Subject: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 03 Jun 2001 23:30:22 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if Hi all. Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Boomers as those born between 1943 and 1960; this is of course too reductive, since it would eliminate those Boomers-in-spirit such as Jane Fonda, Jerry Garcia, and Charles Manson; and it would include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. Prominent Boomers include Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Bill Gates. A certain sort of unctuous consequence-free self-importance has been the hallmark of the Boomers since Doctor Spock put out his baby manual in 1946. It's no coincidence that the rise of 'no-content politics' has occured on the Boomers' watch; it's their invention. Lee Atwater, James Carville, Karl Rove: Boomers all. "A show about nothing." Jerry Seinfeld was born in 1954. "The zipless f*ck." Erica Jong was born in 1942. The diet cola. First sold in 1959. David Brin. Born in 1950, in southern California yet. Yet. As bad as the Boomers have been, they could have been worse. Hippies, campus radicals and their fellow travellers only numbered ten to fifteen percent of their generation in the US; and it seems likely that their opposites, the William Calleys and those responsible for keeping "The Ballad of the Green Berets" on top of the charts, were not greater. (Nixon's Silent Majority was an appeal to the previous generation.) There probably has always been a majority of good Boomers, poor marginalized figures of quiet decency. (Though someone bought all those disco albums.) So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. One idea is keeping the Boomer icons alive for longer. In conjunction with the stereotypical Boomer self-indulgent streak, many Boomers have had spectacular crashes. Pick one sick one. Hell, pick *many*. Let the *minor* figures OD on the toilet. Elvis in the Travelling Wilburys, woo-hoo! Another idea would be to make the US's postwar economic boom even larger, deepening that spoilage factor. A third idea might be to have an alt-Spock become popular: refined sugar for breakfast, it's best not to interfere with a child's moral development, give them more money and everything will turn out all right, et cetera. The movie Kids comes to mind: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113540 Fourth: peer pressure. For a generation supposedly so very non-conformist, it certainly was prey for any fad and fancy that came along; and it did so in large groups. It should be possible to enhance this, say by having Madison Avenue cater to 'youth culture' even earlier, and with more money. Any thoughts? Coyu -- member of the reactive generation. Damn hippies. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 18:01:30 GMT From: terrence@unlikeminerva.com (terrence marks) Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 On 03 Jun 2001 23:30:22 GMT, in soc.history.what-if you wrote: >Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would >have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by >America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. > >William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Boomers as those >born between 1943 and 1960; this is of course too reductive, >since it would eliminate those Boomers-in-spirit such as Jane >Fonda, Jerry Garcia, and Charles Manson; and it would >include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. >So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission >Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad >qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. "Entertainment: the inevitable by-product of our civilization" or "The trouble with your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want" Give Generation IX* more disposable fluff entertainment, when they're growing up, and it might make things a bit worse (or at least make the symptoms a bit more noticeable). Proper television cartoons (and one cannot be a truly self-indulgent child without spending one's Saturday mornings watching bad cartoons) would help. Jay Ward and Alex Anderson produced Crusader Rabbit in 1948, but by 1952, after disputes with NBC and a failed attempt to buy the series back, the series was over. Hanna and Barbera didn't start their own series, Ruff & Reddy, until 1957, far too late for it to thoroughly corrupt your average IX'er. During the 1920s, Ub Iwerks was Disney's lead animator and one of Walt's closest friends. He was the studio's fastest and one of it's best animators. He was partially responsible for the creation of Mickey Mouse. He left in 1930 when Pat Powers, distributor who was cheating Disney out of $150,000, promised him his own studio. Iwerks' Celebrity Productions lasted six years before running out of money, producing such 64 cartoons about Freddie the Frog, Willie Whopper, and other less well-remembered characters. Ub spent the next few years directing cartoons for Warner Bros. and Columbia. Now, let's say that in 1940, instead of going back to Disney like in OTL, somebody else offers him a chance to produce a 30-minute weekly cartoon show for television, and *Ub accepts. It was an emerging new medium at the time, and as long as Iwerks could stay within budget, he'd probably have a fair amount of creative freedom. None of his earlier characters really took off (besides Mickey), so he'd probably create a new one. Let's call him, say, Morton the Rabbit. I don't doubt that *Iwerks could create a number of tricks, devices, and techniques to increase the amount of animation that one man can do. What does this mean for cartooning? Instead of having a background in late 1930s/early 1940s animation like Alexander, Hanna, and Barbera, *Iwerks (and television's) style is derived from late 1920s. Writing, characterization, and plot all grew by huge leaps in that time period. Those elements weren't Iwerks' strong points to begin with. You can expect the Morton Rabbit cartoons to involve cardboard characters, plots that exist to move the characters between unrelated gags, and spontaneous songs and dances. There aren't any sitcoms around for him to rip off, nor is the cat-and-mouse chase a plot staple. Of course, just having *Iwerks cartoons isn't that bad. For full-on badness, you'd need a Saturday morning full of poorly-written, nonsensical, repetitive 'toons. *Iwerks' competition will be less technically skilled and more willing to cut corners. If *Iwerks doesn't develop the one-gag character, one of them will. Expect somebody to discover limited animation within three years and the toy franchise within ten. Also expect them to run out of ideas within five (Morton Rabbit's Space Ark, anyone? Morton Rabbit's Laff-A-Lympics?) This gives even the oldest Boomers a nice, bland, animated mush to rot their minds on. Even if it doesn't make them worse people (and I do believe that "Inch High Private Eye" and "Captain Caveman" can make you a worse person), it's a nice symbol of cultural degradation. Hmm...if H-B's catalog is any indication, we'll be seeing animated versions of TV shows ten years earlier as well. Instead of "Jeannie & Babu" or "Partridge Family: 2200 AD", we'll have "I Married Joan from Space" or a version of "Car 54, Where Are you?" with a cute monkey sidekick. Also, *Iwerks won't be available to do special effects for The Reluctant Dragon, Cinderella, Lady & The Tramp, or The Birds (which he won an Oscar for). How's that? *: IIRC, it's "Generation X" because it's the tenth one after the (American) Revolutionary War. Not just because the letter 'X' sounds cool, or because it's members have an affinity with Billy Idol's first group. That makes the one before it Generation IX and the one after it Generation XI (not Generation Y). I realize that I am probably alone in addressing the generations as such. Terrence Marks Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://www.unlikeminerva.com HCF (another comic strip) http://www.mpog.com/hcf Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 15:57:36 -0400 From: Old Toby Organization: The University of Michigan Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 terrence marks wrote: > > *: IIRC, it's "Generation X" because it's the tenth one after the > (American) Revolutionary War. Not just because the letter 'X' sounds > cool, or because it's members have an affinity with Billy Idol's first > group. That makes the one before it Generation IX and the one after > it Generation XI (not Generation Y). I realize that I am probably > alone in addressing the generations as such. You're getting your names mixed up. Bill Strauss and Neil Howe proposed the name "13th Generation" for Generation X, as (by their reckoning) it was the 13th to have lived in the United States (except for a few doddering geezers born in the 17th century, who would make it 14), although by their reckoning, Gen X _would_ be the nineth or tenth generation after the war (the Compromise Generation was born 1767-1791, stradling the war period, nine generations later, you get Gen X). Eventually, even Strauss and Howe gave up on propogating the term, and now use "Generation X", although there's still a fairly popular comicbook called "Gen 13" (It was an Image book (now part of DC's Wildstorm imprint), and Marvel already had a book called "Generation X", ironically featuring post Gen X stars (Millenials in Strauss and Howe's terminology). The term "Generation X" was popularized by Douglas Coupland's novel "Generation X", he coined it to represent his generation's (then) unknown character, as well as it's alienation and cryptic nature. Old Toby Least Known Dog on the Net Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 08 Jun 2001 20:45:46 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Old Toby wrote: >The term "Generation X" was popularized by Douglas Coupland's novel >"Generation X", he coined it to represent his generation's (then) unknown >character, as well as it's alienation and cryptic nature. First there was some punk band. (Hi Steve!) Then there was Paul Fussell, who used it to describe post-academic boho types. *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 11 Jun 2001 07:06:36 -0700 From: josepheros@hotmail.com (Joseph Eros) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote in message news:<20010608164546.25277.00003081@ng-ck1.aol.com>... > Old Toby wrote: > >> The term "Generation X" was popularized by Douglas Coupland's novel >> "Generation X", he coined it to represent his generation's (then) unknown >> character, as well as it's alienation and cryptic nature. > > First there was some punk band. (Hi Steve!) > > Then there was Paul Fussell, who used it to describe post-academic > boho types. If this refers to the book _Class_, Fussell does not, as I recall, use the term "Generation X". He does talk about a "category X" or some such, but it's not restricted by age. I did find one web source that claims Coupland himself has named Fussell as his source, but Coupland's original words were unavailable due to a broken link. > *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. I'm not a fan either. However, in the original novel (_Generation X_, that is), weren't the X'ers about 10 years older (born within a few years of 1965 or so) than what "Generation X" came to mean in common usage? I'm not going to reread Coupland to find out, but it is my recollection. --- Joseph Eros "Scientists want to know the dirt on Eros" --Boston Globe Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 11 Jun 2001 12:47:52 -0500 From: "James Bodi" Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 90,000+ UNCENSORED Newsgroups. Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 josepheros@hotmail.com (Joseph Eros) wrote: >coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote in message news:<20010608164546.25277.00003081@ng-ck1.aol.com>... ----------deletia-------------------> >> *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. > >I'm not a fan either. However, in the original novel (_Generation X_, that >is), weren't the X'ers about 10 years older (born within a few years of 1965 >or so) than what "Generation X" came to mean in common usage? I'm not going >to reread Coupland to find out, but it is my recollection. ---Coupland is an annoying twerp. And Generation X can hardly be said to have a meaning anymore. Boomers use it to mean 'anyone who comes after us' down to their own children. Paul Foote in 'Boom Bust and Echo' had Generation X as the last part of the baby boom, which he had in Canada lasting until 1966, making Coupland, yep, a boomer. The idea that people born up to 25 years appart would have much in common is pretty stupid anyway. ObWI: suppose the chattering classes broke social demographics into 'cohorts' of four to six years instead. (I chose the lenght because that is the range of age of other youth one usually comes into contact with as siblings, highschool students or college students). Frex, I could see differences in clothing, hairstyle, preferred music etc. between my friends and those of my four-years younger brother; four years after that the same trends were even more pronounced. > >--- >Joseph Eros >"Scientists want to know the dirt on Eros" --Boston Globe -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =----- Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 15:45:42 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 James_Bodi@127.0.0.1 (James Bodi) wrote >The idea that people born up to >25 years appart would have much >in common is pretty stupid >anyway. Agreed, as I said before, Baby Boom was originally applied to those children born in the 6, or so, years immediately after WWII. The vast majority of those kids had at least one parent who served in the US military during WWII. For reasons that are lost, the term Baby Boomer was expanded to include anyone born in the 20 - 25 years after WWII. Some of those people are in fact children of the people that were the babies of the Baby Boom. By those definitions one of my kids [born 1968] is a Boomer, or maybe a Gen X, while the other two are definitely Gen X. Maybe that makes sense