Rooted Cosmopolitans: New decade, new post

Friday, January 1, 2010

New decade, new post

So, somehow since this blog was last updated the decade managed to end. This is the point where I'm supposed to say how terrible it was, but despite the obvious issues we all had to deal with, I can't complain about the past ten years personally. Indeed, what with meeting the wife, fathering a small but energetic human child, getting what might become a longterm job, and buying a house, it was a fairly productive decade.

No, if there is something that needs to be complained about, it is not my own life but rather those who have managed to make so many others miserable for the past ten years, draining their investments (see point #2), driving them out of their homes, and creating all sorts of other problems. For once, I'm actually not talking about Republicans, who are currently out of power and seemingly intent on staying that way. No, as a new decade begins, I want to start it off, and restart this blog, by complaining about Baby Boomers, particularly the early cohort born between 1946 and 1955 (specific individuals, of course, are exempt, this is a generational thing I'm talking about). In the 70's, they gave us disco. In the 80's, greed was good. In the 90's, they didn't give us the internet boom, as the most useful development of my lifetime was the work of the much maligned Gen X. In the aughts, they gave us W. In '08, we gave them Obama. Is there really any debate on which side stuck it to whom?

Seriously, for all the attention paid to "Gen X slackers" a while back, you'll find very few as the CEOs of the banks that managed to crash the world economy, and Ben Bernanke is clearly a boomer. We do slack in our opposition to gay marriage, admittedly, but that hardly counts against us. The boomers can have their teabags, as far as I'm concerned, so long as we get to count Ta-Nehisi Coates in our column. Seriously, if you take the time to read this, you should take the time to read him.

And yet, with all that said about past generations, I'm a little concerned where the world is going to end up once we're in charge, since the kids these days, to put on my fogie hat, like a LOT of handholding and expect quite a bit of instant gratification I'm not really sure we'll be able to provide. At some point, they are not going to settle for being cast into reality TV shows and start to want results, like an end to global warming, and I hope we are up to the task...

In our next installment, I'll perform something of a feat for myself and describe what is was like to argue in favor of health care reform from the right side of the argument. Until, then, I'll leave you with this: