We The Baby Boomers

When I was growing up, I used to hear something said quite a lot and dismissed it as rhetoric. Yet now, I see that it might have been more prophecy than eloquence. It was the belief that when America falls, there won't be a shot fired. It will fall from within.

How many times have we all heard that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it? Yet, here we are. The new Romans. Another civilization that was the wonder of the world. World powers. Developed all the new ways to build cities and irrigate them. The rulers of the free world. And what happened? It collapsed down around itself. And their ruler fiddled while Rome burned. And then Rome as a society was no more. Can't anyone see that it's happening here? Our Senators and Representatives sit around fighting each other over the smallest of details regarding things that are are nothing compared with the real ills of our country. Like picking pepper from fly shit while the structure of our whole society falls down around our ears.

Remember, one of the major downfalls of Rome was that the Senators would take money in exchange for favors and wound up writing and changing laws for money. Sound familiar? Lobbyists?
It's like the Richard Nixon story only it's not just one man. In his last years as our president, he was like a little child. And no one had the balls to say, "we've got to stop this and take control of this craziness. They just sat around being "yes" men knowing he was half crazy.

And we have no one to blame but ourselves. By that I mean my generation. The baby boomers. Throughout the history of the United States, each generation has done whatever was necessary to keep our way of life sacred and protected. No matter what it took they stepped to the plate and made sure that our government and our way of life remained at least as good as when their generation inherited it from their parents' generation. Think about June 6th, 1944. How many thousands of troops stormed the beaches at Normandy in France and died on that very day. It was essentially a suicide mission. But they knew that Hitler had to be stopped or our society would be no more. Our free existence that we had enjoyed since our fight for independence from Great Britain would be swallowed up and forgotten under a Facist rule. So they accepted that they were the deciding factor. Literally gave their lives so that we could continue to live free.

The ones that survived and the ones that remained here to stand watch over our country went on to create families with children that would make up our generation. The baby boomers. Children were being born in record numbers by Americans believing that our way of life was safe and now was the time to bring in the new generation that would keep it safe from harm. But we did not. We voted for the politicians and schoold board members and city governments, county, state and federal law makers that would eventually give our way of life to anyone who wanted it. And everyone wants it.

I can more easily relate to what happened by bringing it to a smaller scale. Let's say you are an upper middle-class family that can pay its bills and prosper. You live in a nice neighborhood that is desirable for almost anyone to live in. Then someone comes to visit and winds up staying. Like the relatives from hell. Can't get rid of them. They came to your house because it was the good life. But soon, overburdened by the extra mouths to feed, you are no longer able to pay the bills and maintain the lifestyle that made it so attractive. So you get fed up and move elsewhere leaving the hangers on to fend for themselves. It isn't long before the neighborhood follows suit, and gets to the point that it's no longer a desirable place to live. All the ones who made it nice are gone leaving only the ones who didn't belong there to begin with.

The point is that if you cannot support the extra influx of people, then you simply have to limit the number that come to live with you. If that sounds elitist, or racist, then your thinking is that of the current administration. Immigrants have always made up the population of our country. Every single person that lives in the United States comes from immigrants to this land. Even the native Americans. They were not the first ethnic group in North America. So I do not blame our country's problems on immigration. I blame it on irresponsible immigration. It's nice to be able to accomodate everyone who wants to live the American dream but it cannot be supported without destroying that which is so desirable. Why did we not see that? Why did we simply go along and let ourselves be overrun by so many people that we couldn't possibly support them? That was not a good philosophy for anyone....citizens or immigrants. And our children's generation had every right to expect us to make the right decisions. To make the hard choices. But we did nothing of the kind.

Unfortunately at this point, I don't know that it can be turned around. We've set too many precedents to turn it back in the direction it was going. And while I'm glad that I'm on this end of life rather than the other end where we have a lot of years to see this destruction, it kills me that our kids will become part of the tidal wave of casualties. They will be overwhelmed to the point that no one will take the initiative to try to salvage it. Yes, it's a heart breaker and even though it's woefully inadequate, the only thing I can offer the generation of our offspring is....I'm sorry.