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Apologies To A Grandson: "It's Not The Country I Imagined For You"
Submitted by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,
Dear Grandson,
Consider my address book -- and yes, the simple fact that I have one already tells you a good deal about me. All the names, street addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers that matter to me are still on paper, not in a computer or on an iPhone, and it’s not complicated to know what that means: I’m an old guy getting older. Going on 71, though I can hardly believe it. And that little book shows all the signs of where I’m headed. It wasn’t true a few years ago, but if I start flipping through the pages now, I can’t help but notice that the dead, with their addresses and phone numbers still beside them, are creeping up on the living, and that my little address book looks increasingly like a mausoleum.
Age has been on my mind of late, especially when I spend time with you. This year, my father, your great-grandfather, who died in 1983, would have been 109 years old. And somehow, I find that moving. I feel him a part of me in ways I wouldn’t have allowed myself to admit in my youth, and so think of myself as more than a century old. Strangely, this leaves me with a modest, very personal sense of hope. Through my children (and perhaps you, too), someday long after I’m gone, I can imagine myself older still. Don’t misunderstand me: I haven’t a spiritual bone in my body, but I do think that, in some fashion, we continue to live inside each other and so carry each other onward.
As happens with someone of my age, the future seems to be foreshortening and yet it remains the remarkable mystery it’s always been. We can’t help ourselves: we dream about, wonder about, and predict what the future might hold in store for us. It's an urge that, I suspect, is hardwired into us. Yet, curiously enough, we’re regularly wrong in the futures we dream up. Every now and then, though, you peer ahead and see something that proves -- thanks to your perceptiveness or pure dumb luck (there’s no way to know which) -- eerily on target.
The Future Foreseen
Back in 2001, before I even imagined a grandson in my life, I had one of those moments (and wish I hadn’t). It was sometime just after the 9/11 attacks when, nationwide, Americans were still engaged in endless rites in which we repeatedly elevated ourselves to the status of the foremost victims on the planet, the only ones that mattered. In those months, you might say, we made ourselves into Earth’s indispensible or exceptional victims.
In that extended moment of national mourning (combined with fear bordering on hysteria), the Bush administration geared up to launch its revenge-fueled global wars, while money started pouring into the national security state in a historically unprecedented way. It was a time when the previously un-American word “homeland” was being attached to what would become a second defense department, secrecy was descending like a blanket on the government, torture was morphing into the enhancement of the week in the White House, assassination was about to become a focus (later an obsession) of the executive branch -- and surveillance? Don’t even get me started on the massively redundant domestic and global surveillance state that would soon be built on outright illegalities and rubber-stamp legalities of every sort.
In October 2001, I had no way of grasping most of that, but it didn't matter. I peered into the future and just knew -- and what I knew chilled me to the bone. I had mobilized decades earlier as part of the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era, which was in its own way a terrible time, but when I looked at where our country seemed to be heading, as the president promised to kick some ass globally and American bombs began to fall on Afghanistan, I had no doubt that this was going to be the worst era of my life.
I wasn’t, of course, thinking about you that October and November. You were then minus 11 years old, so to speak. I was, however, thinking about your mother and your uncle, my children. I was thinking about the world that I and my cohorts and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that crew were going to leave them.
In a quiet way I had done good work -- so I felt -- since demobilizing (like so many Americans) from the Vietnam era. In my spare time as a non-academic, I had written a very personal history of the Cold War of which I was proud. I had been a book editor for two publishing houses, specializing in bringing into the world works by what I used to call “voices from elsewhere” (even when they came from here), including, to name just two, Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback and Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy.
But when I somehow stumbled into the future in all its grim horror, more of that work didn’t seem like an adequate response to what was coming. I had no sense that I could do much, but I felt an urge that seemed uncomplicated: not to hand your mother and uncle such a degraded country, planet, new century without lifting a finger in opposition, without at least trying. I felt the need to mobilize myself in a new way for the future I’d seen.
At that point, however, my knack, such as it was, for previewing the years to come failed me and I had no sense of what to do until TomDispatch more or less smacked me in the face. (But that’s a story for another day.) This April, more than 13 years after I first began sending missives to the no-name listserv that turned into TomDispatch, it’s clear that, in my own idiosyncratic way, I did manage to mobilize myself to do what I was capable of. Unfortunately, I’d have to add that, all this time later, our world is a far more screwed up, degraded place.
A Fragmenting Reality
Stretch anything far enough and it’ll begin to tear, fragment, break apart. That, I suspect, may be a reasonable summary of what’s been happening in our twenty-first-century world. Under stress, things are beginning to crack open. Here in the U.S., people sometimes speak about being in a Second Gilded Age, a new era of plutocracy, while our politics, increasingly the arena of billionaires, seem to second that possibility. Looked at another way, however, “our” Second Gilded Age is really a global phenomenon in the sense that ever fewer people own ever more. By 2016, it is estimated that 1% of the people on this planet will control more than 50% of global wealth and own more than the other 99% combined. In 2013, the 85 richest people had as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, while in certain regions inequality seems to be on the rise. (Whether China and India are major exceptions to this is an open question.) Dark money is rampant not just here, but globally.
