Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

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Simple Minded

Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

I don't buy into the view that one party is more to blame than the other, seems like a mass phenonema caused by prosperity that came a bit too easily for many. Politicians seems no more juvenile than the masses. Other than that, Thornton makes some good points.


April 6, 2013
The Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers
by Bruce Thornton
FrontPage

Like the hero of Gunter Grass’ novel The Tin Drum, America’s progressive Baby Boomers chose not to grow up. Why should they? They decided that their development was complete when they graduated from college. All they needed to do was affirm their magnificent, world-historical identity. No surprise, then, that we are currently afflicted by the juvenile politics of the Democratic Party (both parties-SM), the policies of which embody the Boomer creed: we all have a right to eat our entitlement and hedonism cake and have it too — as long as it’s subsidized by the evil rich.

Boomers, of course, had a lot of help in postponing adulthood. The ever-extending length of adolescence partly accounts for this. Post-war affluence made it affordable to prolong further this historically unprecedented time of life between childhood and adulthood. Consumerism took advantage of this new market, one prone to impulse buying and enjoying access to lots of surplus wealth. So they elevated in social importance the transient whims, banal ideas, and foolish desires of a group flush with disposable income. The result was the most pampered, obsessed over, and indulged generation in American history.

As a consequence, the Boomers developed the unearned sense of entitlement and unrealistic expectations more typical of spoiled children. And the culture went right along with them and pandered to their juvenile taste, mainly because there was money to be made. The traditional moral limits on materialism and freely indulging one’s appetites had always gotten in the way of profit. Starting in the 50’s, the old taboos about sex, public vulgarity, and drugs all began to be swept away. “If it feels good, do it” became a new human right as well as a potent source of profit.

Hence the “eerie vulgarity,” to use Nabokov’s phrase, of our popular culture, which has managed to trivialize the “edgy” and “transgressive” into the dullest of clichés, and reduced what was once the sordid practices of rakes and roués into the mass-marketed fashion accessories of pre-teens, and the subject of smutty jokes on prime-time sit-coms. And anyone who tries to stand athwart this locomotive of degradation is dismissed as a fascist square or a religious fanatic who wants to “turn back the clock” to the dark days of sexual oppression and repression.

This cultural debasement was helped along by the destruction of our educational system. The postwar university’s abandonment of traditional schooling in history, language, philosophy, literature, and basic skills created a vacuum filled by leftist ideology and identity politics, both of which debased history into a cheap political melodrama of oppression, institutionalized victim politics, abandoned training in critical analysis, and promoted utopian standards of happiness and justice never to be met in a complex world of flawed humans. Yet chanting the slogans, jargon, and clichés embodying these unrealistic goals allowed callow Boomers to preen morally on the cheap, and to justify their destructive politics as earnest idealism. The intensity of feelings and passionately held opinions, not the intellectual or moral coherence of thought or ideas, became the currency of worth and authenticity — another characteristic of children, one now reinforced and cultivated by figures of presumably adult authority in politics, schools, and the media. Better yet, the privilege of bourgeoisie Boomers was now compensated for by the ostentatious endorsement of “social justice” for people living two zip codes over.

The worst effects, however, of this indulgence of a whole generation and the failure to educate it can be seen in politics. Traditional political thinking had always been predicated on a tragic view of human nature, one recognizing that what Madison called the “passions and interests” of human nature impose limits on what governments can accomplish. Loss, failure, disappointment, poverty, injustice, and suffering can never be eliminated from human life, only mitigated at best. Evil is a constant reality battling against the good, sometimes requiring destructive force and suffering for its elimination. Earthly perfection, in short, is a delusion, and utopia nowhere.

This was the philosophy of the Founders, as can be seen everywhere in the Federalist essays and the assumptions underlying the Constitution. For example, Hamilton in Federalist 6 reminds us “that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.” In 10, Madison’s famous discussion of “faction” — the political groups “actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens” — likewise reflects a realist view of human nature and the power of “opinions” formed by a “fallible” reason and influenced by “passions”: “The latent causes of faction,” Madison summarizes, “are thus sown in the nature of man.” That’s why the Constitution codifies the separation and balance of powers, so that faction will block faction from threatening the freedom of the whole citizenry. As John Adams said, dismissing the notion of human perfectibility given the permanent human passions like envious rivalry: “Emulation next to self-preservation will forever be the great spring of human actions, and the balance of a well-ordered government will alone be able to prevent that emulation from degenerating into dangerous ambition, irregular rivalries, destructive factions, wasting seditions, and bloody civil war.”

