I Like Ike

In a previous post, " Conservatives and St.Paul", I said some things about the Boomers and their parents. Some of my more clever friends have disagreed with my opinion. Since they are Boomers themselves, they feel that I have injured them. They cannot believe I think the whole Boomer generation is a convention of the Fisher Kings, so terribly maimed in soul. Too bad. I do.

I will provide a brief summary. World War II was horrendous. Remember Sherman's "War is Hell" remains true except for the present government who found war to be a photo-op on an aircraft carrier. How many boomers had fathers who would wake up from nightmares from the memory of the violence? There wasn't a lot of psychiatric understanding of post-traumatic syndrome. There is now, but we choose not to fund treatment. Back then, we offered the brave ones who fought a good life, a quiet life, a life wherein they could forget how awesomely horrific the world is. And they had the intelligent man who lead the war as President, Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike. Ike provided the quiet and tranquil illusion for the men who had served under him in the war which was the creator of all holocausts.

When it became obvious in the 60's that certain issues had to be addressed, the War generation did not wish to face it. After all, they had fought enough. They'd seen Pearl, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Auschwitz... So rightly it was the burden of the younger generation. In time, this generation could not find God without drugs, could not find being in the world without violence, could not find the True Charity that first moved them. So they quit. They went into the world of business, but they did it in a particularly soulless way, for they did not feel comfortable with God. So we had incredible wealth and growth accompanied by incredible poverty and degradation...and we have the present state of affairs where the Attorney General of this country argues for torture in front of elected representatives who are owned by lobbyists. We still do not have the Charity we lost.

Listen to public discourse. Charity has been mugged and dragged into a forgotten alley. I prefer FDR, Harry Truman, and Ike. (Of course, there's still Jimmy Carter, thank heavens.) The era of Ozzie and Harriet was a breather for those who had given all. Now we have the era of those who have given NOTHING and have gleefully taken everything: the Boomers. When I speak of Boomers, I mean the whole generation. We tend to think of Boomers as being somewhat liberal. No, these distinctions of liberal and conservative are invalid here just as they are in most of the places they are used. For even the very conservative religious leaders feel unnaturally empowered by being in this generation, so much so that they will counsel assassinations, they will affirm that they know the mind of God, and they will promote Idolatry under the guise of the Intelligent Design Theory.