The post war Baby Boomers, (I'm "talkin' 'bout my generation") grew up in a world that revolved around them and they continue to believe the world revolves around them. Our childhoods were spent in the ease and comfort that our parents' generation sacrificed so much to provide. Our parents lost 500,000 of their best defending Western democracy in WWII and another 54,000 on the Korean peninsula. Children who are raised to believe the sun rises and sets for them are loathe to risk their own comfort for anything that does not directly threaten them. After all, since the ascendancy of the left among the Western elites, the idea that there could exist anything more important than the attainment of one's personal happiness (usually confused with the pursuit of pleasure and material accumulation) has been accepted as the only sine qua non for a just society. The heightened Narcissism of my generation is the substrate upon which so many of our troubles rest, which is why I write about it so often.
Last week the population of America reached 300 million. Demographers determined that a baby born last Tuesday morning was the three hundred millionth American. His or her arrival was greeted with some degree of excitement in certain precincts of the Blogosphere. Mark Steyn pointed out the contrast between the slow demographic suicide of Europe (and Europeanized America, like Vermont) and American vitality in his greeting in the New York Sun this morning:
The reality is that in a western world ever more wizened and barren the 300 millionth American is the most basic example of American exceptionalism. Happy birth day, kid, and here's to many more.
Steyn also pointed out that within the elites, more common were expressions of unease:
One could have predicted the appalled editorials from European newspapers aghast at yet another addition to the swollen cohort of excess Americans consuming ever more of the planet's dwindling resources. And, when Canada's National Post announced "‘Frightening' Surge Brings US To 300m People," you can appreciate their terror: the millions of Democrats who declared they were moving north after Bush's re-election must have placed incredible strain on Canada's highways, schools, trauma counselors, etc.
But the wee bairn might have expected a warmer welcome from his or her compatriots. Alas not. "Three hundred million seems to be greeted more with hand-wringing ambivalence than chest-thumping pride," observed The Washington Post, which inclines toward the former even on the best of days.
Michael Barone also noted the pessimism surrounding the milestone achievement of our society. In America at 300 Million: Uneasy For A Reason, he also contrasts the mood in America in 1967 when we reached a population of 200,000,000 and the current mood upon reaching a population of 300,000,000:
Then, as now, Americans were in a negative mood, but had much more to be depressed about. We were then mired in a war that produced more than 20 times the number of American deaths as the conflict in Iraq has so far. We were in the midst of the Cold War, with its ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, and the bipartisan Cold War consensus was about to break down. Our cities were ablaze in race riots, and our economy was about to enter an era of stagflation — low growth and high inflation.
Now, most things are demonstrably better. As I noted last summer, levels of warfare around the world have reached a historic low, so that even the loss of one American life in Iraq can land on the front page. The world economy is growing as never before, with millions of people rising out of poverty every year. The American economy continues to surge ahead.
His diagnosis?
But there is something else. It's the looming threat behind the headlines: London terrorist bombers arrested. Terrorist plot to bomb trains in Germany. Iran is developing nuclear weapons, while its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel. Hugo Chavez at the United Nations railing at America. North Korea is developing nuclear weapons to go with the missiles it already has. All these remind us that there are people out there who want to destroy our bounteous and tolerant civilization.
And we know, since September 11, 2001, that they will inflict any damage they can. North Korea is a proven weapons proliferator. Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. It's not hard to imagine them equipping terrorists with nuclear weapons — or with the biological weapons (anthrax, plague) North Korea is said to be developing. Remember the anthrax attacks of September 2001? It turns out we still have no idea where the anthrax came from.
One should always exercise extreme caution when disagreeing with Michael Barone and Mark Steyn, but I trust they will be understanding when I point out a limitation in their diagnoses. In both cases they miss the crucial fact about the Baby Boomer generation: it is always all about them. For the generation that came of age in the heady days of the 1960s, with their personal mythology that their LOVE and commitment stopped an unjust war and brought down a quasi-fascist state, the personal has always been political. When we were young and strong and invincible, we rebelled against the stultifying morality of our parents and achieved heights of libidinal freedom that few could ever have felt before or since. We Imagined there was no war and there was no war. Yet, now, at an age when past generations were slowly slipping into retirement, as the first of the baby boomers (weren't we supposed to be Forever Young?) move into retirement (a retirement we are redefining even as I write this) there is a problem for us. We weren't supposed to become old and infirm, and be replaced by a younger generation. In fact, many of my peers rationalized not having children because of how much stress people put on the environment, and now have no children of their own to hand off the mantle to; yet those right wing reactionaries insisted on having children and now the country is turning redder and redder (and this will continue whether or not the Democrats can stem the tide of historical inevitability one more time with the help of the legacy media). Here is where the pessimism comes from:
When the Narcissistic character ages, his usual sources of self-esteem regulation break down. He no longer has the kinds of sexual stamina and prowess he had in his youth (and no amount of Viagra can hide the fact from himself.) Her beauty is fading and men no longer stare at her on the street, preferring to stare at her daughter (and men are pigs anyway.) Young turks have the energy to compete in the global market and the old graybeards can only get along just so far with their wiles and wisdom before recognizing their time is passing. Approaching retirement, Baby Boomer women begin to have a dawning awareness that they really couldn't have it all; some choices, once made, precluded other possibilities later, and there are no do-overs. This is why the elites are so unhappy. The world has changed and not to their liking, and the world is no longer about us, but about our children.
In 1965, on their first album, The Who sang of My Generation:
People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Now many of us are old and haven't died yet; there is no rush to die before we get any older either, but there is certainly an awareness of our mortality. Those who were unfortunate enough to never realize that life must be lived spiritually as well as materially (vertically as well as horizontally, in Robert's eloquent locution, whose post today, Men Without Chests and Women Without Breasts, is a wonderful disquisition on similar topics done in his inimitable style) have nothing to fall back upon once they have left the bloom of their youth. Once the slope of life turns downward, the Narcissist has only his anger or his despair to sustain him. It makes the entire world seem like a gloomy, unhappy place. If Michael Barone were correct, that the gloom relates primarily to the background threat from WMD in the hands of people who wish us harm, the healthy and energized Baby Boomer would be mobilized to attack the danger and prepare to defend our culture. Yet, because the threat of WMD is somewhat distanced, and statistically unlikely for any individual, while the threat of aging is unmistakably real to each of us, only the close threat is acknowledged by the Narcissistic Boomer. Further, the continued leadership of Bush and his minions, who are so obviously less worldly and less intellectual than those who deserve to be making the world a better place (mostly by wishing it were) is an intolerable insult.
If the Democrats win the mid-term elections, they are likely to cause great grief to our ability to fight against an implacable enemy. Yet, if they lose, again, I fear for their rage and despair. It is when the external world shows its indifference that the Narcissist is most at risk for existential despair.
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