Monday, August 11, 2003
LET THE WORD GO FORTH THAT THE TORCH HAS BEEN PASSED TO A NEW GENERATION...AND THAT THEY PASSED IT ON TO THE NEXT
Jeff at Caerdroia has a brilliant observation on the Boomers and the War on Terror. The money quote:
"The War on Terror is the first crisis the Boomers have faced. Their parents fought and won the Cold War, and suffered the consequences of Viet Nam and Watergate. The Boomers sat on the sidelines theorizing, and cheering on ideological ideals without any sense of personal responsibility. Bill Clinton in many ways was the avatar of personal irresponsibility - nihilism made manifest. Now that the crisis is upon the Boomers, the instinctive habit of many is to return to their youth, and shift responsibilities once more to the grownups. Sadly, the real grownups are not in the international community, but in the generation younger than the Boomers."
I think this also neatly explains the reflexive tendency in Congress and the media ( both dominated by the Fifty-something age cohort) to reference any and all foreign policy problems through the lens of the Vietnam War experience, a reference totally lost on anyone under thirty and is relatively irritating to those over seventy whose formative war experience was WWII.
¶ 8:25 PM
Jeff at Caerdroia has a brilliant observation on the Boomers and the War on Terror. The money quote:
"The War on Terror is the first crisis the Boomers have faced. Their parents fought and won the Cold War, and suffered the consequences of Viet Nam and Watergate. The Boomers sat on the sidelines theorizing, and cheering on ideological ideals without any sense of personal responsibility. Bill Clinton in many ways was the avatar of personal irresponsibility - nihilism made manifest. Now that the crisis is upon the Boomers, the instinctive habit of many is to return to their youth, and shift responsibilities once more to the grownups. Sadly, the real grownups are not in the international community, but in the generation younger than the Boomers."
I think this also neatly explains the reflexive tendency in Congress and the media ( both dominated by the Fifty-something age cohort) to reference any and all foreign policy problems through the lens of the Vietnam War experience, a reference totally lost on anyone under thirty and is relatively irritating to those over seventy whose formative war experience was WWII.
¶ 8:25 PM
