A Walk Down the GenX Political Memory Lane

Part II: The Boomers-in-Power Years

When you came of age to vote, you weren't interested much in presidential politics, having been put off by either the corruption of Nixon and the inefficacy of Carter, or the cluelessness of Reagan and Bush the Old. Even if you were politically conscious in your twenties, you probably based your vote on your assessment of the lesser of two evils OR thinking that the known evil is better than the unknown.

In the 90s, you probably voted for Bill Clinton because he seemed pretty cool wearing those shades, jamming with the band on Arsenio, and some of his rhetoric actually seemed to make sense. Sixteen years ago, he seemed like a breath of fresh air after those two decrepit old bastids. So he smoked a little dope when he was young (who didn't?) and so he cheated on his wife (who cares? and besides, Hillary did seem a little frosty*). In 2000, you probably voted for Al Gore, only to discover that your vote didn't count after all, and now we'll never know how the aftermath of September 11 might have been different if it weren't for Ralph Nader and all that vote-counting incompetence in Jeb Bush's Florida.

Whether you've been politically conscious or not, you've been getting more and more disgusted by the ugliness of campaign tactics, which have been getting progressively worse throughout your adult life. Every summer, you can't flip the channel fast enough when the TV commercial mud-slinging starts up, and you start counting the days until November. Luckily, your finely-tuned GenX bullshit-o-meter allows you to see right through it.

You know that campaigns based on personal attacks against the opponent mean only one thing: the candidate who "approved this message" is fundamentally weak, has no real message, no original ideas, and no clue how to fix the very real problems of your city, your state, or your nation. It seems their interest lies only in winning: attaining or retaining a nice, cushy government job, securing for themselves (and their Boomer buds) all the perks that go along with that, and you get the feeling that, in some back room somewhere, they are laughing at the stupid taxpayers that foot the bill. If you do go to the polls on election day, you don't vote for the candidate you think will do the most good, but for the one you think will do the least damage.

Why am I being so hard on the Boomers, you might ask? It's not really their fault; as is every generation, they were shaped by the times they grew up in. They are products of the military-industrial complex that they inherited from prior generations (can you say McCain?). We're talking about the military-industrial complex that over the previous fifty years created the world's sneakiest and most well-funded Intelligence and Investigation machine to fight the dreaded Soviets, and that, when the Cold War ended, became such a pork train that it was too slow to change objectives in time to put the pieces of September 11 together, despite the big wake-up call of the first Trade Center attack in 1993. Billions of taxpayer dollars worth of spy technology and thousands of people on the government payroll in National Security Agencies that were, thanks to Boomer mistrust of one another, both unwilling and unable to share information, resulting in TOTAL FAILURE on that one tragic day.

Our nation was shaken to the core, sobered, and no matter what you think of Bush now, at the time, people looked to him for leadership and it seemed, at first, to be there. Despite his grievous record since then, we still believe the guy has a heart, even if he is dumber than dirt. We sort of feel sorry for him and Laura and the girls – it's easy to forget that he ran in 2000 on a mostly Clintonian domestic agenda – better schools, Rx benefits for seniors, let's all ride the Internet wave and don't fix what ain't broke.
Then SMACK-O! 911 happens a few months into his presidency, completely obliterating the domestic agenda,and giving him an nice "in" to settle a score for his old man. OK, nuff said in defense of Mr. Bush, who is already regarded the world over as the singular worst president America has ever known, the weakest in character, leadership and judgment – not to mention a happy hour joke in every language spoken on the planet and, worst of all, the single greatest source of inspiration for this kid >

In the aftermath of 911, our Boomer leaders proceeded to make this horrifying crisis for our nation even worse, doing exactly the wrong thing: adopting their fathers' generation's stance, fighting back with military might. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Saddam Must Go. It all happened so fast, it's like the first few years after 911 are a giant blur and here we are, nearly seven years down the road already.

So now Saddam's gone, but Bin Laden's still here, his brainwashed legions growing stronger, hating us even more, and with the current anarchy in Iraq, we know now that a totalitarian leader like Saddam was a much better option to keep their incomprehensible and so-like-five-hundred-years-ago tribal hatreds in check. And you know what? They want to live and die like that? That's their problem. Let them fight it out, while we dedicate the best and the brightest of the American Generation Next to defeating terrorism where it can (and will) be defeated: Finance, Technology, Intelligence, securing OUR borders, making OUR country safe, and most of all, finally forcing Big Oil to invest their staggering profits in viable alternative fuels so we can defeat the REAL enemy, the financial backers of Al Queda, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East.

Part 3: The Constant Undercurrent

top