Jeremy Gruenbaum: "Blame The Boomers" ...For Everything
My nephew. Jeremy Gruenbaum, wrote this in response to an excellent piece by Noah Millman in The American Scene, Check it out. I'd like to think Jeremy is wrong about my generation but, in the 24years I've known him, he has been invariably right about pretty much everything.
After reading your post "Who closed the conservative mind?" I felt compelled to write. To introduce myself, I'm 24, Boston born and raised, a Kennedy/Obama Democrat, and Jewish to boot. I've probably read your writing in the past, but I'm not familiar with your work.
That post is the best distillation I've found of what led to the current state of the conservative movement. I think people like me who follow the movement from the left and know the history have our basic understanding of what happened, but the key insights about the movement come from people who identify with conservative philosophy as opposed to the conservative movement.
Clearly the separate explanations you posit (blame the south/money/frum memo/iraq war/times) are all part of a comprehensive explanation set out in the post, and you're right that the times are the key element. It's something I've thought about a lot.
I was a month away from my 16th birthday on 9/11, so my life as a political junkie basically began when I heard about Monica Lewinsky in middle school. Until 2006, I'd never cheered my party on as it won an election, and by then, it felt too late. Out of that experience, I came to understand that modern America is defined by the bitterly divided Baby Boomer generation, my parents' generation, and that division has cost America dearly since they were born.
So I get to the part about how it's the times that are to blame. The times are exactly the lifespan of the baby boomers. Their parents forged the intellectual and demographic base of the movement in the 1950's. After living through 30 years of World War and the Great Depression, who wouldn't want to conserve every aspect of the seemingly perfect lives they built in the aftermath? Isn't that what the people who make up the conservative base want? To go back to the idealized 50's somehow?
It was with those sentiments that the baby boomer's parents created the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of modern conservatism and passed them on to their children. It might've worked, but something went wrong. Half of the baby boomers rejected their parents' conservatism in the 60's. That's about as understated as I could be describing that decade, but it's accurate. The two sides were left to fight their battles and those battles became the culture war. Because of the boomers' numbers, that war has dominated the country ever since.
The conservative movement won that war, electorally at least. But it was badly bloodied and had to throw away most of its founding principles. Really, everyone lost. I'm not going to hash out every single thing that went wrong between 1968 and 2008, it's a long list that we already know. To be honest, I think America is a disappointment, considering the promise it showed in those mythical 1950's. Maybe that promise wasn't real, but that doesn't lessen the disappointment.
And now, the rest of the country must try to pick up the pieces. The baby boomers are still large enough to control the country politically, but they can't because they're so evenly and bitterly divided. Those kids who rejected their parents' philosophy back in the 60's were part of the civil rights movement, so they naturally formed a political coalition with minority voters . That coalition is the modern Democratic Party, and as minorities become the majority, Democrats will continue to win national elections, at least until some other kind of right wing opposition can coalesce around a non-white-southern base.
The country will move forward, but we're leaving behind the other half of the baby boomers, the ones who tried to carry their parents' world into the 21st century. No matter how hard they try to stop it, the world continues to evolve. In the last 10 years, they've seen the movement they built take absolute power, only to squander it in a single presidency. After 9/11, their party had free reign to do whatever it wanted legislatively and in foreign policy. The Bush Administration sent the country down such a terrible path that it destroyed their movement and turned it into a hollow shell. And like all boomers, they worked their whole lives, overtime, saving for a retirement that was wiped out in the Great Recession.
I guess a lot of those people just can't take it. Instead, they turn away from reality and live in a fantasy world where they're always right and the whole world is always against them. It's sad really.
We've come this far, so I guess I need to tie in how the life story of the conservative base relates to the so-called "epistemic closure" issue. To me its pretty simple: blame the money and the times.
The times, because the advances in technology over the last 20 years allow people to self-select news and information sources that only confirm their biases. As they shut themselves off from the larger conversation, the desire to stay shut off only gets stronger, and so a system of alternative news and information sources grows to meet the demand.