to somebody. In any rate, nobody is up in arms about people born in 1966. It is that initial 1946 - 1952 population spike that has rippled through American society causing changes ever since, and will continue to have a major impact on society for the next 25, or so, years. Wonder what it will be like 25 - 30 years from now when the kids ragging on us, start getting ragged upon by their offspring. Say what you like about the real Boomers, we never attacked our parents on the INTERNET while we were in high school or college :-) Mind Like A Steel Trap, Rusted Shut And Overgrown With Weeds Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 12 Jun 2001 05:12:29 -0700 From: res05k58@gte.net (David Walker) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) wrote in message news:<7259-3B252DF6-28@storefull-248.iap.bryant.webtv.net>... > James_Bodi@127.0.0.1 (James Bodi) > > wrote > > > > >The idea that people born up to > >25 years appart would have much > >in common is pretty stupid > >anyway. > > Agreed, as I said before, Baby Boom was originally applied to those > children born in the 6, or so, years immediately after WWII. > > The vast majority of those kids had at least one parent who served in > the US military during WWII. > > For reasons that are lost, the term Baby Boomer was expanded to include > anyone born in the 20 - 25 years after WWII. > > Some of those people are in fact children of the people that were the > babies of the Baby Boom. > > By those definitions one of my kids [born 1968] is a Boomer, or maybe a > Gen X, while the other two are definitely Gen X. > > Maybe that makes sense to somebody. > 1968 is Definately Generation X, which is mostly 1965-1979 or so, while the Boomers (When they are nearing retirement 'Baby' just shouldn't apply anymore!) are 1946-1964, Generation Y is 1980-1995 or 96, and Generation Z is 97-today. Dunno what they'll call the NEXT generation (circa 2010's kids), We're out of letters. Boomers were the TV Generation, half-raised by TV shows like I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, and the like (to the point that some people think those TV shows were what the 50s were REALLY like -- though we should know better). Generation X is MUCH smaller than their Boomer parents' numbers (thus the problems Social Security faces), and straddles the TV and Computer generations. Most of the Internet Boom was formed by Gen-Xs who embraced computer technology in their teens. They were the first kids to have video games. Generation Y is the Computer Generation: they've grown up using computers since toddlerhood and are generally better and more at ease with them that either their late-boomer parents or most Gen-Xers. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 18:45:20 -0500 From: "Doug Hoff" Organization: SBC Internet Services Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 "Joseph Eros" wrote in message news:ba38f237.0106110606.2284c772@posting.google.com... > > If this refers to the book _Class_, Fussell does not, as I recall, use the > term "Generation X". He does talk about a "category X" or some such, but > it's not restricted by age. IIRC, it was the 'X Class' -- __________ Doug www.althist.com Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 16:52:26 -0400 From: Old Toby Organization: The University of Michigan Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Coyu wrote: > > Old Toby wrote: > > >The term "Generation X" was popularized by Douglas Coupland's novel > >"Generation X", he coined it to represent his generation's (then) unknown > >character, as well as it's alienation and cryptic nature. > > First there was some punk band. (Hi Steve!) > > Then there was Paul Fussell, who used it to describe post-academic > boho types. > > *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. There may have been previous uses of the phrase "Generation X", but was it used to refer to what is essentially it's modern meaning (the post-Boomer generation)? I credit Coupland because he's the first person I've heard of who put the words and meaning together. Old Toby Least Known Dog on the Net Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 18:43:42 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Coyu wrote: > *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. There's good stuff in the Coupland ouevre. Unfortunately you have to go digging for it, and some of the stuff you have to dig through may cause nausea, dizziness, skin rashes, and minor neurological damage. He's got a bad case of overwriting ("Microserfs" the very-good-to-excellent novella/faux biography => _Microserfs_ the very regrettable novel) and an even worse case of "Mama, look how HIP and CLEVER". Still, I can think of at least four Coupland taglines that have stayed with me for quite a few years now. But to return to the question at hand... maybe we're going about this wrong. It's hard to make the Boomers' bad qualities worse; pop music, frex, can only get so bad. Maybe, instead, we should look at the Boomers' _good_ qualities, such as they are, and try to flatten them. Frex... umm, okay give me a sec... no, no, I can do this... Okay. Here's one. Modern architecture bottomed out between 1960 and 1980; there's barely a single large building (and not one large _public_ building) from that period that isn't butt-ugly. The still-quite-modest revival of postmodern architecture began in the early '80s, about the time the first wave of Boomer architects began building things big enough to notice. Boomer aesthetics by and large aren't real impressive, but give them this: they were able to figure out that Le Corbusier was full of crap. Imagine a world where the modernist and brutalist trends in architecture had never reversed themselves, but gone on and on and on. _Every_ large building a featureless slab. _Every_ public building a parking garage with a flag on it. Ugly, badly designed, soul-destroying horrors continuing to rise towards the sky in every American city. That'd be worse. A lot worse. If nothing else, it'd probably go a long way towards aborting the American urban renaissance of the last 20-15 years. Any others? Doug M. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 8 Jun 2001 20:27:38 -0700 From: firebug@flashmail.com (Firebug) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 Douglas Muir wrote in message news:<3B2154E6.F8821228@starpower.net>... > But to return to the question at hand... maybe we're going about this > wrong. It's hard to make the Boomers' bad qualities worse; pop music, > frex, can only get so bad. ?? I'm a bit confused by this statement. While there are certainly exceptions on both ends, pop music from the 1960s and 70s is generally far superior to the junk being cranked out today. - Firebug Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 13:36:24 GMT From: James DiBenedetto Organization: Temporary Emergencies Postdebacle Steering Committee Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 Firebug wrote: > Douglas Muir wrote in message news:<3B2154E6.F8821228@starpower.net>... > > > But to return to the question at hand... maybe we're going about this > > wrong. It's hard to make the Boomers' bad qualities worse; pop music, > > frex, can only get so bad. > > ?? I'm a bit confused by this statement. While there are certainly > exceptions on both ends, pop music from the 1960s and 70s is generally > far superior to the junk being cranked out today. > Gotta disagree about this. The pop music that *people still listen to* from the 60's and 70's is fine, but for every Beatles or Rolling Stones, there were a hundred crappy bands podicing utterly worthless and forgettable music, just like there are now. The big difference is, we don't hear the really bad 60's and 70's music now, because it was worthless and forgotten. I guess there might be more crap now, because there are more bands (thanks to a larger population and more channels available to distribute music). The other big difference is, the crappy music made now is digitally preserved on CDs and MP3s and in purely physical terms will have a longer "shelf life" than the LPs and 8-track tapes of the 60's and 70's. -- "...of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere with a sign on it saying "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn't even have time to dry." - Terry Pratchett, "Thief of Time" Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 16:20:19 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 starkllr@home.com (James DiBenedetto) wrote >Gotta disagree about this. >The pop music that *people still >listen to* from the 60's and 70's >is fine, but for every Beatles or >Rolling Stones, there were a >hundred crappy bands podicing >utterly worthless and forgettable >music, just like there are now. Truer words were never keyboarded >The big difference is, we don't hear >the really bad 60's and 70's music >now, because it was worthless and >forgotten. Roger that, the "Oldies" and "Classic Rock" stations' play lists are based on the "Billboard" charts of the 60s and 70s, not everything that was out there >I guess there might be more crap >now, because there are more bands >(thanks to a larger population and >more channels available to >distribute music). Don't know if it is crap, but there are definitely more types than there were 30- 40 years ago. :-) Mind Like A Steel Trap, Rusted Shut And Overgrown With Weeds Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 22:23:00 -0400 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 Douglas Muir wrote: > > . > > Okay. Here's one. Modern architecture bottomed out between 1960 and > 1980; there's barely a single large building (and not one large _public_ > building) from that period that isn't butt-ugly. I am having trouble with this. What does beauty mean for a building? The purpose of a building is to enclose space for practical uses. The only things that matter are structural integrity, costs of construction, cost of maintainance, economy of heating, cooling and lighting. Besides when one is inside a building, it does not matter what it looks like from the outside. Does beauty have an objective, rational, meaning in this context? Bob Kolker Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:34:22 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 In article <3B218884.292F9BB8@mediaone.net>, "Robert J. Kolker" wrote: [zap] > I am having trouble with this. What does beauty mean for a building? > The purpose of a building is to enclose space for practical uses. The > only things that matter are structural integrity, costs of construction, > cost of maintainance, economy of heating, cooling and lighting. > Besides when one is inside a building, it does not matter what it > looks like from the outside. Does beauty have an objective, > rational, meaning in this context? Esthetics matter. It's very difficult to quantify, but a structure will have an effect on the morale and productivity of the people that work in and around it. (not that I mind working in a place that has an architectural motif that could be described as 'mid 50s bomb shelter' or anything...) Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 21:38:34 -0400 From: Old Toby Organization: The University of Michigan Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 Douglas Muir wrote: > > Okay. Here's one. Modern architecture bottomed out between 1960 and > 1980; there's barely a single large building (and not one large _public_ > building) from that period that isn't butt-ugly. The still-quite-modest > revival of postmodern architecture began in the early '80s, about the > time the first wave of Boomer architects began building things big > enough to notice. Boomer aesthetics by and large aren't real > impressive, but give them this: they were able to figure out that Le > Corbusier was full of crap. I have to disagree with this, while the Postmodernists helped improve things, the nadir of modern architecture is not the 1960s and 70s, but the 1940s and 50s. The 1950s were the glory days of the public housing project, even middle-class housing developments of that period are often done in similar style. The "glass box" office buildings took off in the 1950s (although plenty were built in the 60s, and some even into the 80s), Begining in the 60s, you had a lot of experiments with color, material, and form, as well as the reincorporation of commercial space, and incorporating drama as well as function into the design. Also, superstructures got big in the 1970s, and I think they're pretty cool. OTOH, a lot of postmodern buildings are just modernist slabs with a tiny bit of filligre scattered here or there, and most "deconstructionist" work is, frankly, hideous. > Imagine a world where the modernist and brutalist trends in architecture > had never reversed themselves, but gone on and on and on. _Every_ large > building a featureless slab. _Every_ public building a parking garage > with a flag on it. Ugly, badly designed, soul-destroying horrors > continuing to rise towards the sky in every American city. Problem is, we basically have to kill of architecture. Architects had dug their own rut by reducing architecture to exposing the engineering. This prompts the inevitable question of "why bother with the architect, if the engineer does everything." It was pretty much inevitable that architects restore themselves to usefulness by adding stuff to the engineering again. OTOH, without architects to insist on purity of form and expression of function, it seems inevitable that little elements of kitsch start creeping back in. Eventually these will build up, and eventually we will be back with decoration and architecture. Hmm, but maybe, just maybe, we could get the Boomers to reinvent architecture in a way that the business community just can't accept, leaving the old styles still dominant on the ground, even as the architects sketch wildly divergent visions. Maybe the Boomer distaste for the grand results in a refusal to build anything not done on a "human scale"? Or alternatively, they go in for the grand, and produce hopelessly unfeasable dreams? Or maybe they go beyond "historicism" and insist on using authentic historical methods and materials? The Episcopal Bishop of New York (from the generation before the Boomers, I think) went in for this, bringing in European craft specialists to finish building the Cathedral, after about ten years, they went broke, and stopped work with only half a bell tower to show for it. > That'd be worse. A lot worse. If nothing else, it'd probably go a long > way towards aborting the American urban renaissance of the last 20-15 years. It might not help, but the "urban renaissance" was around a lot longer than the last 20 years, Jane Jacobs clearly described the process of gentrification going on in parts of New York in the 1950s (mind you, "urban decay" was going on faster, but...). Old Toby Least Known Dog on the Net Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 23:45:30 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 Old Toby wrote: > I have to disagree with this, while the Postmodernists helped improve > things, the nadir of modern architecture is not the 1960s and 70s, but > the 1940s and 50s. Demur. You can still see decent courthouses and public schools from the Truman administration. > Begining in the 60s, you had a lot of experiments with color, > material, and form, as well as the reincorporation of commercial space > and incorporating drama as well as function into the design. Beginning, perhaps. You don't see either of these trends going "mainstream" until after 1980. > OTOH, a lot of postmodern buildings are just modernist slabs with a > tiny bit of filligre scattered here or there Sure. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on this point. It's not that postmodern architecture is "good"... by and large, it's derivative and mediocre. It's just that what came before was _so_ bad. As for deconstructionism... well, I consider Frank Gehry to be a bizarre aberration, not a trendsetter (and I'm not too keen on this whole idea of museums-as-art). At best, he might be another Gaudi, a fascinating dead end... and he's got a long way to go before there IMO. (leaning into the screen to conceal this from the girlfriend, who thinks Gehry is brilliant) [snip "killing architecture" -- good point] > > That'd be worse. A lot worse. If nothing else, it'd probably go a long > > way towards aborting the American urban renaissance of the last 20-15 years. > > It might not help, but the "urban renaissance" was around a lot longer than > the last 20 years, Jane Jacobs clearly described the process of > gentrification going on in parts of New York in the 1950s (mind you, "urban > decay" was going on faster, but...). Naw, I can't agree with that. When money and population are flowing out of cities, crime is rising and investment and property values falling, you don't have a "renaissance" even if some isolated urban pockets are bucking the trend and doing OK. The roots of the UR go back to Jacobs and even further, but that's like saying the roots of civil rights go back to Frederick Douglass. In very, very broad terms, urban cores in the US lagged behind the rest of the country relatively from about 1950 until sometime in the 1980s... after which, for some reason, they began a period of relative growth. This is IMO an almost entirely positive trend. Sabotaging it (or making it happen earlier) could have some interesting knock-ons. Doug M. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 9 Jun 2001 00:01:09 -0400 From: jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 In article <3B219B79.29AC1823@starpower.net>, Douglas Muir wrote: > snip > >In very, very broad terms, urban cores in the US lagged behind the rest >of the country relatively from about 1950 until sometime in the 1980s... >after which, for some reason, they began a period of relative growth. > >This is IMO an almost entirely positive trend. Sabotaging it (or making >it happen earlier) could have some interesting knock-ons. Bad Ideas Which Were Never Implemented: Fuller Domes: Take a perfectly good city. Whack a huge dome over it for 'climate control'. Oh, now pollution can't blow away, too bad. Also, the dome now rigidly defines regions which are in the city and out of it [dunno if that is actually bad] and building heights are limited by the dome height, which will vary from edge to center. During winter, the dome will have a net lift, good for popping panes out. Speaking of panes, those have to be cleaned. If by chance there's a strike or the local culture isn't up to the job of paying for maintainance, the dome gets grungy fast. Arcologies. Big big building, with 100,000 of thousands of people in them. These would have to be backed by the same kind of people who pushed the Projects like Cabrini Green, I think, for the worst effect. Combine both: a grimy dome, filled with rotting arcologies. -- The Canadians were a hospitable and tolerant desert people, living on the edge of a wilderness of snow and permafrost. Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon were cities of the northern desert, Samarkands of ice. J.G. Ballard Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 04:12:52 GMT From: "Allan Mac Donald" Organization: MPowered-Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 "James Nicoll" wrote in message news:9fs725$6oc$1@panix2.panix.com... > In article <3B219B79.29AC1823@starpower.net>, > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > snip > > > >In very, very broad terms, urban cores in the US lagged behind the rest > >of the country relatively from about 1950 until sometime in the 1980s... > >after which, for some reason, they began a period of relative growth. > > > >This is IMO an almost entirely positive trend. Sabotaging it (or making > >it happen earlier) could have some interesting knock-ons. > > Bad Ideas Which Were Never Implemented: > > Fuller Domes: Take a perfectly good city. Whack a huge dome > over it for 'climate control'. Oh, now pollution can't blow away, too > bad. Also, the dome now rigidly defines regions which are in the city > and out of it [dunno if that is actually bad] and building heights are > limited by the dome height, which will vary from edge to center. During > winter, the dome will have a net lift, good for popping panes out. Speaking > of panes, those have to be cleaned. If by chance there's a strike or > the local culture isn't up to the job of paying for maintainance, the > dome gets grungy fast. > > Arcologies. Big big building, with 100,000 of thousands of > people in them. These would have to be backed by the same kind of > people who pushed the Projects like Cabrini Green, I think, for > the worst effect. > > Combine both: a grimy dome, filled with rotting arcologies. Add in a few other blunders that abounded at that point. A lot of buildings from that period suffer from what is locally called "sick building syndrom" Imagine what one of the arcolgy ridden domes would be like? sick city syndrome? The people would be none too pleasant. -- --- If I don't get what I want.... (X)I deserve something much better (_)I don't deserve it (_)I haven't tried hard enough Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 9 Jun 2001 07:22:31 -0700 From: jabodi@my-deja.com (James Bodi) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote in message news:<9fs725$6oc$1@panix2.panix.com>... > In article <3B219B79.29AC1823@starpower.net>, > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > snip > > > >In very, very broad terms, urban cores in the US lagged behind the rest > >of the country relatively from about 1950 until sometime in the 1980s... > >after which, for some reason, they began a period of relative growth. > > > >This is IMO an almost entirely positive trend. Sabotaging it (or making > >it happen earlier) could have some interesting knock-ons. > > Bad Ideas Which Were Never Implemented: > > Fuller Domes: Take a perfectly good city. Whack a huge dome > over it for 'climate control'. Oh, now pollution can't blow away, too > bad. Also, the dome now rigidly defines regions which are in the city > and out of it [dunno if that is actually bad] and building heights are > limited by the dome height, which will vary from edge to center. During > winter, the dome will have a net lift, good for popping panes out. Speaking > of panes, those have to be cleaned. If by chance there's a strike or > the local culture isn't up to the job of paying for maintainance, the > dome gets grungy fast. > > Arcologies. Big big building, with 100,000 of thousands of > people in them. These would have to be backed by the same kind of > people who pushed the Projects like Cabrini Green, I think, for > the worst effect. > > Combine both: a grimy dome, filled with rotting arcologies. -------Sounds exactly like the Sprawl from Gibson's early work. I think the domes there were only half-complete though. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 11:06:36 -0400 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 James Nicoll wrote: > > Fuller Domes: Take a perfectly good city. Whack a huge dome > over it for 'climate control'. While Fuller Domes are both impractical and a Bad Thing on a citywide scale they definitely have their uses on a smaller scale. The M.I.T. Radar site in Westford MA, known as Haystack consists of the radar antenna covered by a geodesic dome to keep the rain and snow off. The site is about 12 miles from where I live and on a clear day it is easily seen from the center of town. A Fuller Dome the size of a house would not be a bad thing and rather much cheaper than a conventional wood frame house. That is if you don't mind living in a house that looks like a golf ball on sterioids.(pace! I know that it is a dodeccahedron). Bob Kolker Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 12:32:53 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 bobkolker@mediaone.net (Robert J. Kolker) wrote >The M.I.T. Radar site in Westford >MA, known as Haystack consists >of the radar antenna covered by a >geodesic dome to keep the rain >and snow off. DOD used Fuller domes extensively for all the Early Warning Radar lines. A friend of mine was the maintenance chief at the radar site in GTMO. He gave me a tour of his dome. Kind of strange to see a de-icing system on a dome in Cuba. :-) >A Fuller Dome the size of a house >would not be a bad thing and rather >much cheaper than a conventional >wood frame house. Plans for dome houses are advertised in home improvement and "Popular Mechanics" type magazines. They are not that rare as summer/vacation homes. Mind Like A Steel Trap, Rusted Shut And Overgrown With Weeds Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 08 Jun 2001 22:51:31 GMT From: congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse >From: Douglas Muir douglas.muir@starpower.net >Date: Fri, Jun 8, 2001 5:43 PM >Message-id: <3B2154E6.F8821228@starpower.net> > > > >Coyu wrote: > >> *Then* Coupland, who frankly gives me a rash. > >There's good stuff in the Coupland ouevre. Unfortunately you have to go >digging for it, and some of the stuff you have to dig through may cause >nausea, dizziness, skin rashes, and minor neurological damage. > >He's got a bad case of overwriting ("Microserfs" the >very-good-to-excellent novella/faux biography => _Microserfs_ the very >regrettable novel) and an even worse case of "Mama, look how HIP and CLEVER". > >Still, I can think of at least four Coupland taglines that have stayed >with me for quite a few years now. > > >But to return to the question at hand... maybe we're going about this >wrong. It's hard to make the Boomers' bad qualities worse; pop music, >frex, can only get so bad. Maybe, instead, we should look at the >Boomers' _good_ qualities, such as they are, and try to flatten them. > >Frex... umm, okay give me a sec... no, no, I can do this... > >Okay. Here's one. Modern architecture bottomed out between 1960 and >1980; there's barely a single large building (and not one large _public_ >building) from that period that isn't butt-ugly. The still-quite-modest >revival of postmodern architecture began in the early '80s, about the >time the first wave of Boomer architects began building things big >enough to notice. Boomer aesthetics by and large aren't real >impressive, but give them this: they were able to figure out that Le >Corbusier was full of crap. He designed the surrounding of the new Statue of Liberty in F.A.T, incidentally. I'll leave judgements of that to the reader. President Chester A. Arthur, the anti-Rutherford Hayes Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 22:15:27 GMT From: terrence@unlikeminerva.com (terrence marks) Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 On Fri, 08 Jun 2001 18:01:30 GMT, terrence@unlikeminerva.com (terrence marks) wrote: >Now, let's say that in 1940, instead of going back to Disney like in >OTL, somebody else offers him a chance to produce a 30-minute weekly >cartoon show for television, and *Ub accepts. After further thought...WWII stopped regular television broadcasts and created serious shortages of animators supplies. If we keep Iwerks at Columbia or Warners for a bit longer, and move this up to 1946 it should still work. Terrence Marks Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://www.unlikeminerva.com HCF (another comic strip) http://www.mpog.com/hcf Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 19:31:36 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Joe Queenan, in _Balsamic Dreams_, offers a "worse Boomers" timeline. It's tongue in cheek, but maybe not altogether. Some excerpts: 1964 -- Styx appears on the Ed Sullivan show for eight weeks running. 1966 -- Peter Fonda, not Dennis Hopper, gets the real career, replacing Sean Connery as James Bond in _Goldfinger_. 1970 -- Jim Morrison does not die, nor do Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix or Duane Allman. Instead, each appears on a duets album with Mel Torme. 1976 -- ABBA does the soundtrack for _Apocalypse Now_. Robby Benson plays the insane Marine colonel. Jerry Brown elected to second term. 1982 -- Frank Zappa records "Love and Marriage" with Frank Sinatra. 1986 -- Cher, not Sonny, gets elected to Congress. 1989 -- The Doors set up the first Rock'n'Roll Fantasy Camp. 1993 -- Geraldo Rivera replaces Ted Koppel on _Nightline_. Jim Morrison records "Faith and Begorrah! 'Tis the Celebration of the Lizard" with the Chieftains. 1997 -- Grumpy Old Easy Riders wins Best Film. 2000 -- Robin Williams elected to the US Senate. You get the idea. A Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame dominated by statues of ELO, Olivia Newton-John, Boston, ABBA and Air Supply. More political celebrities and celebrity politicians. Re-enactments of _everything_. Idiotic '70s fads (waterbeds, Fu Manchus, bell bottoms, pet rocks, the mullet) being forced down the throats of Gens X and Y... well, okay, _more_ so. Pop culture even dumber than pop culture already is. Just how bad could it get? Thoughts? Doug M. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 14:06:15 -0400 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Douglas Muir wrote: > ELO, Olivia Newton-John, Boston, ABBA and Air Supply. More political > celebrities and celebrity politicians. Re-enactments of _everything_. > > Thoughts? > > Doug M. Will Olivia Newton-John still have a one octave range in this ATL? Bob Kolker Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:44:32 GMT From: beathotel@loop.komm (J.Yen,Esq.) Organization: never had it, never will Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 19:31:36 -0400, Douglas Muir wrote: > > >Joe Queenan, in _Balsamic Dreams_, offers a "worse Boomers" timeline. >It's tongue in cheek, but maybe not altogether. Some excerpts: > > >1964 -- Styx appears on the Ed Sullivan show for eight weeks running. The mid sixties had no shortage of cheesy rock acts either, despite the overabundance of great rock acts. Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, etc...plus of course all the leftover Frankies and Bobbys from the early 60s teen idol wave. Actually, the lead singer of Styx was in a band in the late 60s, Clear Light, who were certainly cheesy but nowhere near as bad as Styx. Clear Light were essentially generic late 60s California hard rock without any ot the songwriting ability or musical skill....really more mediocre than awful in the way Styx were. > >1966 -- Peter Fonda, not Dennis Hopper, gets the real career, replacing >Sean Connery as James Bond in _Goldfinger_. ....while Hopper was elected Governor of California... >1970 -- Jim Morrison does not die, nor do Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix >or Duane Allman. Instead, each appears on a duets album with Mel Torme. Taking " The Soft Parade " one step further... Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 6 Jun 2001 04:18:03 -0700 From: syd_webb@hotmail.com (Sydney Webb) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote Coyu, pardon me for taking so long to bite^h^h^h^h respond to your post but I'm currently enjoying a Twirlip of the Mists experience with my newsfeed and the fraction of s.h.w-i posts that are coming through are an average of 40 hours old. > There probably has always been a majority of good Boomers, > poor marginalized figures of quiet decency. It's kind of you to say this. Equally I'm sure there have been some noteworthy Gen X and Yers but I don't get out much these days and thus no names come to mind. > So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission > Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad > qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. OK. So we want to make people born between 1946 and 1960 even more narcissistic and self-absorbed. Hokay. You are warned - a big WI sometimes requires a big PoD. No Ronald Reagan. President Reagan is the indispensible figure for ending the Cold War. (This fact didn't appear in the most recent s.h.w-i FAQ but it should.) No Reagan, no collapse of the USSR. Now the trouble with the Baby Boomers in the old USSR was that, by definition, they did not remember the Great Patriotic War. The sacrifices the people had to make. A child born in Leningrad in 1946 may have had an elder sibling who starved during the siege. Naturally the parents of this Boomer will spoil them rotten. And what did young Boombers during the Breznhev years obsess about? Western blue jeans, rock-n-roll records and Pepsi Cola. Hah! Decadent consumerism. But look at these Bombers now. In their 40s and 50s. No job security. No state pensions. Eeking out a living among the wreckage of the economic restructure while the various mafias loot the country and deposit the proceedes in Swiss bank accounts in the name of 'economic liberalism'. So what happens to these Russian Boomers? Now they discover spirituality. They return to the Orthodox Church in growing numbers. Rather than relying for the state to look after them they take responsibility for their own well-being and their families. (See 'mafias', above.) If not for Reagan these Boomers would still be living in their fools' paradise. But wait! What if, just supposing, you wanted to make decadent *Western* Boomers even worse? Is hard. Maybe... maybe Internet becomes more widely spread 20 years earlier. After all, look at the damage it has done to the young people. - Syd Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 07 Jun 2001 21:26:20 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Syd Webb wrote: >But wait! What if, just supposing, you wanted to make decadent >*Western* Boomers even worse? Is hard. Maybe... maybe Internet >becomes more widely spread 20 years earlier. After all, look at the >damage it has done to the young people. So far, we got earlier crack, a seventies version of the Internet -- maybe like the French Minitel? [1] -- and more ABBA. Hm. Truth to tell, I was hoping for something a bit more apocalyptic. Still, that does seem to be the nature of the Beast. [1] Run by the Post Office, it will be used for personal ads, coke deals [2], biorhythms, and wife-swapping party annoucements. [2] Imagine cokeheads pioneering strong crypto. Like cypherpunks aren't paranoid enough?? Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 04:22:42 GMT From: Kenneth Jubal DeMonn Organization: Concentric Internet Services Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 On 03 Jun 2001 23:30:22 GMT, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Hi all. Hm. How to make the Boomers worse? Well, I suppose we could delay the introduction of the Ohio-class SSBNs, and still have the original "41 for Freedom" boats carrying around Poseidons and Trident Is, rather than Trident IIs. Oh, wait. Never mind. >Coyu -- member of the reactive generation. Damn hippies. That phrase always reminds me of a _Swamp Thing_ issue, that featured a character fond of it. Let see, we've got Moore and Gaiman. Who's young and good in comics these days? -- "They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse." Gaiman/Pratchett Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 21:01:52 -0400 From: daniel patrick duffy Organization: private Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Coyu wrote: > > Hi all. > > Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would > have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by > America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. > Fool! Now that you have revealed yourself, the Evil Boomer Conspiracy can hunt you down and reprogram you. And I can assure you that 48 straight hours of Iron Butterfly's "Ina-Ghada-Davida" and old Barbara Streisand movies will break any man. It's not a pretty sight.... But seriously, if you let me get out my bong pipe (quarter century old resin is a bitch to clean out), allow me to set the record straight....youngster. > William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Boomers as those > born between 1943 and 1960; this is of course too reductive, > since it would eliminate those Boomers-in-spirit such as Jane > Fonda, Jerry Garcia, and Charles Manson; and it would > include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. > Oh puhlease, Gen X isn't exactly famous for its social involvement. > Prominent Boomers include Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, > Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Bill Gates. > OK, so where are all the prominent Gen Xers? Boomers were rocking the world in their 20s, so what's on your generation's resume? Everything that has come since in politics our culture is at best a tired remake of the 60s. Janis Joplin would kick Courtney Love's ass. > A certain sort of unctuous consequence-free self-importance > has been the hallmark of the Boomers since Doctor Spock put > out his baby manual in 1946. > Not in my house, Irish Catholic families (this was pre-Vatican II) tended to burn Dr. Spock in effigy. > It's no coincidence that the rise of 'no-content politics' has > occured on the Boomers' watch; it's their invention. Lee Atwater, > James Carville, Karl Rove: Boomers all. > There is a real simple solution to that, you Gen Xers might actually try voting once in a while. Trust me, its both fun and educational. > "A show about nothing." Jerry Seinfeld was born in 1954. > As I recall, that shows demographics were strongest in the 20-somethings. I guess you all got tired of watching "Gilligan's Island" and "Brady Bunch" reruns on Nick-at-Nite. > "The zipless f*ck." Erica Jong was born in 1942. > Hey its not our fault that sex is no longer fun and casual as nature intended. And all you young guys can do is bitch about wearing a condom. Sheesh, when I was your age I was willing to wear a scuba suit and a viking helmet if it got me laid. > The diet cola. First sold in 1959. > The Greatest Generation was still in charge of marketing at most major corporations well into the 70s. Besides, if you're gonna bitch about lame products from the past you might as well give us credit for some real cool stuff: The Ford Mustang - the first and the best muscle car James Bond Movies starring Sean Connery Motown music The original Star Trek series (and the Twilight Zone, and the Outer Limits) > David Brin. Born in 1950, in southern California yet. > > Yet. As bad as the Boomers have been, they could have been > worse. Hippies, campus radicals and their fellow travellers only > numbered ten to fifteen percent of their generation in the US; > and it seems likely that their opposites, the William Calleys > and those responsible for keeping "The Ballad of the Green > Berets" on top of the charts, were not greater. (Nixon's Silent > Majority was an appeal to the previous generation.) > It was a weird time. For example, my father (who was a right wing Republican long before it was fashionable, he made Barry Goldwater look like Jane Fonda) - veteran of WWII in the Pacific - was willing to send my older brother to Canada rather than see him drafted for Vietnam. > There probably has always been a majority of good Boomers, > poor marginalized figures of quiet decency. (Though someone > bought all those disco albums.) > Well for some of us "disco sucked" even in the 70s. But while we are on the subject of music, I suggest you see a PBS Frontline episode entitled "Merchants of Cool". All that foul degeneracy issuing from MTV and rap music is purely contrived, created by focus groups at Viacom. Even the fights (Britanny vs. Christina, Christina vs. Eminem, Eminem vs. Insane Clown Posse) are staged like confrontations in the WWF. Actually the WWF is probably pretty representative of prepackaged Gen X "culture". The Monkees were derided for being a fake band, little did they know that they were the wave of the future. Maybe our youthful rebellion was idiotic and didn't change much, but at least it was heartfelt. Nothing in popular culture today is real or sincere. Its not even real enough to criticize. I say don't trust anyone *under* 30. > > Coyu -- member of the reactive generation. Damn hippies. Jeez I haven't seen this much whining since "30something" was on TV. And who you calling spoiled? We didn't have cable or remote controls, we had to work to get our TV, which only had three stations and a snowy UHF channel. Why in my day we walked 10 miles to school and back again in knee deep snow, uphill both ways... ;-) Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 20:01:36 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Daniel Patrick Duffy wrote: >All that foul degeneracy issuing from MTV and rap >music is purely contrived, created by focus groups at Viacom. Sumner Redstone was born in 1923. And the groups you describe are Generation Y. >Janis Joplin would kick Courtney Love's ass. Hm. Let's compare. Janis Joplin was an acne-scarred teenager who cut classes and drank hooch with the bad kids behind her high school. Courtney Love, after being dosed with LSD as a baby by her psychedelic parents, living in a urine-soaked hellhole of a commune as a young girl, legally emancipated herself as a teenager and left for Alaska to work as a stripper. [1] I'm going to give this one to Courtney. In fact, Courtney Love is a shining example of what happens when hippies breed. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, her and Alex P. Keaton. (Gosh, Frances Bean is nearly *nine*!) [1] Which is incredibly lucrative, actually. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 15:52:41 -0400 From: "Walter R. Strapps" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Coyu wrote: > > > (Gosh, Frances Bean is nearly *nine*!) I feel very old. Cheers, Walter R. Strapps Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 01:14:39 GMT From: congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse >From: daniel patrick duffy theduffys@fuse.net >Date: Mon, Jun 4, 2001 8:01 PM >Message-id: <3B1C2F80.AB52B073@fuse.net> > > >The Ford Mustang - the first and the best muscle car Unless the designing teams were all in their very very early twenties... >James Bond Movies starring Sean Connery Ian Fleming, 1908. Sean Connery, 1930. Albert Broccoli, 1909. >Motown music Gordy Berry, 1929. All the Supremes were born during WWII. >The original Star Trek series (and the Twilight Zone, and the Outer >Limits) Gene Roddenberry, 1921. William Shatner, 1931. Rod Serling, 1925. Richard Matheson was 18 when he fought in WWII. (A member of Generation Y. We'll fix you all. We'll fix you good.) President Chester A. Arthur, the anti-Rutherford Hayes Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 19:53:41 GMT From: cassiusmaxim@aol.com (Emperor) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >(A member of Generation Y. We'll fix you all. We'll fix you good.) Oh yes. All your base are belong to us. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 5 Jun 2001 12:15:03 -0700 From: maurer@itam.mx (Noel) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) wrote in message news:<20010604211439.12001.00001607@ng-fc1.aol.com>... (snip) > (A member of Generation Y. We'll fix you all. We'll fix you good.) ---"I wanna thank you Mom, I wanna thank you Dad, for bringin' this whole f----n' world to a ... if we destroy all of it!" If you're really a Gen Yer, y'know who I talkin' about. And, uh, he ain't no boomer. Noel Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 20:15:35 GMT From: congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse >From: maurer@itam.mx (Noel) >Date: Tue, Jun 5, 2001 2:15 PM >Message-id: <3ac469c0.0106051115.720df3e5@posting.google.com> > >congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) wrote in message >news:<20010604211439.12001.00001607@ng-fc1.aol.com>... > >(snip) > >> (A member of Generation Y. We'll fix you all. We'll fix you good.) > >---"I wanna thank you Mom, I wanna thank you Dad, for >bringin' this whole f----n' world to a ... if we destroy >all of it!" > >If you're really a Gen Yer, y'know who I talkin' about. >And, uh, he ain't no boomer. ::sigh:: I'm just not groovy. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 06:10:04 -0400 From: daniel patrick duffy Organization: private Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 None of which would have become famous if not for Boomers plunking down their parents' hard earned cash to purchase these products... ;-) Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 17:10:15 -0700 From: westfield1@my-deja.com (Merlin) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote in message news:<20010603193022.20402.00003084@ng-fg1.aol.com>... > > So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission > Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad > qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. Let's try a simple one. A bright teenage druggie in the mid-1960s comes up with the idea of freebasing cocaine. As a result, urban race riots become much worse, as a certain portion of the population turns to looting to support the habit. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam pick up the habit, becoming less effective overall but more brutal towards civilians. Haight-Ashbury becomes a giant crack house. And Dubya, rather than merely having a short attention span and mangled syntax, now sounds like Crackhead Bob of the Howard Stern Show. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 19:05:38 -0500 From: "James Bodi" Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 85,000+ UNCENSORED Newsgroups. Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Hi all. > >Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would >have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by >America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. set-up and ideas snipped------- >>Any thoughts? > >Coyu -- member of the reactive generation. Damn hippies. > >----Well, your ideas would work. I'd add to that 'no Vietnam', in the sense of no build-up that required heavy use of conscripts. Hell, eliminate the draft. This would leave the boomers without the only event in their lives that hinted that history wasn't uniquely designed for their pleasure. I'm not saying that this is plausible, mind. -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =----- Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 19:09:35 -0500 From: "James Bodi" Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 85,000+ UNCENSORED Newsgroups. Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Hi all. > >Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would >have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by >America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. set-up and ideas snipped------- >>Any thoughts? > >Coyu -- member of the reactive generation. Damn hippies. > >----Well, your ideas would work. I'd add to that 'no Vietnam', in the sense of no build-up that required heavy use of conscripts. Hell, eliminate the draft. This would leave the boomers without the only event in their lives that hinted that history wasn't uniquely designed for their pleasure. I'm not saying that this is plausible, mind. It would have other benefits too. Many individual boomers would be much better off, and I have no objection to that. There wouldn't be all that tawdry 'draft-dodger' caterwhauling in US politics. But actually, I think we haven't seen nearly the worst of the boomers yet. Just wait until their grasping, born again, authoritarian old age. They're already showing signs of it. Nehemiah Scudder in 2015? -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =----- Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 10:05:11 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 In article <20010603193022.20402.00003084@ng-fg1.aol.com>, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: > Hi all. [zap] > William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Boomers as those > born between 1943 and 1960; this is of course too reductive, > since it would eliminate those Boomers-in-spirit such as Jane > Fonda, Jerry Garcia, and Charles Manson; and it would > include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. Patty Hearst? [zap] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 17:52:26 GMT From: sarcastic_jew@yahoo.com (Ivan Hodes) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. > This is a bit of a slander. The Freedom Riders who suffered to help bring about civil rights in the south were boomers, as was SNCC. The SPLC is also Boomer-run, isn't it? Ivan Hodes Oh, he who'd make his fellow creatures wise Should always gild the philosophic pill W.S. Gilbert, "The Yeomen of the Guard" Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 04 Jun 2001 22:37:35 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Ivan Hodes wrote: >>include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. >> >This is a bit of a slander. The Freedom Riders who suffered to help >bring about civil rights in the south were boomers, as was SNCC. A freshman college student in 1961 would have been 18 -- they would have been born in 1943, right at Strauss and Howe's border. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is also borderline. Julian Bond was born in 1940, Marion Barry in 1936 (yes, that Marion Barry), Stokely Carmichael in 1941. But I don't think they were part of the same socioeconomic trend as Boomer America. James Meredith was born in 1933, btw. >The SPLC is also Boomer-run, isn't it? Morris Dees was born in 1936. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 10:43:46 GMT From: sarcastic_jew@yahoo.com (Ivan Hodes) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 On 04 Jun 2001 22:37:35 GMT, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Ivan Hodes wrote: > >>This is a bit of a slander. The Freedom Riders who suffered to help >>bring about civil rights in the south were boomers, as was SNCC. > >A freshman college student in 1961 would have been 18 -- they >would have been born in 1943, right at Strauss and Howe's >border. > Hmm. Daddy was a Freedom Rider, and he was born, as you say, in 1943; but he was also outside the boomer mainstream, being a communist. God knows I'm no fan of the CPUSA, but I'll say this: at the lower echelons (which, in the mid-60s, included Boomers) did a lot for civil rights. >>The SPLC is also Boomer-run, isn't it? > >Morris Dees was born in 1936. > No kidding; I thought he was much younger. Ivan Hodes Oh, he who'd make his fellow creatures wise Should always gild the philosophic pill W.S. Gilbert, "The Yeomen of the Guard" Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 17:40:14 GMT From: che49966680@aol.com (Mister Wiggins) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 >Hmm. Daddy was a Freedom Rider, and he was born, as you say, in 1943; Hm. May father went on one Freedom Ride, decided that not swinging back just wasn't his cup o' tea. >>Morris Dees was born in 1936. >> >No kidding; I thought he was much younger. He looks a lot younger. Mister Wiggins. "Well Govan, If we are to die, let us die like men."- Last words of Pat Cleburne. 1864 "If this is as good as it gets, then I'm sorely disappointed." Kate Morrow, 2001. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 18:07:24 GMT From: jawolf@mediaone.net (James A. Wolf) Organization: Disorganization Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 sarcastic_jew@yahoo.com (Ivan Hodes) wrote: >>include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. >> >This is a bit of a slander. The Freedom Riders who suffered to help >bring about civil rights in the south were boomers, as was SNCC. The >SPLC is also Boomer-run, isn't it? > The Freedom Riders were, for the most part, pre-boomers. All of them were born before 1946. -- <*> James A. Wolf - jawolf@mediaone.net - people.ne.mediaone.net/jawolf <*> "The jawbone of an ass is | "In the beining the Universe was created. just as dangerous a weapon | This has made a lot of people very angry and been today as in Samson's time." | widely regarded as a bad move." Richard M. Nixon | Doug Adams 'So long and thanks for all the books.' Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 03 Jun 2001 23:45:14 GMT From: congyoglas@aol.comgentboss (President Chester A. Arthur) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 "For All Time" may have a similiar result, I'm not sure yet. Austerity makes people behaved, violence does not. President Chester A. Arthur, the anti-Rutherford Hayes Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 00:45:43 GMT From: jawolf@mediaone.net (James A. Wolf) Organization: Disorganization Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Hi all. > >Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would >have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by >America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. > Ia! Ia! Woodstock fthagn! -- <*> James A. Wolf - jawolf@mediaone.net - people.ne.mediaone.net/jawolf <*> "The jawbone of an ass is | "In the beining the Universe was created. just as dangerous a weapon | This has made a lot of people very angry and been today as in Samson's time." | widely regarded as a bad move." Richard M. Nixon | Doug Adams 'So long and thanks for all the books.' Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 13:23:32 +1200 From: Gareth Wilson Organization: University of Canterbury Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Coyu wrote: > > So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission > Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad > qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. > The reason the Baby Boomers are so insufferable is because they won. Name a movement that was associated with the Boomers and you can be sure it's completely mainstream now. To make them worse you have to make them win even more. Let's say there's some kind of hideous nuclear accident in the 1970s that kills several people. That starts an anti-nuclear power movement on the scale of the Vietnam anti-war movement, and just as successful too, so they manage to outlaw nuclear power in most developed countries. Wouldn't that give the Boomers even more of a swelled head? -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gareth Wilson Christchurch New Zealand ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 04 Jun 2001 04:44:13 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Gareth Wilson wrote: >The reason the Baby Boomers are so insufferable is because they won. Name >a movement that was associated with the Boomers and you can be sure it's >completely mainstream now. The American Indian Movement. The Equal Rights Amendment. Legalization &/or decriminalization of marijuana. Ditto for psychedelics. Ditto for prostitution. The POW/MIA movement. The Promise Keepers (a median age of 38 in 1995). Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge is 53. David Koresh of Waco was born in 1959. Andrea Dworkin of Brooklyn was born in 1946. A good chunk of the founders of NAMBLA seem to have been Boomers. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 18:42:18 +1200 From: Gareth Wilson Organization: University of Canterbury Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Coyu wrote: > Gareth Wilson wrote: > > >The reason the Baby Boomers are so insufferable is because they won. Name > >a movement that was associated with the Boomers and you can be sure it's > >completely mainstream now. > Yeah, perhaps that statement was a bit sweeping. But the US has just had a pot-smoking, draft-dodging, Vietnam-war protesting President who's in an open marriage, and he got a huge approval rating from a lot of voters who _weren't_ baby boomers. And now it has a cocaine-snorting drunk-driving President whose VP has a openly gay daughter, and no-one cares much about that either. Neither would be possible 30 years ago. You're right that the impact of the boomers on the actual law has been limited, but as for culture and general public opinion... -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gareth Wilson Christchurch New Zealand ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 02:25:38 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 COYU provided the following list of Baby Boomer causes that he obviously feels are examples of something [perhaps examples of Boomer failures ?]: >>The American Indian Movement. >>The Equal Rights Amendment. >>Legalization &/or decriminalization of >>marijuana. >>Ditto for psychedelics. >>Ditto for prostitution. >>The POW/MIA movement. >>The Promise Keepers (a median age of >>38 in 1995). >>Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge is 53. >>David Koresh of Waco was born in >>1959. >>Andrea Dworkin of Brooklyn was born >>in 1946. >>A good chunk of the founders of >>NAMBLA seem to have been >>Boomers. The American Indian Movement. The Equal Rights Amendment. Legalization &/or decriminalization of marijuana. The POW/MIA movement. The Promise Keepers Legalization&/or decriminalization of Prostitution are all legitimate, and ongoing issues, some of which the Warriors initiated and Boomers became involved in. Perhaps they would be good candidates for the Baby Boomer Offspring to take over and see through to fruition. The other items mentioned are totally of a "WTF You Talkin Bout Willis" nature. Obviously, COYU is merely trolling the group to see what kind of shit he/she can stir up by trashing the Baby Boomer Generation. Since I was the only one to bite, he/she failed pretty miserably. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 18:55:50 -0500 From: "James Bodi" Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 85,000+ UNCENSORED Newsgroups. Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 grampajaymk1@webtv.net wrote: >COYU provided the following list of Baby Boomer causes that he obviously >feels are examples of something [perhaps examples of Boomer failures ?]: > >>>The American Indian Movement. >>>The Equal Rights Amendment. >>>Legalization &/or decriminalization of >>marijuana. >>>Ditto for psychedelics. >>>Ditto for prostitution. >>>The POW/MIA movement. >>>The Promise Keepers (a median age of >>38 in 1995). >>>Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge is 53. >>>David Koresh of Waco was born in >>1959. >>>Andrea Dworkin of Brooklyn was born >>in 1946. >>>A good chunk of the founders of >>NAMBLA seem to have been >>>Boomers. > >The American Indian Movement. >The Equal Rights Amendment. ---Died around the time my voice broke. >Legalization &/or decriminalization of marijuana. ---Became the War on Some Drugs >The POW/MIA movement. ----Died except among whackos some time ago. >The Promise Keepers --Are a Simpsons joke only slightly more current than Iron John and the "Men's Movement", another bit of gag-making self-absorption brought to us by the boomers >Legalization&/or decriminalization of Prostitution ---dead issue. > >are all legitimate, and ongoing issues, some of which the Warriors >initiated and Boomers became involved in. > >Perhaps they would be good candidates for the Baby Boomer Offspring to >take over and see through to fruition. > >The other items mentioned are totally of a "WTF You Talkin Bout Willis" >nature. > >Obviously, COYU is merely trolling the group to see what kind of shit >he/she can stir up by trashing the Baby Boomer Generation. > >Since I was the only one to bite, he/she failed pretty miserably. > ----Well, lots of people responded, it's just that they weren't boomers. The fact that you assume that Carlos was trolling for _boomer_ responses is a pretty good example of boomer self absorption. -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =----- Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 21:22:30 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Well, since the offspring of the Baby Boomers are now in their twenties and thirties and have done jack shit to change society, I guess it is normal for them to be jealous and to bash their parents' generation. Just carrying on things started by Boomers and Warriors [Rock n Roll, Personal Computers, INTERNET/WWW, Environmental Issues, etc] doesn't count. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 03:08:37 GMT From: "Allan Mac Donald" Organization: MPowered-Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 wrote in message news:13234-3B1AF0E6-141@storefull-248.iap.bryant.webtv.net... > Well, since the offspring of the Baby Boomers are now in their twenties > and thirties and have done jack shit to change society, I guess it is > normal for them to be jealous and to bash their parents' generation. > > Just carrying on things started by Boomers and Warriors [Rock n Roll, > Personal Computers, INTERNET/WWW, Environmental Issues, etc] doesn't > count. Yeah cause there are so many black and white issues these days. We can screw whomever we want, we can take any drugs that catch our fancy. This is the only generation whos standard of living is going down in comparison to our parents. The major social issue we are going to have to deal with is wiping creamed carrots off of your senile faces. So yeah we got the right to whine. -- --- a. pagan fire dancing b. gay sexual inuendo c. poutine d. freakish personal grooming e. obsession with conquering new england f. bizarre plots to rebuild ancient rome Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 08:54:57 GMT From: Blaine Manyluk Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 On Mon, 04 Jun 2001 03:08:37 GMT, Allan Mac Donald promulgated: > wrote in message >> Well, since the offspring of the Baby Boomers are now in their twenties >> and thirties and have done jack shit to change society, I guess it is >> normal for them to be jealous and to bash their parents' generation. The Internet Revolution? Techno-Geek Liberation? >Yeah cause there are so many black and white issues these days. We can >screw whomever we want, we can take any drugs that catch our fancy. This is >the only generation whos standard of living is going down in comparison to >our parents. The major social issue we are going to have to deal with is >wiping creamed carrots off of your senile faces. So yeah we got the right >to whine. Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from Generations X and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, or is my sample size screwed because I am considering mostly the (youth-centric) Web? Or maybe all three? ====================================================================== [To reply, remove the S's from my address, and change the R's to N's.] An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually come up with a good _Voyager_ script. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 09:54:49 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 In article , Blaine Manyluk wrote: [zap] > Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from Generations X > and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, or is my sample size > screwed because I am considering mostly the (youth-centric) Web? > > Or maybe all three? Little bit of all three, I think. Gen X types seem to be a bit more cynical than boomers were at the same age, and when you're young, it's hard to see the value of the social support programs the democrats and republicans support so much (Who is FICA, and why is he taking so much of my money?). Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 8 Jun 2001 20:34:34 -0700 From: firebug@flashmail.com (Firebug) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 rosignol wrote in message news:... > Little bit of all three, I think. Gen X types seem to be a bit more > cynical than boomers were at the same age, and when you're young, it's > hard to see the value of the social support programs the democrats and > republicans support so much (Who is FICA, and why is he taking so much > of my money?). We can also read the statistics, and see that our generation is getting royally _screwed_ on Social Security. That's why, in the long run, Social Security privatization will be an unstoppable force. - Firebug Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:07:04 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 In article <6b16c478.0106081934.3eef7265@posting.google.com>, firebug@flashmail.com (Firebug) wrote: > rosignol wrote in message > news:... > > > Little bit of all three, I think. Gen X types seem to be a bit more > > cynical than boomers were at the same age, and when you're young, it's > > hard to see the value of the social support programs the democrats and > > republicans support so much (Who is FICA, and why is he taking so much > > of my money?). > > We can also read the statistics, and see that our generation is > getting royally _screwed_ on Social Security. That's why, in the long > run, Social Security privatization will be an unstoppable force. Who's counting on Social Security? I expect it to collapse under it's own weight long before I get a penny of what I paid into it. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 11:10:08 -0500 From: Andrew Reeves Organization: The University of Texas at Austin; Austin, Texas To: rosignol Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 > Little bit of all three, I think. Gen X types seem to be a bit more > cynical than boomers were at the same age, *Ahem* I must now throw my hat into the ring here and point out that the alleged "cynicism" of today's age 16-28 crowd is anything but true cynicism. It is an affectation that comes from being told by MTV and the rest of the entertainment industry that they have "seen it all" and that they are knowingly cynical. The alleged cynicism of today's youth is anything but. If everyone is supposedly cynical and blase because the TV/internet/music has told them to be, then this cynicism is really just naivete by another name. Indeed, the only reason these young folks can begin to think they've "seen it all" is because all they've seen is suburbia; I guess if suburbia is the extent of your world, there may indeed be a bit of ennui there, but it's ennui that's there because they have most assuredly not seen it all. Andrew Reeves Idealistic 24 year old who will be damned before he adopts the outlook the entertainment industry tells him to. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 16:35:42 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 In article <3B1D0460.8B964C40@mail.utexas.edu>, Andrew Reeves wrote: > > Little bit of all three, I think. Gen X types seem to be a bit more > > cynical than boomers were at the same age, > > *Ahem* I must now throw my hat into the ring here and point out that the > alleged "cynicism" of today's age 16-28 crowd is anything but true cynicism. Compared to the 'give peace a chance' idealism that was floating around back in the 60s? I'm not saying Gen X has reached a level of ultimate cynicism that no one had ever achieved before they arrived, just that compared to how the boomers were at the same age, the Gen X'ers tend to be more cynical. [zap] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 15:32:43 -0400 From: Barry Rene DeCicco Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 rosignol wrote: ('boomer' vs 'Gen X' cynicism) > Compared to the 'give peace a chance' idealism that was floating around > back in the 60s? This was incredibly cynical, given the times. It was basically opposing the policy of the US government, both short- and long-term. During the Cold War, when many of these peoples' fathers had served in WWII. I can't conceive of something that would be equivalent, now. Barry Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 22:01:48 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 In article <3B21285B.6CCC40FB@takemeout.umich.edu>, Barry Rene DeCicco wrote: > rosignol wrote: > > ('boomer' vs 'Gen X' cynicism) > > > Compared to the 'give peace a chance' idealism that was floating around > > back in the 60s? > > This was incredibly cynical, given the times. I think we have different definitions of cynical. > It was basically opposing the policy of the US > government, both short- and long-term. Well, it wasn't exactly a good policy. Trying to keep people from implementing an broken economic system by dropping bombs on them is kind of silly. Better to let them try it, watch it break, and then offer them help with implementing something that works a bit down the road.... less hard feelings that way. Hmmm... Were there any french colonies that _didn't_ develop a nasty insurgency? [zap] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 05 Jun 2001 01:19:30 GMT From: ives100@aol.com (Ives100) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Blaine Manyluk wrote: >Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from Generations X >and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, or is my sample size >screwed because I am considering mostly the (youth-centric) Web? All three. In the first place, the Web tends to have a higher percentage of libertarians, anarchs, and other non-mainstream political theorists- probably because the Web is a forum where they can be heard. Also, I think that Gen X and Y *are* a little more libertarian than their parents at that age- they're young, so they want to be radical, but they can't be young and liberal, because that's what their parents were- it's no rebellion. Thus, many are libertarians. Jeff Dougherty Ad Astra pro Humanae Generis Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 04 Jun 2001 20:12:11 +0200 From: Steve Holland Organization: UNI-C Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 Blaine Manyluk writes: > Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from > Generations X and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, > or is my sample size screwed because I am considering mostly the > (youth-centric) Web? I suspect that it is the latter. My experience has been that Web users are far more oriented towards the anarchist/libertarian/conservative (which is a rather vague description) end of the pole than a typical cross-section of society is , even when you take demographics into account. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps the Net is the only place that these people can find where they are not laughed at ===================================================================== To find out who and where I am look at: http://www.nd.edu/~sholland/index.html ===================================================================== Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 23:52:59 -0400 From: Old Toby Organization: The University of Michigan Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 Steve Holland wrote: > > Blaine Manyluk writes: > > > Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from > > Generations X and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, > > or is my sample size screwed because I am considering mostly the > > (youth-centric) Web? > > I suspect that it is the latter. My experience has been that Web > users are far more oriented towards the > anarchist/libertarian/conservative (which is a rather vague > description) end of the pole than a typical cross-section of society > is , even when you take demographics into account. I'm not sure why > that is. Perhaps the Net is the only place that these people can find > where they are not laughed at Founder effect, I suspect. There's a strong libertarian strain among engineers, and the internet was created by engineers, with engineers as the first users. Also, I suspect that Usenet, as an older and less flashy medium, arguably even anachronistic (witness the rise of web boards), tends to maintain a stronger resemblence to the charter population than the full range of internet users (many of whom only use the WWW and/or e-mail). Finally, the SF community tends to have more libertarians and anarchists than the general population, so groups like SHWI and RASFW will have an even greater number of them. OTOH, I don't think libertarians are concentrated in "Generations X and Y", rather the peak libertarian years are the late Boomers and early Xers (born c. 1954-1969), those that grew up in the seventies. The socially conservative "Christian Right" types also peak with the late Boomers, but have more of an appeal with early Boomers than with early Xers. This probably makes the late Boomers the most conservative age group around. Old Toby Least Known Dog on the Net Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 00:39:37 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Old Toby makes an interesting point about the differences among the baby boomers. Back in the early 60s the National Forensics League nationwide high school debate topic was 'Federal aid to education'. The effect of the baby boom naturally figured very prominently in the debates. Back then it was a 'given' that baby boomers were the children of returning WWII vets. There were an awful lot of families with 3 or 4 kids born in 46, 48, 50, 52 [get the last one toddling around and it was time for another, and this was before disposable diapers too !!]. Most of the kids in my class had younger brothers/sisters in the same class as my younger brother and sister . Lumping all persons born in a certain time frame into a 'generation' can be very misleading. Stretching the 'Baby Boomer Generation' out to include those born in the mid 60s means that many of what can be called the late baby boomer generation are in fact the children of persons who were themselves children during WWII. Most of the actual foot soldiers in Vietnam, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the sexual revolution, and the civil rights movement were from that first crop of post war babies. It is this group that gives those who have never done anything such fits. It is this group that is going to severely test social security, and the entire health care system in the next 12 - 15 years. Of course it is also this group of boomers that raised the group that now criticizes the boomers so heavily. :-) FWIW There is a smaller version of the postwar baby boom still occurring to this date. Check the birth records at Portsmouth and San Diego Naval hospitals, plus the surrounding civilian hospitals, you will find spikes that correspond to 10 - 12 months after the return of a carrier battle group [10 -15 ships depending on the international political situation] from a major deployment. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 21:18:25 GMT From: Blaine Manyluk Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 On 04 Jun 2001 20:12:11 +0200, Steve Holland promulgated: >My experience has been that Web users are far more oriented towards the >anarchist/libertarian/conservative (which is a rather vague >description) end of the pole than a typical cross-section of society >is , even when you take demographics into account. I'm not sure why >that is. Perhaps the Net is the only place that these people can find >where they are not laughed at You may have something there, with the Web being the best available eco-political niche. After all, communists have academia, and fascists have trailer parks. (No insult intended on those who live in those place who aren't...) It could also be psychological. Author Paulina Borsook has proposed that the same personality elements could predispose one towards both cybertech and libertarianism. ====================================================================== [To reply, remove the S's from my address, and change the R's to N's.] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 10:02:48 -0700 From: bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 > > Right now, I realized that most libertarians seem to be from Generations X > and Y. Is this a generational thing, a pose of youth, or is my sample size > screwed because I am considering mostly the (youth-centric) Web? > > Or maybe all three? > Reaction to our parents, mostly, although I'd attribute part of it to youthful radical poses. Bernard "Alex P. Keaton was a hero of mine" Guerrero Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 04 Jun 2001 04:21:19 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Gram Pajamyk wrote: >Well, since the offspring of the Baby Boomers are now in their twenties >and thirties and have done jack shit to change society, Yawn. The Internetization of America happened on our watch, with our brainpower, and made us a *lot* of money. Tune in, turn on, cash out. >Just carrying on things started by Boomers and Warriors It is *such* a Boomer tactic to conflate the achievements of their (better) parents with their own puling and squalling. Y'all really needed more spanking, IMO. >Rock n Roll, And now we start with the wholly pernicious Boomer practice of pop culture idolatry. Firstly, y'all didn't invent Rock and Roll -- that fell to people born in the 1920s and 1930s. You were the first generation to *consume* it, which is something entirely different. Secondly, it's pop music. It didn't change the world. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't even put a dent in it. All it did was provide the world with a soundtrack. >INTERNET/WWW The Internet was a product of the old ARPANet -- Cold War Greatest Generation. The World Wide Web? The great majority of HTML, Java and C++ programmers out there are forty-one or younger. And Linus Torvalds is 31. >Environmental Issues John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson -- born in 1907! -- Edward Abbey, Paul Ehrlich... Here's a big hint. None of these people are Boomers. Jeremy Rifkin is, though: a loud know-nothing yapping voice on the fringes of science, like so many of his age-cohorts. So is anti-science writer Michael Crichton (see above). I'll grant you personal computers. Of course, y'all didn't *do* much with them, save play Zork and fiddle with Visicalc. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 09:58:53 -0700 From: bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 > > Jeremy Rifkin is, though: a loud know-nothing yapping voice > on the fringes of science, like so many of his age-cohorts. > I've hated that f*cker since I read one of his articles back in 7th grade in relation to a project. It's beyond visceral. Bernard "first we kill all the Rifkins" Guerrero Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 13:28:32 -0400 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 Bernard Guerrero wrote: > > > > Jeremy Rifkin is, though: a loud know-nothing yapping voice > > on the fringes of science, like so many of his age-cohorts. > > > > I've hated that f*cker since I read one of his articles back in 7th > grade in relation to a project. It's beyond visceral. > > Bernard "first we kill all the Rifkins" Guerrero A-f***ing-men to that! Rifkin is the Beast from the Heart of Darkness as far as I am concerned. This scurrilous twit is beyond a liar. He is a conscious perverter of what is true. He literally breaths lies. Whenever I hear the Excecutioner's Song from -The Mikado- I think of Rifikin[1]. He is on little list, on my little list. Bob Kolker [1] If some day it should happen that a victim must be found/ I have a little list, I have a little list/ Of society offenders who are best off underground/ And never will be missed/ no never will be missed ...... From the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 21:21:59 GMT From: Blaine Manyluk Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 On Mon, 04 Jun 2001 13:28:32 -0400, Robert J. Kolker promulgated: >Bernard Guerrero wrote: [re. Jeremy Rifkin] >> I've hated that f*cker since I read one of his articles back in 7th >> grade in relation to a project. It's beyond visceral. >A-f***ing-men to that! Rifkin is the Beast from >the Heart of Darkness as far as I am concerned. >This scurrilous twit is beyond a liar. He is a >conscious perverter of what is true. He literally >breaths lies. I'll top that statement. Rifkin is the Dark Ages (1970s) personified! ====================================================================== [To reply, remove the S's from my address, and change the R's to N's.] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 09:44:47 -0700 From: rosignol Organization: very little Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 In article <20010604002119.00424.00002591@ng-fr1.aol.com>, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: [zap] > >INTERNET/WWW > > The Internet was a product of the old ARPANet -- Cold War > Greatest Generation. > > The World Wide Web? The great majority of HTML, Java and C++ > programmers out there are forty-one or younger. And Linus Torvalds > is 31. Tim Berners-Lee was born in 1955. Sorry, Coyu, they got that one. Of course, it's basically become a new medium for the distribution of pornography, if the companies making money are any indication... ;) [zap] Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 12:18:48 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 In keeping with the 'make them even more insufferable' thrust of the original post I offer this: The US gets fully involved in a "Good War" [something in the nature of Desert Storm only lasting a lot longer] simultaneous with the "Bad War" in Vietnam. This requires a much larger military, getting its people power from the still in force draft. Both wars wind down at about the same time. From 1973 on there would be instead of OTL three baby boomer subsets 1. those who served in the military 2. those who would have, but just didn't get called up 3. those who refused to serve there would be a fourth subset the group that served in the 'Good War'. Basically the country have two groups of veterans, one honored right from the beginning, and one that takes decades to get anykind of positive recognition. At class reunions I have seen things shift from my being looked down upon by some because I served, to those same persons acting deferential because they didn't serve. I think the tensions between the two veteran groups would really alter the whole complexion of the last quarter of the 20th century. Imagine what things would be like if there was a group who might say "well, we didn't kill any babies in _____ like you guys did in Nam", or "we won ours". Given the above I think you might easily wind up with a sizable portion of the boomer generation even more bitter than OTL. Mind Like A Steel Trap, Rusted Shut And Overgrown With Weeds Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 14:18:07 -0400 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 still-a-grampa- still-jay wrote: > > I think the tensions between the two veteran groups would really alter > the whole complexion of the last quarter of the 20th century. I should think that any combat veteran would respect another combat veteran because they both had their arses on the line. And if one group served in a loosing war, it was not their fault, it was the fault of the politicians who would not let them win. Do you have any experience of WW2 vets looking down on Viet Nam war Vets? Both belong to the Brotherhood of Shot At Guys. > > > Imagine what things would be like if there was a group who might say > "well, we didn't kill any babies in _____ like you guys did in Nam", or > "we won ours". > Take a "Good War" as an example. In OTL the Good War was WW2. Do you know of any combat fliers who dropped bomb on German Cities being criticized * by other veterans * for killing women and children? Killing babies is an unfortunate fact of Total War. It cannot be avoided. Bob Kolker Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 20:30:49 GMT From: "Allan Mac Donald" Organization: MPowered-Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 "Robert J. Kolker" wrote in message news:3B22685F.3DD7A617@mediaone.net... > > > still-a-grampa- still-jay wrote: > > > > > I think the tensions between the two veteran groups would really alter > > the whole complexion of the last quarter of the 20th century. > > I should think that any combat veteran would respect another > combat veteran because they both had their arses on the > line. And if one group served in a loosing war, it was not > their fault, it was the fault of the politicians who would not > let them win. > > Do you have any experience of WW2 vets looking down on > Viet Nam war Vets? Both belong to the Brotherhood of > Shot At Guys. Not so true. There are known examples of vets from Korea being looked down on by WWII vets. I dont know about the vietnam thing seeing as how we dont have a lot of vietnam vets. > > > > > > > > Imagine what things would be like if there was a group who might say > > "well, we didn't kill any babies in _____ like you guys did in Nam", or > > "we won ours". > > > > Take a "Good War" as an example. In OTL the Good War was WW2. > Do you know of any combat fliers who dropped bomb on German > Cities being criticized * by other veterans * for killing women and > children? Killing babies is an unfortunate fact of Total War. It cannot > be avoided. Everyone is somebodys baby. Even you bob Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 15:43:29 -0500 (CDT) From: grampajaymk1@webtv.net (still-a-grampa- still-jay) Organization: WebTV Subscriber Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 bobkolker@mediaone.net (Robert J. Kolker) >>still-a-grampa- still-jay wrote: >>I think the tensions between >>the two veteran groups would >>really alter the whole complexion >>of the last quarter of the 20th >>century. >I should think that any combat >veteran would respect another >combat veteran because they >both had their arses on the line. >And if one group served in a >loosing war, it was not their fault, >it was the fault of the politicians >who would not let them win. the old brotherhood of the sword concept, be nice if it was true >Do you have any experience of >WW2 vets looking down on Viet >Nam war Vets? Yes, personal experiences. Some of the guys my dad walked across France and Germany with are very bitter over losing sons in that 'Stupid Shithole of a Place' and have lashed out at those who came back. There are also those WWII and Korea vets who were so affected by combat that they cannot understand why we didn't all run to Canada when our numbers were called. It gets quite emotional for all concerned. I have also experienced instances of snobbery from some non-combat WWII vets towards all Vietnam Era Vets. That very 'Good War -- Bad War' thing that I proposed. I have seen "The Brotherhood of of the Sword" all of a sudden come into being then. Sort of a 'we can talk bad because we've been there, you haven't, shut the fuck up' situation. Trying to shoehorn Veterans into one group is just as frustrating as trying to cram all college students into one all inclusive group. Think of a Venn Diagram. One really big circle full of a bunch of little circles. Some of the little circles partially overlap with others, some are completely separate. Mind Like A Steel Trap, Rusted Shut And Overgrown With Weeds Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 4 Jun 2001 09:54:20 -0700 From: bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 > > So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission > Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad > qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. > Good God, this could turn out worse than "For All Time". You sick bastard! How about getting Bobby into the White House? That should give them an earlier shoe-horn into real politics (as opposed to McGovern) than having to wait for one of their own (ie. Bill) to make it. Or maybe up the turnout at Woodstock a bit more. Imagine CS&N singing about being a _million_ strong (eg. an actual turnout of about 500,000). Bernard "leading edge Gen-X slacker" Guerrero Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:36:06 GMT From: beathotel@loop.komm (J.Yen,Esq.) Organization: never had it, never will Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 On 4 Jun 2001 09:54:20 -0700, bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) wrote: >> >> So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission >> Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad >> qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. >> > >Good God, this could turn out worse than "For All Time". You sick >bastard! > >How about getting Bobby into the White House? That should give them >an earlier shoe-horn into real politics (as opposed to McGovern) than >having to wait for one of their own (ie. Bill) to make it. > >Or maybe up the turnout at Woodstock a bit more. Imagine CS&N singing >about being a _million_ strong (eg. an actual turnout of about >500,000). OR, how about a ( slightly ) harder edged Woodstock lineup ? Let's say that CS&N wind up cancelling at the last minute due to the fatal drugs overdose of David Crosby, and they wind up being replaced by Iggy Pop and the Stooges... Neil Young does show up with Crazy Horse, therefore giving a much harder edged performance than CSNY would have done. Hendrix, the Who, Santana, Led Zep, etc. all show up as in OTL. However, the general tone of the festival is made harder edged by more hard rock - including proto-heavy metal and proto-punk. In addition to Iggy and the Stooges, lets say theres also on the bill Steppenwolf, MC5, Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath, etc. And that Joan Baez has the unenviable task of directly following Iggy, Also, instead of getting the fake 50s antics of Sha Na Na, the festival's organisers wind up getting Jerry Lee Lewis or Gene Vincent, as a REAL survivor of rock's early days. I would imagine that both of those men probably would have engaged in audience baiting of some sort, and Jerry Lee especially would want to create some sort of apocalyptic ending no one could top by stirring up the crowd. To top things off, lets say the organisers of Woodstock wind up getting the Hells Angels as security... > >Bernard "leading edge Gen-X slacker" Guerrero Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 19:05:18 GMT From: beathotel@loop.komm (J.Yen,Esq.) Organization: never had it, never will Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 On 03 Jun 2001 23:30:22 GMT, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Hi all. > >Ah, the Baby Boomers. What in normal circumstances would >have been a peculiar demographic blip was transformed by >America's rising postwar affluence into a Lovecraftian horror. > >William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Boomers as those >born between 1943 and 1960; this is of course too reductive, >since it would eliminate those Boomers-in-spirit such as Jane >Fonda, Jerry Garcia, and Charles Manson; and it would >include those selfless crusaders for justice such as... hm. > >Prominent Boomers include Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, >Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Bill Gates. > >A certain sort of unctuous consequence-free self-importance >has been the hallmark of the Boomers since Doctor Spock put >out his baby manual in 1946. > >It's no coincidence that the rise of 'no-content politics' has >occured on the Boomers' watch; it's their invention. Lee Atwater, >James Carville, Karl Rove: Boomers all. > >"A show about nothing." Jerry Seinfeld was born in 1954. > >"The zipless f*ck." Erica Jong was born in 1942. So Erica Jong invented the actual act rather than the phrase ? Not even. > >The diet cola. First sold in 1959. > >David Brin. Born in 1950, in southern California yet. > >Yet. As bad as the Boomers have been, they could have been >worse. Hippies, campus radicals and their fellow travellers only >numbered ten to fifteen percent of their generation in the US; >and it seems likely that their opposites, the William Calleys >and those responsible for keeping "The Ballad of the Green >Berets" on top of the charts, were not greater. (Nixon's Silent >Majority was an appeal to the previous generation.) > >There probably has always been a majority of good Boomers, >poor marginalized figures of quiet decency. (Though someone >bought all those disco albums.) > >So. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (Mission >Impossible, aired 1966-1973), would be to enhance the bad >qualities of the Boomer generation even *further*. > >One idea is keeping the Boomer icons alive for longer In some cases, that would have destroyed their appeal. Some would have continued to be creative but not in ways that would have appealed to as large of an audience ( Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix come to mind ). Some would have been embarrassments ; Brian Jones once he lost his looks would have been a has been like Syd Barrett. . In >conjunction with the stereotypical Boomer self-indulgent >streak, many Boomers have had spectacular crashes. >Pick one sick one. Hell, pick *many*. Let the *minor* figures >OD on the toilet. Elvis in the Travelling Wilburys, woo-hoo! > >Another idea would be to make the US's postwar economic >boom even larger, deepening that spoilage factor. > >A third idea might be to have an alt-Spock become popular: >refined sugar for breakfast, it's best not to interfere with a child's >moral development, give them more money and everything >will turn out all right, et cetera. The movie Kids comes to mind: > >http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113540 > >Fourth: peer pressure. For a generation supposedly so very >non-conformist, it certainly was prey for any fad and fancy that >came along; and it did so in large groups. It should be possible >to enhance this, say by having Madison Avenue cater to 'youth >culture' even earlier, and with more money. Or perhaps, when conservatism makes its inevitable backlash, to have someone like Reagan cater to rather than attack the hippie generation. Have Reagan be the " economic libertarian " who wanted " government off our backs " that he claimed to be. No war on drugs ( thus saving an innumerable number of lives and saving huge amounts of money spent on jails and prisons ). Have Reagan's " evil empire " crusade against communism mention the fact that since Marx and Engels in " The Communist Manifesto " advocate banning prostitution, therefore laws of zero tolerance for even prostitution that does not take place in public are Evil Commie Crap. Meanwhile of course, Reagan would crack down heavily on the poor, perhaps eliminating welfare, therefore creating a society where the rich could do literally anything on the backs of the poor multitude. Sorta like OTL America but with the puritanism and calvinism totally removed. Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 23 Jun 2001 23:06:55 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Johnny Yen wrote: >>"The zipless f*ck." Erica Jong was born in 1942. > >So Erica Jong invented the actual act rather than the phrase ? >Not even. No, but she certainly popularized it as a sociological statement. Tres Boomer indeed. Another example -- Germaine Greer posing spread-eagle in Screw magazine for ideological reasons (though Greer, like Jane Fonda, slightly predates the Baby Boom). Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 09:59:13 +0100 From: Phil Edwards Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 On 23 Jun 2001 23:06:55 GMT, coyu@aol.com (Coyu) wrote: >Another example -- Germaine Greer posing spread-eagle in Screw >magazine for ideological reasons Well, she selected a pose that would be as shocking and irrecuperable as possible - breasts covered (so no topless crop-shot for the more daring end of the mainstream meeja) and legs spread (on the assumption that most p0rn-users would rather be looking at pubic hair - an assumption which I think was probably correct, in that time and place, but that's another question). Plus the rest of the editorial board (all male) swore blind that they were going to pose nude as well. Bastards. Phil "won't hear a word against Germaine, unless I'm saying it myself" Edwards -- Phil Edwards research@amroth.zetnet.co.uk Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 27 Jun 2001 15:23:14 -0700 From: bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 > > Phil "won't hear a word against Germaine, unless I'm saying it myself" > Edwards Once a crank, always a crank. If she showed up on the NG, she'd probably get drummed out as a master-troll within days. I think she's advocating female circumcision now, no? Bernard "not very in favor of cultural self-determination" Guerrero Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 10:46:08 +0100 From: Phil Edwards Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 On 27 Jun 2001 15:23:14 -0700, bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) wrote: >> >> Phil "won't hear a word against Germaine, unless I'm saying it myself" >> Edwards > >Once a crank, always a crank. If she showed up on the NG, she'd >probably get drummed out as a master-troll within days. I think she's >advocating female circumcision now, no? I'd be surprised if that were the case. Phil -- Phil Edwards research@amroth.zetnet.co.uk Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 28 Jun 2001 07:08:05 -0700 From: bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 Phil Edwards wrote in message news:... I think she's > >advocating female circumcision now, no? > > I'd be surprised if that were the case. > I vaguely remembered running across this some time ago in a book review concerning "The Whole Woman" (apparently the TNR review below.) However, further research seems to indicate that she's been tacking this way since "Sex and Destiny" back in the 80's. http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/053199/talbot053199.html http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9910/opinion/decter.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/greer-debate.html Bernard Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 22:11:14 +0100 From: Phil Edwards Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 On 28 Jun 2001 07:08:05 -0700, bguerrero@askallied.com (Bernard Guerrero) wrote: >Phil Edwards wrote in message news:... >I think she's >> >advocating female circumcision now, no? >> >> I'd be surprised if that were the case. Well, she's not *advocating* female genital mutilation, but she's certainly writing in its defence[1]. And I am surprised. Never mind, I'll just add it to my list of things GG's wrong about. Phil "who believes GG is right all the time, with a few exceptions" Edwards [1] -- Phil Edwards research@amroth.zetnet.co.uk Subject: Re: WI Challenge: Making the Boomers Worse Date: 27 Jun 2001 04:01:49 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Phil Edwards wrote: >>Another example -- Germaine Greer posing spread-eagle in Screw >>magazine for ideological reasons > >Well, she selected a pose that would be as shocking and irrecuperable >as possible - breasts covered (so no topless crop-shot for the more >daring end of the mainstream meeja) and legs spread (on the assumption >that most p0rn-users would rather be looking at pubic hair - an >assumption which I think was probably correct, in that time and place, >but that's another question). Plus the rest of the editorial board >(all male) swore blind that they were going to pose nude as well. >Bastards. I think the difference between a Boomer and a member of a later generatio