{"id":9687,"date":"2017-12-20T17:55:59","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T22:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=9687"},"modified":"2020-12-20T11:35:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T16:35:48","slug":"a-generation-of-sociopaths-and-other-lazy-ignorant-stereotypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/9687","title":{"rendered":"“A Generation Of Sociopaths”…And Other Lazy Ignorant Stereotypes…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was raised, as I\u2019ve said often, by a single divorced mother. I\u2019m not relating this to wear it like a badge, but offering it as explanation. The attitudes, mindsets, and behaviors we express in our everyday lives may well have their biological roots\u2026as in for example the fact that I\u2019m gay\u2026but they\u2019re almost certainly flavored by our life experiences. Different metals behave differently in the fire, but still the fire changes us.<\/p>\n

It makes throwing labels around at people problematic. I understand the human need to identify, categorize, sort, put a name on things the better to understand them. But what you must always keep in mind, what Jacob Bronowski clarified for me in his Science and Human Values<\/em> essays, is the concepts by which we understand nature are always imprecise and imperfect. You have to treat them with humility. What is a planet?<\/p>\n

By this stage of my life I suppose I should be used to having labels slapped on me, and all the baggage that comes with them. In grade school I got the problem child label simply for being raised in a \u201cbroken home\u201d. Among various family members I was granted the label of being my father\u2019s son, and dad having died robbing a bank that label came with its own lovely baggage set. My maternal grandmother\u2019s favorite name for me (when mom couldn\u2019t hear it) was Stinking Rotten Good For Nothing Garrett Just Like Your Pap<\/em>\u2026not exactly something that\u2019ll fit on checks or credit cards.<\/p>\n

For being a slight somewhat girlish kid in grade school I received a variety of labels. Mom and I lived a very low budget life\u2026another set of labels. In my senior year I came out to myself and earned the gay label, and all the ancillary labels that came with it that Facebook would probably censor if I posted them here. Ever since I can remember I\u2019ve had the urge, the need, to express myself in various forms of art and Artist is the only label I\u2019d willingly apply to myself except it feels so damn pretentious. But there are others: Cartoonist, Painter, Photographer. Sometimes I wear one of those. I took up building my own computers and programming them\u2026another set of labels. I read a lot. I pay attention to political events. I like to travel. I like to explore. Nerd. Geek. Tourist. Wonk. I\u2019m in my 60s. There\u2019s geezer. Old man. Computers have allowed me to suddenly, late in my life, earn a good income. There\u2019s Yuppy. I drive a Mercedes-Benz. There\u2019s Bourgeois. It\u2019s a diesel. There\u2019s nerd again. I should be used to it by now. But it\u2019s not the labels, it\u2019s the baggage that comes with them. You want me to stick the Ignorant label on you, apply a label to me and then expect me to wear the baggage that comes with it. Especially this one: Boomer<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I used to wear it without too much discomfort. That nerd label again. I saw it as merely a statistical description. I was born in 1953, so I am part of the post war baby boom, so I am a boomer. My generation was the reason so many new schools had to be built. So far, so good. But where once I was a trailing edge boomer, benefiting from the struggles of the older kids ahead of me that allowed me to wear blue jeans and long hair in school, suddenly one day I realized I was being lumped in with kids born in the 60s as though we all had the same culture, the same life experiences. Boomer. Never mind the political baggage. Anyone with half a brain who walks through life with their eyes wide open and their mind still curious cannot help but see how generational labels are as superficial and misleading as any other. There\u2019s a history here that separates us Kennedy era boomers from the Reagan era ones, and I can sum it up with the name of a country: Vietnam<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some years ago I\u2019m quietly standing at the balcony rail of the outdoor smoker\u2019s lounge of one of D.C.\u2019s gay bars, puffing on a mini-cigar. A cute young guy walks over to me and gives me a look\u2026<\/p>\n

Me: Hi.<\/p>\n

He: Are you a throwback?<\/p>\n

Me: Sorry?<\/p>\n

He: You lived through the sixties?\u00a0 You know\u2026the hippies and that stuff\u2026?<\/p>\n

