Another Clueless Dimwit - Bruce Cannon Gibney - Thinks He Knows About Boomers

It's not an astounding revelation to point out that the Baby Boomers  are among the most vilified generations ever, usually by goofballs who lack any serious knowledge of the group and tend to shoot from the hip.  Most of the polemics issuing from these nattering nabobs of negativity - based on precious little real evidence or logic - insist we Boomers are about to usher in the fall of civilization as we know it. From Arch-Boomer nemesis Robert Samuelson -  who blames “entitlements” for an approaching fiscal train wreck-  to a spate of  has beens and copycats including P.J. O'Rourke, Joe Klein and  David Willets (in his book, ‘How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future and Why They Should Give It Back’) . To an imp they all carp about the "pathological narcissism or selfishness" of the Boomers as the root cause of all our national ills. It's incredible that up to now none of these losers have blamed the Black Death on us too. Occurred before our temporal era? No problem, they'd blame it on our former incarnations!

The latest  addition to this motley crew of hard up writers and petulant,  whiney little bitches is Bruce Cannon Gibney, via his book, “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America,” which came out earlier this month. One wonders if this moron even has a clue what a sociopath is, to make such a broad and sweeping claim about an entire generation.

Perhaps the best insight on the sociopath as clinically defined (which is what I presume Gibney was trying to base his claim on) is the book by Dr. Martha Stout, 'The Sociopath Next Door'. She notes the attributes include seven distinguishing characteristics, such as deceitfulness, impulsivity, superficial charm and a lack of remorse. She  estimates as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. Add in those who exhibit some rudimentary controls of conscience and the total of sociopaths comes to 10 percent.

The Baby Boom contingent itself is now 74.9 million strong which means it makes up just over 24 percent of the U.S. population.  This means Gibney has splattered his "sociopath' brush too wide by over 50 percent. But no surprise there for a turkey who's probably only done minimal research and grabbed most of his material via anecdotes related to him by familial inbreds. (His own).

In his book - similar to most Boomer bashers-  Gibney claims that much of the generation born between 1946 and 1964 is "selfish, lacking in empathy and financially irresponsible." Like the semi-literates before him he uncritically adopts the tag of “Me Generation” -  a term coined by equally uninformed PR and media assholes at the time. Thus the baby boomers have long been described as self-interested, but as always - the level of conflation is mind boggling.

I refer here to the classical logical error committed by most Boomer bashers: the “fallacy of composition” i.e. when one claims that what is true of a part is true of a whole.  In this case, the “Boomers” he is referring to make up about 5 percent of the total generation. These are the entitled, 'silver spoon in the mouth'  twerps like Gee Dumbya Bush – who got his Harvard education via a legacy entitlement.  And Donald J. Trump, raised as a closet psychopath and liar by a father and mother leery of his pathological tendencies and who knew they had to instill in him a sense of grandiose entitlement.

So, in effect, what those like Gibney, Willets, Klein et al have done is attribute to an entire generation the attributes of perhaps 5 percent of the total. Again, the fallacy of composition magnified to stupendous proportions - to the extent none of these trash books are really worth the paper printed on. And hence, would only have appeal to ardent Boomer haters seeking to reinforce their confirmation bias.

More evidence that Gibney is a congenital idiot and has no clue what he's yapping about, when he writes:

“70 million Americans did appear to be sociopaths a few months ago [during the election],”

Again, what's he talking about? Can't he even get basic facts straight? If he's referring to votes, or voters, it makes no sense given 65,844,954 voters went for Hillary and  62,979,879 for Donald Trump. So where is this "70 million"?  How does this number enter to support his daft claims? If he's trying to tie it into the Boomers it's a lost cause, a fool's errand.

Gibney in his generalized twaddle claims a hallmark of the boomer is an inability to plan for the future, financially and otherwise. He writes:

 “They really just don’t save, and all these personal behaviors translate into international policy. Climate is another indicator of improvidence and lack of empathy — they don’t care really care about the environment, just about themselves.”

