Had a conversation with a woman yesterday, which I never intended to, nor imagined would, turn political. She asked what Biden was thinking by pushing one of the most mild items on his evil, destructive agenda. I replied that he is most likely incapable of thought.
She became indignant and attempted to lecture me that God put Biden in power. I called BS on this ridiculous assumption. God allows stuff to happen; but rarely causes it Himself. He allows people to sin; but doesn't commit the sin Himself. He allowed Israel to chase evil and turn utterly corrupt; but He didn't corrupt them.
Nadler's actual wording has been disputed; but his message is the same.
Predictably, she threw Romans 13 in my face. I explained that the people are the legitimate rulers of the USA; not our public servants. When those public servants violate the Constitution, they rebel against the rightful authority of the land. So far, this country has not formally transformed into a monarchy. We are not required to obey any earthly king--nor public servants who try to act like a king.
This went in one ear and out the other, of course. More was said, which consisted of me wasting my time using reason; and her manipulating, deflecting, and finally changing the subject.
The woman is Silent Generation. Silent and Boomers grew up in a world in which there was no penalty for living under delusion (such as a miraculous transformation into a righteous person with sterling moral character, and God's approval, the moment some dirtbag is awarded a government paycheck). They would not pay the consequence for their delinquent stewardship of our republic. Their children and grandchildren have to pay it--all while being chastised by those who are part of the problem when we recognize reality.
That we study and accept the whole counsel of scripture, rather than just the bias-confirming passages selected by the High and Awakening era preachers, looks like heresy to them.
The 2nd Turning in a saeculum corresponds to the summer. The warming trend that makes the spring so pleasant continues, making the summer somewhat uncomfortable due to the heat. So it is with an Awakening. People begin to question and defy existing institutions, attitudes, and traditions. Prodigals, who enter rising adulthood (20-40) during an Awakening focus inward, rather than forward. They are typically selfish and self-obsessed. A gaping generation gap appears between them and their Barn-Raiser parents. Having been raised with maximum indulgence, the "younger generation" of narcissists reject the conformity of their predecessors, only to adopt an attitude of extreme entitlement. They see themselves as visionaries, and as more "conscious"--and therefore more important--than everyone else. Including their own children. Their focus on self, and on "consciousness" lead them into quests for spiritualism.
In the book of Judges, if not all the historic books of the Old Testament, I think many Awakenings are documented. In my opinion, every period in which the Israelites chased after foreign gods was probably an Awakening.
In particular, the account of Samson strikes me as occurring in the late stages of an Awakening. The culture in Israel (specifically in Dan) had already embraced pagan religion, and by the time Samson was born, that had progressed to its logical conclusion: rule by heathens. Samson was a spoiled brat who rejected the council of his indulgent parents. He bossed them around, instead. He was gifted with an access to spiritual power none of us have enjoyed. The manifestation of that power through him, superficially, makes us think of him as strong and masculine. Yet he was dominated by women throughout his tenure as a judge. Females "wore the pants" in his life. His weakness was rather sickening, and tragic. The gift he was granted at birth was magnificent. And all he had to do was uphold his Nazerite vow to keep it. By the end of his life, he had pissed it all away.
The last Awakening America went through began with the JFK assassination and ended during the "Morning in America" period of the early-to-mid 1980s. It included the "Summer of Love;" the moon mission, the Vietnam debacle, Watergate, the Civil Rights movement, the sexual revolution, civil unrest and domestic terrorism.
The Boomers followed the pattern, and actually pushed the boundaries. Probably the most spoiled, indulged children in history; they grew up to be the most ungrateful adults, with the most dramatic generation gap between themselves and their fathers. They questioned and defied institutions like never before--most notably, the Draft. But they despised more than just that institution, including gender norms, marriage, and the family itself. (Of course those are even more despised today, but the slippery slope began in the Awakening.)
While the generation gap widened, the gender gap narrowed. Masculinity was reviled, in men. Males grew their hair out long like women; music featured male vocalists singing in ever-higher voices; sodomy came out of the closet and was celebrated. Young females became as promiscuous as the worst of men in previous times, burned their bras in public, demanded "liberation" from roles as wives and mothers, and increasingly sought their own careers and traditionally masculine pastimes like sports. They cut their hair short, wore business suits, and preferred masculine (or at least androgynous) nicknames.