Me: Yeah\u2026but I wasn\u2019t a Hippy.\u00a0 There were a lot of different things going on back then.\u00a0 Most of us were just along for the ride.<\/p>\n

He: I know\u2026I\u2019ve read all the books.<\/p>\n

Me: Throwback?<\/p>\n

He: You know\u2026from back then\u2026<\/p>\n

Me: I don\u2019t understand your use of the term.<\/p>\n

He: You\u2019re about my mother\u2019s age\u2026<\/p>\n

Well I hope \u201call the books\u201d weren\u2019t published by the same people who make biology textbooks for Liberty University.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Ezra Klein and Sean Illing read the same ones. Klein this morning retweeted gleefully this Vox article: \u201cHow the baby boomers \u2014 not millennials \u2014 screwed America\u201d Subtitled: \u201cThe boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it.”<\/p>\n

So I go to look and right there at the top of the page is\u2026Oh Goodness There They Are\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a>Screen cap of Klein’s tweet…this is the photo that leads the article<\/em><\/p>\n

…The Dirty Fucking Hippies \u201c\u2026dancing during an anti-war demonstration staged by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam at Golden Gate Park\u2019s Kezar Stadium on April 15, 1967.\u201d I\u2019ll just bet they\u2019re all smoking acid too. You two have read all the books\u2026right? I haven\u2019t seen such lazy cheapshit stereotyping since the last time I read an article on The Federalist about Teh Gay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhat the Federalist audience that Vox is apparently going after reads…<\/em><\/p>\n

Illing\u2019s article promotes A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America<\/em> by Bruce Gibney. \u201cThe boomers, according to Gibney, have committed \u201cgenerational plunder,\u201d pillaging the nation\u2019s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of America\u2019s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boomers. The boomers. The boomers. I was raised by a divorced single working mother. My dad died trying to rob a bank. I grew up in a series of small apartments, wearing mostly second-hand clothes and going to public school, where in the 1960s, because I was the product of a \u201cbroken home\u201d I was treated like a problem child even though I was pretty well behaved. That didn\u2019t change until high school. I was the first male in dad\u2019s side of the family to finish grade school and get a diploma. I did three semesters of community college and then had to go to work to support mom and me. For most of my life I had no idea how I was going to earn a living and resigned myself to a low income life lived in rooms rented in other people\u2019s houses. Before I started earning a good living as a software developer I had no car, and no prospects. Seen from within, the life I am living now seems an absolute miracle to me.<\/p>\n

And I look at what the republicans and their billionaire money teats are doing to All Of Us let alone the next generation with a dull horror, Because I Led That Life, I can imagine perfectly well what it could easily have become had I not had the lucky break that allowed me to escape it, and I don\u2019t want it happening to Anyone Else.<\/p>\n

But no\u2026I\u2019m a boomer. And a Dirty Fucking Hippy. Who was doing Manpower temp jobs and living with mom when I was the age Klein and Illing are now, and I am a sociopath who doesn\u2019t care who he\u2019s screwing out of a future.<\/p>\n

Whatever. If playing Wall Street\u2019s game of Blame The Other Guy We\u2019re Screwing Too works for Vox, Klein, Illing et. al. then fine. Enjoy the cheap thrills of the blame game while I watch people who wish to bury the past, and people who\u2019ve read all the books, keep on grimly repeating it. And\u2026pay attention now\u2026I don\u2019t particularly care if people who don\u2019t know me from Adam hate me for being something I can\u2019t help being. I was fine with that even before I knew that I am gay. I learned how not to give a flying fuck about that even before my grade school teachers told me I was a problem child because my mother was divorced. I learned how not to care long before all that, while being hated, or at best patronized, by members of my own family for being my father\u2019s son. And I will not wear your goddamned labels, and I will not carry your goddamned baggage. Go to hell.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was raised, as I\u2019ve said often, by a single divorced mother. I\u2019m not relating this to wear it like a badge, but offering it as explanation. The attitudes, mindsets, and behaviors we express in our everyday lives may well have their biological roots\u2026as in for example the fact that I\u2019m gay\u2026but they\u2019re almost certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,65],"tags":[37,19,12],"class_list":["post-9687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-politics","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-our-feckless-news-media","tag-the-jackass-chronicles","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}