With progressive Boomers, though, this traditional American political wisdom was corrupted by utopianism, a childish belief that perfect justice, perfect equality, absolute freedom, and a world without losers or violence would come about just because we desired it so. Unrealistic standards of state behavior and goals alien to the tragic truths of human nature became the touchstone of political virtue. At the same time, government has to grow more and more powerful in order to accomplish lofty goals like eliminating poverty, discrimination, or war, in the process threatening political freedom and personal autonomy. This demand for absolute personal freedom and greater government power to achieve unrealistic goals reflects the incoherence typical of childish reasoning.

This is the world the Boomers have created. Popular and “serious” culture alike reflect a highly polished mediocrity, its stale and questionable ideas and creaking clichéd plots and characters — psycho white guys, CIA agents, corporate CEOs, repressed Christians — given a patina of technical high finish and spurious innovation. Our politics embodies a juvenile utopianism expressed in bumper-sticker bromides — “Hope and Change!” — dangerous in a world of hard men, conflicting goods, tragic limits, and fanatical evil. These are all the expressions of an over-indulged, badly educated teen-aged mind.

But the ultimate blame for this generation’s pathologies lies with bad ideas birthed long before 1946 and spread by grown-ups who should have known better. Romanticism midwifed the cult of feeling and solipsistic individualism. Positivism popularized the notion that science and technology could liberate us from suffering, want, and failure. Communism, socialism, and progressivism all pursued the impossible dream of perfect equality and justice and eternal universal happiness. Secularism and the decline of faith empowered pseudo-scientific substitutes like psychology and sociology. All these diseases of modernity slumbered in the body politic, infecting mostly the intellectual and artistic elites, until they broke out into an epidemic nurtured by post-war wealth and mass media, eventually leading to the presidency of Barack Obama, a walking symptomatology of the progressive Boomer disease. And here we are today, like Livy’s Romans so far gone that we can stand neither the disease nor the cure.

©2013 Bruce S. Thornton
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Enki »

It's actually really easy to avoid the degraded culture. What makes people seem like fascist squares is when they want to legislate their own morality.

I think that a greater level of freedom would actually make morality fashionable. For now we are used to substituting law for morality, so our moral reasoning is less.

Of course there are reasons to legislate morality, but it should be done micro-regionally. States/Counties should make allowance for Red Light districts. If you are against legislation of this sort of thing, then you undercut zoning, and then I get to throw a rave in my backyard on a Tuesday night, and you as my neighbor have no recourse but violence.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by YMix »

