All my life, people have wanted to be young, young, YOUNG!
With the Weakest Generation, this obsession with youth began to become a cult. You who did not live through their era will not know it as well as BBG and I do, but unless a WWII vet had been a big success in real life, his biggest days ended when he was a very young.
A lot of people say that their kin never talked about the War. As a writer, that doesn’t impress. What a writer does is write what an audience wants to read, so the fact that a writer came up with the title “The Greatest Generation” means that that was exactly what they wanted to hear and were happy to pay for.
It is true that after WWII a lot of veterans were known as the Silent Generation. They did not want to talk about the War. That is because they remembered it. But the most horrible memories, the first-hand ones, fade, unless you have mental problems.
When your parents die, you no longer weep only at any mention of them only a year later.
In fact, by 1960 every WWII vet had seen so many movies about the uniform heroism of WWII and how every GI could take on a Nazi Division with his gun jammed that there was no real memory at all. The life of a real family man who made a living and raised a family had been reduced in the public mind to a dull routine.
So they began to worship themselves as youths.
This was a fertile ground for hippiedom to develop..
There were genuine hippies, but they are not a shadow in history. The hippies we know about were political lefties. To them the WWII generation had done one good thing, which was to save Stalin and give one third of the human race to the Reds.
They did their bit by carrying all those Viet Cong flags in their Peace Marches.
The Youth Cult, Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30, was wildly popular with the media.
Of course, the VFW was largely known as anti-hippie, but respectable conservatives are known as real opponents of the left. This didn’t fool me when I was a kid.
The VFW insisted that when THEY were young they were Brave Warriors, and the new ones were shirkers.
But it was a situation much like today’s liberals and respectable conservative. Both sides agreed on an essential
This essential was that both VFW and Leftists hippies agreed that youth is everything.
Every other generation had considered youth had its place, but maturity was the status a man was most productive in. It has been three generations since we have considered the ultimate loss to be a person who does not MATURE.
This has been a major part of the failure of the Weakest Generation and those it spawned to mature.
It is also the reason no one notices it.
#1 by Simmons on 09/13/2011 - 9:29 am
I’m old enough to remember the parents of the GGs, and yes they were a different bunch, better, more mature.
Vegas was formed to take GG money, and that is about all you need to know outside of Bob’s porch talk when it concerns GGs and the downfall of White America.
#2 by dungeoneer on 09/13/2011 - 10:19 am
There`s no need for a conspiracy of silence when the conspirators are dead and buried.
The revisionism of the youngsters will be merciless.
#3 by shari on 09/13/2011 - 2:47 pm
“The revisionism of the youngsters will be merciless.” As a boomer, I certainly hope that it’s rigorous and thorough, because the truth sets free. I hope to see a lot more of that, out in the open. I don’t have any interest in growing old, just to see how long I can last.
#4 by BGLass on 09/13/2011 - 6:08 pm
Men who try to “stay young” are gross. Like, when they drive around in some car they wanted when they were 15 or wear too tight workout outfits. Personally, i miss smart old men who found the power to drop their pretensions. The other ones remind me of Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby, him going on and on about his football days, as if his life ground to a halt when he was 20 at yale. People speak of the “Lived Life,” but no one ever talks about what psychosis must go on inside the ones without the lived life. Never trust anyone under 30. That’s the new motto now
#5 by H.Avenger on 09/13/2011 - 8:13 pm
Bob,
Read your Skype.
#6 by ioannes on 09/13/2011 - 10:57 pm
It was always easy identifying the parents/ancestors of the greatest generation. Their fathers could be identified by the striped coveralls and the straw hat. Their mothers could be identified by the apron they always wore around their dresses. Their uniform was always a working uniform except for the suits they wore on their best day. I was fortunate to be around when this group was in their final years. Every one of them that I knew worked hard and were productive right up to the day they either died or until they were too feeble to work.
Their children the paper hat generation always looked forward to the big pensions and social security. I know because that is what they told me. They had the big dreams of moving to So. Florida and live the retirement life that they were owed. The greatest generation became inventory for an old people farm. A few of them did so at an early age. Their children the baby boomers will make the inventory at the people farm even bigger.
#7 by Simmons on 09/14/2011 - 10:24 am
My grandfather born 1898 worked till he was seventy as a mason. Finally his kids basically forced him to retire and take a pittance of a SS check which in truth was small because he never thought to pay into the scam.
I should have known the GGs’ faults because grandpa always refered to them as “our boys.”