And I do wish it would stop. More and more I'm convinced that we royally screwed up generations ago as we began throwing away age old wisdom for the latest pop scholar fad. Add to that a world of endless luxury and leisure, and you have something Rush Limbaugh observed some years ago. You have the Baby Boomers, the first generation that never had to grow up. I think we've been getting younger and younger as the generations pass. Worse, with each generation we discard reality and set up fanciful lies about what the world is really all about. The results, as I often say, speak for themselves.
FWIW, I hold no brief for Congresswoman Greene. Nonetheless, I remember years ago when bloggers agreed that if you're reduced to trying to rip someone over a spelling error on Social Media, it's as good as saying you've been owned.
Not with you here. People born during the years running from 1938 to 1957 as often as not grew up to be passable human beings. The most distressing thing about them was that they had an absurd propensity to resort to the divorce courts in comparison to people just a few years older. They also had a greater tendency to have out-of-wedlock children, though fewer children generally; and of course, there were the abortions. The following cohorts were less likely to sue for divorce, but more likely to produce out-of-wedlock children (in the course of producing slightly more children generally). The cohorts following that exhibited a lower propensity to marry and a lower propensity to have children generally (though with proportionately fewer abortions).
ReplyDeleteThere are other distressing elements which separate the pre-1938 cohorts from those who came after: the use of stupefacients, the declining capacity to undertake collective action, and the bad taste and general slatternliness. The thing is, in each cohort, most of the people are not and have not been participants in the general run of unpleasantness, though they sometimes countenance people who do.
NB, Marjorie Taylor Greene, 47, married her one and only at age 20, in conjunction with her husband has operated the family business since age 27, and has borne three children. Occasional Cortex flitted from one short-term scheme to another between the age of 22 and 29 'ere being elected to Congress. She's never had any children. She does have a common law whose regular employment as an IT tech has been by all appearances paying the bills all these years (you can see him in the recent pix of her vacationing in Florida); they've never got 'round to having children or even to a visit to the local courthouse. These two women are not equals. They never will be.
The impression I had from Limbaugh was that he meant for the first time, kids weren't rushed to grow up. They could remain kids, in mind and action. So an 18 year old in 1930 seemed more like a 30 year old in 1965. Which makes sense. I look at my graduating class, and we looked like kids compared to kids I see in old 1930 yearbooks. And today, kids who are in high school remind me of us when we were kids in elementary. There is a sort of reverting against Paul's advice to put childish things behind us.
DeleteI think you're investing too much in appearances (though these aren't trivial). My mother would tell you the culture was dramatically different in that respect. "We worked to make ourselves look older than we were". She'd also tell you it was a culture wherein the value accorded to personal self-expression was much lower. And a time and a place wherein daily life was more uncomfortable. (Think of how much experience you have with dental pain in comparaison with your grandparents). It's also true that the working world was on average more physically taxing (for men at any rate; for women it was less pronounced).
DeleteThere has been some delay in when people enter the labor force. Around age 18, the majority of the young are employed at any one time (at least p/t). A century ago, it would have been around age 14 that this was the case (among the non-agricultural population). Much of this occurred prior to the war.
The median age at first marriage fluctuates up and down. It is only in the last 30 years that it has exceeded the value it had in the 1890s (only, the life expectancy of the young at age 26 is notably longer than it was four generations ago).
Hedda Hopper once appeared as a mystery guest on the panel show What's My Line?. One of the blindfolded panel asked her if she was a blonde. Her reply, "By the drugstore". I have a dear cousin who had blinding platinum hair at age 5 and handsome golden hair at age 14. Took her until age 35 or thereabouts to reconcile herself to mousy brown and quit having beauticians messing with it. MTG isn't there yet. May never get there. My cousin works for an auction house in Manhattan and is a statuesque mother of three. She piles her hair on top of her head in a power bun so she looks even taller.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to get to know MTG (the congress woman, not the card game), it wasn't that long ago she appeared on the Tim Poole podcast. Here is a clip.
ReplyDeleteTim Pool is spelled without the E. It's Tim Pool.
DeleteThanks! If anyone asks I blame autocorrect. ;)
DeleteI don't hate her. But she's careless. I know she could walk on water and feed the multitudes and they'd still find reason to trash her. But that doesn't mean she should give them legit reasons.
DeleteI understand the sentiment, but by this point I've learned "giving them legit reasons" just means "fighting back."
DeleteYou've bemoaned before about conservatives yielding too much. Well that's how and why it happened. Conservatives kept yielding because they kept trying to seek out and locate the "perfect" strategy.
Well... *gestures around* Here are the fruits of that. You want to keep trying to "not give them reasons" or do you want to fight back?
I want leaders who will fight back without handing the opposition legitimate ammunition. Again, I know anything done that involves fighting back will be framed as Nazi. One way to fight back would be pointing this out, that to the Left the definition of Nazi means not leftist, which itself is wrong. Heck, pointing out that there is such a thing as the Left would be a good start. Too often we allow the Left to frame the narrative as 'The Right versus True.'
DeleteConservatives might not be able to be perfect enough, but I've also observed that fighting fire with fire doesn't work either. That's because the Left - with the media/education/entertainment in its pocket - is able to make sure only one side will get burned.