They took birth control to avoid having children, then aborted children who were conceived, anyway. They got abortion "legalized" via a ruling by a cultural Marxist Supreme Court, which has been treated as law ever since. What children were actually born to them were undervalued, neglected, or abandoned. To compensate for this "baby bust," left-wing activists in government opened the floodgates to the largest, most prolonged invasion in history. Since 1965, the red carpet has been rolled out for hordes of foreigners who value neither our culture, our once-predominant faith, nor our freedom. It was inevitable that, given their unabashed lust for dominance, and our timid "inclusive" philosophy and appeasement, they would one day rule over us, demanding of us the assimilation we never demanded of them.
Rising spiritual awareness led the Boomers to experiment with "mind-expanding" drugs and/or dabble in eastern mysticism/pagan religions, on the quest for "Nirvana" or a "higher plane of consciousness." And within Christianity, they became "Jesus Freaks"--often personalizing their concept of the Savior into an effeminate, pacifist hippie space cadet whose only objectives were peace and love--as Boomers defined it. In other words, their picture of Jesus was nearly identical to their own self-image.
It has been rightly noted that Boomers can't take credit for the Apollo missions. To be fair, neither can they be blamed for Vietnam. However, their reaction to the indecisive, pointless intervention in Vietnam, and Watergate, and Roe v. Wade, etc. has had long-term effects on America to this day, and spurred on the Unraveling.
The two previous archetypes were profiled on the old blog. I'm finally continuing the series.
One of Jesus' famous parables was of the Prodigal Son. In it, a wealthy father has two sons. The one son, despite his cushy life, decides he knows better than his generous father what life is all about and how to live it. He demands his inheritance, abandons his loving father and the life and home that was provided to him, journeys to a far country and parties hard until his entire inheritance is squandered and he is reduced to eating pig food.
(Just in case you haven't heard this parable: the son then returns home and is welcomed with open arms by his father, the way sinners who repent are welcomed by God into salvation and the Kingdom. The older brother has done what he was expected to do the entire time the Prodigal was off on a self-indulgent spree, and rankles at how the irresponsible narcissist is the one who gets rewarded and celebrated. The brother is much like the Custodian archetype)
I think the generation who followed Joshua into the Holy Land was like the Barn-Raisers, and the first judges were like the Custodians. The children who grew up in the fulfillment of the Promise, then turned their back on God to worship idols was Prodigal. Before the Holy Land campaign it's very difficult to correlate Biblical figures to the American generational archetypes. For one: they weren't Americans. For two: their life spans were much longer than what Strauss and Howe's generational theory is built around. However, I look at most of the tribal patriarchs as mostly Prodigals (one exception being Joseph, who strikes me as a Nomad type). Abraham, who did everything he could to set up Isaac for success (including finding him a wife), strikes me as a Barn-Raiser. Isaac, who was born within a year of a significant crisis (the judgment on the cities of the plain) and went through a personal crisis of his own (almost sacrificed), nevertheless entered adulthood with a life of peace and wealth, but raised his own children without the same level of wisdom or provision...and therefore seems like a Custodian. Jacob got the short end of the stick, but was "streetwise" and clawed his way into the inheritance and the blessing via crafty deceit. Even so, he was left on his own to find a home and a wife, and floundered with a lack of paternal guidance. He resembles a Nomad, or perhaps a Prodigal.
Strauss and Howe named this American generational archetype the "Idealist" or "Prophet." The most recent such generation certainly see themselves that way, but I prefer to call this archetype the "Prodigal" for a reason that should be obvious soon.
The Prodigal generation from the 1800s is labeled the "Missionaries." As I've warned previously, generalizations are necessary when referencing generations and their peer personalities. Neither Strauss, Howe, nor I believe every member of a generation conforms exactly to the profile. There are many differences and varieties within generations; the members don't agree on everything, and certainly are not carbon copies of each other. Likewise, names for generations aren't to be applied literally. The "Republican" Generation (born 1742-1766) played out most of their lives before the political party of the same name ever came into being. They are labeled "Republican" because they built the republic in North America after prevailing through their existential crisis. Certainly there were many missionaries among the Missionary Generation, but not all of their peers shared the same faith or ideology. Probably the best known Missionary in history was FDR, for instance.
Prodigals grow up after the resolution of an existential crisis, in times of stability and prosperity. They come of age during a "spiritual awakening" in which they question the institutions their Barn-Raiser fathers built (or their Custodian fathers maintained). In adulthood, they take over and transform those institutions, and in elderhood, they appoint themselves as a sort of "moral police" who are compelled to tell everyone else how to think, believe, speak, and behave.
