Elonka wrote:
] Decius wrote:
] ] The voice of moderation is gone. The baby boomers now
] ] completely control the country. Hold on to your hats.
]
] Um, just exactly what entire age range are you
] tar-and-feathering now?

Wish you hadn't asked that privately. I'm going to post this publically. I hope you don't mind.

"Tar-and-feathering" is open to interpretation.

I have tremendous respect for Mr. Powell. I know that you have as well. I think he has done tremendous things for this country. More then I could ever hope to achieve. I hope you won't argue that he wasn't a voice of moderation in this administration. I would further add that in doing so he represented the present elder Generation, who were too young to fight in WWII. That generation has played a pivitol role in our history. His resignation symbolizes the loss of their voice in our affairs as they grow old and retire. It is a loss that I lement, because it is their temperance that has on many occasions given us peace.

As they fade away, the nature of our country's character is changing. The future will be bold and hard, and so I said "hold on to your hats."

I'm a fan of a series of books by authors Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, who have argued that there is a pattern in American history that relates to generations. Generations fit into archtypes, and there is a repeating cycle of 4. Particular generations grow up in certain circumstances, and it gives them a particular character. That character impacts how they treat the world, and also how they raise their children, repeating the cycle. Furthermore, when certain kinds of generations are in certain places within their lives history tends to have certain characteristics.

Wikipedia has a short summary of the idea here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Howe

Whats key is that Baby Boomers fit their "Prophet" archtype spiritually driven, moralistic, focused on self, and willing to fight to the death for what they believe in.

Gen Xers fit their "Nomad" archtype, ratty, tough, unwanted, diverse, adventurous and extremely cynical.

Times in our history when a Prophet generation was in it's elder years and a Nomad generation was middle aged tended to be typified by a serious crisis, such as the Great Depression/WWII, or the American Revolution.

Quoting them from the USA-Today in 2001:

"The generations alive today have much in common with the generations alive in the USA around 1929. Elder veterans of the last total war -- the Civil War, that is -- were passing away. A moralistic generation born after the Civil War was deep in middle age. The free-agent barnstormers of the Lost Generation were wearing out, their Gen X-like pragmatism now a tired subject. A new generation of protected, special, scoutlike children was filling high schools and colleges.

That is why the 1990s bore so many similarities to the 1920s. What we are experiencing now, post-Sept. 11, resembles no year as much as 1930, whose mood shift historian Frederick Lewis Allen described as "bewilderingly rapid," as "an old order was giving place to the new," reflecting an "aching disillusionment of the hard-boiled era, its oily scandals, its spiritual paralysis, the harshness of its gaiety."

...

In 1770, did colonists expect a revolution? No.

In 1855, did Americans, North and South, expect a bloody civil war? No.

In 1925, did a roaring nation expect a stock collapse, depression and global war? No."

-=-=-=-

What do you expect?