Though you don’t know it yet, you’re already living in an increasingly lopsided world whose stresses only seem to be multiplying. Among other things, there is the literal fragmentation going on -- the collapse of social order, of long established national units, even potentially of whole groupings of states. Astonishingly enough, from Ukraine to Greece, Spain to France, that mood of fragmentation even seems to be reaching into Europe. Across much of the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, fragmentation has, of course, been the story of our moment, with nations collapsing, wars endemic, extremism of every sort on the rise, and whole populations uprooted, in exile, under almost inconceivable pressures -- and for much of this, I’m sad to say, our country bears a painful responsibility.
In these years, I wrote repeatedly (not to say repetitiously) on the subject; about, that is, a group of mad American visionaries who had dreams of establishing a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East by force of arms and then lording it over the world for generations to come. In the name of freedom and democracy and with a fundamentalist belief in the transformational power of the U.S. military, they blithely invaded Iraq and blew a hole in the heart of the Middle East, from which the fallout is now horrifically apparent in the Islamic State and its “caliphate.”
And then, of course, there was our country’s endless string of failed wars, interventions, raids, assassination campaigns, and the like; there was, in short, the “global war on terror” that George W. Bush launched to scourge the planet of “terrorists,” to (as they then liked to say) “drain the swamp” in 80 countries. It was a “war” that, with all its excesses, quickly morphed into a recruiting poster for the spread of extremist outfits. By now, it has become so institutionalized that it wouldn’t surprise me if, in your adulthood, Washington were still pursuing it no less relentlessly or unsuccessfully.
In the process, the president became first a torturer-in-chief and then an assassin-in-chief and, I’m sorry to tell you, few here even blinked. It’s been a nightmare of -- to haul out some words you’re not likely to learn for a while -- hubris and madness, profits and horrors, inflated dreams of glory and the return, as if from an earlier century, of the warrior corporation and for-profit warfare on a staggering scale.
All of this happened in a country that still bills itself as the wealthiest and most powerful on the planet (though that power and wealth have proven ever harder to apply effectively) and all of it happened, despite obvious and honorable exceptions, without much opposition. If this is a Second Gilded Age -- .01% of Americans, 16,000 families, control 11% of all wealth (as they last did in 1916) and 22% of all household wealth (up from 7% three decades ago) -- it is also, in the words of historian Steve Fraser, an “age of acquiescence.”
This has been true for the return of plutocracy, as well as for the growth of a national security state that has, like those billionaire plutocrats, gained power as the American people lost it. If that state within a state has a motto, it might be this singularly undemocratic one: Americans are safest and most secure when they are most ignorant of what their government is doing. In other words, in twenty-first-century America, “we the people” (a phrase that I hope lasts into your time) are only to know what their government does in their name to the degree that the government cares to reveal it.
That shadow government could never have gained such power if it hadn’t been for the trauma of 9/11, the shock of experiencing for one day a kind of violence and destruction that was common enough elsewhere on the planet, and the threat posed by a single phenomenon we call “terrorism.” The Islamic extremist groups that come under that rubric do indeed represent a threat to actual human beings from Syria to Pakistan, Somalia to Libya, but they represent next to no threat to what’s now called the American “homeland.”
Of course, some whacked-out guy could always pick up a gun and, inspired by a bizarre propaganda video, in the name of one extreme organization or another, kill some people here. But mass killings by those with no ideological animus are already, like death-by-toddler, commonplace in this country, and no one thinks to organize trillion dollar “security” systems to prevent them.
That the fear of this one modest danger transformed the national security state into a remarkable center of power, profits, and impunity with hardly a peep from "we the people" has been a kind of bleak miracle of our times. What were we thinking when we let them spend something like a trillion dollars a year on what was called “national security” in order to leave us in a world that may have little security at all? What did we have in mind when we let them fund their blue-skies thinking on the weaponry of 2047, instead of on the schools, energy sources, or infrastructure of that same year? I could pile up such questions endlessly, but if what we ceded to them is still of interest to you 20 or 30 or 40 years from now, and you have the luxury of looking back on our times, on the origins of your troubles, I’m sure you’ll find a clearer view of all this in the histories of your moment.
I have no way of imagining what the United States will be like in your adulthood and yet I can sense that this country is changing in unsettling ways. It’s being transformed into something that your great-grandfather would have found unrecognizably un-American. If we can’t yet speak of “fragmentation” here, phrases like “political polarization” and “gridlock” are already part and parcel of our new billionaire way of life. What exactly all this is leading to, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look either familiar or good to me. It certainly doesn’t look like the American world I’d want to turn over to you.
America on the Couch
You haven’t set foot in school, barely know how to use one of those ubiquitous silver scooters, and can still embrace the magical thinking of childhood -- of announcing, for instance, that you’re “hiding,” even in plain sight, and then assuming that you can’t be seen. So I know that it’s a little early to bring up the seemingly unhinged nature of the affairs of grown-ups.
Still, if this country of mine, and someday yours, could be put on the couch, I suspect it would, in layman’s terms, be diagnosed as “disturbed” (on an increasingly disturbed planet). Worst of all, we can evidently no longer see what actually threatens us most, which isn’t a bunch of jihadis, but what we are doing to our ourselves and our world.
