June 27, 2002
Fading Boomers Become Sheep
Maureen Dowd hit a bulls eye with "The Age of Acquiescence," in which she describes how the baby boomers' most paranoid beliefs in the 1960s of creeping fascism and control of America by a militaristic corporate state have all come true.But the generation that struggled against the domination of America by the military industrial complex in the '60s has now faded into acquiescence as the New Silent Majority.
In the '60s it was their own asses that were on the pan. There was a draft and the baby boomers were being forced to go off by the thousands and commit themselves to killing "gooks" or getting blown up themselves. The draft cut right through America's middle class as well as the poor. Today, that generation is out of harm's way, just as Bush, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney were in the '60s and still are. Now the boomers aren't as concerned. It's a lot easier to promote war when you don't have to worry about fighting in it yourself.
Today the corporate military industrial complex has a different formula. Instead of having a draft, you deplete the country's wealth by giving hundreds of billions to your friends in the "defense" industries; further impoverish the country by letting the biggest corporations get by without paying taxes at all; keep unemployment up to a certain "acceptable level" by Federal Reserve manipulations of the prime interest rates; "privatize" or underfund education so it becomes too expensive for all but the rich. Then you have a permanent poor class with no hope for a better life, who are prime material for the "volunteer army."
-- By David Cogswell