That brings us to the money. The rulers of the conservative noise-machine aren't in it for electoral victory, or to influence policy, or to provide a service that they feel is vital. They're in it for the money, and there's a ton of it. All those people who avoid opposing and even neutral views bring big ratings and big money to the conservative media complex. They watch Fox, buy Ann Coulter's books, go to Sarah Palin rallies, and wrack up page-views on WorldNetDaily and RedState. Glenn Beck made $32 million in the last year.
The personalities who dominate that world get filthy rich off it, but I think most of them don't really care about advancing the conservative movement's agenda in a concrete way. They'd rather have their audience continue to feel alienated and betrayed by their country because it makes them tune in even more. They create an alternative narrative to describe the world, share it amongst themselves, and close the loop so that any interfering facts can't get in the way of the arrangement. Anyone who questions the system is thrown out and demonized. Epistemic closure.
The conservatives were not carrying forward the dream of their WWII winning parents. They were bitterly rejecting the positive view of the 60s-70s population that overcame American Apartheid and ended the Vietnam war. They dream the dream of "I got mine."
Blame the Boomers? No, blame the folks who built the industrial high school, designed to educate a few elite while preparing a majority of unthinking skilled workmen. That would be Jeremy's great-grandparent generation, but not many of them, just the one's named Carnegie, etc.
April 27, 2010 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
The conservatives were not carrying forward the dream of their WWII winning parents.
Sure they were Marquis. But it was Lilly white and went to Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton or Dartmouth.
C
April 27, 2010 9:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 24, 2011 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
This goes for the left and the right. Both with idealized but totally opposing views. But both viewing the world through rose colored glasses. One some "free market utopia" the other some "socialism utopia" and neither seeing the world as it actually is.
C
April 27, 2010 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
The really sad part is that most of what *made* the '50s better, especially in terms of economics, would be totally repellent to modern conservatives:
- strong unions
- considerably smaller gap between the highest and lowest wages at a given company
- strong bank and securities regulation
- top marginal tax rate around 90%
So in a sense, modern conservatives are nostalgic for a time that NEVER EXISTED.
April 27, 2010 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
So in a sense, modern conservatives are nostalgic for a time that NEVER EXISTED.
That is so true. A Disney inspired fantasy that only exists in their minds.
C
April 27, 2010 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here is a campaign currently running in the UK that points the finger squarely at Baby Boomers. It encourages young adults to vote Boomers out of power at the general election. It's only young people that will be paying the clean up bill for the mess they've inherited. Its only fair that they have a bigger say in how its done.
www.itsalltheirfault.com
April 27, 2010 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
here's a deep thought...
Most Republicans will proudly proclaim that they want to leave the world a better place for their children and grandchildren than the world they grew up in.
But wouldn't that be PROGRESS!?!?
Now that the word "Progress" is spat with such hateful contempt by anyone entrenched on "the right", (much like with the word "Liberal" was mistreated in the late 20th Century,) one must wonder what other label they miught put on those aspirations to leave their progeny a better world than they knew.
So what would you call it, if not Progress?
April 27, 2010 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
One thing about the culture war -- I think we're better off for having fought it. Just look at the civil rights advances we've made.
April 27, 2010 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yess!
April 27, 2010 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
How Right, Des. Far from losing the war, we've pulled our recalcitant culture into the early 21th century. We're not giving up now. (And, most of our inspiration came from progressives from prior generations who were born into messes that were not of their own making either. What's new about that?)
May 1, 2010 1:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a member of Generation Y, I have been saying for years that the Baby Boom generation is, by and large, to blame for American decay. Consequently, I've been lambasted by folks of that generation.
I'm not sure I agree completely with the writer's view of the Bush administration. In 2000 and 2004, the concept of the "Neocon" was not well established yet on Main Street in America. Pundits and Beltway scribes were intimately acquainted with this group, of course, but when Bush ran against Al Gore and John Kerry, most people who voted for him were under the honest impression that he was a real Republican.
I voted for him in 2004 under just such an assumption. And without resorting to popular revisionist history, I had very legitimate reasons for doing so during that election; not the least of which being that John Kerry was quite obviously a loser candidate.
Obviously, as his presidency literally came apart at the seams from 2006-2008, the true notion of the Neocon became crystal clear for everybody. Looking back on it now, most people who voted for Bush are ashamed to admit it.
But again, revisionist history is everyone's enemy.
The Neocon-led Bush administration clearly left a meteoric crater smack in the middle of the Conservative movement. The result, as we are seeing now, is something of a power vacuum. Tea Party, Social Conservatives, Fiscal Conservatives, Bigots, Racists, and even good old traditional Conservatives are all vying to wrest control of the party. For Republicans, this would appear to be a sad, desperate time.
But when you take into account the almost assured fact of GOP electoral gains this fall, you wonder just how far to the right the voters will go? Will it be a little? Will it be an entire house of Congress? The scary part is that if the GOP gets some (or a lot) of power back, what faction is going to ultimately prevail within their ranks?
That question is paramount because in the wake of health care passage, they are going to be hungry to avenge that embarrassment with what figures to be a consortium of conservative legislation.
The ideological division of the Baby Boomer's is becoming the ideological division of the entire country. The middle ground is going the way of the dinosaur. In it's place is ever-growing partisan sentiment.
April 27, 2010 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
The ideological division of the Baby Boomer's is becoming the ideological division of the entire country. The middle ground is going the way of the dinosaur. In it's place is ever-growing partisan sentiment.
The ideological division began in the 1950s has has grown since then. First it spit the Democratic party and is now splitting the Republican party as well. The old time conservatives like Goldwater and and old time Liberals like Humphrey have gone the way of the dinosaur. And unfortunately so has what was once known as the middle class.
C
April 27, 2010 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the splits in the two parties goes back further than the 1950's. The conservatives have hated change since forever, unless it was economic change someone could get wealthy on. (They tend to be highly focused on wealth concentration and preservation.) The Democrats split the Democratic party over Segregation (institutionalized Racism) and abandoned the South to the Republicans who were glad to become more conservative to get the reliable southern votes.
When the South went Republican, the Democrats lost the voting block that had made them the dominant national political party after the Depression occurred.
The other thing that has happened since the 1950's is the growth of the power of television to determine who was President. That has had the effect of unifying both political parties ideologically, with the Republicans using it to greater effect.
Prior to the 1960's there were no real national parties. There were two opposing alliances made up of state political parties, which is why the Racist Southern Democrats were able to ally themselves with the more liberal Democrats outside the South. Television has had the effect of forcing the national politicians in each party to respond to the ideology of their allies from other parts of the nation. The Republicans, as the minority party through most of the second half of the century, grabbed onto this unifying effect first. The conservative movement intensified it with, among others, the help of TV evangelists and the Mega-churches.
The decline of national journalism, both print and TV, together with the rise of the internet and the ability of news consumers to live in a world of their own choice is what has begun to split the Republican Party. Their focus is on power and getting elected, not governance. That seems to be a self-reinforcing dynamic that has led to a Republican Party which cannot govern. The Bush administration proved that in about five years. The 2006 and 2008 elections just confirmed it.
By the way, the power of Wall Street to convince the newspaper families to go public with their stock and sell out for the money has had a lot to do with the decline in journalism. So has changes in technology, but the loss of families running journalistic enterprises and turning the over to people who live for profit instead of journalism has seriously sped up the changes in journalism, mostly for the worse. Something else to blame Wall Street and Milton Friedman for.
The Great Recession has, of course, thrown a spanner into the works for right now, but the long term trends seem unlikely to change.
That's my opinion, anyway.
April 27, 2010 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said Richard.
C
April 27, 2010 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your nephew falls into the very common trap of assuming that since
(1) contemporary neo-cons oppose latter-day '60s liberals
and
(2) '60s conservatives opposed '60s liberals
that therefore
(3) contemporary neo-cons = '60s conservatives
which is quite erroneous.
Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see a young person being thoughtful and concerned. He deserves your continued encouragement.
