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thedrifter
12-27-06, 03:09 PM
Lynch Views: The Spoiled Generation
by Lee Lynch
2006-12-27

I find the fact that a bunch of people around my age are running the country to be pretty alarming. How could they possibly know what they’re doing? We are the spoiled generation.

The “great generation” suffered and survived the stock market crash, the depression and a real war, World War II. They saw a limitless future—they’d saved the world from democracy and, through their experience of the depression, knew what their children needed. They’d gone through every deprivation from penury to food rationing to lack of health care and determined that their children would have everything they couldn’t have.

My parents’ generation was the one that made sure there was not only plenty, but fulfilled their dreams through us. We wouldn’t have to work to put food on the table until we were grown. There was money for entertainment: crowds of kids filled the Saturday matinees at the RKO and every home was stocked with a TV, transistor radios and, later, a hi-fi. We would learn trades or go to college. If we were sad, there was money for a doctor and the new happy pills. There was always a turkey at Thanksgiving and the floor under the Christmas tree was piled with gifts. My brother, who was born into the depression and with his dad at sea with the Merchant Marines, would, in the ‘50s, bring me terrific gifts that I now see were what he would have loved as a little boy: Lincoln Logs; trucks; and a model of a Western town with plastic cowboys, horses and corrals.

These riches: The full bellies, the easy access to schools, the weekly allowances and the Disney promise that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true, gave war babies and the boomers who followed insatiable appetites for more. We had all the stuff we needed, but now we wanted the rest: a free world.

Freed from worry about our next meals, we looked for another kind of feast. Our parents had fought the war to end all wars—What were we doing sending our friends and brothers to die in Viet Nam? If everyone was so darned free, why were African Americans riding in the backs of buses? Why were women still dancing half-naked on Ed Sullivan instead of driving fire engines or voting in the Senate? Why were cops still raiding gay bars and beating in our heads?

If we could have bread, we felt entitled to roses. So we repaid our parents by demanding what we thought we were entitled to: real freedom. Bright kids should get into the best schools. Women should earn as much as men. Love should be unfettered by constraints of gender or color or religion. More war was a senseless waste.

But we were spoiled. The revolution made it to TV, the powerful people made what we thought were concessions and we called that winning. We got straight jobs and settled into nuclear families and liked the taste of money, which we donated to whatever causes we still believed in while making sure we were able to earn more money. Then we elected one of our own to finish the job we’d started in the ‘60s without doing the footwork spoiled kids never learn to do. President Clinton proclaimed that gays should be allowed in the military; Senator Clinton was aiming for universal healthcare. When the reactionary axes fell, we were helpless to salvage what we’d been about to gain—or had we become so comfortable we were too indolent to care?

We had some sort of communal tantrum. The next thing we knew, the king of the spoiled generation was in office, an irresponsible white man who had been given a premium college degree without working for it, a man who walked away from his military commitment unpunished, who was entrusted with business ventures he was incapable of operating and who was placed in an office to which he was not elected. A man who, now that he’s roused himself to smell the coffee, is putting men from the great generation into his administration, running to his political daddies to fix his messes.

Six years later, we’ve managed to bleed more Blue into our country, but have we learned the lesson we needed all along? We may have had the necessities handed to us on silver TV dinner platters as kids, and we may have been able to envision a world truly better for everyone, but have we learned that our goals can’t be won only by crowding the mall in D.C. and cheering for entertainers, then going back to our comfy homes and scantily-clad women on T.V.?

Were the ‘60s only about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll? Okay, we’ve won some elections—will the spoiled generation, as we retire, get back to work and earn the freedoms promised by the great generation? Or will we rest on our Blue laurels and party on?

Ellie