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Don’t blame the boomers
Dear Republic:
I share Kevin Potvin’s opposition to regressive tax cuts, but I’m disturbed by his sweeping attack on the “baby-boom” generation in his article, “Baby Boomers Wreck Everything” [issue 132].
No doubt the baby boomers are an extremely privileged generation historically, but to characterize all or most individual baby boomers as self-indulgent and anti-social, strikes me as scapegoating, in particular, Mr Potvin’s ugly call to lower the retirement age, “the sooner to get rid of the lot of them.”
Many young protesters in the ’60s were more than just “pampered students.” Some of them may have ended up by becoming affluent and complacent, but others were courageous, principled activists, who often paid a high price for their ideals. Were the civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi, or the antiwar protesters beaten by police in Chicago and murdered at Kent State, simply pampered, spoiled brats?
In addition, to blame regressive economic policies on baby-boomer self-indulgence is simply bad history.
The current reactionary political tide began in the early ’80s; its original leaders and ideologues were not baby boomers afflicted by “excessive Spock-inspired indulgence.” How does Potvin account for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who were certainly the equal of Gordon Campbell and Stephen Harper in pandering to greed and selfishness?
- Carl Rosenberg, Vancouver
The more things change . . .
Dear Republic:
I read your publication consistently. While I do enjoy it, I find myself not always in agreement with some of the ideas you express.
Re: your article on Baby Boomers [issue 132]. It seems every generation, no matter how idealistic they might be in younger years, are eventually co-opted by existing social and corporate mechanisms.
I’m of the boomer “demographic,” though I’ve certainly not managed to access the levers of wealth or power many in that group have. While I agree that many boomers exhibit the selfish tendencies you cite, I must take issue with the notion that replacing boomers with younger talent, or a new generation, will lead to a better society. The co-opting mechanisms that exist will not likely change, just because a certain demographic is no longer in control.
Boomers, or at least the “leftie” types therein, used to think, if we could just get rid of all the straight, narrow-minded piggies running the show back in the ’60s, a better world would result. Well, boomers eventually supplanted most of the previous generation, and guess what? The world still functions in much the same dysfunctional way, in terms of power elites and such. What makes you think anything would change if you were able to give all the boomers you don’t like an earlier retirement than they were anticipating?
As for your article on Afghanistan, you should be careful you don’t end up sounding like an apologist for the Taliban. Though they may have been able to impose order on an anarchic country, it certainly wasn’t a very pleasant order. Not that I’m saying the country, as currently run, is any great shakes.
As for Osama and his brethren: Well, I haven’t seen any convincingly conclusive evidence that 9/11 was something other than what most people think it was: a spectacular blow against the US on its own home soil, orchestrated by Al-Qaeda.
I’m definitely no fan of most US foreign policy, but even if Ralph Nader had been President at the time of the attacks, I think it’s none too likely the US (and other countries who’ve participated) would not have sent in troops. Not to have done so would most certainly have been political suicide for any US President.
As for other foreign adventures, if the US had left well enough alone, and not tried to over-reach themselves as they have in Iraq (in this, they remind me of the Athenians, when they became too ambitious during the Peloponnesian war and invaded Syracuse), they wouldn’t find themselves in the awful mess they’re now in.
- Bruce Macmillan, Vancouver
The big lie of 9/11
Dear Republic:
In a recent letter to The Republic, Tony Rogers, an American journalism professor, uses name-calling and smear rather than to address himself to the relevant questions that Mr Potvin has raised regarding the September 11 attacks [“Letters,” issue 132].
Mr Rogers manages to track down and attack the questions raised in a small bi-weekly newspaper, but overlooks reports in the major media (BBC, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Guardian, and others) that 9 of the 19 alleged hijackers are alive and well and understandably denying involvement in the September 11 attacks.
Mr Rogers has the gall to wonder whatever happened to good old-fashioned journalistic skepticism. I would suggest that Mr Rogers seems more interested in discouraging any examination of the official explanation, than in directing the skepticism he argues for, toward the Bush administration.
Two planes collapse three buildings at the WTC, and two more planes crash into a field and the Pentagon with such force that they vapourize, leaving no trace, yet DNA is recovered to allow identification of the victims?
Where is the old-fashioned journalistic skepticism, Mr Rogers?
The big lie around 9/11 cannot withstand scrutiny. It has more holes than a colander, yet American journalism is hyper-allergic to even basic questions. Hunter S Thompson described the response of American media to the September 11 attacks as shameful. I agree. I would add that, with the exception of journalists like Mr Potvin, Canadian journalism is not much better.
I will go even further. The Bush administration, by perpetrating the big lie of 9/11, has overplayed its hand. It’s time to call them on it, and use the scandal and war crimes trial that follow to exorcise their secret government and establish a real democracy in America. The Bush administration is bluffing and is vulnerable, but if they are not called, not challenged, if they get away with their plotting, they will establish an American security state. Considering the Canadian strategy of ever-deepening integration with America, Canadians will become subject to this security state apparatus, just as global capitalism, peak oil, and climate change threaten to tear the economic and social fabric of society.
–Turtle, via email
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