The latest Prodigal generation is, of course, the Baby Boomers (so-named because of the explosion in childbirths experienced during and after WWII). They inherited the most peaceful, prosperous society in recorded history. Their indulgent parents pampered them beyond any known precedence. The Bible warns parents what happens when a father spares the rod--and that happened generation-wide. These entitled children grew up with a contempt for their inheritance, for their fathers' values, institutions, and the fathers themselves. (The "generation gap" is most prominent between GI fathers and their Boomer children.) Through their cultural influence, their political tenure, and/or their vote, they have squandered all that peace and prosperity--and not just for themselves. It was the next generation these Prodigals reduced to eating pig slop, while they pursued immediate gratification for themselves and lectured their juniors about "social justice."
X and the Millennials are not nearly as enamored with the Boomers as the Boomers are with themselves. In fact, our elders are finally facing somewhat of a backlash. Ignorant people on social media and blog comment threads routinely accuse each other of being Boomers (having no idea how old the other person actually is) for making comments they disagree with. "Boomer" is fast becoming a generic insult. On the one hand, it's as silly as judging an individual based on assumptions about their race or sex. OTOH, it's difficult to feel any sympathy for the Boom, collectively.
Thanks to the Boomers (and the spineless Silent Generation "leaders" who wound up emulating them), the most powerful, prosperous country on Earth, with liberty and justice for all, has been reduced to a hopelessly corrupt debtor nation teetering on the precipice of economic collapse, tyranny, and civil war. After bankrupting the country through crooked and frivolous spending, exporting all our manufacturing base (and jobs) overseas to our enemies, they now have crushed the service-oriented economy that remained through this Orwellian quarantine, keeping "essential" businesses like abortion clinics and liquor stores open, but strong-arming their arbitrary list of "non-essential" businesses (and churches, of course). Meanwhile, secure with their guaranteed incomes, they demonize people who have the audacity to protest because they need to feed their families.
But family wasn't an important consideration for Boomers, at least during their non-stop party prime years. They grew up with strong, functional families, so they didn't appreciate them. It was the Boomers who gave us "free love" and the Sexual Revolution. They took birth control to avoid having children, and aborted them when that didn't work. Those who did bother getting married and having children divorced in record numbers, pulling their wishy-washy Silent elders down with them, leaving the next generation (of unwanted children) to fend for themselves. They didn't just introduce widespread fornication and adultery, but a whole panoply of sexual immorality God warned us about. But it wasn't enough to inject it into our society--they had to glorify it in pop culture, too. It's hard to find even one movie or TV show without sodomy-acceptance messaging, and now, if you're paying attention, you can see them pushing pedophilia as the next perversion to be normalized.
The idyllic childhood of the typical Boomer was tainted by the JFK assassination. Simply by examining bygone pop culture (music, movies, art, etc.) you can easily detect whether something was produced before or after that national-attitude-changing event. The atmosphere in America was markedly different in 1964 and after, than in 1963 and before. That event set off a cultural chain reaction. The Boomers soon turned to lifestyles of drug abuse, paganism, sexual debauchery, and radical ideology. They hated their fathers, and that hate spilled over to what their fathers symbolized to them: the nuclear family; children; monogamy; traditional gender roles (masculinity in men, femininity in women); art that was beautiful and made sense; civic responsibilities; patriotism; Christianity; the draft; the military-industrial complex.
Much of this is ironic, because their GI/Greatest Generation parents were leftists, too. An overwhelming majority of the GIs were New Dealers, and reliably voted Democrat in most elections throughout their lives. But that wasn't left-wing enough for most of their kids, though. We can argue about whether the GIs were truly Christian or patriotic (they were neither, if you look beyond the superficial), but that's how the Boomers perceived them. So the Boomers rebelled against what they thought their fathers represented.
Of course, there were some Boomers who became "Jesus Freaks" instead of New Agers and dope fiends trying to "achieve a higher consciousness" via "mind expanding" substance. Also, there is a small minority of Boomers (in the later/younger cohorts) who fought in Vietnam rather than dodging the draft. Some Boomers today lean to the right, and many are saved. Again, when I talk of the generation and their peer personality, there are plenty of exceptions.
The Boomers were the first generation to receive, and accept, an official name. It was only afterwards that historians named older generations, retroactively. Certainly some people had referred to the WWI/Roaring '20s youth as "a lost generation;" but that didn't become their official name until later. The Boomers celebrated their own distinct identity, before other age groups began to think of themselves that way. (After control of the country transferred to the Boomers, the term "senior citizens" was coined to identify the aged GI/Greatest.) "Never trust anyone over 30!" Boomers declared...until, of course, they grew older than 30.