Put another way, if we’re not significantly threatened by what we’ve dumped all our money and energy into, that hardly means there are no threats to American life. In fact, I haven’t even mentioned what worries me most when I think about your future: the increasing stress under which life here and elsewhere is being placed by the exploitation and burning of fossil fuels.
In any case, I had the urge to put all this “on the record,” though I have no way of knowing whether that record has any permanence, whether in the world of 2047 you’ll even be able to access what I’ve written. In other words, I have no idea whether you’ll ever read this. I do fear, however, that if you do, it will be from a more fragmented, unhinged, stressed-out version of the planet we’re both on today, and I’m aware that our responsibility was to provide you and all other children with what you minimally deserve -- a decent place to grow up.
For that record, then, I want to say that, despite my own best (if modest) efforts, I feel I owe you an apology. In ways I find hard to express, I’m sorry for what is and what may be. It’s not the country I imagined for you. It’s not the world I wanted to leave you. It’s not what you deserve.
Nonetheless, I still have hopes for you and your moment. As a wonderful writer of my time once pointed out, the darkness of the future is a kind of blessing. It always leaves open the possibility that, against the madness of the moment, the genuine decency, the lovability I see in you, that anyone can see in just about any child, has a shot-in-the-dark chance of making a difference on our planet.
And more specifically, however much this may be an “age of acquiescence” when it comes to wealth and war, it hasn’t proved so on the subject that matters most: climate change. Against the forces of genuine criminality and wealth, despite a tenacious denial of reality funded by companies that have profited in historic ways from fossil fuels, a movement has been forming in this country and globally to save humanity from scouring itself off the planet. From pipelines to divestment, its strength has been rising at the very moment when the price of alternative energy systems is falling rapidly. It’s a combination that offers at least a modicum of hope against the worst pressures to fragment and, in the end, simply destroy this planet as a welcoming place for you and your children and their children.
So let me just end this way: someday in the distant future, I hope you’ll read this letter and that, given the ingenuity of our species, given the grit to resist madness, given whatever surprises the future holds, you’ll smile indulgently at my worst fears. You’ll assure me -- or at least whatever trace of me is left in you -- that I had a typically human inability to imagine the unpredictable future, and that in the end things never measured up to my worst fears. I hope, despite what we didn’t do, that you have the opportunity for a life of wonders, the kind that everyone on this planet deserves.
Your loving grandpa,
Tom
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Yeah, I'm real sorry but you're not having my $3m house or my big fat pension money back till I'm dead.
Now, if you wouldn't mind paying for my medical, my hip operation and my free bus pass...
Waddya mean you've got your own family to pay for, I have rights you know...
You cannot really change the matrix from the inside.
Bullshit, we changed from the inside. Now all our institutions are rotten.
This is not the way you talk to children, much less grandchildren. It is strained, mannered, a rather silly and poor approach for talking politics..., but the sentiments are genuine.
I've often told my kids, the thing I regret most, is that they could not grow up in a country as decent and sane as the one I grew up in, and it's only getting worse.
You teach children truth and build their character through experience. There was a time when we admired the old folks for their wisdom, this too was taken from us. They don't make them like my Grandpa. But we will have another chance. In all honesty, my pops is getting better with time.
How to grow tremendously abundant food without diesel or chemicals (10x the normal yield) using intensive composting:
http://craftsmanship.net/drought-fighters/We will all need to know this art.
that was awsome. I didn't finish reading as I have to get back to converting a weed patch into a garden. Unfortunately we have a 100 day growing season here.
So agree with you. I am so saddened both my grandfathers are dead. One before I was born. The stories that were told to me about him make me realize he would have been a shining light in my troubled childhood.
When I look at most parents today, I see people entrenched in the matrix. They work, watch tv and, for the most part, just keep their heads down and endure. The grandparents seem different. Maybe just having a foot in a different world where they let their kids have unstructured fun, family dinners, and the joys of a more simple life. A time like in Christmas Story where people lived in a small house with one bathroom, a dad who worked and a mother who stayed home.
It really troubles me so many women look down on those times. Yeah, we've come a long way baby... and was it worth it? Looking at our society today how could you say anything but no.
Our beauty here is a long growing season. But without water that doesn't mean a lot now. Yesterday we got some rain and my garden looks thankful. I am too. Good luck with your garden Dogbreath.
Miffed
To me the matrix is our genes. Unseen by the human eye, resistant to surrendering control, and blind to its own effects, they remain the puppet masters to an unwitting mankind.
Whatever fate our genes have in store for man, it will be an unwanted one.
Greatest generation my ass...
Grandpa badly needs an editor, but otherwise did alright. Some shit went horribly sideways after reagan and clinton dismantled the economy but otherwise us&a is a hell of a lot better today than it was 50 years ago. Pat on the back grandpa, you didn't do so bad.
Letter could be condensed down to 'dear grandson, we did some good things and we made some mistakes. Here's the main: never trust government, banks or rich people. Hope it all works out. Good luck.'
It went sideways well before Reagan and Clinton. Try 1913 when the FED and income tax came in.
Better off than 50 years ago? You are sadly mistaken, as usual.
Trying to think of any real improvements in the last 50 years,
and all I could come up with is micro-wave ovens.