April 27, 2010 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's always great when there is an older generation around to blame for today's mess isn't it? No blame to the "toxic freakshow nature of our politio-media culture" is there? (I have been waiting for a place to insert that in TPM seen I saw it in a Mark Halprin piece).
April 27, 2010 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really like this interpretation of US political history. It is food for a lot of thought.
Two points I would like to make, though.
- I am delighted to see a coherent explanation for the current political mess America is in that does NOT blame the DFHs.
- I don't think that the parents of the Baby Boomers actually created conservative children. They transmitted their fear of returning to the Depression and the War and of losing their hard-earned wealth and new status. That teaching of fear of change took root in a long-term existing set of conservative politics that has existed in America since before the American Revolution. The wealthy oligarchs who ran America in the 20's and who were marginalized by the Depression and the War came back to mobilize the new generation. (Coors, Scaife, the Bush family, etc. Look at the individuals who inherited their wealth and who fund the conservative think tanks.)
It's an excellent explanation for how we got to the present day almost in another Great Depression and fighting two unnecessary wars with a Supreme Court poised to roll back as much progress as they can get away with.Digby has occasionally written of the "Two Tribes" in American politics. What the Boomer's parents did was raise many of their children to choose the tribe that hates and fears social change. LBJ was the last American President who embraced the ability of America to change for the better, and he institutionalized the Civil Rights changes that we now know was part of the very best things to come out of America.
April 27, 2010 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had a great grandmother that lost all her savings in the depression blamed it all on FDR. The fact that the gone was gone long before FDR got into office was of little consequence to her. FDR closed the banks there fore it was all his fault. Was a staunch Democrat before that and then became a republican.
C
April 27, 2010 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Plural nouns take plural verb forms, and singular nouns singular verb forms. Civil Rights changes WERE part of progress, even if now a Supreme Court is poised to roll back as much of that progress as IT can get away with. Grammar may be generational (unlike dangling prepositions). Or it may not be. Even Obama has had his slips, and -after all- "talking 'bout my generation" was a very 1960's generation fixation.
April 27, 2010 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
True enough. I didn't take the time needed to edit properly. But it is a blog comment, after all. Short and quick.
Fortunately I do not take umbridge at grammar police or consider them more important than they really are. ;-}
April 27, 2010 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi, I'm Jeremy, the writer. This is a solid discussion so I thought I'd jump in.
In response to Gettysburg:
Even though this minute it seems like the middle ground is gone, I'd contend that it's really only gone in the baby boom generation. While our generation has its differences, we are much more able to come together in the middle of matters of policy.
The classic right/left battles have no middle ground (think abortion or the death penalty). But the baby boomers project that ideology onto every issue. For example, people from the right and left of Generation Y would be able to come to some sort of an agreement on how to handle global warming, as opposed to one side insisting that the problem doesn't exist.
---------------
In response to bluesplashy:
I'd say that of course the political media is a disgrace and has contributed massively to the current state of American politics. However, I do believe that the explanation for why the media is that way stems from the right/left divide in the baby boom generation. As the right swept to power, they had already spent decades complaining about the "liberal media" and helped create the dynamic we see now where the media refuses to be as critical as they should be about the right wing. Then, de-regulation was pushed through in the 90's and created the ultra-corporate media we have today, more interested in ratings than in the truth. MJ has heard me go on about this at length, but that's the short version of where I stand on the media today. I think someday I'll write another piece focusing on the media's role in all this.
---------------
In response to Richardxx:
I know the right wing has always been identified with basically the same sort of attitudes and policies, the "fear of change" as you put it. My point here was more to try explain why that strain of American politics is so strong and so destructive in the same generation of Americans that brought us the Civil Rights movement.
Also, "I don't think that the parents of the Baby Boomers actually created conservative children. They transmitted their fear of returning to the Depression and the War and of losing their hard-earned wealth and new status."
That's exactly the idea I was going for. It's not so much that they pushed ideas that we now consider "conservative," it's that they passed their children a certain mindset about the world down to their children, and that mindset came from the unique circumstances of the 1950's. Of course, like I wrote, half of their children violently rejected that philosophy once they became teenagers.