The Boom got their war memorial before the GIs or the Silent, which is very significant, considering the hubris of the GIs "who saved us from Hitler!" Everything has always worked out in the favor of the Boomers. When they were kids, the world catered to kids. When they were adults, the world catered to adults. Predictably, it looks like they will be the last generation to collect Social Security benefits. The 13ers/Xers, who have been paying into the government-sanctioned Ponzi scheme all their working lives to support their affluent elders, will be left holding the bag. Boomers had high-paying jobs, cheap college, cheap mortgages, cheap taxes, and lavish government handouts...and have ensured that the following generation, after paying for most of it (and GI/Silent/Boomer criminal government spending) by their unfair bulk of the tax burden, get none of it.
None of this strikes the Boomers as unjust, though. Why would it? Everything should work to the benefit of a self-righteous narcissist, at the expense of the un-cool youngsters who just aren't as "conscious," "aware," or "groovy." And it never stops. The COVID-1984 lockdown highlights Boomer entitlement, too: Wal-Marts around the country set aside a specific time in the morning hours when only Boomers could shop. The almighty Boomers need first dibs on essential food and supplies. If the majority of passengers on the Titanic had been Boomers, you can bet children would not have gotten priority for the lifeboats.
I first learned of Facebook through a Millennial. (I got on it to see what all the hubbub was about, but quit cold-turkey after a couple years.) Now the younger Millennial cohorts inform me that Facebook is wall-to-wall Boomers. Maybe it was that way before (I didn't think in terms of generations, then, and so didn't really pay attention). With all the selfies, pictures of what people ate for lunch, and ignorant self-centered remarks about current events (and their oh-so-important feelings about them), it's the perfect hangout for aging Boomers.
Hollywood is controlled by the Boom, and has been for 40 years. It's a Boomer bully pulpit to promote their cultural Marxism and marginalize anybody/everybody who disagrees with it. But pop culture from a generational perspective deserves at least one post of its own, so I'll table that for now.
If you had to pick a "defining moment" for the GI Generation, you have several options. But if you wanted to have as many of them together in one place as possible, you'd probably choose D-Day (for combatants) or VJ Day in New York City (for military and civilians).
That moment for the Boom (at least the counterculture Boomers) is Woodstock.
If you ask a Boomer to explain how Woodstock defines their g-g-g-generation, they'll probably say something about a "collective conscience" experienced at the event. I would add to that definition some more tangible details.
Hundreds of thousands of Boomers trampled down the fencing and crashed the festival without paying to get in. After the concert started, it was officially announced that all the freeloaders were off the hook. So the epic three-day party was paid for them by the event organizers. The dairy farmer who let them destroy his land for the festival was somebody they said could never be trusted (he was GI generation and well over 30). Free food was provided the entire time. When it ran out, the local middle-class townspeople (the kind they called "fascist pigs" or "capitalist warmongers" with no conscience) donated food right out of their own fascist warmonger kitchens so the attendees wouldn't go hungry. The Red Cross also distributed donuts. The US Army (who they called "baby-killers") and others provided free medical care for those who overdosed and experienced "bad trips" on LSD.
Everything was handed to them on a silver platter, and the very same people the Boomers considered inferior are the ones who bent over backwards protecting Boomers from the consequences of their own stupidity. The hippie festival is basically a microcosm of the Boom's entire privileged life.
The 600 acres where the festival took place was a beautiful area before the armada of spoiled pothead and junkie brats descended on it like a locust storm. The muddy, stinking, garbage pit they left behind resembled a war zone--missing only shell craters. Kind of like what they've done to America.
Toward the end of the three-day orgy of drugs, fornication, and subversive music, the dairy farmer addressed the wasted multitude from the stage. By no stretch of the imagination can anyone make the case that the attendees exercised any modicum of self-control; nevertheless, Max Yasgur congratulated them for not killing each other. He said they "showed the world" what love and peace look like.
At every stage of their lives, the Boom has enjoyed privilege and entitlement. They assume it's deserved--and why wouldn't they? The presumption has been reinforced at every turn--by the parents and grandparents they maligned, and even sometimes by the children who survived Boomer's state-sanctioned abortion epidemic only to be neglected, insulted, and abandoned by their free-wheeling parents.
Just like the Missionaries before them imposed their values on everyone else in elderhood (the Missionaries were the driving force behind Prohibition); the Boomers now try to preach to the rest of us what morality and justice is.
The party never ends for the Prodigals. But it's always at the expense of others.
