The Greatest Generation

The Spirit Who Always Denies

I was hanging around someone who was talking about "The Greatest Generation".

Of course, I - being der Geist, der stets verneint - decided to disagree, saying that the decision to fight to defend oneself and one's country has been a common phenomenon throughout history, and in no way makes one generation of people in one country a greatest generation.
They can be pretty good stuff, but not the best.

I said that it was probably just another form of the idea of America being exceptional in the best possible sense, and heads and shoulders above the rest of the world, which, truth to tell, was a bunch of third world riff-raff and G20's barely 40 years from Hershey bars and Lucky Strikes and various benighted troglodytes.

My experience with "The Greatest" nowadays is pretty much my mother.
I printed some financials articles on various things, one of which was the federal deficit and the fact that it was decreasing and revenues were increasing.

Nobody disputes it.

That is why it was not a factor in the election last month: it could not even light a fire under a tinderbox.

My mother said that maybe the Financial Times was   slanting   the news to make Obama look good. It was a distinct possibility in her opinion, formed by FOX.

I said that the notion that everybody was lying to you (except your cable news shows) was a pretty good definition of paranoid obsession.

It has been a long 68 years.

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