Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Never Trust Anybody Over 30

An excerpt from the book "How Not to Become a Millennial" that discusses how the Boomer adage "Never Trust Anybody Over 30" has come to bite them in the ass.

"The Millennials didn’t grow up in a vacuum.  They weren’t born in the cabbage patch, sprouted legs one day, and then “POOF,” 22 years later found themselves $120K in debt with a Master’s degree in Diversity and Inclusion.  Like everyone else they were a product of their environment.  And a huge part of that environment, if not the most influential part, was the elders who would raise them.  Parents, teachers, professors, guidance counselors, therapists, bosses, even politicians and media personalities would directly and indirectly wield incredible, if not total influence over the Millennials and would be the single most determining variable in how the Millennials would turn out.

This is the way it has always been throughout human history because there’s no other way for it to be.  Younger generations have to be raised by older generations.  But the Millennials were going to be raised by a very unique generation of elders.  A generation of elders that the world had never seen before in terms of its wealth, stability, pampering, and privilege.  Nor had the world seen such an arrogant, self-important, completely delusional, and completely wrong generation before. And it was this generation that was going to prepare the Millennials for the real world - the Baby Boomers.

What I absolutely love about the Baby Boomers, what I find so incredibly rich is how they were the generation that coined the phrase “Never trust anybody over 30.”  And you need to really break down this statement to appreciate how hypocritical, delusional, arrogant, and simply wrong that statement is and therefore how wrong the Baby Boomers are.

First, Boomers said this when they were young.  Not only stupid, but inexperienced and young.  They were a bunch of teenage, 20 something know-nothings, who never worked a job, had yet to start families, draft-dodged a war, but somehow they thought they knew better than their elders and the culminated eons of human history.  Not only is this against common sense, it’s the epitome of hubris and arrogance.  Many of them hadn’t even gone to college to have a political religion installed in them so they’d parrot such outlandish stupidity.  They were just that naturally stupid and arrogant on their own!  And this was the raw material that would go on to raise a generation of children of their own.

Second, “over 30” meant the WWII generation.  Implying the generation that went through:

the Great Depression
fought WWII
came back home and built the most successful economy in the history of the world
put a man on the moon,
and then as an encore performance, during their retirement years, won the Cold War

was not to be trusted.  Never in the history of the world had a single generation fought, staved off, and defeated such evil and created such good with such sacrifice.  But yet some 19 year old, pot-smoking Boomers knew better and insisted you couldn’t trust, of all people, the World War II Generation.

Third, when it came time for the Boomers to take stewardship of the United States they went and completely shat the bed.  They inherited the greatest country the world has ever seen and in nearly every capacity destroyed it.  Instead of surpluses they ran massive government deficits.  They increased the national debt from 40% GDP to its current-day 106%.  Household debt from 40% to 100% GDP.  Economic growth tanked from the WWII generation average of 4.25% to 2.25%.  And there’s their collection of “bubbles” and financial crises they collected like Pokemon cards – the Dotcom Bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Education Bubble and the Volcker Recession – all making genuine economic progress damn near impossible.  And this says nothing of the sociological and societal destruction they wreaked upon America.  Divorce, broken homes, crime, welfare, single motherhood, dead beat dads, teenage pregnancies, drugs, STD’s, and The Doors.  A generation could not have failed more at being responsible adults if they tried. 

But about the worst thing they did was to shame, mock and ridicule American culture itself.  The pinnacle of human achievement and good.  The best culture and country the world has ever seen. The country every other human on the planet desperately wants to move to or become like.  And the Boomers could not wait to destroy it, throwing it under the bus for such petty reasons as being edgy, to curry favor with anti-American leftists, or to simply fake being some kind of academic or intellectual.  In the end, they managed to take the world’s greatest asset and in one generation turn it into the world’s largest liability.

Finally, and perhaps most ironic, is that they have provably become what they so arrogantly mocked in their youth.  You absolutely should have trusted somebody over 30 back in 1968, not the 20 something dipshit hippies the Boomers were.  But today, well over the age of 30, the Boomers are the ones you should never trust because they are such an absolute, abject failure of a generation.  Nobody listens to them.  The entire country hates them.  Their half-sibling children debate whether they should bother visiting them in nursing homes.  And this optimistically assumes the Boomers even have the money to afford nursing homes as they all reverse-mortgaged their homes to afford basic living expenses.  They are so bad of a generation that instead of commanding the respect eldest generations normally did in the past, they are the butt end of jokes, minimized and completely encapsulated with a the simple hashtag of “OK Boomer.”  They are no better than the Millennial generation they raised and their only value in society will also be to serve as a warning to others."

Check out the book!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084QKMZTJ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B084QKMZTJ&linkCode=as2&tag=captaicapit0b-20&linkId=fa8e349e2314b3e2c45028a86af0344f

15 comments:

richard777 said...

Still very much has your DNA all over it. I will definitely pick up a copy!

dienw said...

What I absolutely love about the Baby Boomers, what I find so incredibly rich is how they were the generation that coined the phrase “Never trust anybody over 30.” And you need to really break down this statement to appreciate how hypocritical, delusional, arrogant, and simply wrong that statement is and therefore how wrong the Baby Boomers are.

No,libtard Boomers may have adopted that meme but it was started by the Silents who were leading the idiot Boomers around by their noses.

Uncle Maffoo said...

Gotta love Boomers, man. They simultaneously expect credit for "changing the world," but deflect any and all responsibility for how their OWN CHILDREN have turned out.

But hey, The Beatles, amirite?!?

Pontificus Maximus said...

Look, Boomers suck(ed), no doubt about it, but they’re not the ones who made it impossible to get elected unless you promised to deficit-spend your grandchildren into debtors’ hell. No, that was “The Greatest Generation”, whom even an NYT columnist coined “The Greedy Geezers” for their deficit-bloating ways. Whose votes were Bush and Kerry pandering to when they tried to out-do one another with unfunded prescription drug plans in 2004? Not Boomers—Greedy Geezers. You see, when it comes to voting yourself free stuff, Boomers learned from the best. If you read the Old Testament, you will not be surprised. It is chock full of accounts of people who started out well and finished very badly. Finishing well is not a trivial accomplishment, even for those who start out nobly. Scripture makes it clear that we will be judged by how we finish, not how we start. The Greedy Geezers finished very poorly. After all, they were the ones who listened when Dr. Benjamin Spock told them not to spank their budding little Boomer brats.

Tatooine Sharpshooters' Club said...

And people already live in terror of receiving an "OK boomer".

Tucanae Services said...

Interesting observations there Cappy. But how about some perspective....

First off the Boomer generation did not reach political control of the country till Clinton took power. That means --

* Volcker recession, necessary as it was to stamp out the stagflation, was on the greatest generation's watch, not the boomers.
* The S&L mess? Funny the CEOs involved, and a couple of senators, were all greatest generation.
* The Dotcom bubble is a red herring. First off it was a greatest generation problem, as RAM of the 60/70's was a dear commodity hence 2 digits vs 4 digits for the year was rationale way to save money. When 1999 rolled around RAM was at a reasonable price. From my perspective as an IT guy the Dotcom bubble was an acceptable if inadvertent error. I assign no anomisty to those I learned from in this matter. I might have made the same decison in 1975 in the same situation.
* As to economic growth; how easy it is when you consider that the US, Argentina, Mexico and Canada were the only intact economies on the planet in 1946. If you could 'make it' there was some place in the world that needed the product. But in 30 years those countries that were devasted were now competing for market share. This is a case regardless of better management US GDP rates had to drop over time. Sucks but a fact. This is not a generational issue.
* Societal degenercy? Hey, who fostered and signed a series of laws that were the components of 'The Great Society'? POTUS Johnson was the man and the year was 1964. Most of us Boomers were still in middle school. So why did not the greatest generation stop this?

As a Boomer there is a lot we screwed up on. But most of your markers are not on our watch. So what did we miss?

* Too much me, me, me.
* We should have backed out of the middle east, it was not in our interest to be there.
* We should have been more diligent against Corps that were selling out to the Chinese for cheaper baubles.

