I hope that there are some young people out there who appreciate the privilege of watching angry old bastards like me and Ororke and Budarick going after each other. Joe and Budarick and I are not the jolly old Santa Claus types who sold out everything you young people SHOULD have inherited from us. We are hurt and bitter and vicious about the fact that you got sold out. We tried so desperately hard decade after decade to sound the alarm.
Now let’s skid to a stop for a moment. Joe and Budarick live in a nightmare we kep predicting. You may never fully comprehend what that feels like. We are bitter, we are vicious. You have here three men who are furious and tortured beyond understaning at what our generation handed to you. This a company I am proud to be part of. Joe tries to say he doesn’t care. He does. Budarick, IN MY OPINION, is spending the thought he should be spending on today’s reality on memories of Der Fuhrer.
We are three of the only decent people of our generation you will be exposed to. I have every right to be part of this triad, and that is a claim others cannot make. This little group of ours has the highest entry fee of any club on earth.
So I have the right to talk about the other two.
But of these three pissed-off old men, only Whitaker has Bob’s Blog.
Joe deal with this by being “philosophical.” He tries desperately to convince us that it doesn’t HURT, because being HURT is for girls, and he is a Real Man. Budarick obsesses on the fact that Hitler had was right in his assay of the situation.
Joe ticked me off when he repeated that tired old line, “Power comes from the barrel of a gun!” I was deeply embarrassed a couple of years ago when some old drunk at the last convention in New Orleans kept shouting, “Mao Tse Tung said that power comes out of the barrel of a gun!” Joe is very upset at my constantly using hte word “silly,” but the simple fact is that everybody listening to that old drunk rave was whinking what a silly ass he was.
I don’t know if anybody remembers anything, but there was time when Yeltsyn climbed on top of a tank. It was several years ago and it was televised all over the world but I assume nobody remembers it now. Old time Communists held Gorbiczev hostage and they were in command of the entire Soviet military. They had ALL the guns. They had the barrels the old drunk was screaming about. They had the triggers, they had the powder in the shells.
“Power some from the triggers! Power somes from the powder!” and so on, ad nauseum.
Those in charge of the barrels ordered their magic barrels of a gun to surround the Yelstsyn group.
They obeyed.
One of the crowd who had no gun barrels except that stationary tank Yelstyn had climbed up on threw a Molotov cocktail at tank. As it began to burn, the guys with the barrels of the gun jumped out and ran. “Power comes from the barrel of a GUN!” So why diud the guys who had the barrel get the hell out?
Because they had to live in Russia long after that gun barrel the drunk old fart was yelling about was history.
Power is attitude. I call people silly because that attitude is TRUE, and it destroys them because they are SILLY.
#1 by Dennis on 07/16/2006 - 7:26 am
NOT SPAM
This may not be much, and not really on topic, but this comments section is here, and I’m going to use it.
This following quite means a lot to a Gen X’er (or am I a Gen Y?) like me..
>Joe and Budarick and I are not the jolly old Santa Claus types who sold out everything you young >people SHOULD have inherited from us. We are hurt and bitter and vicious about the fact that you >got
>sold out. We tried so desperately hard decade after decade to sound the alarm.
You may not be aware of the disgust and dismay I had, watching the baby boomers and their ilk, revel in what they had, get lost in pointless nostalgia, and leave for us the bill for their lifestyle. I can tell you, that some of us, those in my generation who understand, feel robbed by the ones before us and much of my politics comes as a rebellion against the baby boomers/WWII generation and counter culture ‘revolutionaries’.
But it is good to hear people like you admit this and genuinely feel bitter that your peers couldn’t leave a better future behind, it does mean a lot, a lot more than you may think, because you really are in a minority, a very, very small minority. A minority so small, I’ve yet to meet anyone in person who would even begin to THINK like that.
I certaintly have learned from that mistake, and will under no way allow myself to do anything which will give my children a more uncertain future.
#2 by Simmons on 07/16/2006 - 10:54 am
NOT SPAM Attitude, Passion and Confidence are necessary inherent parts
of leadership. From my observations the Left has had their Colonel Kurtz
moment and are now trying to flee the field of race relations, while the
“Respectables” try and hold the high ground. The white foot soldiers
of liberalism have seen the light so to speak and have taken the three
qualities and are applying them to safe issues such as global warming.
What we see and what depresses some is the charade maintained by a worn
political system and the bureaucracy, think Gorby and Gosplan. I have
peeked behing the curtains at the “Noble Savage” road show and found
nothing there not even the Left.
#3 by Elizabeth on 07/16/2006 - 3:47 pm
It isn’t the calendar that determines the differences between the generations.
From my own experience, I’d classify anyone as a Baby Boomer who was under 16 on January 1, 1945,
and who started first grade before the end of 1962. They remember JFK’s inauguration speech.
(This includes my parents but does not include me.)
Generation X really starts with those born beginning January 1,1957. We’re the ones who
either were part of the bulge in the demographic snake or have had to follow it all our
lives. (More babies were born in the U.S. in 1957 than in any other year.) Our older
members had the indescribable _thrill_ of graduating into the Carter stagflation
(high unemployment, official policy of diminished expectations, and double-digit
inflation and double-digit interest rates).
I’d place the start of Generation Y with the kids born in 1978, which was the start
of the “echo.”
#4 by Elizabeth on 07/16/2006 - 3:51 pm
When I was an undergraduate, I caused some faculty nausea by telling some professors
how similarly Mao and Hitler made speeches.
I don’t know Chinese and, at the time, I knew no German.
I based my conclusion on film clips of the two making speeches: they paced their speeches
identically and they used most of the same gestures. (The film of Mao’s speeches that I saw
was made in the 1930s and early to mid-1940s.)
How dare I compare St. Mao with Hitler!!!
#5 by Dave on 07/16/2006 - 4:05 pm
NOT SPAM
There is truth is in the eyes of a child (who naturally knows that attitude is everything):
My town was all white and I had never even seen a colored even though I was in high school. The social studies teacher said: “Negros talk funny because it is their way of passively resisting white oppression.”
Robbie, the kid sitting next to me, raised his hand and said: “My Pa says the only way to get a lick of work out of a Negro is to give him a licking.”
The social studies teacher became stunningly livid. His face turned florid and in a rage he ordered Robbie out of the classroom. My classmates were utterly flummoxed.
We simply could not understand what was wrong with the social studies teacher. Right then the suspicion began (which thereafter never left) that our social studies teacher was mentally unbalanced. We all felt sorry for Robbie who had been victimized.
Do I ever long for a sane world.
#6 by Pain on 07/18/2006 - 9:33 pm
NOT SPICED HAM
“You have here three men who are furious and tortured beyond understanding at what our generation handed to you.”
Well we appreciate it, believe me. Would you like another spoonful of jello, sir?