..as you type on a computer connected to the internet. Someone got a gun to your head making you post on zh all day kaiser?
More of the same from a guy who can't form an argumnet or defend a position, let alone face the stark truth about America's descent into fascism.
That would be admitting a truth something he's afraid to do.....typical Lib characteristics.
FOIA, 18 year olds can vote, some kinds of unequal application of the law were removed vs. about 100,000 unhealthy things from government in the last 50 years.
America is circling the drain. It is not inevitable - It is by design. Read What is wrong with the people.
"People as uninformed and as gullible as Americans have no future. Americans are a dead people that history is about to run over." - Paul Craig Roberts
Allowing 18 yo to vote was almost as destructive as allowing females to vote. Simple correlation man -- run the numbers!
everyone should be allowed to vote, women, children, chimpanzees, rocks, trees, birds, after all, why not?
if democracy is a good thing, then more democracy is even better, right?
should god be allowed to vote?
Only tax paying US citizens who show a photo id should vote.
god doesn't have a photo id, so you don't think god should be allowed to vote?
why do you hate god so much?
It went sideways well before Reagan and Clinton. Try 1913 when the FED and income tax came in.
There are many ways to point out how ridiculous that is, but here's the simplest:
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Life-expectan...
Things keep getting better and better, I wish I could've been born later to enjoy it. There's the inevitable backslide in various areas but mostly improvement year after year. Im always amazed by people who say they wish they could've been born in the past... good litmus test for sanity.
If history is a guide we are overdue for a big backslide, but after that it'll be smooth sailing again.
As long as someone else pays your bills.
Spoken like a true parasite.
Funny thing how your brain works, Cole claims things are going well = parasite feeding off .gov. In my case it's the direct opposite, but even if I didn't have to work to pay taxes I'd still have to work 24/7 anyway. I'm like a border collie - workaholic, I don't recommend it to anyone and don't judge people who aren't like me but that's the facts.
50 years ago america had little or no debt. Now each family holds 60k per member share of the national total. Better off?
A correction, its the governments debt not your family's. The government and their MSM lapdogs likes to trot that figure out but its fallacious, no more real than someone forging your name to a piece of paper saying you owe X for a new car and an ObamaFawon.
agreed.
Odious debt From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate debt, is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.[1]
those who loaned money to the USSA and other illegitimate governments for illegitimate purposes deserve to eat the losses. purposes such as: military adventurism in the mid-east, illegally spying on the american people, extracting wealth from the free market and handing it out to big banks and rigging the markets, etc, etc.
Odious or not, enforceable or not, you are being taxed for it.
You still giving the world advice from Switzerland?
Sure, but one of the best takes on the last 30years that I saw (wish I had thought of it)-
Reagan = Augustus
Bush = Tiberius
Clinton = Caligula
Bush II = Claudius
Obama = Nero
American civilization peaked in 1969, when we put a man on the moon. Everything since then has been a derivative of that time and technology. Lots of things have gotten worse.
Great, we have pocket super computers so we can send each other selfies and dick pics. Woohoo!
Who's this "we" that "put a man on the moon?"
In 1969?
Was that on the Jetsons?
yer darn tootin, seek_truth! it don't say in the bible that we put man on the moon, so it dun never gone and happened!
if jesus wanted us to go to the moon, we'da been born with space suits on, i tell you whut!
Sez duh idjit hoo bleeves in duh moon landing hoax.
I suppose you're gullible enough to believe the official account of Pearl Harbor, USS Liberty, OKC bombing, 9/11, Sandy Hoax, Boston bombing, etc.
Gotcha.
I guess I'm one of those idjits regarding Project Apollo. So please enlighten me regarding exactly what was insurmountable about the moon landings. It's clear that low earth orbit and orbital rendezvous are within our reach, so EXACTLY what prevented NASA from going further?
Bonus points for explaining why the Soviets didn't expose the supposed charade when it would have been in their interests to do so!
It's 2015. Websearch it and educate yourself.
Here's a few thoughts to consider right off the bat:
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
http://realitysandwich.com/23226/kubrick_apollo/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxH0EUbmV_o
That's a start. Draw your own conclusions. I did.
Oh FFS; aliens? Seriously?
It's "a well-known event" (What your reply said before you hastily edited it to denigrate "because aliens")- therefore no evidence to the contrary should even be considered, right?
Kinda like 9/11.
Nice way to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Keep your head happily buried, then.
When does "Dancing with the Stars" come on next?
PS- Nice last minute edit on your post, to bait and switch. The name of the site (re: "aliens") has nothing to do with the article that is hosted there, close-minded idjit. Try reading- left to right, two words make a sentence, multiple sentences make a paragraph.
. "Waaaaa! He ch-ch-changed his post. That was 'bait and switch.'" I was able to extract a throwaway phrase and base my whole reply on it, but he . . . he ruined EVERYTHING!
(Pathetic. But not as pathetic as your 'Kinda like 9/11' straw man.)
But I do admit one thing. I am not considering your "evidence" about aliens, especially since you're not considering the evidence (e.g. LRO) of reality.
Did somebody say Clinton?
Ace - 50 years ago was 1965 - it was way better at that time !!!!!