April 27, 2010 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no criticisms with your excellent post. As I said (or meant to) it is very thought provoking. It also is very close to ideas I am working on, some of which I wrote above.
You also illuminated a current view of America's recent political history that I think needs to be expanded and distributed.
Regarding your first point, I don't think that the Civil Rights movement came from the same generation as did the current destructive conservative movement. I see the Civil Rights movement as growing out of big changes in American society that came from the Depression and which then grew greatly as a direct response to WW II. Some even went back to African-American participation in WW I. LBJ institutionalized the capstone on the Civil Rights movement, something that has really only been developed in greater depth since the 60's and 70's. The conservative movement, based on fear of change, was to a significant degree a reaction to the implementation of the Civil Rights laws. I well remember the "Impeach Earl Warren" signs and bumper stickers from the late 50's on.
Feminism and the GLBT movement are really efforts to redefine what groups can directly get the advantages of the social changes the Civil Rights movement was central to. They are logical expressions of the earlier developments.
As for your second point, I got the idea you were going for, but I am always looking for the mechanisms behind social and organizational changes. I am looking for the actors involved and trying to see how they might have interacted to reach the result that we currently perceive. I was trying to expand your concept, not criticize it. As I say, yours is a very thought-provoking piece of writing.
I assume that this is not the only thing you have written in a similar vein, and I hope to see more. Are you aware of the TPM diaries in TPM Cafe? You'd fit right in and quickly gather a following. Register your name and start writing. Even us fogeys can do it.
April 27, 2010 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't take it as a criticism really, you just made me realize that I should clarify a few points that didn't come across as well as I would've liked.
Thanks for taking the time, I've never really had anything out there like this before so it's very encouraging to get those kind of responses. I think I will start posting on TPM Diaries.
April 27, 2010 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the main reason why I write comments and occasional blog posts. I find the very process of writing clarifies my thinking, and when I forget that I am writing for an audience other than myself, People at TPM are often kind enough to remind me. Writing, for all its solitary aspects, is a very social process.
There are a bunch of very bright people here at the Cafe who are willing to share what they know. I often find it a very educational set of seminars.
I've also been driven (mostly kicking and screaming) to read and occasionally use Strunk and White. An English teacher on NPR recently stated that thought IS language, and if you are not using language properly you are not thinking properly. He said you have no opinions or ideas until you have put them into words, and the quality of your words does not reflect the quality of your language IS the quality of your thinking. So I keep practicing, hoping for adequacy.
You seem well on the way. Keep writing. And, of course, reading and listening.
April 28, 2010 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jeremy,
I tend to agree with you that those of us in Generation Y do not, and more importantly, WILL NOT, fall into the same bitter divisions that the Boomers quite obviously have.
For one thing, the traditional benchmarks of "Conservatism" fail to resonate with an overwhelming majority of people in our generation. That is NOT to say, however, that everybody our age is uber-Liberal.
Nevertheless, practically everybody I know in my peer group is in favor of things like gay marriage, a woman's right to choose, etc. We see these things as common sense instances of social progression. Personally, I am a secular kind of guy, but even people I know who are religious mostly feel the same way. In my opinion, that is quite an accomplishment considering how Boomers are essentially split right down the middle on those issues depending on how religious they are.
To your point, the fact that most (not all) people our age are on the same page regarding the above-mentioned issues is very significant when considering that Baby Boomers have literally spent a lifetime arguing with each other over these things. For our generation, there will still be divisions over things like foreign policy and monetary policy. Nevertheless, the fact that most of us are "socially Liberal" means that we will have far FEWER things to disagree with as we get older and assume positions of power.
In fact, when you look at the Southern voting bloc, social issues are often-times their #1 priority on election day. I believe our generation will avoid major social divisions. If we are left to focus on foreign policy and money, we'll be alright.
April 27, 2010 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look around you and remember what you see, for it will not look the same when seen thirty-five years from now.
