How the Greatest Generation Begat the Stupidest Generation and Lost America

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The first half of the 20th Century was one of the most devastating in human history. The people who lived through that calamitous period are called the Greatest Generation for good reason. They came of age during the Great Depression and went on to save the world from the Nazi and Japanese tyrannies. They fought hard to save the world and later built the United States into the dominant economic and military superpower on the planet.

The thing about the Greatest Generation was that their lives were tough… with a great depression sandwiched between two world wars, life was simply brutal. So when peacetime came around, they were enthusiastic about finally being able to focus on raising their families.

They of course wanted their kids to have better lives than they did. They didn’t want their kids have to deal with the food shortages, the unemployment and the wars that they had lived through. And so they pampered their children and tried to give them good lives. The problem is, their children became spoiled brats and grew into unrepentant socialists and Communists.

America saw that play out in front of their eyes during the 1960’s and 70’s. The postwar years saw an unprecedented economic boom in the United States with jobs and incomes growing to spectacular levels. Families moved to the suburbs, cars became ubiquitous and the golden age of television was upon us. So it’s not a great surprise that when things are going fairly well, spoiled children become spoiled young adults. Which is exactly what happened. From student protests demanding universities bend to their wills to anti-war marches demanding an end to the Vietnam War (really what they wanted was to not be drafted…) to supporting terrorist groups like the Weather Underground & the Black Panthers, young people spent much of the 1960’s & 70’s protesting and demanding pretty much everything. And when they didn’t get their way, they would cause mayhem, taking over universities, rioting and occasionally setting off bombs…

If that sounds a lot like what’s going on today in the streets, it’s no coincidence. The thugs out in the streets today causing mayhem are the children of those 1960’s hippies. One might think that parents who grew up in the midst of the chaotic, anything goes 60’s and 70’s might swing somewhat in the opposite direction and raise their children with a bit more discipline than they had growing up. But that’s not what happened. Just the opposite.

The children of the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s were even more spoiled than their parents. There was virtually no war – and of course, no draft – and although there were economic hiccups along the way, the economy grew steadily from the early 80’s. Things were often comfortable… Video games, participation trophies, MTV and grade inflation… what wasn’t to like? But something was going on… the hints of today’s chaos were being sowed without anyone noticing…

It was during this time that the radical students of the 1960’s and 70’s became the professors and administrators in the colleges they had previously attacked. They became politicians and media personalities and corporate flunkies and whatever passed for journalists. They became board members of foundations and literally wrote the text books used by their fellow travelers who’d become teachers in classrooms across the country.

And so here we are today… Not surprisingly, after these hippy fans of Marx and Lenin and Castro spent decades teaching America’s youth that the United States is evil and racist to its core, the youth have little respect for anything, much less their country. But more importantly, they have no awareness of context and history and reality. That Thomas Jefferson might have been a great if flawed man… Nope. That Gone with the Wind or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn might be masterpieces of literature despite their decidedly “unwoke” themes… Nope. That St. Louis might have been in the middle of a known world war when he led the Crusades… Doesn’t matter. That men can’t actually have babies… Scoff. Ronald Reagan once said: “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.

And that is what makes the current generation of people wreaking havoc in the streets so stupid. Not because they can’t score well on the SAT, because they can – which like so much else in America these days has been watered down to almost irrelevancy – but because they refuse to see what’s right in front of them. Venezuela and Cuba are “worker’s paradises” but both are economic trainwrecks caused by socialism. Yet somehow these young people seek to take the United States down that same path. They are out in the streets protesting the death of a tiny handful of black men at the hands of police while black men kill 8,000 fellow black men every year. Activists and anarchists claim they want to remove monuments of a racist past yet they destroy statues of giants in the battle against slavery like Lincoln, Grant and Douglass. They decry capitalism but are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they live in a world of mobile phones, the Internet, Uber and Amazon that capitalism built.

That the imbecilic BLM and Antifa thugs currently seeking to erase history and destroy the country are the progeny begotten by the Greatest Generation brings to mind a quote from author G. Michael Hopf in Those Who Remain: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” In their desire to give their children and grandchildren better lives than they had to endure, the Greatest Generation created two generations of idiots not smart enough to recognize that in the lottery of life they have been gifted the Golden Ticket.