I don't buy into the view that one party is more to blame than the other
I think that Mr. Perfect is probably the last one around here to blame one party for everything.
Other than that, Thornton makes some good points.
Actually, he makes some so-and-so points. I might have believed him, but I've read enough H.L. Mencken to know better
So they elevated in social importance the transient whims, banal ideas, and foolish desires of a group flush with disposable income. The result was the most pampered, obsessed over, and indulged generation in American history.
"Americans, true enough, are richer than most. Their country yields more than other countries; they get more cash for their labor; they jingle more money in their pockets. But they also spend more and with less thought of values. Whatever is gaudy and showy gets their dollars; they are, so to speak, constantly on holiday, their eyes alert to get rid of the change" - H.L. Mencken, The American, 1918
As a consequence, the Boomers developed the unearned sense of entitlement and unrealistic expectations more typical of spoiled children. And the culture went right along with them and pandered to their juvenile taste, mainly because there was money to be made. The traditional moral limits on materialism and freely indulging one’s appetites had always gotten in the way of profit. Starting in the 50’s, the old taboos about sex, public vulgarity, and drugs all began to be swept away. “If it feels good, do it” became a new human right as well as a potent source of profit.
Heh, shouldn't you post this in the "Capitalism is undermining America’s moral values" thread? :)
Hence the “eerie vulgarity,” to use Nabokov’s phrase, of our popular culture, which has managed to trivialize the “edgy” and “transgressive” into the dullest of clichés, and reduced what was once the sordid practices of rakes and roués into the mass-marketed fashion accessories of pre-teens, and the subject of smutty jokes on prime-time sit-coms. And anyone who tries to stand athwart this locomotive of degradation is dismissed as a fascist square or a religious fanatic who wants to “turn back the clock” to the dark days of sexual oppression and repression.
"That night I went to the Winter Garden to see the new show. During the first part, 40 or 50 head of girls with their legs bare marched down a runway into the audience, passing within four or five centimeters of my popping eyes. During the second part, two comedians came out and began making jokes about what Havelock Ellis calls inversion." H.L. Mencken, On Being an American, 1920
The postwar university’s abandonment of traditional schooling in history, language, philosophy, literature, and basic skills created a vacuum filled by leftist ideology and identity politics, both of which debased history into a cheap political melodrama of oppression, institutionalized victim politics, abandoned training in critical analysis, and promoted utopian standards of happiness and justice never to be met in a complex world of flawed humans. Yet chanting the slogans, jargon, and clichés embodying these unrealistic goals allowed callow Boomers to preen morally on the cheap, and to justify their destructive politics as earnest idealism.
William Jennings Bryan called to say that this kind of politics has been a staple in the USA since at least his time.
In 10, Madison’s famous discussion of “faction” — the political groups “actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens” — likewise reflects a realist view of human nature and the power of “opinions” formed by a “fallible” reason and influenced by “passions”
If you take Madison seriously, then all the parties, including the Democratic Party and the GOP, should be disbanded ASAP and the formation of new parties should be banned.
At the same time, government has to grow more and more powerful in order to accomplish lofty goals like eliminating poverty, discrimination, or war, in the process threatening political freedom and personal autonomy.
Your government started growing powerful by suppressing workers, banning the consumption of alcohol, hunting German-Americans and "communists" (a.k.a. anybody we don't like). Thornton's problem seems to be that a different faction (one he does not agree with) is now in control and taking the trend further and further.
But the ultimate blame for this generation’s pathologies lies with bad ideas birthed long before 1946 and spread by grown-ups who should have known better.
True and this is what sinks Thornton's article.
Our politics embodies a juvenile utopianism expressed in bumper-sticker bromides
Image
Romanticism midwifed the cult of feeling and solipsistic individualism.
The rugged individual?
Positivism popularized the notion that science and technology could liberate us from suffering, want, and failure.
Science and technology did liberate us from much of the suffering and want occurring back when positivism was first developed. Also, don't knock science. It gave you better guns and ammo.
Communism, socialism, and progressivism all pursued the impossible dream of perfect equality and justice and eternal universal happiness.
That was borrowed from Christianity.
Secularism and the decline of faith empowered pseudo-scientific substitutes like psychology and sociology.
Someone had to study the mind and its processes.

And, finally, to go beyond the one liners and the quotes. The problem is that this article is a quite banal take on the same old theme: the present sucks, the past was better and the people I don't like are responsible. The author seems to be aware of trends that go back much longer than 1960, but once again he selects only the things he doesn't like. He notes that consumerism "took advantage of this new market", but has nothing to say about consumerism. Apparently, if you see a new market and take advantage of it, you are beyond reproach. He also says that "the culture went right along with them". No, the culture didn't do anything. Middle class CEOs working for upper class and/or rich owners pandered deliberately to the rest of the society and pushed the culture in a certain direction simply in order to make money. Well, they did make money, but you were left holding the bag of a broken society.

As for the "progressives, leftists and hippies", I wouldn't blame leftism as such, but rather your habit of taking ideologies very seriously and of running away with them. It's no wonder that hippism was born and bloomed on your side of the pond. Europeans have long rid themselves of the Christian church's taboos on drinking and sex (to the extent that they were ever taken seriously) without turning this into a movement. Obviously, such reasonable behavior was not good enough for the USA. Nowadays I see the hippie movement as an offshoot of the same thick trunk of Christian militancy that gave your country the Civil War, the Prohibition, the Cold War and a general inclination for wars over ideas. I was going to say that you are as bad as the Russians, but in fact you are far worse because you are more determined, more militant and better organized than the Russians have ever been.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Azrael »