Really? Seriously? Then how come I, along with many of my friends and relatives (also Boomers) were able to save and do it conscientiously?  As for climate, last I checked, many of my posts the past year have been about climate change and the need for people to take cognizance of leaving a habitable world for future generations. My friends and relatives are also of the same mind, and most of us belong to groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and Waterkeepers' Alliance.  If we didn't care why are we walking to the grocery instead of using cars, recycling assiduously, and eschewing beef (as too water intensive)?    Why are many of us also invested to the extent of Will planning? Again, Gibney uses over-generalization like a narcotic. Hell, mayhap he was on a narcotic when he wrote this termite bait book.

His worst travesty is accusing us of "generational plunder". Accusing us wholesale  of  “the mass, democratically-sanctioned transfer of wealth away from the young and toward the Boomers,” and "making a mess of Social Security and Medicare",

This actually takes a page from one equally uninformed NY Times letter writer,  Daniel Bronheim, who reached full throated pitch and bile as he wrote three years ago:

 “The rising cost of Social Security and Medicare has for a generation crowded out adequate government investment in infrastructure, education and research. It has meant a huge and unjustified transfer of wealth from the young to the elderly, especially when it’s being funded by borrowing from the future”.

Bronheim, like Gibney,  gets his perceptual panties in a twist over elderly greed, but in fact, if he had more brains or common sense he’d recognize it’s the expanded military industrial complex which now consumes 58 percent of current expenditures. THAT is what’s responsible for leaving his younger generation with debt, poor job outlook, and transferred wealth. Does this nitwit not know, for example, that the Bushies pilfered Social Security monies to pay for their illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Yes, the Bushies were largely Boomers, but they were amongst the 5 % of sociopaths, not the much larger proportion of decent, hard working teachers, doctors, scientists, former Peace Corps volunteers I knew.

Gibney at numerous points goes into full blown hysteria blaming the boomers for nearly everything perceived as bad: abortion, divorce, overeating, high inflation, taking deferments during Vietnam, failing to launch a mass movement calling for the rebuilding of Vietnam after the war, crime, poor educational standards, corporate tax rates, adjunct professors.

All of which goes to show how uncritical, undisciplined thinking can lead one down the garden path to verbal chaos and total lack of credibility.   The inveighing against abortion is especially choice. So I can only presume he'd have preferred we go back to letting women use coat hangers to do their own abortions. Else what?  His bellyaching about "taking deferments during Vietnam" also strikes a note of discord given Vietnam was an illegal war anyway. It was hatched by LBJ under false pretenses using the Tonkin Gulf Resolution after it was claimed that two U.S. gunboats (the Maddox and Turner Joy) were fired on without provocation in international waters.

Perhaps the best clue this fool hasn't a clue and his book belongs in the nearest dumpster is when he makes reference to: “Pat Robertson fulminating about homosexuals, feminists, and praying for the deflection of hurricanes while his website minions opined on the afterlife of pets.”   Blissfully unaware that Robertson was born in 1930, 16 years  before the oldest boomer.  Is this a one off error? Fuck no. Gibney also has words for “feckless non-entities like Marco Rubio.” But Rubio, born in 1971, is nearly a decade younger than the youngest boomers.  If this goober doesn't even know the definition of a Baby Boomer, i.e. the year span defined for one to be a Boomer, how can he write about them?  It would be analogous to me writing about solar sprites and calling them sunspots!

If this mentally deficient asshole doesn't even know who qualifies as a Boomer and who doesn't,  why take anything he writes seriously?

Gibney complains that “many young boomers leapt at the neo-Malthusian nonsense peddled in the 1960s and 1970s by a slightly older generation of writers.”  Thereby trying to indict Paul Ehrlich (b. 1932), who wrote “The Population Bomb”.  Again, he misfires on Ehrlich being a Boomer, given he was born 14 years before 1946, the date of the oldest boomers' birth. Apart from that there is no "neo-Malthusian nonsense" as the world IS overpopulated in terms of limited resources. So, he's also a know nothing on this topic as well, see  e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/earth-day-alert-biggest-problem-remains.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/human-overpopulation-contributig-to.html

This derelict, delirious twit even criticizes Al Gore as "anti-environment"  and "a pork-barreling scenery wrecker.”  Huh?  Since when?