- Im a NYC boy - born and raised - and i have been all over this country over the last 50 years - NYC was incredible at that time not so much anymore and so was every where else i have been (48 States) and had a chance to speak to the locals who know - you are a either a dreamer or a propagandist!
If you continue to feed the troll all he'll do is crap all over your back porch.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's and I can tell you without a doubt the country was in far better shape than it is now, across the board. Technological advances aside (computers and cell phones), the degradation of major US cities and entire infrastructure is staggering to behold. Many are 3rd world status now.
I have no idea WTF he is talking about sometimes.
Many won't listen, but this is oddly difficult to explain to the young. Here's how I try.
In sixties America jobs were abundant, and if you had a job, you had a life. There seemed to be some justice in the world.
Here Here!
Compare the night the lights went out in '65 to the event in '77. Two different civilizations showing their best/worst sides.
"Waddya mean you've got your own family to pay for, I have rights you know..."
What is this "family" you speak of?
"And I'll make sure that my last check bounces."
That generation was the luckiest in US and human history. For them, "80% of success was showing up", as Woody Allen put it.
Just turning up... exactly!
Which is why you should be looking to turn up in Australia.
The hippie generation is the most greedy, self absorbed generation ever.
They ruined this country by their short term thinking for increased profits. When they are all dead lets wipe every memory of them from the planet.
Yeah I mena there's always some disconnect with Baby Boomers. The author never once mentions Obama who promised to clean up Bush's mess but instead icreased all of Bush's bad policies - Afghan War, surveillance, drone strikes, Iraq, Syria, DHS - Ugh!
I guess that you have no respect for your father and the sacrifices that he has made on your behalf. Your father does not control the world. But if he were a good man I suppose your tune would be sung a bit differently.
I agree, Tom is what we used to call a coward. Needy, whiny, weepy, sniveling liberal lefty apologist who should be continually ignored and I would not cross the street to piss on him if he were on fire.
I cannot imagine reading his little wimpy rag. He should have stuck to pencil and paper like with his anachronistic address book.
It ain't the country. Its the gubmint, elrcted ruling elite turds, the gubmint bureaucrats & the FSA. Fukem all.
Old ppl amirite?
Try taking some responsibility for wasting the good times instead of bitching about how things turned out.
Boomer drivel.......
If he feels so bad about it, tell him to get his blood funnel out of his grandchildren's future. Boomers make me sick. Always with their talk, talk, talk. Never doing the right thing. If I have to listen to another boomer pontificate I'm going to go nuts. Just shut up and go away, and get your hands out of my pockets.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
Thanks.
Deleated repeat.
So us "boomers" should get out of your site because they make you sick. It's good that you don't blame others for your own failures.
Boomers bought into all the new deal socialism shit because they seen a nice greasy payday for them when they were older.
Social Security is Ponzi theft, and just because you may get out first and get the money only makes you more of a slimeball.
Get off the governments tit and end the evil program. It's not our fault you allowed the evils of central government to corrupt and morally destroy you and all of your ilk. But it is your fault for being complicit and trying ensare others in this shit.
Boomers bought into all the new deal socialism shit and millenial hipsters bought into the hope and change socialism shit. Ya'll get what you deserve, nuffin.
I'd be willing to bet most millenials don't vote at all, because they never trusted any politicians.
You know PresidentCamacho I am sick to death of people like you and their self gratifying so called intellect that you acyually make me sick. It is people like you who muddy the water for everyone else whom are trying to understand the shitty world in which we live in. How can you blame an entire generation for any one given thing. How small minded we have become as a species. I say to you sir, F@#K You and crawl back into yourself for there is the only place you will find respect!
The only failure I see is you and your generation. The most selfish, hypocritical, and entitled ever to walk the earth.
I'm inclined to say fuck you in as many languages as you might know, which is probably only one, street jive... but fuck you anyway.
Umm, i don't think boomers are your issue sport, but keep punching wrinkles you're waiting on the next generation to throw your ass in the wood chipper for your astute observations on doing nothing.....while doing nothing
OK Sport. How are you and the next few generations going to change the US and the world? Suppose we accept your premise that "Boomers FU-pd everything. Different rules of reality with this generation, some accomplishments and some gigantic failures. Now is your turn. Instead of insulting the Boomers, maybe just maybe you can come up with something they can help you to achieve.
Just remember, the long term plan will still be around. The Robber Barron Foundation money and the new Silicon Valey money will still be around engaged 24x7 -365 to infinity to bring to fruition their concept of what humanity is and what it will be in the future. Ted Turner and his population control hologram will still be around long after he is dead. So Mr smartypants; What are you and your generations going to do? Ask for help from some dying old men, or bitch till the day they come looking for you so they can eliminate the useless eaters?
Grandpa was to busy thinking about himself instead of his country.
Grandpa believed Ronald Reagan was god.
Grandpa thought hiring a nigga for President was a good idea too.
I was wrong.
Buy grandpa a nailgun for his birthday.
Good luck defending the bunker all by yourself!
Gen X will give everyone what they deserve. Nothing.
Joke's on everyone.
Boomers get it in the poop shute.
Then right after that Gen-whatever-the-fuck.