Enki wrote:It's actually really easy to avoid the degraded culture. What makes people seem like fascist squares is when they want to legislate their own morality.
I agree.
I think that a greater level of freedom would actually make morality fashionable.
Very interesting. That's quite a profound thought. I think you're right.
For now we are used to substituting law for morality, so our moral reasoning is less.
Yes . . . which is kinda what Jesus said on a few occasions.
Of course there are reasons to legislate morality, but it should be done micro-regionally. States/Counties should make allowance for Red Light districts. If you are against legislation of this sort of thing, then you undercut zoning, and then I get to throw a rave in my backyard on a Tuesday night, and you as my neighbor have no recourse but violence.
You yuppies are so in to zoning :wink:

Good point, though.
cultivate a white rose
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

Enki wrote:It's actually really easy to avoid the degraded culture. What makes people seem like fascist squares is when they want to legislate their own morality.

I think that a greater level of freedom would actually make morality fashionable. For now we are used to substituting law for morality, so our moral reasoning is less.

Of course there are reasons to legislate morality, but it should be done micro-regionally. States/Counties should make allowance for Red Light districts. If you are against legislation of this sort of thing, then you undercut zoning, and then I get to throw a rave in my backyard on a Tuesday night, and you as my neighbor have no recourse but violence.

Amen Bro, love it when you go Rand.

Galt's Gulch, Tinkertown, Simplemindstan, Noddy's Nicke fine places one and all.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

YMix,

Interesting take, thanks for putting so much effort into this. I do agree, one size fits all ideology does make people into crazy Buttinskis!

I never made the connection to Christianity, I just thought Thorton was writing about how when Fred (typical Merikan) does not discipline himself, he opens himself up to being disciplined by external forces, ie: society, the market, peer pressure, the state, math, gravity, the weather, etc. And of course being human, Fred will then start whining about the discipline the external force has placed upon them due to his own lack of self-discipline, his childish expectations of eternal sunshine and lollypops, and reaping what he has sown. “Life is unfair! It’s his fault! He hurt my feelings!”

I also got the impression that Thorton was not saying the past was better, but that the Baby Boomers screwed up in the past. I do seem to recall a post from you saying that some Boomers in Romania longed for the good ole days of the post war period….. Old farts, once yer knees start getting stiffer than yer Johnson, the past always seemed better…. ;)

Xers and Yers (at least here in Merika) don't seem any more self-aware. I think real change is coming when Generation We starts picking up the tab.

I checked Thorton’s bio, he was born and raised in a blue state just like me, but 3000 miles, and probably a half dozen years and IQ points apart. It is strange how culture seems both local and ephemeral, yet cyclical.

Merika is definitely the land of bumper sticker politics. Next to the one you posted, the most popular ones are offshoots of “From each according to their needs, to each according to their abilities.” Most Merikans seem to like being the one perceived as having needs, but seem to resent being the one percieved as having abilities.

The anti-capitalist mind set always strikes me, I am always amazed that so many people oppose freedom of association. I just don’t get it.

In the following paragraphs, who is the you in the text I edited into red?

Also, when you say "Europeans" (blue text) how many people (or total % of population) are you speaking for? ;)


YMix wrote: ................
As for the "progressives, leftists and hippies", I wouldn't blame leftism as such, but rather your habit of taking ideologies very seriously and of running away with them. It's no wonder that hippism was born and bloomed on your side of the pond. Europeans have long rid themselves of the Christian church's taboos on drinking and sex (to the extent that they were ever taken seriously) without turning this into a movement. Obviously, such reasonable behavior was not good enough for the USA. Nowadays I see the hippie movement as an offshoot of the same thick trunk of Christian militancy that gave your country the Civil War, the Prohibition, the Cold War and a general inclination for wars over ideas. I was going to say that you are as bad as the Russians, but in fact you are far worse because you are more determined, more militant and better organized than the Russians have ever been.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

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sigh.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by YMix »

Simple Minded wrote:I just thought Thorton was writing about how when Fred (typical Merikan) does not discipline himself
Yes, you would think that.
In the following paragraphs, who is the you in the text I edited into red?


Take a wild guess.
Also, when you say "Europeans" (blue text) how many people (or total % of population) are you speaking for?