To close, you are discussing facts that are truly history to you. I on the other hand lived it. You have to be there to understand the evolution of what you quote.

GregMan said...

I think the Greatest Generation has principle responsibility for how the Boomers turned out, but the Boomers only amplified the destruction and did little or nothing to lessen it. Everything that happened after 1980 can be laid squarely at the feet of the boomers. The prequel to the destruction was 1960-1979, and that's on the Greatest Generation. Still, the Boomers made horrible bosses and worse parents, and deserve all the hatred and opprobrium they get.

See that guy in the Beemer, cutting everybody off on the highway? Boomer.

That guy with the hot, devoted wife who nevertheless is cheating on her every chance he gets? Boomer.

That manager who thinks cutting costs is the only way to grow a business? Boomer. Who outsources everything he can to a bunch of curry-scented Indian programmers? Boomer. Who agreed with all the HR diversity/affirmative action crap in the first place, and never did a thing to stop it? Boomer.

I am a late Boomer. Late enough that I saw what a bunch of tools the older Boomers were and wanted to have nothing to do with them. Screw the boomers.

BTW, heck of a shout-out from Vox Day, Cappy!

Anonymous said...

@ TUSCANEA

ok boomer

Tucanae Services said...

Anonymous,

You are welcome to your own opinion but not a separate set of facts. Prove the facts I present in error, 'Ok Boomer' is only a notch above a slur devoid of thought.

Anonymous said...

Careful when casting blame of this sort. The whole "Ok, boomer", and shade thrown on entire generations, regardless who the subject is, is simply more "divide and conquer" tactics that the controlling structures of this American empire has used for decades upon decades to keep the common people fighting amongst themselves, while the system itself churns ever forth. For anyone really paying attention, it's quite obvious that the most influential power structures of the last 100+ years have followed a continuity of acceleration, irrespective of what generation was supposedly "in power". What differences you find, generationally, are more social and cultural, rather than political or economic. Nearly progressive advance in the last century was won, not by one generation against another, but by the common people against the "establishment". That's the real battle.

sassed1 2many said...

My parents were of the Greatest Generation, articiated in the great deression and WWII. They destroyed our family right after after no fault divorce was enacted. No free love and fault divorce came from the early Marxist Boomers

Anonymous said...

Boomer Bill Clinton also singlehandedly eviscerated the US economy with NAFTA and Most Favored Nation trade status for China. Tens of millions of high-paying unionized blue-collar industrial jobs that were supposed to be Gen X's birthright vanished in a puff of smoke. Kelly Temporary Services replaced Bethlehem Steel in the Fortune 500.

"But that's okay, the Internet will make everyone rich if you learn to code," said the Boomers, advising us to take on enormous college debt in order to compete on wages with Pajeet who lives in a mud hut on the opposite side of the planet, who writes code for two cents a month.

Boomers also coined the term "overqualified," as a pretext to turn starving college-educated Gen X-ers away from entry-level jobs they wanted to fill with illegal aliens who'd work for a dollar an hour under the table, in the 1990s.

We remember. And our hatred burns bright, bright, bright.

Anonymous said...

As a boomer, I couldn't agree more. Each generation owes a debt to the previous generation which is paid forward to the future generation. When Reagan was elected POTUS in '80, I bowed out of popular culture. I figured if the American people wanted to elect a B movie actor to the Oval Office, I was parting company. I was born in '50 and as an adult found I had more in common with my parents' generation than my own. The boomers blew it. Big time.
You'll get no argument from me.

Birdchaser said...

If you're not a Boomer you more than likely to be an idiot.

Anonymous said...

"And there’s their collection of “bubbles” and financial crises they collected like Pokemon cards."

That made me chuckle a bit.
This article was a joyful reading. But the last part really nailed it.

At least they could had apology for every awful things they have caused. But noo~ it's Millennials and their avocados fault! It's Gen X and their fancy computers fault! It's Gen Z and their tide pods fault!

Guess they didn't call Boomer's "Baby Boomer" for nothing.