The IRS works for the Fed.
Good luck.
They are all civil servants. Remember that.
The IRS could easily merge with the Fed Corporation of Magic.
Another step on the fascist ladder.
You are aware that the Fed is a private corporation for unemployed magicians?
And the IRS is the Treasury's collection agency.
And unionized, and wildly supportive of the Government Party, and actively harmful to private initiative and free speech in promotion thereof.
It's Booooooshes fault
Love Gramps
Now get me a diaper and a Ensure
Best of luck chump. Love Grandpa........
Grandpa should of taught him the following:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC. Title 28
Section 3002 15a, b, and c, under U.S. Code, was established under treasonously signed ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION, on February 21st, 1871 by THE CROWN CORPORATION, now known as THE IMF. Our old capital city, Washington city, was also sold to them that day. Thus, we have never had any say in the CORPORATION that is posing as the governing seat of our nation.
In 1939, they began the BERTH/BIRTH CERTIFICATE/MOTHER BOND SCAM on WALL STREET. The catch with these "human enslaving stocks" is that the owners of these human enslaving MOTHER bonds cannot collect on the bonds, until their supposed HUMAN PRODUCTS are dead! And guess which corporation has the largest investments in those evil bonds? WALMART!
Maybe it is the timing of trying to read this while watching sports on TV, but this is pretty pompous writing.
Poor kid that has to read that!
While a lot of boomers were working hard, being responsible, voting for who they thought were the right politicians, taking care of their kids and doing all the right things - others were grabbing at whatever they could get while equivocating and employing vast amounts of moral relativism to fuck things up completely.
The blame lies with the complicit money-grubbers, the "look the other way" mandarins, the "live for today" politicos, government/military members, and the corporate opportunists.
The short version goes like this. "Now I see that the world we leave for you is FUBAR. Sorry. Good luck."
You forgot "now that I see we fucked this bitch up, please pay for my hip replacement, it's for the children"
Take comfort in knowing this guy's grandson, like the rest of us, will fall asleep after three paragraphs of whining rationalzation and blaming everyone but himself and his peers...no doubt he voted for Obama--twice--the dink!
If only Senator McCain had been elected to the Presidency in 2008, everything would be better....
Sorry grandson, I voted every election for the least criminal or the criminal most inline with me instead of standing up like a freeman and demanding that they adhere to the "Law of the Land. I acquiesced, or even benefited by their crimes, as they installed tyranny over the land. The darkened and increasingly bloodied land that I leave you.
Now you must decide to be used as cannon fodder against foreigners, or even your own country men, or stand and fight the tyranny which I enabled.
I am so sorry my dearest grandson, I hope that you will forgive me, and the rest, for what we have done and not done."
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Riddle me this. Who the hell should we have shot? Who specifically is to blame? I know it’s the banks, the politicians but, which banks which politicians. And, after we shoot them, then what? Are we going down the road of the reign of terror where we kill everybody that looks important or who drives a nice car or lives in a nice house? What exactly is the alternative? Get back to me when you have a solution. When you do though don’t come back at me with some ism. Ism’s have killed millions.
I can tell you this, one day some kid is going to point at you and say you did it. You screwed it up it is your fault.
"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." -Voltaire
For those with intelligence and experience, it isn't hard to figure out who "they" are.
This is specifically why windows above the 4rth floor have been locked since 1929.
Don't fear. Harness your fear and channel it to demanding they not tread upon you.
Then start by Stopping. Stop paying, Stop obeying. Stop Playing.
Just by Stopping paying, you, we, can destroy their system of slavery and tyranny from within; from underneath. Then follow the rest of of the plan:
The Four Rs
Rejection: Stop Paying, Stop Obeying, Stop Playing
Revolution: It is inevitable, so prepare, as they are.
Retribution: The guilty must answer for their crimes against the American people and the Constitution.
Restoration: Restore the American people, country and Constitutional republic.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Lincoln, but sooner.
A voluntary "Means Test" might be a nice gesture, but probably wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. A mandatory one is supposedly the "third rail". All millenials and probably most genX-ers would opt out of SS and all this other stuff. They can't though, so it's crabs and ice water for them.
Crucified: Ukraine’s US-backed Azov Nazis nail pro-Russia fighter to cross, burned alive (VIDEO)
Fuck off shill.
Really outside of Hebron. Settler's bbq
Grandson,
Since you're reading this it seems that mom and dad had a little time away from the fields to educate you. It means that you survived the elimination of 90% of the human race to the whims of those that you'll never hear about. It's a feudal system that you live in. The Barons own you and your mom and dad and can do what they want with you. Probably, they'll be selling you to one of the other Barons soon.
All I can do is hope that in some way you can carry with you a spark that you'll pass on to your grandsons grandson in hopes that someday that spark might ignite a fire that will become freedom. Something you probably can only be told existed along time ago, but, for which many men have died.
Finally, Grandson, I want you to know that Nana and I are moving to our winter place in Scottsdale, so send the checks there. Toodles!
Short version:
It's all Bush's fault and the failure to address climate change. Too bad those gridlocked assholes in Washington didn't listen to the wisdom of Barack Obama. If only we would have let him rule by decree, the world would be a better place.