If there's a country in Europe that suffered in, say, the past 200 years from the same hardcore Protestant ideas about drinking and enjoying oneself, I've yet to hear of it. The Albanians are weird about women, being Muslim and all that, but even in Albania alcohol is available pretty much everywhere.

“Sneaking a beer by Jesus is like trying to sneak daylight by a rooster”. :|
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

YMix wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
In the following paragraphs, who is the you in the text I edited into red?


Take a wild guess.
Seriously dude, don't overestimate my mind reading powers.
To whom are you referring? Americans? Baptists? Catholics? Democrats? Republicans? Fred?

YMix wrote:
Simple Minded wrote: Also, when you say "Europeans" (blue text) how many people (or total % of population) are you speaking for?

If there's a country in Europe that suffered in, say, the past 200 years from the same hardcore Protestant ideas about drinking and enjoying oneself, I've yet to hear of it. The Albanians are weird about women, being Muslim and all that, but even in Albania alcohol is available pretty much everywhere.

“Sneaking a beer by Jesus is like trying to sneak daylight by a rooster”. :|
Thats why you shold always take two Baptists fishing, so they can police each other and not drink your beer.
:)
Alcohol is also available pretty much everywhere in the US, even in the Bible Belt, the old Blue Laws have been gone for a generation or so. So I'm not sure what you point is.....

Are you saying that "Muslims" are to Europe as "Baptists" are to America? If so, are you saying Muslims are not as polically active and as meddlesome as Baptists?
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

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Simple Minded wrote:I do seem to recall a post from you saying that some Boomers in Romania longed for the good ole days of the post war period….. Old farts, once yer knees start getting stiffer than yer Johnson, the past always seemed better…. ;)
Boomers? Amazing.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by YMix »

Alcohol and the attitude toward it was only an example. What I was trying to get at is a peculiar view of the world. This is a good example of it:
when Fred (typical Merikan) does not discipline himself, he opens himself up to being disciplined by external forces, ie: society, the market, peer pressure, the state, math, gravity, the weather, etc. And of course being human, Fred will then start whining about the discipline the external force has placed upon them due to his own lack of self-discipline, his childish expectations of eternal sunshine and lollypops, and reaping what he has sown. “Life is unfair! It’s his fault! He hurt my feelings!”
The universe is made of disciplinary forces whose purpose is to teach man not to stray from the proper path. Trying to modify the society in order to lessen the impact of some of these forces is HERESY and it will have DIRE CONSEQUENCES! Relaxing and enjoying yourself is anathema to discipline!

Life as a Protestant passion play where the protagonist, let's call him Fred, is a naive and whining man-child who refuses to accept that only struggle and hardship give meaning and value to life. Time and again he foolishly fails to see the wisdom of the old proverbs.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
Simple Minded

Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

YMix wrote:Alcohol and the attitude toward it was only an example. What I was trying to get at is a peculiar view of the world. This is a good example of it:
when Fred (typical Merikan) does not discipline himself, he opens himself up to being disciplined by external forces, ie: society, the market, peer pressure, the state, math, gravity, the weather, etc. And of course being human, Fred will then start whining about the discipline the external force has placed upon them due to his own lack of self-discipline, his childish expectations of eternal sunshine and lollypops, and reaping what he has sown. “Life is unfair! It’s his fault! He hurt my feelings!”
The universe is made of disciplinary forces whose purpose is to teach man not to stray from the proper path.
I could not agree with the above statement (in red) more! Reality often provides discipline where society and parents do not. (My wife often says physics wil discipline the kids whose parents do not.) Fred at age 6 falling 5 feet while climbing a tree just might create a database that just might keep Fred at age 18 from jumping off a ten story building after drinking a couple beers. The database provided by reality is one that can not be matched by regulation. The hyper protective mother (or OSHA, or the FED, or Brussels) who prevented Fred from climbing trees at age 6 just might be sowing seeds she does not want to reap.

Where to draw the line, and who should draw it will always be in debate.
YMix wrote: Trying to modify the society in order to lessen the impact of some of these forces is HERESY and it will have DIRE CONSEQUENCES! Relaxing and enjoying yourself is anathema to discipline!