Beyond all that codswallop Gibney pronounces that:  “the story of the past forty years has been the substitution of sentiment for science” and that “the Boomers were the first modern generation to harbor really negative feelings about reality and science.”

Really? Seriously? That's not what I've beheld in the various scientific organizations I've been a member of including the American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union. These include cooperative research projects as well as papers presented at conferences.  What I saw was more substitution of "sentiment" for science in the Gen X'ers and Millennials - including too many of them carrying on with the bunkum that the Sun and "natural cycles" are responsible for global warming not CO2.

So I've no idea what Gibney is blabbering about.

Gibney is also glib in dismissing Boomers at making any positive contributions, period, from major advances in medicine and science, to arts and culture, to  civil rights and the rights of women, disabled people and gay people.  Did he even hear of the Civil Rights Act? Does he know (or care) how many Boomers literally put their bodies on the line- subjected to truncheon beatings and dogs?  This was when they joined the Freedom Marchers to Alabama, and Mississippi in 1964-66?  This was to help in signing up African-Americans for voter registration. Many I knew who left for MS while at Loyola returned so badly injured they were unable to continue their educations.  One, "Marty" from NYC, had to return home to recuperate after having his skull fractured by a racist pig's bat.

Other Boomer voting rights assistants were shot at and lost their lives, like those who accompanied and helped Viola Liuzzo in one of her voter drives. Does this piece of shit even know about that?  Does he know or grasp how the Boomers marching against the Vietnam War brought it to an earlier close? Or how Boomer journalists who trained cameras on the slaughter  and indiscriminate butchery (My Lai massacre)  assisted as well?  He also has some damned nerve carping about "rebuilding" in Vietnam after LBJ and Generals had much of the place "blowtorched" using napalm.

Is he aware of the Boomer engineers and scientists who helped put men on the Moon (later Apollo missions)? Who also designed the Viking craft for the Mars encounter in 1976 and contributed numerous experiments, research for Shuttle missions? Is he remotely aware of the Boomer scientists who helped make great advances in antibiotics, as well as more improved tests for cancer using enhanced technologies?  What about the advances made in fields from nutrition to gerontology which many of my Peace Corps colleagues also participated in?  How about the sheer number of us who returned home from volunteer assignments overseas to volunteer again in our own communities?

Yes, some of my generation were narcissists - but more were idealists - who believed in such moral ideals as equal rights for all, equal pay for both genders, and using science to advance humanity. The Boomer generation did have its share of sociopaths, but again, no  more than in later generations, such as Gen X and Millennials. (See, for example, the flick 'American Psycho' about a Gen X Wall Street broker sociopath and psychopath)

As I noted above, the chief problem of Gibney - apart from not recognizing who was a Boomer and who wasn't - is his tendency to wildly conflate. In the latter case he regularly conflates the Woodstock counterculture types ("hippies"), with the moderate liberal types (who served in Peace Corps or VISTA instead,  like me)  and their ideological right wing opposites.   So no surprise that by mixing the descriptions of all these groups in one pot he comes out with bare balderdash. Or,  as my Caribbean friends would say, Calalloo soup.

A perfect example of Gibney's "calalloo" - inspired Boomer bollocks is when he writes:

“As a group, the Boomers managed to be simultaneously for the war and against serving in it. Their responses to Vietnam were confused,”

But "they" weren’t confused, because "they" is not one homogeneous population.  Unless one is a congenital  ignoramus he cannot describe the Boomers by writing about us indiscriminately as an entire group. The reason is that the Boomers actually comprised three differing populations (at least)  as I indicated. By conflating them, Gibney ends up with gibberish and balderdash while committing the fallacy of composition.. What should he have done? Simple! Write:  "One faction of Boomers was pro-War and another was anti- War and marched against it, while another faction opposed the War but didn't actively inveigh against it choosing instead alternative service".  More complicated? Yes, but more honest, a trait Gibney seems to lack as much as Trump.

