Oh my lord, I probably should not have read into that. I honestly had no idea…
“I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him.”
–Men versus the Man: A Correspondence between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H.L. Mencken, Individualist (1910), pg. 116
He was a smartie and he was great at puncturing other’s arguments and his rhetorical technique was of the highest order, but he was a racist and antisemite, and he also would have preferred we didn’t stop Hitler.
Setting that genocidal thinking aside, he’s fun to read when he isn’t punching down.
But that’s the problem. It’s not just “not all Boomers,” it’s “not most Boomers” for any given thing other than age range. Same thing with every so-called generation. For any attribute, the standard deviation is way out of sight of the mean, and for significant chunks of the population, they aren’t even on the same axis.
That’s what makes the concept of “generations” so problematic, and what makes real people so interesting and wonderful. We are various, strange, and different. I’m glad my kids are growing up in an era where that variation and weirdness is more accepted and embraced than ever before.
I do agree, as I noted below… I’m of the mind that since it’s a social construct, it can be changed, and probably should be, but it’s a strong social force, so we have to pay it mind…
Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself!
It does have problems, and as has been said better than I could, all generalisations have their own problems and conceptual failures, whether it’s the concepts of generations, eras, families, nations, genders, or whatever.
Different fuzzy groups of people can have potential access to different material conditions, whether it’s access to home-ownership (not as a universal quality, but as a statistical likelihood), or access to the word “totes”.
Put me down for “awesome universal opportunity for awesome universal outcome” but I also think demographics isn’t total astrology. Without essentialism, too.
Statistically, there is something happening, without blaming or culturally stereotyping the millions of humans involved:
Shared experiences are important, but one of the many things I hate about the whole generational argument is the assumption that all boomers’ shared experiences only apply to their own cohort, and their attitudes and values calcified sometime in their late teens.
Every boomer alive today has lived through the same historic and cultural shifts as every GenXer and millennial. It’s absurd to think that they have not been influenced by them, for better or worse. I did not fall asleep 40 years ago only to be Rip Van Winkle’d into 2019, adrift and confused, wondering how I acquired a wife and kids and a lawn.
ETA: Rereading this, @MalevolentPixy, it sounds as if I’m attacking your post. I’m not, I assure you. I basically agree.
Demographics isn’t. Generational demographics is. It’s like taking a 500 million ton sample of the Earth’s crust and attributing to it the properties of silicon. It might be 80% silicon atoms, but even then it doesn’t share 80% of the properties of elemental silicon.
I dunno - I still seem to get some 20 or so emails every day with people claiming they have videos of me “enjoying myself” while looking at “interesting” porn and then demand CryptoBux in ransom so they don’t distribute the videos to my colleagues and friends.
I have an anxiety disorder and depression. 30 years ago I was a virulent right wing lunatic. I had a website with all kinds of bullshit, completely focused on Clinton and Vince Foster, etc. My wife told me that my kids (then 4 and 2) were afraid of me. I remember being AGAINST the patriot act because a democrat would get that power eventually and that would be bad, let alone the privacy issues.
25 years ago I started taking medication after talking with my doctor about it because of that. Life got WAY better. I was less angry, I stopped listening to Rush et.al. Slowly my political views shifted. Now I’m a crazy bomb-throwing (figuratively) leftist. So the crazy is clearly still relevant, however the direction changed.
I think that’s kind of interesting. Not sure what it means, but it is interesting.
And a hopeful story for those of us who are not certain that folks on the far right can actually shift back to sanity. Thank you for sharing. Hope is a scarce commodity these days.
I like the bit about the Patriot act. Even broken clocks are right twice a day
I’d caution against bomb throwing though. I resisted anything left of neoliberalism for a long time because of Oklahoma City. I knew people who worked in the federal government, who were simple honest people who genuinely wanted to serve, in a positive way, not by hurting people.
If someone close to me had been killed, I’d probably have lurched hard right.
I know it’s cool to be all doom and gloom, but I’m actually cautiously optimistic for the future. I think we’re seeing a generational shift as fundemental as the one when Jim Crow got pulled back.
If you truly care, I’d really encourage you to get folks registered to vote. It works - that’s why they’re trying to make it illegal.
i know i’ll probably regret asking this but given that mcveigh was a right-wing, white supremacist, and fan of the turner diaries who is currently fetishized by many of the alt-right how do the responses you mention to the oklahoma city bombing above follow from his far-right political beliefs?
The person said they’d shifted from being very right wing to a “figurative bomb throwing” leftist, which while cute made me feel compelled to point out that such jokes aren’t good, and that any sort of violence has far reaching effects.
I have met people who lost loved ones to terrorism and it clouded their thinking for a long time.
I didn’t do a good job articulating that, and I’m sorry if you somehow took away that I was sitting around at any point reading the turner diaries.
I was just an edgelord who flirted with libertarianism until I actually took an econ class.
Vox reposted an interesting (read that as depressing) interview with an author who wrote about boomer politics. Applicable to current discussion.
I think there may something to the concept of “generational trust fund babies.” That seems to sum up the attitudes I see around me. Not sure about the 2024 deadline, I actually fear we may have passed the point of no return already, but time will tell. What is unquestionable is we need to start yesterday to at the very least stop digging.
