Storming Our Paychecks: The greatest generation's next mission - Brief Article

National Review, Oct 23, 2000 by Rob Long

They are, I know, the greatest generation. They stormed the beaches at Normandy, they smashed Hitler's Fortress Europe, they Rosie-the-Riveted a thousand warships, they saved the world.

And then, back home after years of blood and dirt and sacrifice, they built bedroom cities and paved over orange groves, headed to work in dress khakis and grey flannel, built skyscrapers and atom-smashers, and eventually sent a man to the moon.

But today, they mostly drive too slow, right blinker blinking, a sliver of mottled skull flesh peeking over the driver's side headrest like a yellow crescent moon, on their way to an early-bird dinner, after a long day calling up talk-radio stations to complain about the cost of prescription drugs. They sit in the lobbies of cut-rate stockbrokers, watching the ticker tick up their mountains of cash-they remain the richest segment of the population, hands-down-flipping through cruise-ship catalogs and packaged-tour brochures.

They are remarkably easy to hoodwink, these destroyers of Fascism. When they get a letter from Ed McMahon, they actually think they might "already have won." When a callow voice oozes confidence over the phone, they cash in some long bonds and invest it all in Accutech International, or whatever rent-an-office outfit the boiler-room huckster is pushing. They purchase every lame product they see, from Craftmatic Adjustable Beds to Itty Bitty Booklights. Politicians can scare a million of them before breakfast, terrify the rest before lunch, and claim to "save Medicare" around dinner time, which is about 4 p.m.

How did this generation-forged in war, tempered by mortar fire, flinty and rock-tough in their fatigues and counterman's hats-get so whiny? How do you get from "Next stop, Tokyo!" to "Who's going to pay for my Percocet?" How do you get from "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" to "I've fallen and I can't get up?"

A strong, silent population is only one aspect of the legacy of wartime. Another, which emerges over the years, once the combat dreams stop and the shrapnel scars fade, is a comfortable faith in government bureaucracy. It was, after all, the federal government that smashed the Axis devils; it was the federal government that paid the GI Bill; it was the federal government that built the highways and created something called the "aerospace industry." Why not prescription drugs? Why not elder day care? Why not sue the Publishers Clearing House for deceptive practices, as the State of Florida (Florida! Of course!) recently did. Why not sue McDonald's for serving hot coffee that's too hot? Why pay taxes on Social Security benefits? Why means-test any federal handout?

Spend an hour watching a C-SPAN call-in show. The telephone lines are allotted, irrelevantly, to "liberals" and "conservatives." The true fault line of American politics isn't left-right, it's young-old. It doesn't matter which blower the clenched, angry old voice is droning out of-it's demanding free stuff, subsidized this, and government-provided that. Young liberals and young conservatives may disagree about the fringe issues, but they can all decipher a pay stub. They all know what FICA stands for. It's a transfer payment to Nana, sliced out of the paycheck before it's printed, so she can take that whale-watching cruise to Alaska. Young people, of course, aren't watching C-SPAN during the day. They're working. And Election Day, conveniently enough, is a Tuesday, which, as everyone knows, is the busiest workday of the week.

Years ago, during one of PBS's most irritating pledge drives, the featured program was hosted by John Bradshaw, a round-shouldered therapist with the devil's facial hair. In a series of riveting lectures, he convinced his audience that the key to their individual troubles-I'm too fat; I'm too thin; I'm always sad; I'm too happy; I can't love anyone; I can't not love everyone-could be found in some repressed childhood experience. The way to healing, he claimed, was to root around in the memory until a suitable villain appeared (Mom, Dad) and dine off that for a while. His audience was predominantly people in their late 40s/early 50s. And as the camera panned across their anxious, weeping faces, you could see that Bradshaw had figured out that the most consistent aspect of the baby-boomer psyche, from Woodstock to Lewinsky, was a willingness-no, an enthusiasm-for blaming it all on Mom and Dad.

Here were sovereign American citizens in the prime of their lives, faces glazed with tears and snot, blubbering, blaming, bear-hugging stuffed animals, trying to get in touch with something called their "inner child," and an appalling thought shivered through me: What's it going to be like when these people get old? Say this for the "Greatest Generation": They don't cotton to the psychobabble. You don't hear a lot of "my mommy never hugged me" and "my father abused me emotionally" and "I'm really trying to get me to take care of me" around the ice sculpture on the Princess Cruise ship. But when the boomers get old, we are all in deep trouble. It will be sanctimonious, aggrieved self-pity-24/7.