The takeaway of all this is that if you're going to write about the Baby Boomers be sure you don't over generalize, but instead grasp that separate factions comprised this generation. It also helps, when singling out the supposed travesties of individuals, you know whether indeed they are truly Boomers - or part of a different generation.

The conclusion for me is that Gibney's effort has only one practical use - as toilet paper if you're ever marooned on some island.

How Did We Go From Astronomical To Atomic Time?

Me, standing astride the Greenwich meridian which separates the eastern and western hemispheres, in July, 1978.

A question that often comes up during astronomy lectures concerns astronomical time- keeping. Most educated people are at least aware that it's based on the motions of the Earth (rotation and revolution) with respect to the Sun.  For much of the past 150 years precision astronomical timekeeping has been carried out from the Royal Greenwich Observatory outside London. (See images above). This is also the venue through which the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude ) runs, separating the eastern and western hemispheres and which I had the honor of standing astride in July of 1978.  As we were informed by one specialist at the time, this is the location from which Greenwich Mean Time is measured and which clocks around the world have adopted.

First things first, A “time zone” is defined by taking the 360 degrees through which Earth rotates in one day, and dividing it by 24, since it requires 24 hours to make one revolution. Thus, one standard time zone would be generated via (360 deg/ 24 hr) = 15 deg/h or 15 degrees of longitude per hour - so be 15 degrees of longitude in expanse. Thus, time zones (calibrated per HOUR) were marked out by LONGITUDE differences.

Time zones don’t mean anything until referenced or calibrated to a fixed position-location, and that is the Greenwich Meridian, defined as 0 degrees longitude. All longitudes west of Greenwich mark time earlier – and all longitudes east of Greenwich mark times later. Thus, Berlin will always have a time later than London, and London will have a time later than New Orleans, just as Barbados will always have a time earlier than London and later than Miami.

The time difference is referenced to longitude difference for the various central meridians. For example, if London is at approximately 0 degrees longitude, and New Orleans is at 90 degrees west longitude, then New Orleans is earlier than London by (90 deg/ 15 deg/h) = 6 hours. If the time in London is noon local mean time, then it is 6 a.m. in New Orleans.

In order to solve the problem of different local mean times, Greenwich Mean Time or GMT was developed, so people could compare the same clock times around the world. GMT is based on a 24 hour clock defined at the Greenwich Meridian. So, for example, if one is listening to the BBC from New Orleans and the time given is 13h 30 m GMT, then that means it’s 1.30 p.m. LMT in London. Since New Orleans is 6 hours earlier, than that means it’s 7.30 a.m. local mean time in New Orleans.

Thus, knowing GMT, one can always work out the time at one’s location if one knows the longitude difference relative to Greenwich. (Note for the purposes here, I ‘m taking London as having the same longitude as Greenwich. It's actually off by a few thousand feet but negligible in terms of computations.)

In the above discussion the key thread is that timekeeping was a more or less sensible operation, meaning it could be related to an actual object (Sun) and its apparent motions as seen from Earth. The problem is that over the centuries that followed time keeping became ever more abstract and also more refined in the sense the increments got smaller (ultimately reaching the second defined as 1/86,400 th of the time from one noon to the next.

But this required the ultimate abstraction of the fictitious mean Sun.  What exactly is the fictitious mean Sun? What, for that matter, is the fictitious Sun? Basically, the former is that fictitious entity which is presumed to travel always at a uniform rate every hour and every day. This fictional creation enables us to fabricate "time zones" based on the fiction that the Earth turns uniformly through 360 degrees every 24 hours, hence through 15 degrees every hour.

