A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America

I’m going to post a copy of the guardian review of this book by Bruce Cannon Gibney.

I have my own views but will reserve them for the moment as I what to see what others think.

The day before I finished reading A Generation of Sociopaths, who should pop up to prove Bruce Cannon Gibney’s point, as if he had been paid to do so, but the notorious Joe Walsh (born 1961), former congressman and Obama denigrator. In answer to talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel’s plea for merciful health insurance, using his newborn son’s heart defect as an example, Walsh tweeted: “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anyone else to pay for somebody else’s health care.” Gibney’s essential point, thus proved, is that boomers are selfish to the core, among other failings, and as a boomer myself, I feel the “you got me” pain that we all ought to feel but so few of us do.

Gibney is about my daughter’s age – born in the late 1970s – and admits that one of his parents is a boomer. He has a wry, amusing style (“As the Boomers became Washington’s most lethal invasive species … ”) and plenty of well parsed statistics to back him up. His essential point is that by refusing to make the most basic (and fairly minimal) sacrifices to manage infrastructure, address climate change and provide decent education and healthcare, the boomers have bequeathed their children a mess of daunting proportions. Through such government programmes as social security and other entitlements, they have run up huge debts that the US government cannot pay except by, eventually, soaking the young. One of his most affecting chapters is about how failing schools feed mostly African American youth into the huge for-profit prison system. Someday, they will get out. There will be no structures in place to employ or take care of them.

The boomers have made sure that they themselves will live long and prosper, but only at the expense of their offspring. That we are skating on thin ice is no solace: “Because the problems Boomers created, from entitlements on, grow not so much in linear as exponential terms, the crisis that feels distant today will, when it comes, seem to have arrived overnight.” As one who has been raging against the American right since the election of Ronald Reagan, as someone with plenty of boomer friends who have done the same, I would like to let myself off the hook, but Gibney points out that while “not all Boomers directly participated, almost all benefited; they are, as the law would have it, jointly and severally liable”.

Gibney’s theories about how we boomers got to be sociopaths (inclined to “deceit, selfishness, imprudence, remorselessness, hostility”) are a little light: no experience of the second world war, unlike the Europeans; coddled childhoods owing to 1950s prosperity; and TV – “a training and reinforcement mechanism for deceit”, not to mention softening viewers up for ever more consumption of goods.

My own theories are based on my experience of the cold war. I think that the constant danger of nuclear annihilation and the drumbeat on TV and radio of the Soviet threat raised our fight-flight instincts so that some of us became overly cautious (me) and others overly aggressive (Dick Cheney). I also think that our parents were not “permissive”, but that they produced too many children in an era when there was nothing much for the children to do but get out of the house and into trouble – few time-consuming tasks around the house or on the farm, plus bored mothers and absent fathers, who felt a sense of despair when they compared themselves with the shiny advertisements of middle-class perfection they saw everywhere, not just on TV. This was what America had to offer – washing machines, high heels, perfect hairdos, Corn Flakes, TV dinners, patriotism and imminent destruction.

Gibney’s book includes more than 100 pages of documents and notes, and he is best at analysing the financial details of the various forms of national and environmental debt that our children and grandchildren will eventually have to pay. He slides around the obvious – to me – solution of just shooting us so that we can’t suck social security dry (I am not in favour of shooting even rats: the gun rights advocate Wayne LaPierre, born the exact day I was due in 1949, though I came six weeks early, is surely the ultimate example of this book’s sociopaths, completely indifferent as he is to the lives lost to the gun rights lobby). Yet Gibney does convince me that those of us born between 1940 and 1965 (his definition) are a drag on the future.

His last chapter concerns what can be done before it is too late. “Remediating the sociopathic Superfund site of Boomer America will be expensive,” he writes. “In money alone, the project will require $8.65 trillion soon and over $1 trillion in additional annual investment.” Then he asserts that it can be done, that the investment will pay off, that “it will be helpful to view reform as a process of manageable fiscal adjustments”. Good luck with that, and I say that with deep sincerity. As I watch my fellow boomers, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump and Mike Pence grin and fistbump at the idea of killing their fellow Americans with their newly passed health bill, I suspect that no one, not even their children, can redeem these people.