Love grandpa (too stupid to see who is really responsible for this mess)
Hint to you grandpa: those people who you think run the country, don't really run the country. You stupid fuck.
One of the last things my great grama siad to me was. Its good that you know how to fix things. Cause you are gonna have a lot to do.
Are any of you that have taken the time to comment or should I say complain that no one is handing you a silver spoon to eat the futures gruel doing anything other than whining about boomers that is serious enough to make concrete changes for this country? If you are, congratulations, in all seriousness. If not, then shut the fuck up and get to work.
Grandson: tl;dr
Fuck you grandpa. You didn't have a clue.
Grandpa drank Kool Aid and voted for guys who had a clue: Reagan and Bush. Well, one of them actually had a clue. The other one was the Useful Tool.
So leave! Take anyone you care about with you.
Yep, that's the five year plan. Although I am far better set up then most (200 acres riverfront, great spring water, wife with an MS in Permaculture many resources and no debt). The plan is still to leave, where exactly we are still deciding but we have the means and both she an I have lived over seas for years at a time in third world conditions so we are by no means fooling our selves. The time to bail is near. Our European ancestors left their homes searching for greener pasture, why can't we. This place is fucked. I hope my kids can adjust and my grandkids grow up thanking us for leaving a sinking ship. Do you ever hear folks say " I whish we would have stayed in Europe even though we knew wwii was just around the corner?
Congratulations! Do you ever wonder why you are sane while virtually everyone else is not? The USSA is far worse than nazi germany in the years immediately before it went totally over the edge, and has much more destructive capacity, including thousands of nuclear bombs on intercontinental missles!
I cannot adequately describe how much more enjoyable my life has been after getting the hell outta dodge over 3 years ago. The residents of the USSA are unbelievably tolerant of authoritarian compared to most other places on the planet, but presumably they don't realize this because they don't travel much, or only stay in 5-star tourist traps and thus have no basis to know, or because repeating the pledge of allegiance a million times at school convinced them that "pledging allegiance" (intentional self enslavement) is a form of "liberty and justice for all". Gag!
Kids will have no problem adjusting. They'll be much better off... unless you are foolish enough to move to one of the current "partners" of the USSA (the major "western" nations).
The south pacific has all sorts of great options. South america has some. Nepal and Mongolia were very interesting, but too cold for me (though the beauty of some remote areas was almost sufficient compensation). I never explored Africa, but I'm sure one could find a few good places.
Any idea where you're going?
PS: I very seriously doubt you have 5 more years!
There's nothing wrong with leaving. Get when the getting's good and never make a downward move. Having a nice chunk of land is good and all, but you are sane to realize it's not the best thing to have. Still have healthcare stupidity and live in a country that fees you to death for every single thing they can dream up.
I left long ago and while there is a desire to return, it's simply not realistic. Life's not perfect here, but there's a lot less bullshit to deal with. Leaving where we are now, we'd probably be looking at a few options in Europe. America is over as far as I care, no real desire to return... there's family, there's history, there's memories... but there is no future.
Lead, follow or get out of the way.
This seems like a weak attempt at trying to impress GW! Sounds right up his alley.
Don't everybody get caught up in the straw man arguments. Focus on who is the real culprit.
Wonder what the grandkids reply will be?
chinga maricon puto bendejo
Why Am I Moving Left?
I used to be right down the middle. But America’s changed, and so have I.
By THOMAS E. RICKS
July 23, 2014
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/why-am-i-moving-left-109241.html
See
Dear Grandtransgender:
I fucked you over. I won't do a fucking thing to change that, but I wanted to leave you this note so as to further depress the fuck out of you.
Love,
. . . your dumb-ass grandpa who doesn't fucking give a shit
Can we finally admit Reaganomics and free trade have been epic failures for the average American worker??
the trickle down part we're told, will start any time now
So far 4 folks have down voted this??? Why? Because Reganomics and free trade have worked so well? fucking idiots.
Because Reganomics is meaningless, and attacking it is falling into the two-party trap. The problem is older than Reagan, at least as old as 1913 and perhaps 1865.
The US has not had free trade ever. Free trade means one sentence: "Anyone in this country can buy or sell anything with anyone from any other country".
That is all we need. What I think the OP has in mind is managed trade, NAFTA, etc, which is NOT free trade, it is in fact the opposite. And it is a lot older then Regan, see the Moril tariff, Smoot-Hawley, etc. The State has been sticking its nose into trade since Alexander Hamilton.
The problem is not any leader or any policy. It is the existence of the State. As long as the people allow anyone to claim the right to rule over them the same problems ( war, depression, tyranny ) will continue to occur.
I am 48 now.
I want to check out at 70, 75 tops. I feel cheated. I live in a world of immoral, unethical fools and the memo that I got in grade school didn't read this way.
The memo didn't say "Go to school, get a good job, have 2.8 kids with a house with a white picket fence, and then enter middle age among the most ignorant, imbecilic, cowardly, self-absorbed, immoral fucktard generations that humanity has ever produced".
Seriously, 22 years and counting down. No gym, no low fat diet, no quitting smoking or putting down the single malt.
I am going to make the best of a shitty reality, and put quality before quantity. Afterall, who the fuck would want to live to 90 in a world like this?