By contrast, the fictitious Sun is not so regularized so its motion is erratic. This is also referenced to what we call "apparent solar time" or "sundial time".  Based on comparisons of the two, one can then compute what is called the "equation of time", see e.g.















The above concepts are, of course, idealizations. In truth, the Earth's rotation rate is not stable over time, hence the lengths of time - especially the second- will be affected. Every tide that strikes the beaches of the planet takes energy out of its spin, through the combined actions of Sun and Mon.

This is good to know because it set the stage for atomic time. Why atomic time? Well, because atoms are not affected by tides.  Thus it was near the middle of the last century physicists decided that the "second" needed revision. Indeed, the second was not the second at all (1/86, 400th of an Earth rotation) but instead was equivalent to 9.2 billion oscillations of a microwave beam when tuned to the frequency of a cesium atom. The clear advantage is that one no longer needed to look at the Sun to set clocks. Thus did Judah Levine announce at one global time conference:

"I have bad news for you, Britain. We are stealing the Greenwich meridian!"

Which brings us to the singular disadvantage of atomic time: It is no longer sensible in the way that solar time had been. While one could mark the passage of time from noon on one day to noon the next and multiply by 60 minutes per hour then by 60 seconds per minute - then take the reciprocal, how could one process - far less measure - 9.2 billion oscillations of a microwave beam when tuned to the frequency of a cesium atom?.

Never mind, the accuracy is needed given much of the world (especially in the financial- commercial arena) now requires sub-second accuracy. For example, for financial clients latency is crucial. This means the time elapsed between ordering a trade and when it actually happens. Even a two second delay in the flash trade sphere could mean millions lost for some high end users.  These typically make dozens or hundreds of trades per second so even a millisecond delay is critical.

Note again, atomic time is not a system that has or needs time zones. It works on Universal Coordinated Time, or effectively GMT applied to every location on Earth.  Since the accuracy of worldwide UT is governed by atomic clocks, there is no tolerance for such things as "leap seconds". For reference, a leap second was last added to electronic clocks at midnight universal time on Saturday, June 30, 2012, with atomic clocks reading 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before then moving on to Greenwich Mean Time. (Other leap seconds were added in 2008, 2005 and 1998.)

The leap second is added in order to compensate for changes in Earth's rotation.  But the worry of the atomic time lords is that if we get a leap second wrong it could  lead to global financial catastrophe. For example, if Tokyo markets are out of synch with New York's for even a fraction of a second and thousands of trades are delayed. Or, more technically, let's say for a 2 second period it is not possible to distinguish UTs of 00:00:00 and 00:00: 00 the next time, i.e. after a leap second is added. Then the order of trades would be impossible to decipher.  As far as any financial regulators would be concerned, causality itself would be reversed.

But Britain's time managers say 'hogwash' to this. The Greenwich Observatory position was best stated by Peter Whibberley in 2013 after a failed conference in Geneva:: "Removing the leap second would not be a minor technical change, but rather a fundamental change. Ever since mechanical clocks were created we have always adjusted to model the rotation of the Earth."

But the atomic clock masters aren't buying it, and therein lies the conflict and the basis or failing to resolve the issue.

Former British science minister David Willets, however, is unrepentant about British intransigence. As he notes:

"If we just fixed time by the atomic clock it would, over centuries, diverge from time as measured by the rotation of the Earth. The Sun would then not be at its highest in the sky at noon. The (Prime) Meridian would no longer be at Greenwich but slowly heading towards Paris. Leap seconds allow us to keep the time of day linked to the rotation of the Earth even as it slows. The purists disapprove of this but we should not sever the link between time and the pattern of our lives on Earth."


I for one believe he makes a solid point. Already technological gizmos (see previous post) have majorly impacted social areas of our lives, wreaking havoc in many as they are unable to break free of the electronic social twitter tethers. Now add in disruptions of time perception, where one might look to see an estimate of the time - say by the Sun's altitude in the sky- and behold it is totally out of synch with one's quartz watch.   All this plays into the horrific picture painted by Morris Berman in his book, The Re-Enchantment of the World, portraying a grim time when humans have lost all connections to the natural world .

