Posted conversation re: the passing of Teddy Kennedy

I posted this:

Worry not, progressives, soon enough we boomers will shuffle off this mortal coil and you will no longer have to struggle against our mythologizing, our navel gazing and self-involved natures, our love affair with the troublesome, imperfect Kennedy clan.

But we who grew up under the influence of those shining smiles, towering intellects, deep disappointments, and flawed characters lived through a time of dreams and nightmares that molded us, informed our vision, and made possible the left as we knew it...warts and all.
Allow us our last moment of ridiculous belief as we wax nostalgic for a world we tried to create, our last kumbyah.

Yep, y'all are right. The Kennedy's were not the pillars of progressive thought we have always held them up to be. Obama is not the torch bearer we elected him to be, and we knew it ahead of time, and voted for him anyway, in no small measure because of our bloated respect for them.
However, they were who we had, and they made us believe we could do what we thought no one else could do.

We may have been wrong, but it was for what seemed to be all the right reasons.
Your time will come to make your own mistakes.
The work, the cause, the hope, the dream.
Take them and run with them. Good luck to you all. But remember to thank a Kennedy and a baby-boomer along the way.

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."


Got this in reply:

Two things:

1. You left out the bit where you were the first generation to be put in the thrall of the television. The effects of that device go very far in explaining why your generation failed to significantly or lastingly change this country for the better despite the true horrors of the War and the Cold War and your tremendous -and historically unique- demographic advantage. Pretty damned sad and pathetic, when you think about it.

2. "Your time will come to make your own mistakes."
But that's just the problem! Our time HAS come, but you frigging people won't get out of the damned way! I'm 30 years old with a child on the way, I'm ALREADY too old and too weighed down with responsibilities to have participated in your Youth Movement -and I haven't even had the chance to have one of my own! Popular Culture -and therefore politics and economics- has been dominated by your generation for my entire life, and now that you are aging and nearing death, the only thing that matters is "health care reform". Just like "Social Security reform" was the only thing that mattered as the bulk of your generation hit retirement. THERE ARE TWO IMPERIALIST WARS STILL BEING WAGED by the U.S. Government, and all we can talk about is a "healthcare reform" bill that was a stillborn monstrosity from the moment the Insurance Corporations touched it!

The sick thing is this that really isn't even a reflection of the relative sizes of our respective generations, since mine is the larger one. (Please, nobody argue with this assertion, I know we've been trained to not see it, but the Boomers had more than two children on average, which makes their children's generation larger than them) It's just that mine is more chronologically spread out, and therefore impossible to approach as a single "target market" by the Corporatist Marketer's and Advertisers.

TV raised you.
TV gave you your power.
TV corrupted you.
TV turned you into Consumers.
And now, TV eulogizes one of your "lights", as if he was a kind of lesser angel sent from heaven.
And you all eat it up with a spoon.
Ugh.

Sorry to be so mean, but I am just so friggin' tired of all this bullshit.
-matti.


To which I replied:

Dig, I know we had our flaws.

But it was not our job to get outa your way. Any more than those who came before us gracefully stepped aside to let us do our thing.

We gave it the "best minds of our generation" Our leaders were murdered before our eyes and in the light of day like dogs in the street. Our movements were co-opted and turned into commodities for mass consumption. We tried, we had some success. We had spectacular failures. We were part of something that looked to us like Dorothy stepping out of her black and white nightmare world into a technicolor world of possibility.

Yes. We had all the advantages. All the tools at our disposal.
But, we were busy growing the opposable thumbs required to use those tools.

You said: "I'm 30 years old with a child on the way, I'm ALREADY too old and too weighed down with responsibilities to have participated in your Youth Movement -and I haven't even had the chance to have one of my own!"

The fact that you are 30 and only now having children is thanks largely to the changes wrought by those who came before you. So, what the heck were you doing up till now? You want YOUR youth movement? Why aren't you DOING IT? Somebody strap you down and force you to settle in and go for the okie doke? NO.

I thought this "life is over at 30" bullshit was OUR thing.

Each generation had its load of crap from the previous gen handed to them. Each generation has its share of advantages, and sadly, I know the load of horrors we left you. But it wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't just because we won't get to steppin' off the path to let you pass. It is the job of each generation to shout to those who went before: "See ya!" as they go running, skipping, tumbling, charging ahead.

Youngun, I know it isn't easy. It is HARD. I do not envy you. Our mistakes stare us in the face every day. Not all of us gave up the dream. Not everyone sold out to the Man. Not all of us.
30? Hey, trust me, there is PLENTY of work to be done by able bodied adults.Maybe it was because it was a Youth Movement without the wisdom of some sort of experience that we failed so spectacularly.

Best of luck to you all.

November 5th, 2008 11:51 pm

(written upon the occasion of the election of Barak Obama for President)

There are moments when you see the world shift on it's axis. When the events around you clearly and unequivocally divide yesterday from today.November 22, 1963 was one such moment. This is it's polar opposite.

No, the political reality isn't going to look terribly different...not tomorrow and maybe not even in the next four years...but something substantial is DIFFERENT. A step we had no idea how to take, much less if we were willing to take has been shakily made, and it is meaning- filled.
It is up to all of us to make that meaning something with which we can live.

I was born into a world where black men were still, regularly, being lynched from trees with their severed genitals in their mouths and set aflame for looking like our new, shiny President-elect. It was a world barely recognizable today, even in parts of the country where that reality is hardly passed, where the means may have changed, but the result is not much different. Even the most cynical Black person knows that everything after this, is new and amazing and laden with a hope many of us dared not even dream.

It doesn't put more money in the bank, it doesn't fill our poorly educated minds with the wisdom of the ages, it doesn't change our fear-filled hearts or give us imagination...but it is one baby step beyond the bounds we have always lived with...and once that baby step is taken...there is no returning to the helplessness of uselessly flailing limbs...there may be bruises and bumps, broken dishes and fingers testing those funny little plates in the walls that shock small, wet, questing digits...but no going back to passively watching the dolphin mobile hanging over our crib.

I have always been glad I was born in this country...no matter what, I knew the privilege it confers. But today, I am proud to be part of this f****d up, mixed up, damnedable, blessed country.

THANK YOU AMERICA! (now, let's get to work!!)