When I was in my twenties conservatives of my generation were few and far between. Everyone seemed hip and progressive. This hip generation gave impetus to genuine and positive change. Such things are carried on the strength of cultural, historical, and political awareness. And, let me also add, fashion. As much as anything, good 'ol non-introspective fashion was a force for a great deal of positive change.
Much of the hip young generation of those days is now seriously right wing. Funny that dumb old fashion is responsible for a significant chunk of what can safely be called social progress. And, god knows, there has been a lot of that since the fifties. Quite a few of the phony lefties (people who are now right wing) were unreflectively instrumental in the making of the changes they now reflexively revile.
Be skeptical of what looks like unity in your generation. As you get older that unity will disappear like a mirage.
May 1, 2010 1:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wait wait wait...Please remember that many of the people who got us to this place (oh, like Reagan, Nixon, Ford, G.H.W.Bush, Greenspan, corporate CEOs, Supreme Court justices, Senators, and so forth) are decidedly NOT boomers! They are mostly part of what some people call "the greatest generation"--the same generation that the DFHs rebelled against. This is also likely to be the only generation that will benefit from most of the new deal. As a boomer, I have heard my whole life (and I have worked since I was 14--even if only an after school job then) that there will not be anything left in Social Security for us. Also, for my whole life we have been waging war somewhere and have built up a huge war machine while claiming to be peace loving people. We have culture wars because as a people we are not who we think we are. As a nation we are selfish and mean-spirited--that is how Reagan got elected, he made being greedy and mean-spirited seem perfectly acceptable (remember the welfare queen stories?)W just perfected that story...
April 27, 2010 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think I did a good enough job differentiating between the individual actors who made certain things happen as opposed to the demographic groups that shaped the culture/climate of the country more generally. Those powerful members of "the greatest generation" that you mention took advantage of the baby boomer demographics (ie the Social Security situation or the Reagan elections). Like we all know, Reagan wasn't a baby boomer, but his election marks the moment when the Republican half of the baby boom generation made its voice heard. Then they drove him to one of the all-time landslides in 1984.
As for the selfish/mean-spirited point, I couldn't agree more. That attitude is, of course, prevalent on both sides of the ideological divide. We have a fundamental problem in this country in that we worry more about appearance and reputation than actual substance. There's who you are, and there's how you look or, "it's not what's trueit's what you can prove." Another topic for another day.
April 27, 2010 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The people you list ("Reagan, Nixon, Ford, G.H.W.Bush, Greenspan, corporate CEOs, Supreme Court justices, Senators, and so forth") were all influenced by or part of the reactionary right who were marginalized after they (as a group) caused the Great Depression. I still recall vividly how so many of them viscerally hated FDR even in the late 50's and 60's.
Here in Texas it surprised me when, in 1961, one of their group (John Hightower) won the special election to fill the Senate seat LBJ had left when he became Veep in 1960. What I didn't know then was that Texas, even in the 30's, was dominated by conservative Southern Democrats who had consistently fought against FDR throughout the 1930's.
Those same conservatives in Texas were financed largely by four Texas oil millionaires who later went on to fund the John Birchers nationally and who, with an Oklahoma oil millionaire) sent a lot of money in the 50's to oppose Eisenhower. They provided a lot of the original core funding for the conservative think tanks and the conservative movement.
[Sources: The Establishment in Texas Politics by George Norris Green and The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough.]
April 28, 2010 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I find fascinating is how easy it is to brainwash the younger generations.
Was there something moderate about segregated schools? Do these folks think the women who marched for suffrage in the 19th and early 20th century were centrists? Do they think the long hard battles for safe working conditions, the 40 hour work week, union rights, etc. were centrist battles? Did boomers cause the Civil War?
Ideological battles are as old as this country and it isn't surprising that they ebb and flow. The WWII generation may have been the real exception, united by the great war into common effort and beneficiaries of the post-war boom.
I read somewhere that you have a free pass to blame your parents until you are 25. So I guess Jeremy has a year left to grow up.
April 27, 2010 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
See my reply to Ptroub below.