Do we really want this in the interest of efficiency? At least for the time being any changes regarding the leap second will be postponed until 2023 when the next time conference meets.

Millennials Need to Stop Whining About the Boomers!

Let's face it, the Baby Boomers have been a target of easy opportunity for all manner of nattering nabobs of negativity, who insist we Boomers are about to usher in the fall of civilization as we know it. From Arch-Boomer nemesis, Robert Samuelson who blames “entitlements” for an approaching fiscal train wreck, to a spate of authors – including P.J. O'Rourke, Joe Klein and  David Willets (in his book, ‘How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future and Why They Should Give It Back’)

Now enter a whiny Millennial, Alexander S. Balkin, who in a recent Salon piece (‘Boomers Ruined America’) cried for over 1,000 words on how terrible, amoral and  greedy the Baby Boomers are with choice shots such as:

The perfect example of this was the 2008 collapse of the toxic housing debt market. In government, baby boomers ballooned the defense budget beyond the point of reason. They then raided government programs to pay for their mistakes. Regarding the environment, baby boomers left the United States reliant on coal (cough, cough) while eroding the advanced nuclear energy infrastructure built by their parents. We can thank baby boomer leadership for a nation that has no sound policy on foreign affairs, the environment, energy, social welfare, human rights, terrorism, technology development, education, debt, etc. The point being, baby boomer leadership has provided America with a government that is the most partisan and self-serving the union has ever seen, and remains entirely reactive to the world around it.

All of which is over-generalized mush – can you say “fallacy of composition” i.e. when one claims that what is true of a part is true of a whole?  In this case, the “Boomers” he is referring to make up about 5 percent of the total generation. These are the entitled, 'silver spoon in the mouth'  twerps like Gee Dumbya Bush – who got his Harvard education via a legacy entitlement, and who – once elected- set the nation on a course of perpetual fear (following 9/11) , perpetual war (with defense budgets to match)  and massive oil  & coal dependency (well, BOTH Bush and Cheney were oilmen, after all, duh!)

But this twerp Balkin makes no distinction between that enclave of miscreants and the vast mass of Boomers – like me – who gave blood, sweat and tears either fighting in Vietnam for a war those like Bush instigated (in that case, LBJ – fawning fool for the Texas oilmen and military industrial complex) or serving in Peace Corps (as I did for 4 years) or some other volunteer mode. Yet this guy blames us and essentially dumps us all into the same mix as the Bushite- Neocon- Maul Street shyster  subset of Boomers!  This lack of rational discrimination alone calls into question his credibility in writing the piece.

As for the 2008 financial meltdown, don’t even get me started. But if this guy Balkin had a clue he could have researched and excavated the actual background – which can be boiled down to those of the elite Bushie-mold ilk creating credit default swaps and mixing them up with valid bonds and labeling the whole AAA. Those who want more information (and that especially includes Mr. Balkin)  can go here:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/lights-go-out-on-dismal-science-long.html

Also, the historical causes of multi-nation financial meltdown are a lot less obvious than picking on one highly visible demographic.  If you want the supreme distillation it can basically be summed up in two parts: 1) trashing the Bretton Woods Global Finance Agreement (1973), and 2) Launching numerous wars of choice which have not only cost blood but enormous treasure.

In the case of Bretton Woods, while it wasn’t perfect it did provide a more equitable global basis for competition and trade than what’s in place now – based on such travesties as G.A.T.T., NAFTA and World Trade Organization fiats (which sent millions of American jobs overseas). Worse, with the collapse of Bretton Woods, global currencies went from a fixed exchange rate system to a floating system. Only years after did many of the creators of the latter realize what an error they had made, and how much they facilitated currency speculation –especially in the carry trade. Since the Asian crisis in 1997, currency raiders have splattered the reserves of a number of nations as governments have watched helplessly. Only most recently, this piracy has reached new heights via the used of “naked credit default swaps” for speculators to bet on national collapse (as in Greece) with NO money on the table of their own.

