Consumerism isn’t going anywhere. And marketing will never stop working.
But your anecdote proves the point. You understandably feel shitty about what you were a part of. That is normal person thinking that results in a median shitty nation with median shitty people.
Boomers were taught that well actually you did a good thing, and Kim deserved every penny she got. Why? Because that is capitalism… and why is capitalism good? Well it has to be good because it’s the opposite of communism, which is the worst thing ever.
So participating in that marketing campaign was your patriotic duty and you should feel great about it.
And after the fall of the USSR America was even more on top of the world with its unchallenged military, and they were taught what? I don’t imagine they weren’t still being taught to be greedy capitalist pigs.
Perhaps they were taught day and night that all they had to do to continue that was be greedy capitalist pigs to live the American Dream and become millionaires.
Um, they were taught that they defeated the USSR because of the virtues of being a greedy capitalist pig. I remember my dad telling me that Reagan won the Cold War by bankrupting the USSR with his Space Wars, something a whimpy communist country could not afford. This is a widely believed myth in America.
To be fair, I spend a shit ton on nice meals. When I get sent to the guillotine by the proletariat during the Revolution, my penchant for expensive meals will definitely be among the main exhibits that sent me there.
You may qualify for special dispensation if your photography concentrates on the glorious revolution in progress instead of the degenerate bourgeois art that will only see you sent to the gulag.
I have a hard time believing your parents were objectively terrible. You seemed to have turned into a successful, decent human being. How bad could they have been?
He actually doesn’t. But he always seem to describe himself that way. Maybe “introverted” would be better. But again, that’s not the impression I’d get except for the fact that he seems to describe himself that way.
Scroll, read, scroll, read, scroll read… Ah, fuck it. Grunch.
The point of saying that Boomers suck is that the Boomer mentality, which could be summarized as “the American Dream is alive and well”, needs to be defeated. Essentially they have a total blindness to privilege. Boomers who get mad about generational warfare (edit: just noticed I had welfare there which made no sense) are the ones who don’t get this, just like the white people who don’t get the “being white is privilege” thing. Also just like that, it’s possible to take it too far. The point of anti-Boomer warfare is not that all Boomers are bad, it’s that the zeitgeist of the generation is still running the show and doing enormous damage.
Ok, so let’s strike terrible business people off the list and focus on what the next wave of (currently) 40 to 55 year olds will be like when they start writing legislation, but I don’t believe any sane person would have great expectations.
The leading lights of future Dems appear to be who? A conservative ex-cop, an ideas-free ex-Mayor and fucking Beto, an overgrown kid on his skateboard?
Mine might have been worse than his. Nature beats nurture more than you would think. Also when people are funny it’s wise to assume that life hasn’t been super easy for that person. Pain + Time = Humor is a formula that holds up surprisingly well.
Yeah Aaronovitch has nailed it. Even if the basic premise is good, the dates are wrong anyway.
Many people with the shared experience of not being conscripted but growing up in post WW2 boom (America) and austerity (Europe) and benefitting from the welfare state, jobs for life, final salary pensions and cheap housing were born before 1945, eg my father.
And all that state backing helped in no small way to produce a lot of the best music the West has heard.