The first sociopath I actually knew, in the 1980s, was born in 1961, just like Joe Walsh. In the 80s, he was in finance. When, over dinner, I objected to off-shoring jobs and destroying unions, he said, in a sneering, Ayn Randian way: “They don’t have a right to those jobs!” He ran through his millions and is now in jail for pimping his girlfriend. I doubt he has learned a thing.
Read A Generation of Sociopaths and hope for the best. Gibney is more optimistic than those who predict an imminent third world war, than the scientists who warn of sudden climate shifts and the end of antibiotics, and even – in one sense – than the evangelicals who believe in the Rapture. He also has a better sense of humour.

 

As someone who I guess is in the "millennial" category I agree with some of this. The boomers were the first generation to have everything they needed and almost everything they wanted. The easy suburban life where you don't really worry about anything. The depended on their parents to care for them now they depend on me. Yet at the same time they call me selfish, stupid, and lazy. People my age pay social security to you. We will never see it. There are so many of you and so few of us. We can not sustain you.

Many of these people are also the ones who think socialism is a dirty word and belittled young people for supporting Bernie Sanders. So for me it's frustrating because you benefit for socialism. The goverment just gives you money in old age because you paid tax. It's right in the name what it is. You are in fact receiving goverment sponsored healthcare similar to the NHS in England which is what we Sander's supporter's wanted. We do not want the USSR. But you think that is all "socialism" is.

Also in the time they grew up the tax rate on the wealthy was MUCH higher. That is what enabled the suburban lifestyle. It was certainly not the "trickle down economics" made famous by Regan. Yet there was still wealthy people. The goverment did not tax them so much they were poor or they lost their incentive to be successful as I hear argued now.

You have no idea what the job market is like now. In your day you did not even need a college degree. All you needed was a high school diploma and you could probably buy a house, support kids, and dad is the only one who works. Now you need a a 4 year degree and 2 years experience to work at Starbucks. And Starbucks is never going to pay you a fair wage. Minimum wage in the 1970's adjusts with inflation to $15 an hour now. So you have no idea when you say you can make it with a minnium wage job I did when I was your age so you are lazy. Many of you are in hiring positions in your company and choose not to rectify this.

Overall I don't think we should fight too much on generational lines. We should work togetehr. But we do need to address the elephant in the room and that is the unrealistic world view of some people.

 

I didn't read the whole gibney article, let alone wasting time with a book by that idiot, because, well, I thought it to be moronic. And the author has no credibility to me. He boldly displays both his ignorant and his bias.

Anybody who denigrates an entire generation of millions as sociopaths is an idiot. And knows next to nothing about psychology or what the true definition of a sociopath is.

As far as the boomers making things worse for their progeny, and the next generations, this too is a ludicrous statement. Things are better now in the world than ever. Did you know that the World is actually more peaceful now than ever before in history? Look it up if you doubt me. Google the Pew Research Center's global survey on the matter.

With technology and advances in medicine and health care and nutrition that next generation can rightfully expect to live longer than any before it. Thanks to Baby Boomer science. Anybody who pines for the "golden ages" like saying that they had it better decades ago or centuries ago does not know their history. Minorities have more equal rights now than ever. The Browning of America is a real thing. Women have made unimaginable advances in their rights and opportunities. The 1990's was called the Decade of the Woman. This was a time when the average boomer was in their 40s or so, so they were smack in the middle of government and the work place and thus can take credit for this advancement.

Any millennial or Xer who now blames Boomers for their plight is just trying to lay the blame somewhere else. This is the problem with the millennials. Quick to judge and slow to take responsibility. Quick to want wealth and comfort but often loathe or afraid to work for it.

I saw this picture of five or six teenage to young adult girls at a baseball game, sitting in their seats. All of them had their phones out (of course!) and they were taking selfies. Really? The caption to the pic said.............

"Never before has a Generation documented so themselves so well while accomplishing so little."

LOL

Love it!!

So....what to do? Blame the boomers! It's the easy way out.

And the millennials always want the easy way. Thanks to the Boomers they have been handed a wealth of comfort and prosperity. But every year or so some cheese dick comes along and shows how little he knows about sociology and psychology and even history, and condemns an entire generation just because the big bad world scares the shit out of him and he can't quite cope and doesn't quite have the sack to man up and take care of business.

So they point fingers.

And whine like little girls with skinned knees.

Lame.

 

^your rant about how you shouldn't characterize an entire generation lost all credibility when you went on to characterize an entire generation of millenials. Lol

Anyways. I do see lumping in an entire generation of people as one coherent mass all possessing the same flaws to be on the same level as believing in astrology and believing all Scorpios are exactly the same.


Some baby boomers royally fucked the world and some made it better. Same with Gen x'ers and Millenials, and it will be the same with these Gen Z freaks who are coming of age.

 

Most of the financial problems in the first world come down to three areas

1. Too many fuckin old people

2. Too much reliance on credit

3. Short term gains with Globalization vs long term impact



I dont believe we should be working together, and regardless of my or anyone elses personal opinions.

There may come a tipping point, Especially with healthcare or property prices



I can see the day coming when those areas collapse and we have to make tough choices

 

To clarify:

We should probably a start hitting old people over the head, getting the government to seize their houses so 6 young people can live there instead of one 80 year old.

And invade China so the rest of the world gets all its shit back

 

Most of the problems in this world come down to three things,,,

Fabricated resource scarcity,
A primitive eCONomics system that does nothing but keep people enslaved to it and those in charge of it
and rampant illiteracy in the realms of STEM skills, critical thinking and the fear of saying "I dont know".

https://www.rt.com/news/239809-chinese-skyscraper-19-days/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141013-food-waste-national-security-environment-science-ngfood/

http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/landfill.html


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ePrKKRS0o


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oChSWZP3_uA

 

To quote the late Sir Boyle Roche, pirated by the late economist Robert Heilbroner, pirated by Groucho Marx, "what has posterity ever done for me?" For the pros and cons of this perspective, see
http://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/19/archives/what-has-posterity-ever-done-for-me.html
https://senseininterpretations.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/the-terrible-question-of-posterity-a-philosophical-inquiry/

 

My brother thinks all people over 80 should be sent to some type of retirement island out in the Pacific. Their assetts seized and sold off. And they just provided with enough goods and services on the island to get by. Since, people over that age rarely contribute anything to society. they've had their day, now bugger off and give the other younger and productive folks their time. The economic burden of the elderly on society is also great. And it far outweighs percentage wise their demographic proportion in the country. In other words, though, say, maybe only 5% of our populace is over 80, they take up probably six times that in care costs.

At first I thought my brothers idea to be absurdly callous.

Nowadays, I must confess I think it is not without at least a modicum of merit. Being a motorcycle rider and almost getting killed several times by old geezers who seemed to be trying to murder me has no doubt affected my change of heart in this matter. LOL

 

Wonder what he'll think when he turns 80?

 

^ hell, i'd like to retire to an island in the pacific right now...

 

And then let's get rid of our kids, cuz they're just a bunch of moochers anyway. And better hope we don't get old or disabled ourselves, cuz it'll suck. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse ! (Or maybe not so beautiful, depending on our lifestyle.) But for starters, let's get rid of all the sociopaths, because they're selfish and selfishness is contagious, and if everybody gets selfish society will fall apart and it would be Road Warriors and Mad Max and nobody would be there to give us sex, drugs, rockn' roll, and welfare checks. That includes getting rid of all the jerks who think it's a good idea to push their parents and grandparents aside now that they've outlived their usefulnss in providing free room and board in their basements. And at the top of the list let's put the internet trolls who propose offing their elders in forums like this, cuz they're ungrateful shits.

 

I think Okiefreak's post there needs a Love button.

But if anything, we should be getting rid of the eCONomy and the Systemic inefficiencies that lead to all the aforementioned forms of fabricated scarcity which keep eCONomists rolling in Cash as Scarcity breeds profit...

http://greenwave.org/3d-ocean-farming/

http://www.aidic.it/cet/14/37/021.pdf

 

I dont see it that way

I was half joking at first, but am kind of serious, the world should be there for the young

We should look after the old because they did whatever....not when it starts to impact young peoples chances of ever getting the basics, a mortage is near impossible in most of our big cities, the cost of healthcare is ridiculous in countries where its free market, a massive burden on government budgets when its universal along with welfare. Along with increases in automation its harder to get work, harder to keep long term full time employment than when the baby boomers were young


So yes, I believe at 46 now we should be taking steps, and by the time I get to 80 I do not expect the rules to be the same at all anyway, tax concessions on superannuation for the elderly will be the first to go, along with even voting rights.


So why support some of the rights baby boomers have now at the cost of young peoples chances, when I know damn well I'm not going to have those same rights in 30 years?

 

https://www.inverse.com/article/30868-may-1-universal-basic-income-day

 

Whether you want to call it Basic income or Universal welfare, we have had that in a sense for thousands of years, since the first governments. No one pays directly for the bitumen their street was made out of, the street lighting, the highways around us, we are still "consumers" of that, plus a whole lot of stuff the government does that an individual may never use. Paying a basic income would just be an extension of that


Its still not going to fix certain problems though. Its not going to get people to move en masse to rural areas where housing and other costs of living may be cheaper, they are still for the most part going to want to congregate in the big cities because its not as boring. Tradesmen will still over charge when there is high demand, and Transport will be more expensive per kilo of whatever the further one is away from an urban centre,

It will be interesting to see what happens in Finland, if it changes anything, although there scheme is only for the unemployed, You'd need to do it for every citizen to see if its really going to change anything - and you'd only be able to do that by, initially at least, raising the taxes of everyone that does work ( for the majority it would just mean getting a payment a month of roughly the same amount of extra tax they would be paying)



I'm skeptical about all these doomsayers opinions on how much automation is going to affect the labour force. Just 5 years ago, when 3D printing energed, everyone was on about how it would revolutionize the construction industry, we;d all be printed plastic houses and cheaply putting them together like lego......didnt happen because when you buy a house the actual value of the bricks and mortar that was put in place 40 years ago is next to worthless, its the land value and its potential growth in the future, thats what you are really paying for.

And driverless cars, you wont see them in 5 years, there are some basic flaws in probability and logic that need to be overcome first that may never happen.

We have had driverless trains of varying degrees for 50 years, and yet most trains around the world arent driverless. The main advantage of even 4th level automation is precision/ on time running, they dont work out cheaper as you have all these other systems to maintain that you pay a more specialized work force to monitor - compared to the old version of paying a driver and guard, and most of these trains still have a guard on board, just in case something goes wrong


The IT systems for British airways went down yesterday, because they outsourced it all to India, one 48 hr period will probably end up costing them whatever they would have saved in a 2 year peroid outsourcing that IT


Uber is set to collapse, the CEO himself has said basically if we dont get self driving cars we are fucked, Because in the end, Uber is just a middle man, why does any city need a foreign company running their hire car services for them. The next step will be all those taxi companies themselves setting up their own version of Uber.) or that cities own government do it

And drones, even if someone invents a superdooper material that doesnt heat up or freeze at a million revs per minute for the propellers, you are still limited to the density of the air and lift generated, as well as turbulence and just simply the goddam weather.

Many like to get excited about technology and touch themselves over what they think they want for the future....or see the worst in it so they can get attention for a blog. But most of its bullshit. 20 years from now, some thing will do to Facebook like Facebook did to Myspace, there will still be taxis, most cars still wont be frickin hybrids or self driving, iphones will still be overpriced shit catering to the dumb half of the population.....and there will be another 5000 job descriptions that dont exist today that involve watcjing over some dumb automated system that doesnt really make anything better

 

^ maybe people like you and your brand of nazi-ism should be the first to go....and stay out of Finland. Finland does not need hoardes of people flocking there to ruin it there, also, and kill their reindeer. if you like something they do...tell your own country to do the same.

 

The obviously sensationalist title really turns me off before reading. As others have commented, it's absurd to categorize an entire generation as 'sociopaths'. And actually I'm not sure what is meant by 'betrayed America'. Correct me please if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall it was boomers who elected Reagan, and a large number obviously voted for the present incumbent.

Journalistic twaddle IMO.