Briefly, I believe that the current ideological battles have created a climate that is not so common, but no unprecedented, in American history. And more importantly, I'm trying to see where those ideologies fit in the grand scheme of American history. I don't think they are the be-all and end-all, far from it.
My worldview is more that big money drives historical events and actors more than any ideological considerations.
April 27, 2010 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I strongly concur!
April 28, 2010 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will place more faith in the current generation of young adults when they start tossing overboard some of the outdated crap they have taken on from their elders, such as the "left-right divide" being a great explanation for what ails America.
Clinton balanced the budget. Bush II unbalanced it. So which is "left" and "right"?
The Bush II administration advocated going to great lengths to spread "democracy" abroad. Obama's administration wants to follow a more limited and pragmatic foreign policy, e.g. Mideast policy should be based on what makes sense for America's national security. Which is "left" and "right"?
How can a movement that crucially depends on disruptively radical new information technologies credibly be referred to as "conservative"?
But don't take my or anyone else's word for it, youngsters, figure it out on your own, and choose your own way to deal with results. Good luck; it's good to see attempts being made.
April 27, 2010 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my generation, and I think out there in the world, the left/right divide means democrats/republicans. I know the historical meanings, and I know that the politics can't really be broken down into a single left-right continuum. But in 2010 the word "conservative" (or "the right") usually refers to the conservative movement and its priorities/politicians.
At this point, the small "c" conservative definition, in my mind, applies to those old school republican types who don't have a place in the modern conservative movement. Andrew Sullivan is the prime example, but there are lots of people like that in my home state, MA. People say the Northeast Republican is dead, but they're around, they just aren't welcome in the modern Republican Party.
This confusion between the label "conservative" and the (capital C) Conservative Movement is a great trick of the Republican media strategy of the last 40 years, because conservative is a word people respect. Like when we saw those polls right after the 2008 election saying most people still self-identified as conservative, even though 53% had just given a liberal a very strong mandate. Tea Party members consider themselves extremely conservative, but in truth, they're radicals. They and their Conservative Movement fellow travelers advocate extreme changes to the American system. That's how a movement that's labeled "Conservative" can rely so heavily on modern info-technology and be so un-conservative.
So the left is the left and the right is the right even if their respective ideologies no longer correspond to a traditional left-right spectrum. Those are just the labels and they're not changing any time soon. That's how a movement that is anything but conservative is known as "The Conservative Movement."
------------
Also, quickly, a response to your first comment
When you say 60's conservatives, in this context I'm interpreting that as "people who were opposed to the counterculture movement." Not necessarily as reactionary as your typical Goldwater voter, but more likely than not a Nixon voter in 1968, and definitely a Nixon voter in 1972.
Obviously, 60's conservatives and modern neocons aren't the same people and don't have the same ideology. First of all, neocons are really only a cohesive movement in the context of international relations and national security, two subjects that weren't really key to the rise of the Conservative Movement. Second of all, neocon philosophy revolves around a strange view of Israel that MJ has elaborated on at considerable length, whereas the Conservative Movement is more focused on domestic culture war and fiscal issues. Yes, movement conservatives still have foreign policy concerns, but those concerns don't drive the movement.
I think this topic deserves a more detailed explanation, so I'm going to work on that now.
April 27, 2010 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are a clever and sensitive guy, Boston J (like your uncle!). Do your further work, develop your more detailed explanations and tell us what you come up with. Looking forward to hearing more from you, on future pages.
April 28, 2010 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think part of the problem is that dialogue on the left and the right has become reactionary. And by reactionary I mean reacting to modern times by exalting a false past era. It is like two people arguing past each other over who started the fire while both their houses burn down.
Baudrillard stated that part of the society of the spectacle was the inability of modern men and women to appreciate the present without contextualization from the past. They take the myth of their parents' generation and overlay it across the present and then make it fit through cognitive dissonance. This effort creates anxiety because all change becomes threatening.