Life as a Protestant passion play where the protagonist, let's call him Fred, is a naive and whining man-child who refuses to accept that only struggle and hardship give meaning and value to life. Time and again he foolishly fails to see the wisdom of the old proverbs.
I have no idea how you made the leap from the original article to the above, but hey, everyone views things differently, so be it. So much interpretation seems dependent upon one's chosen group identity, and the group identity they choose with which to label others.

Old Joke: A young boy goes into a blacksmith shop (way back in the old day before OSHA, trial lawyers, rampant litigation), he is looking around and figeting. The boy is wandering around touching hammers, anvils, and tools. The blacksmith says " I just took that horseshoe out of the furnace. Don't touch that horseshoe. It's hot." The blacksmith turns his back, and sure enough, the boy picks up the horseshoe, and within a couple tenths of a second, sets it back down. The blacksmith says "Ah ha, I told you it was hot, you didn't listen, and now you burnt yourself, didn't you?" The boy says "No sir, it just don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."

Cute joke, cause it is about reality and human nature. If the listener CHOOSES to believe the blacksmith was a Bhuddist, or an objectivist, or a muslim, or black, or rich, or the kid was a democrat, or a republican, or hispanic, or poor, suddenly the joke is "offensive."

I'm going to an antique farm show in a few hours, always fascinates to look at past ingenuity (and lack of safety equipment) and ponder how life was different back in what some would consider the "good ole days..." and what others would consider the days of horrible oppression/drudgery.

I know more than a few old farts who lost body parts to mechanical equipment in their younger days. None of them sued anyone. Due to a concept of "rugged individualism" (that phrase always cracks me up) or "personal responsibility" ("I screwed up, that will teach me!")? Societal norms were different then. Better or worse? Pick the one you like.

Ya tell people the Dallas Cowboys won last Monday's game, and most listeners will assume you are either a football fan or a Dallas Cowboy fan....

Its almost like people see and interpret life according to their own preferences....... few things seem more just to my simple mind...... ;) It is what makes life..... um, er, uh...... life!!!!

Thanks for the additional explanation.

Just for the record, I consider myself more of a Buddhist/Animist than Protestant...... ;) The religous one-size-fits-all whackjobs on the right are as goofy as the statist one-size-fits-all whackjobs on the left.
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Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by YMix »

Simple Minded wrote:I could not agree with the above statement (in red) more!
I know. Almost everything you post here is a riff on that theme.
I know more than a few old farts who lost body parts to mechanical equipment in their younger days. None of them sued anyone. Due to a concept of "rugged individualism" (that phrase always cracks me up) or "personal responsibility" ("I screwed up, that will teach me!")? Societal norms were different then. Better or worse? Pick the one you like.
I welcome you to rural Romania where people suing each other is almost unheard of. Not sure if it's personal responsibility or ignorance regarding the justice system.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
Simple Minded

Re: Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers

Post by Simple Minded »

YMix wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:I could not agree with the above statement (in red) more!
I know. Almost everything you post here is a riff on that theme.
I agree! :D

Isn't that fascinating? Once you read 50 posts from anyone, they never seem to have anything new to say. I'm not sure if it is because we are narrow beings in terms of what subjuects we like to passionately proselytize, or because of how narrowly we perceive others once we have labeled them.
YMix wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:I know more than a few old farts who lost body parts to mechanical equipment in their younger days. None of them sued anyone. Due to a concept of "rugged individualism" (that phrase always cracks me up) or "personal responsibility" ("I screwed up, that will teach me!")? Societal norms were different then. Better or worse? Pick the one you like.
I welcome you to rural Romania where people suing each other is almost unheard of. Not sure if it's personal responsibility or ignorance regarding the justice system.
Which would make one think that Romania would have an economic advantage other some of their competitors.

I thought about you when I was at the heritage festival. I saw a lot of "rugged individuals" who were exercizing their personal freedom of eating or smoking themselves to death. I wondered how many would complain about the cost of replacement knees or chemotherapy (70+%?). Then if the state acted to reduce costs, how many would complain about the resultant doctor shortage or their increased taxes/fees (70+%?).

One lady was on a 1/4 scale pulling tractor painted pink and decorated with lots of breast cancer awareness ribbons. My wife said "Wow! That is ironic!" The lady was smoking a ciggarette!

Amzing how similar people are when it comes to personal cost, compared to the differences expressed while discussing ideology with no personal costs.
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