If one now factors in how things have changed since 1973, one begins to see why the “younger generation” has been placed in economic peril – and it isn’t from the Boomers! For one thing, floating exchange rates and currency raids have allowed the dollar’s strength to deteriorate. This is called “currency debasement” and it’s been used over and over in recent decades for not very salutary purposes. For example, the Bush government used it to make the cost of domestic goods cheaper (via a cheaper dollar) to try to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

Then again, the global market tyranny that has replaced Bretton Woods, has enabled millions and millions of high paying, relatively secure jobs (especially in manufacturing, but more recently in computer software specialties) to be shipped offshore to places like Bangalore and Beijing. Minus those higher benefits, higher paying jobs, Americans have barely been able to make ends meet – and this partly explains their stupendous reliance on credit card – to make up for their lost income. Young people, caught in this vortex, will obviously not see the same economic security as their parents who held steady good paying jobs with top benefits, to the extent that one could even afford to stay home. The now (nearly extinct) single income family!

Now, to this, add in all the wars  (Bushie instigated- without higher taxes to pay for them) which have bled down the national treasury (as I noted by an estimated $6 trillion – not even counting whacked out “defense” spending such as the $2.1 trillion under Reagan) and you have the basis for an economic Armageddon. Because make no mistake, SOMEONE had to pay or will have to pay, for those wars. Who is holding most of the bonds right now? Chinese and Japanese bankers – to the tune of nearly $2 trillion. Who will get the bill in the future? Our kids and grand kids, because their cowardly government didn’t have the brains or insight not to try to act like the world’s cop – and especially (in the Bush years) launching a full scale war against robed lunatics when a localized police or intel action could have been effective.

They preferred to bankrupt us, as Osama bin Laden always wanted – playing into his hands. Nor did they have the inner fortitude, given they got their war vote (by reconciliation no less) , to at least mandate the taxes to pay for it.  They preferred instead to use future taxes (and higher interest rates) to pay for it, but on the backs of future generations.

Yet now the smarmy asses in congress that voted for these war travesties and their humongous costs, want to say we haven’t the money for decent health care reform.

No, the Boomers are not the ghouls they’re made out to be by the likes of David Willet  or Alexander S. Balkin.  One of whom (Willet)  blames us for having too few children to increase our wealth relative to theirs and the other blames us for everything from the credit crisis to exploding defense budgets and overt dependence on fossil fuels.  Neither displays any grasp of reality and therein lies the problem. Because minus test in reality and hard evidence you don't know what you're talking about. 

People need to wake up, stop their blame game, and examine who the real culprits are in this forlorn multinational debt and war miasma. One thing for sure: Boomers do not need to “give back” anything to the next generation. What we do have to offer is our insight, and best advice. It’s up to the young ‘uns to take it or leave it, but if they leave it – don’t blame us for their predicament and lack of political smarts.

If I had one piece of advice for the likes of Balkin and his compatriots, it would be to put down the Ipods, smart phones and Twitter access and head to the library to do some serious reading: on history, politics and economics especially. To see first hand how you got to where you are without having to rely on simplistic scapegoats....like a whole generation. Knowledge is the key to your liberation, not picking on a large group that in many ways has been victimized as much or worse than you and for a longer time.

And btw, despite Balkin's claims we were somehow all privileged and got it all handed to us, I will have him know that most of us weren't favored sons like George W. Bush. We either had to get scholarships to attend university or student loans. And after graduating we educated ourselves on the basics of the political system and economics - our parents didn't have the time to dote because they were too busy working.

Before Mr. Balkin or others of his generation go after the Boomers again, they may wish to pick up a copy of my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy – to see how Millennials really ended up where they are:

 http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/philip-a-stahl/the-elements-of-the-corporatocracy/paperback/product-18649133.html

 See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/will-millennials-save-us-all.html