It’s only because they’ve had life so good that they have the luxury of excoriating the country in the first place… Rather than being caught up in the many wars that crisscross Africa or living daily with the threat of starvation or the lopping off of limbs, they can craft the fiction of “institutional racism”. Rather than being shot or have tanks roll over them for speaking “Truth to power”, they can put on their Che Guevera tee shirts grab their skateboards and scream “Fuck the Police” while firebombing police stations secure in the notion that they’re unlikely to face any consequences. And on the off chance they did face the possibility of consequences for their actions, they’re confident in the notion that they’ll have an army of empty headed Hollywood and Twitter personalities ready to raise money for their defense and turn them into martyrs for the cause. They can burn the flag, blockade highways, tear down statues and vandalize churches and monuments, comfortable knowing the protections afforded by the very system they want to destroy will likely protect them from harm.

That so many Democrat politicians across the country have thrown in with and knelt down with these modern day Jacobins and sans-culottes, and allowed so much of our history to be destroyed will one day be written about as a turning point in American history. It will be the beginning of a revolution… either one in which real Americans decide to take back their history from the Stalinists running academia, the media, Silicon Valley and increasingly, “woke” corporations; or one in which the “woke” Democrats prevail in November and set about destroying the Constitution and the killing the goose that laid the golden eggs they have been eating their entire lives. One will see a free United States leading a the world as the 21st century unfolds while the other will see the world collapse into a fire of war as the world’s beacon of freedom, prosperity and strength is replaced with a fascist state wrapped around a Zimbabwe like economic disaster.  Forrest Gump said “Stupid is as stupid does” and that’s exactly what the country is looking at as the progeny of the Greatest Generation destroy the very legacy that was built for them. Hell is after all, paved with good intentions.

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And Jimmy Carters’ creation of the department of education was the icing on the poisonous cake .

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

― George Santayana

Our “woke” generation has no idea what they are doing, or, at what cost.
Destroying American statuary and American history (as Oprah has just agreed to pay millions to do) doesn’t change human nature. No matter how far woke some get, they will never get the masses (even their liberal masses) to keep up with them.
There’s an article at American Thinker about how our colonists tried out socialism.
They shared everything in common.
All they asked was 4 hours of work in the common farmland per day per resident.
But the residents then, like the CHAZ folks now, preferred to sit and write poems or pretend to work.
The colony fell into such dire straits that cannibalism occurred.
We just watched Venezuela come to this point all because of socialism.
The “woke” want to “eat the rich.”
So, then what?
Where does the food come from?
Who trucks it in?
Who toils to keep the shelves stocked?
They all want to live on “Reparations,” and play the flute or listen to music on devices.

There’s a true test of every philosophy:
What if EVERYBODY did it?

Not this nonsense again. Who voted for FDR and his New Deal or LBJ and the Great Society? It wasn’t boomers. A tiny minority of boomers were the lefties of the sixties and seventies. And wasn’t it the so-called greatest generation who raised the boomers? How about we blame them and their parents for the beginning of the expansion of government and decline in self-reliance?

My real problem with this is that you are assigning blame and casting judgment on people as a group. That is what leftists do.

Good post, Vince

All we have gotten from these filthy Democrats are traitors and turn coats Carters bumbling Clinton and Obama’s coruption and now Biden’s stupidity

the childlike adults are chronically adults but have the temperament of a child. from a psychological standpoint they are unstable and dangerous. their infantile behaviour is seen everywhere, temper tantrums, screaming, crying and above all victimization. you can not argue with a 3 y/o who thinks they can fly. no different.

I really blame pediatrician Dr. Spock for most of this. My mother raised me like it was the 1930s, but my sister and brother were raised under the 1960 discipline codes. They were problems; I say I must be part of the WWII generation since I was born in 1945 and we were cancelled from the baby boomer generation at some point.

Lol
It is always so easy to be able to blame others when things don’t go the way you want How many here ever took low paying jobs teaching kids while also hoping to instill in them “correct” social values?

@John: It isnt the schools business to teach social values, they need to stick to reading, writing, arithmetic and science and history.
What in the hell are “social values” let alone correct social values? If the teachers had these wonderful qualities every student would excel in these basics.
Average Public School Math Proficiency. The national average math proficiency is 49% PATHETIC!

@kitt:
Children spend a great deal of their waking hours in Primary grade school
In school I was taught many things I would consider “social values”
Patriotism
Honesty
Respect for fellow humans
Charity
Teamwork
Our school days in the 50s began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer
Apparently you do not regret these aspects of education no longer being taught by “leftists”
I do

@John: You were also taught the basics, and could be flunked a grade, todays schools are a tiny bit different than the 50s. I will say the pledge is still taught in Pre K here.
Most of our protestors are college educated whites that were programmed in school to hate their race and country, what kind of values are those?
“It’s all about doing everything possible to ensure that kids are successful.”
So passing them along with their peers even if they havent learned the material is what they do. No zero policies no consequences policies.