Chunk
Ka chumk
Ka chumk
Ka chumk
I'm a veteran soldier. I paid. You paid. Hang on...
Gatekeeping Bullshit. Lying to his granchildren. What a disgrace. All these BS ZH contributors toe the gatekeeper line. Fucking joke of a site.
After a year of lurking and 4+ years as a member, I tend to agree. ZH is in a rapid decline. There was a time when I felt intimidated by the wealth of economic knowledge the members had.... Most of those folks are gone. I visit here less and less, when once it was the first thing I read in the AM and the last thing in the PM. Now it's become a parody and it's all the Jews fault of course.
Regrettably, everything was not better during the time of unparalleled enlightenment you refer to, with yourself being a champion. It may come as a surprise, but maybe you should consider that not everyone agrees with that and it isn't because they aren't as smart as you.
Dear Grandpa,
While you were worrying about climate change, Fukushima was constantly leaking killer radiation into the world's oceans. Now my friends all have cancer and your great grandchildren are mutant freaks. Thanks for focusing on the wrong thing.
Nixon took us off the gold standard 'temporarily' to fund more vietnam ... this is what happened.
“It’s Not The Country I Imagined For You.”
How bad does it have to get before you decide to learn the real history and lessons of American Founders?
Gramps needs a few weeks in the Q99X2 rendition fun camp and he'll be ok.
What about your own Son, Grandpa? No letters for him? Oh that's right, he doesn't fucking talk to you any more because you are a greedy selfish fuck who threw your own family to the dogs in order to climb the ladder of success. These fuckers never stop trying to justify their own apathy while unloading their guilt upon the backs of those in no condition to address or answer for the situations they created......
The dine and dash generation.
Woolworth's five and dime. That's were i bought my matchbox cars in case Shell gasoline didn't have what I wanted. Really dating myself. ;p
Tl; dr, but I reckon you mean that people don't need government.
If you and radical marijuana could grasp that simple concept, ya' might just make a difference.
The article above appropriately pivots around this:
Of course, that is emphasized even more so after one recognizes that the events on 9/11/2001 were very probably an inside job, false flag attack, done by Zionists in order to blame on Muslims.
Ah the stupidity of generalization. lashing out at the phantom. good sheep!
Well old man. Get some of you and your cronies. And make up for it. Find a Tribe member or 10 and do something about it !!!!!
finally a winner. the matrix. Why the eff are we here. Grandpa is not to blame.
We are in the way of the plan and it takes time. This is what it looks like. Everybody is howling at the moon, bunch of idiots
Agree.
I'm not going to read all of that FFS. Could someone cliffnote it for me?
Old vs young. rich vs poor. woman vs man. santa laughing, spreads his wings.
It's all part of the plan.
Dear Grandpa,
Remind me again what you did to stop all this from happening that had a chance in hell of working?
Yeah, didn't think so.
And if Mom and Dad told you you were on your own for the nursing home, don't look at me. I'll be lucky to live to your age at all, much less have enough to raise children of my own to maturity.
You got to have a grandkid to play with. Pity I won't.
I should thank you for the iPad, I guess. I'd be more grateful if you hadn't used Mom's inheritance to pay for it. They could have really used the money.
Your grandson
PS Now Grandma's gone Mom figured it was okay to tell me she drank herself to death. And why. All those left-wing rallies you went to and didn't come back from till mid-morning next day? Grandma wasn't fucking stupid. Neither was Mom.
Fuck, man, half the time you didn't even bother washing your hands afterwards.
Fuck, grandpa, but you were a prick.
You deserve to die destitute and alone.
3/3/93 was a hard day for me. That day my 2 remaining grandparents died. That day my dog died. So on that day you lost a Marine - my father, the woman who warned me about all this, and my only friend through all of it.
Vaguely like what I had to tell my son about 5 years ago. I apologized to him for not being more proactive.
Locally I am affectionately known by sympathizers as a trouble maker. That feels good but it doesn't help much if they aren't willing to help join in the fight.
Dont' misunderstand me: I havn"t a spiritual bone in my body....
There lies the crux of the matter:
You have rejected the One True Living God and worship idols.
Consequently, the people have become polluted and their politicians corrupt.
what you refer to as "the One True Living God" is an idol.
I always thought of humans as pets (like our leaders do lol) meaning some are born to nice families, others are thrown outside, given crap for food, and no medical care. Like being born in the US vs. Africa. Hardly fair at all there. Is there any meaning to it, or are we really are just random shit that evolved from grey soup and have no more signifigance on this planet than a fucking fly?
And thus enter thousands of religions to answer these, and other, questions. All convinced they are righteous and responsible for millions of deaths in order to prove it. This all has to be some huge fucking joke. When we die we're probably gona rematerialize in some form at some cosmic bar where all our shithead friends are laughing their asses off "hahahahaha motherfucker we gave you cancer, made you gay and suck dick, killed your kids and gave your dog arthritis!"
Have you ever really loved anything? God is this love-he is also judgement and wrath.
It is appointed for Man to die once. And then the judgement.
Says fucking who? God didn't write the bible, man did.
Until the sob lands in my back yard and convinces me otherwise, forget it.