So I wouldn't blame the boomers, I would blame the diminishing standards of education and the massive overstimulation of media beginning with radio. In order to cope, we wholly accept or reject the ideology of our stronger parent and live in perpetual reaction to our environment. This leads to seeking out media stimulus that conforms to our anxieties and propagates disconnected individualism.
April 27, 2010 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
J., Impressive post, with some fine observations. Still, you've got some way to go with your understanding of the major currents in recent American history. Little doubt, you'll get there.
May 1, 2010 1:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Having grown up in a migrant family, both the UFW and the Chicano Movement, had a serious impact, not only on my life but on my political development, as well.
And from this outpost here in the Sonoran Desert, I have not found that angst and anger of the Baby Boomer Generation all that important. What I have found is the context of the Left and Right, to be far more important. Take, for example, FDR, Truman, and LBJ have been the capstone for the Center-Left. Thus, the Right has been in a "deconstruct mode" for all these many years, and which continues to this day.
Of course, the Right has been attempting to incremental approach where possible to reduce the impact that LBJ's "participatory" Democracy brought to all us of us, and especially for those of us who reside in the "racial and ethnic" communities.
Now, I will not go pedantic on the white supremacy that suffuses the majority on the Right, but I would suggest that the Bush/Cheney Effect has turned a very large portion of white America into the Society for the Criminally Stupid, and Arizona's latest version is a combination of both and which are mutually reinforcing.
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May 1, 2010 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jeremy Gruenbaum may be a smart guy, but I don't think he ever heard of the civil rights movement.
What's wrong with the Baby Boomer generation is that we didn't win -- didn't overthrow the hegemony of race and gender privilege thoroughly enough so that the country could get on to its other imperative -- overthrowing the hegemony of cancerous greed.
Good luck kids. The survival of the species and even the planet may depend on you doing better than we did.
May 2, 2010 10:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks So I wouldn't blame the boomers, I would blame the diminishing standards of education and the massive overstimulation of media beginning with radio. In order to cope, we wholly accept or reject the ideology penimaster
February 7, 2011 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 8, 2011 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks So I wouldn't blame the boomers, I would blame the diminishing standards of education and the massive overstimulation of media beginning with radio. In order to cope, we wholly accept or reject the ideology
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February 12, 2011 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 12, 2011 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Serioulsy, I clearly disagree with you on that point. I've found of what led to the current state of the conservative movement. I think people like me who follow the movement from the left and know the history have our basic understanding of what happened, but the key insights about the movement come from other places. Kostenlose Browserspiele
February 24, 2011 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 16, 2011 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
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February 16, 2011 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who closed the conservative mind?" I felt compelled to write. To introduce myself, I'm 24, Boston born and raised, a Kennedy/Obama Democrat, and Jewish to boot. I've probably read your writing in the past, but I'm not familiar with your work.pharmacy informatics
February 20, 2011 6:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 25, 2011 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
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February 27, 2011 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
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March 3, 2011 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I felt compelled to write. To introduce myself, I'm 24, Boston born and raised, a Kennedy/Obama Democrat, and Jewish to boot. I've probably read your writing in the past, but I'm not familiar with your floor signs
March 5, 2011 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
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March 6, 2011 6:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
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March 28, 2011 4:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 3, 2011 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
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April 3, 2011 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks I get to the part about how it's the times that are to blame. The times are exactly the lifespan of the baby boomers. Their parents forged the intellectual and demographic base of the movement in the 1950's. After living through 30 years of World War and the Great Depression Schwinn 420
April 6, 2011 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks sentiments that the baby boomer's parents created the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of modern conservatism and passed them on to their children. It might've worked, but something went wrong. Half of the baby boomers rejected their parents' conservatism in the 60's. That's about as understated as I could be describing that decade, but it's accurate. The two sides were left to fight their battles and those battles became the culture war. Because of the boomers' numbers best way to build muscle
April 11, 2011 8:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 11, 2011 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
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April 14, 2011 7:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 18, 2011 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 21, 2011 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 26, 2011 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 30, 2011 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
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May 2, 2011 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
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May 2, 2011 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
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