@MOS#8541:

their infantile behaviour is seen everywhere, temper tantrums, screaming, crying and above all victimization.

Trump has the temper tantrums and the victimization down pat. Can we count his caps-lock tweets as examples of screaming?

@kitt:
The right always wants to complain about what the left did
They never take a look at themselves and say “why didn’t I become a teacher instead of allowing lefties to take over that important job.
Do you regret not debiting you’re life to teaching children?

@John: It was my choice to not go to college, I went to technical school after my kids were in school, first their home work then mine. I worked in a mill shift work 12 months of the year again good pay my choice. Still making sure the kids did their assignments, helping them understand what the teachers did not teach them. While other kids played pong mine played dungeon of the algebra dragon. I did my share of teaching just being mom.
So no, my taxes pay them, I am their employer, I expect them to do their jobs in a proficient manner. If its too tough, quit go get an easy swing shift mill job.

@kitt:
So you chose not to try and help educate other kids only your own
Many others also did that and now say that the education system is flawed
If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem
I am sure that was the choice of most of the posters here who decry the leftist education that most kids now receive

@John:

If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem

Nice, that leftist card has been maxed out.
My part was taking responsibility for the children I gave birth to, but thats not enough, I have to take responsibility for what others did beginning many years ago.
Cram it ,you are the problem making excuses for failure. Saying its my fault for not failing my kids? Liberal nonsense, total lack of logic.
Keep making excuses and bitch at people who recognize the problem and want to see change in the failing system. I guess you think just shoving more money at failure is the answer, you must be an educator, or an overpaid useless superintendent.

@kitt:
Of course it is obvious that you accept no responsibility for any of God’s other children
Except to criticize the efforts of anyone else who are trying to help others such as teachers

@John: I accepted my personal responsibilities, seems you let those guilty for why Johnny cant read off the hook and attempt to shift blame to a parent that raised successful children, while paying taxes that pay their salaries most likely yours. Again the second card, blame shifting is maxed out. What other well worn cards are in your wallet?
Dropping phonics seriously?

@John: @kitt:
Wrong about your assumptions
I drive a truck for a living
My “bitch” is people who criticize a system that they aren’t putting in any effort to change, other than bitching about it
Like “lefties” bitching that our military has not had much success in the last 20 years

@John: So dont bitch, get a steak burned just eat it or get a job there as a cook. Bitch bitch bitch point out the failings, til those that can make the changes sit up and take notice.
The teachers unions dont want charter schools that prove they are failures. LA union wants all social ills solved before the schools reopen.
https://www.utla.net/sites/default/files/samestormdiffboats_final.pdf
If you dont work and refuse to work what happens? Only deliver 49% of your loads undamaged what would happen? Someone would bitch, there would be consequences.

@kitt: m
I am not bitching at teachers
I think they are doing a decent job
If you think education is messed up get a job teaching it as a teachers assistant and try to make it better

@John: Im not going to do what youthink I should do. You think they are doing a bang up job, Im gonna add my voice to the growing numbers of those bitching about failing schools. I dont need a job. I did my part, even touching the next generation with free daycare for the grands from diapers to pre-K.
Imagine me telling the kiddies when I was in school they taught me there was going to be an ice age by 2020 no summer at all. That much of what they are told cant be proven by scientists, just like when I was in school. Then teaching them climate change is real we do have proof, but it takes many lifetimes and people dont control the sun and earth cycles. Then show them people can live in all climates, and do, cause we are real smart, we adapt.

@kitt: kitt
I said that they were doing a decent job not that they were “doing a bang up job”
Why put words into my mouth ? Is that the only way you can debate? ?
Lol
It is a pretty weak tactic

@John: I didnt think we were debating or I would ask you for proof of the decent job they were doing. Depending on the area not 1 child can read at grade level I guess cause no one bitched.
According to Pew Research Center data released in 2017, the United States ranked 38th in math and 24th in science when compared against 71 other countries. Just two decades ago, the US education system ranked 6th on that list.
The general thought is Some states choose to spend more on their students and invest more in school facilities. Really money and buildings, I thought is was the people standing in front of the class.
Some rank it by spending per Student and drop out rate.
Not how I would rank a school.
Mass is ranked number one,
8th grade NAEP proficiency: 50.8% (math) 45.7% (reading)
Not decent I see by 1/2.
Now sir as this is a debate now make your point.

Yes it is true
The Blue states that spend more money always fo seem to test higher than our poorer cousins in @kitt: red states
School facilities including teaching materials such as books and computers DO make a significant difference in the total learning experience
Kitt do you have an understanding of what a 50% score even means in NEAP
Perhaps this will help some, ma’am
Nationsreportcard.gov
My guess is statistics is not your strongest card

@John: You really need to know how to put up a link your attempt leads no where, perhaps you need to look up the definition of debate. As far as red states go or democrat better than republican, let me point to Baltimore deep deep blue ,where no child in 13 schools was proficient.
Money? Baltimore schools specifically, and an astounding $16,184 is spent per student #3 in most per student in the Nation.
https://www.cagw.org/thewastewatcher/greedy-administrators-are-real-reason-why-baltimores-education-system-crumbling
Statistics can easily be manipulated, average test scores?
Try again my democrat pal.

@John:
Well if the link didn’t work for you I aplologize
Did you try to use google ?

@John: I have been to the website dearest, You must properly link to the page in that vast site that backs your end of the debate.
I dont use google there are much better search engines that are not as politically slanted and track much less. Silly things you learn when married to a software engineer for an international company.
Hint links are highlighted in red in the comment section, else you messed up.
Do you require step by step instructions on cut and paste from an address window?

So kitt could you explain to me the significance (or lack there if) of MA receiving a 50% rating from NEAP?

@John:
Well hate to nitpick but of course Baltimore is not really a state just a city as a state Maryland ranks 13 out of 50
And of course Maryland is the state with the highest per capita income
Cut and paste instructions ?
Great
But first can you explain to me the significance of the 50% score that MA received from NEAP and why that wasn’t “decent” ?

@kitt:
Cut and paste instructions

@John: If you are not able to debate, present your evidence that schools are doing a decent job then I win the debate its quite simple.
I did not say Baltinore was a state just a Democrat failure where they pour too much money into failures with total lack of results.
May I suggest a manual for you, theres load of pictures.
Has 50 % ever been a passing grade?
So thanks for nuthin hunny, you cant make nor explain your case.

@kitt:
Haha
“Baltimore”
And why aren’t you calling me “dearest” anymore?
Is our internet relationship changing ?
That 50% that you attributed to MA is not a “grade”
Please compare the students accomplishments by states, how are super red states doing against the bluest states ?
Woukd that manual also apply to iPhone 6s? Which is the only thing I use ?
Have you read that manual? Did it include any material on spell check?
Remember !!
Whenever we misspell and don’t correct
The ‘errorists win!!
Don’t let them destroy ‘Merica

Anxiously awaiting your next mid five my Dearest

@John:Face it you lost, you cant back up your opinion with facts.
This isnt a pop quiz for me, you called it a debate.Which means you present examples and evidence to support your ideas.
If it isnt a grade, why not, if 50% score is decent, why? You are not even trying so darlin, dearest democrat pal move along.
Keep the shiny side up good buddy, stay away from the lot lizards.
Typos is the best you can point out as wrong you are a mental cripple using remedial troll 101 tactics that dont work.
If you happen to catch Wabbit on the air tell him sis says hi.

@kitt:
Wow this chat really seems to be headed in the wrong direction
No more calling me “dearest”
Was this because of the misspelling I pointed out ?
I guess I shouldn’t be waiting for what exactly a 50% rating from NEAP means?

@John: Ok I wont call you dearest, you called it a debate. Which means you present examples and evidence to support your ideas.
This is not a pop quiz for Wabbits lil sister, its your turn to make your brilliant point on how you come to your conclusion the teachers are doing a decent job.
Waiting for your evidence, you know I am thinking you are delusional, you use words like relationship, then in #32 would is not spelled woukd I guess it was simply a typo easily overlooked. 😉
Whenever we misspell and don’t correct
The ‘errorists win!!
Don’t let them destroy ‘Merica

“I would be a king if all the rules were torn down.”

The Postman: The movie and the book

If all the rules were torn down, most people would soon be dead, a slave, or cowering in constant fear. Beware of anyone who tells you otherwise. They’re lying, and it’s probably because they believe the quote at the top of this post.

@Greg: You are correct letting go the rioters in St. Louis sets a very bad example. Creepy Joes campaign staff donating to bail out rioters, they still work for him, cant they just call their mommy for bail?

@kitt: why did you stop calling me dearest ?
Was it because of the typos I pointed out ? I did try to make it a bit of a joke
Kitt does NAEP called that 50%
Perhaps my most learned friend you could explain to me what the 50% assessment that was given to MA in your post actually means ? Is that a “failing grade” I don’t think that is what it means
Could you explain it to me
Dearest Kitt ?
th@kitt: