My generation’s disease

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• So essentially, these poor, self-absorbed and bored, bereft waifs have been conditioned to sit back and wait for the changes our government indoctrination machines have done such a great job telling them are coming. They wait in line like so many welfare rats, expecting the government to dole out their happiness and personal pleasures...no wonder we're in economic and social trouble. Like all great socialist societies, everybody owns everything and therefore nobody owns anything. When you own the very same shit your neighbor does you aren't likely to take care of it as if it were yours and when it comes time to mow the lawn it's always going to be your neighbor's turn to mow it. I put up with this lazy 'projects' mentality when I had to live in government housing while I was stationed in Darmstadt, Germany. Of course, rank has its privileges and it doesn't hurt to be the brigade sergeant major's card playing buddy, I found that out about our building coordinator when it came time to get stuff fixed around our stairwell! Petty politics isn't any different than the unpetty kind, except that your unpetty 'favors' are more expensive and more often. The only time I saw any motivation in him was when there was something in it for him or his family. This mentality of non-motivation and sloth goes back a long way and is directly connected to the hand out mentality of both the grifters and drafters of the entire welfare system. Only now, instead of being some poor inner city kid with a chip, it's an entire generation of kids with chips. I prefer rock salt, when I impose my morning motivational!

  • They have lost track of the Constitutional guarantees. They think the government will provide for them, rather than give them the ability to persue life, liberty and happiness.

  • In a proverbial nut shell, yes.

• It was the previous generation that stole their gold.

  • Hell, it was 2 generations before mine that took is off the gold standard, and I am easily old enough to be your grandmother, so that was done way before my time. At any rate, Our generation was the recipient of the brunt of the change in monetary policy. My high school senior ring was 14 K gold, with some additional tuff added onto the ring. It cost me $25. MMy wedding ring, 8 years later was 10k gold, and cost $40 on sale. And the costs just kept going up. My parents bought their last hose in 1965. 3 bdrm, 2 bath, !/3 acre yard, double garage, etc. My mother sold it at a loss fro its apparaised value in 1997 for $60K. Now you can'
    t touvh it for less that $120K. Prices keep going up, but wages have not increased to match. I heard some stupid report a couple of das ago that was all happy because the inflation rate was down. Unh huh. With food and gasoline not in the calculations! We are in much worse financial condition than is being reported. We all know it, but the government is trying to tell us everythink is all hunky dory.

  • Yeah and they stole your mind while they were at it.

    • Similar to stolen "gold" he'd need a mind to begin with for it to be stolen.

• The article really gets at the root of the problem in the country- alluding to how badly the odds are stacked against our engineering and way out when the up and coming generation seems to want their revolution handed to them on a silver platter.

  Not every millennial is like that but with the majority so vast of those who are incapable of seeing the needed impetus for change when they look in the mirror and so vulnerable to political charlatans who promise easy answers, the odds that we're going to successfully extricate this country from the current economic and political train wreck are very, very remote.

  The preoccupation with high tech gadgets and near obsession with social media and useless information follows a pattern very similar to addiction- but with the "drug" so readily available and the promotional allure so ever present, staging some sort of generational intervention would be a monumental waste of time and effort.

  Propagandists already have their minds... as they will those of each emerging generation. The public education system together with mass media proffered pop culture has hijacked they critical reasoning and it can only be through those avenues that remedial measures can be achieved- albeit through properly educating the next generation in hopes that over a number of decades, self motivated, reasoning and empowered people will gradually become a majority again and eventually take the country back.

  Otherwise, the demagogues who have exploited so well the millennial malaise to get themselves installed into power will oversee the complete collapse of a country that is already a pathetic shadow of its former self. It will be cold comfort knowing that they will be getting what they deserve.

  • Well they did have their gold stolen from them by their greedy parent's generation.

    • If a person isn't willing to work to earn or keep something it is not theirs to be stolen. Your rhetoric is a tell as to part of what afflicts the newest generations- victimization as empowerment. If all you are willing to do is whine about "stolen gold" then clearly you had no gold to begin with and you do not deserve anything you aren't willing to put forth the necessary effort to earn.

      • Except that the gold belonged to anyone who used US dollars prior to 1971. Anyone who trades in dollars should also "own" an equal amount of purchasing power in gold. The previous generation got greedy and stole that equal purchasing power to fuel their own greed

        So yea, even if I didn't own gold directly, my "gold" value in my dollars was stolen.

        Not to mention that it is a constitutional right that all money has to be backed in gold and silver, so our constitutional rights were violated too.

        • You are not exactly correct. First of all, the journey off the gold standard started with FDR in 1930s - he made it illegal for US citizens to own gold. This move was basically his version of Quantitative Easing if you will - making money worthless in order to force the public to spend it. But FDR ended the convertability of dollars into gold for the public at large. The restriction against the public owning gold was not lifted until 1974 or so.

          The 1971 event you alluded to was Tricky Dick's "closing of the gold window" which ended the dollar's fixed peg to gold on the world market, making the dollar a fiat currency. I was not yet 20 at the time, so this event was not my generation's doing but the culmination of numerous events, not the least of which was profligate government spending during the 1960s.

          Basically, it took around 4 decades to go from gold-backed dollar to monopoly (fiat) money, a process not unlike the cooking of a frog in the pot by turning up the heat so slowly he doesn't notice. The dollar price of gold began rising steadily from $35 in 1971 to nearly $200 in 1974 and hit a high of around $800 or so in 1980. Of course, that is about half of today's recent highs. Today's pols have no connection with the events 40 years past - they print and spend money like toilet paper. Like gun ownership, the gold standard is viewed by today's "enlightened" wise men as a barbaric relic... in other words, something that makes sense and actually works.

          The Baby Boom generation has a lot of faults (some of which I managed to avoid and some I have not) but we should not take the blame for the debauchery of the dollar, a process that was begun when our parents were teenagers.

        • The Baby Boom generation has a lot of faults (some of which I managed to avoid and some I have not) but we should not take the blame for the debauchery of the dollar, a process that was begun when our parents were teenagers.

          ----------------------

          Yet they still didn't say anything nor did they have a problem living up 2 or 3 decades of prosperity at the expense of the next 100+ years of debt.

        • Oh Man! De ja vu, scary. Are you channeling Olivia?

        • Just a coincidence I guess, but it just goes to show that I'm not the only one who realizes the truth.

        • For actually putting a small measure of thought into the response I'll give you a bit of credit. That being said (well, typed) continually whining about it as you are doing here is not going to be the impetus for thoughtful discussion- neither is repeatedly advocating the candidacy of Ron Paul. Placing hopes in any one person opens the door to more political snake oil salesmen like Øbama who are quick to make easy promises in order to assume power.

          Every crisis furnishes the potential of a challenge we can choose to make ourselves equal to- the new economic game is not impossible to play so stop repeatedly and endlessly whining about the fact that the rules were changed 42 years ago.

        • Thank you, for not leaving blood stains.

        • Unlike progressives, I am not a fan of scorched earth.

    • Are you positing that our generation is as pure as the driven snow, this generation of 'Me' and Now!'

      • We didn't steal any gold if that's what you're asking.

        • Who the hell is giving the creep thumbs up? I'll bet he reboots his computer, then adds his own!