Medicare part D, left unfunded.
-Sat on a housing bubble, enabling CDS and other financial instruments to expand the bubble, which popped leaving us on the precipice of a Second Great Depression
Wayne, STFU about Keynesian economics failures, until you admit that Bush Administration and the other "adults" who were our leaders have sunk us into the ground.
I wanted to "Read the whole
I wanted to "Read the whole thing." but the link is dead. Could you fix this?
There is little that is more
There is little that is more courageous than running toward the sound of gunfire to protect your comrades, but it is also fairly straightforward (I'm admittedly a POG, so feel free to blast away if I'm wrong here).
Cutting the US deficit, preventing nuclear proliferation, or avoiding man made climate change might not be nearly so courageous, but they are anything but straightforward.
The "whole thing" is here:
The "whole thing" is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/penn-state-my-fina...
and more here: http://live.washingtonpost.com/on-faith-111114-Penn-State-my-final-loss-...
Good lord, what a whiny
Good lord, what a whiny self-entitled piece of crap that first article is. What could you possibly find to recommend in it?
I admit that complaining that
I admit that complaining that the previous generation's sense of entitlement leaves you short of what you are entitled to strikes me as highly ironic. And I'm in my 20's.
I didn't find it particularly
I didn't find it particularly whiny because the author is stating an intent to move out and draw fire. The "Baby Boomers" have done a piss poor job of building on the foundation laid by the "Greatest Generation" and have in fact weakened it. It is incumbent on us (I am 39 so I suppose long in the tooth for some) to move out, pick up the slack, and try to restore this nation to its previous state of greatness.
In unrelated news, thanks for the Munson shoutout. As an Athens, GA native, the loss of Larry Munson is a palpable absence.
RIP our brave brother. yes
RIP our brave brother.
yes there's a crisis in our institutions public and private, at least somewhat generational. it's also Transnational, the "global elites" the worst example of which is the Global Financial Syndicate have no loyalty to anyone but themselves and personal gain. Somehow they think they can continue to pile kindling and pour gas under the world - a world full of arsonists - and they won't get burnt.
They scoffed at honor, tore down every pillar of institutional morality from the family up, and prospered doing it. They also appear to *love it* when they damage or destroy an institution, or deface the sacred, or just raise juvenile Hell.
We get to chose your retirement. Shoulda died before you got old.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/11/13/listen-up-boomers-...
1. God bless and keep Lt.
1. God bless and keep Lt. Bostrom.
2. Every 'generation' flows into the channels prepared for it by its predecessors.
3. The best you can hope for is that one or two upstanding and forceful leaders will make a few hard choices for the greater good.
4. Doesn't happen much..
5. Mostly we are reacting to what gets crammed down our throat in the arena of human events.
6. Has always been so.
7. Bitching about it is: (1) necessary; (2) inevitable; (3) about as useful as whining about the sun coming up.
8. Damn us and then settle down and get to work.
V/R JWest
@ visitor 11/20/11 So
@ visitor 11/20/11
So Keynesian economics is correct because you don't like George bush? You complain about $1 Trillion on the war in Iraq. Obama borrows more than that every year he is president. The question is how many more trillions does America have to go into debt before we question Keynesian economics? is their a number? Or do we just blame bush whenever anyone asks?
Wayne, don't forget the
Wayne, don't forget the hyper-inflation. Already done. Be interesting when the high inflation we have already in food and energy - petrol - catches up with what's actually been done to our currency and balance sheets.
Cultural Collapse is more
Cultural Collapse is more than Generational Narcissism
Andrew, it's an important subject. And at age 57, I'm disgusted
with most of my generation. But you, and Thomas Day,
and Walter Russell Mead (per Elf 11/21 @ 1:36pm), are attacking
generational symptoms instead of culture/character causes.
Institutions have failed their tests of internal accountability --
Penn State, the Catholic Church, Congress, Alan Greenspan's banks,
the military's eternal cover-ups and whistleblower-executions ...
The CIA's internal accountability mechanisms got the coup de grace when
Director Michael Hayden unleashed an internal investigation against
CIA Inspector-General Helgerson.
To fix those Institutions ("clear and hold"), you must simultaneously
drain the culture/character swamp in which they are festering.
The culture/character causes are vast and subtle.
You should look to how the implicit "Behavioral-Economic" incentives
embedded in our Cultural Infrastructure shape
perceptions and character.
That Infrastructure includes "Risk Society" techno-hardware
and Institutions that insulate individual "situation awareness"
from the sharp Real-world feedbacks essential to learning.
And that Infrastructure includes "Information Society"
psycho-manipulative consumer-marketing software/wet-ware techniques
that pumped-up our globalized economic Ponzi-tron ...
and "mission-creeped" the purpose of the NatSec establishment
into expanding the global supply chains for an unsustainable bubble.
Things fall apart; the civilian Centers -- of corrupt global power
structures -- can hold together only by the Gravity of their own
vices -- and by projecting threatening images of The Other Enemies.
A Political Economy that panders to Freedom vs. Responsibility -- and
a Military-Civilian division of labor tantamount to Moral Apartheid --
have eroded deep deposits of historical wisdom, and the hard-won
humility (risks of unknown unknowns) that was our greatest patrimony.
We trouble our own house -- our Ethics inheritance
dis-integrates to dust in this wind.
It is we, who are reaped by the whirlwind.
It is we, who deserve this.
"..the civilian Centers -- of
"..the civilian Centers -- of corrupt global power
structures -- can hold together only by the Gravity of their own
vices --"
I'm stealing that one.
I went through IOBC and
I went through IOBC and Ranger School with Jon. He was a good buddy of mine and Bowden got his character spot on. I doubt upon taking contact he had any thought of self-preservation, but acted out of pure instinct to defend his soldiers.
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