The Greatest Generation & Their Plutocratic Heirs

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—8/8/11—The jeremiad that follows flows from my sorrow over what a zealous minority in American life and politics has done, and is doing still, to stem the democratic changes ushered in by the men and women of the Greatest Generation and those faithful to their ideas and achievements.

Fearing decline of wealth and status, far too many of the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the “Greatest Generation,” to appropriate Tom Brokaw’s apt label for the men and women of the World War Two era, have tucked their tails comfortably inside their BMWs when challenged to meet the needs of the times, and have hastened the decline and fall of The United States.

In community, city, and state across our land, the call is for retrenchment and not for advancement, not for trench warfare against the plutocrats ruling the nation, but for accommodation of the rich and powerful.

Oh, to be sure, some descendants of the greatest generation are trying to keep representative government alive, trying to match the energy, mirror the sacrifices, and emulate the dedication to service that characterized the men and women of the 1940s and 50s. Their opinions and beliefs now scorned, they have become a belittled corps.

Belittled for wanting academically strong children of illegal immigrants to receive higher education, for believing that restrictive measures should be taken to curb the reckless behavior of bankers and brokers, for asking fellow citizens to accept a tax burden sufficient to keep policemen, social and health-care personnel, and teachers doing the work that a nation needs done to be considered great. The belittlers become experts at bad-mouthing, demonizing, and denouncing the reforms put in motion by Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson.

And to raise one of their plutocrats to a kind of political sainthood, they form a chorus singing the praises of Ronald Reagan. They refuse to see the insight of Shakespeare when he wrote, “A man may smile and smile and be a villain.”

For here was a man who smilingly conned the nation into becoming debt-ridden; into becoming a world-class leader in government financed by credit card. And this was a lesson, and practice, passed on to George W. Bush, who embarked on costly misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that so far have added 2.3 trillion dollars to our national debt, according to studies done at Brown University

But the blame for the bankrupting wars in those two nations does not fall to Bush alone. Congressional leaders in both parties removed their hands from the national purse strings and helped plunder the wealth of the nation. Out flowed billions and billions of dollars whilst tax cuts for plutocrats sharply reduced the revenue stream. An idiot in fiscal matters could have seen the inevitable result. Anyone sounding alarms about the nation’s fiscal recklessness was deemed unpatriotic. Our wars must go on, for the military-industrial complex would have it so. Our plutocrats would have it so.

Never mind that revenue that might have gone to revamping our schools, repairing our infrastructure, positioning ourselves to compete with China, India, Japan, and Europe in developing innovative solutions to pressing problems, went, in far too large a measure, to turning plowshares into guns, tanks, and drones.

Never mind that an aging population, many poor and/or disabled, struggled to find the means for even basic health care.

Never mind, either, that young men and women who fought these wars had far too little care and support once they came home.

Never mind, either, that speeches addressing the need to sacrifice a few shekels by way of taxes didn’t spill from the lips of politicians, for statesmanship, for willingness to put national needs above personal bank accounts, for altruism did not gibe with “single selfishness and compulsive greed,” to borrow Thomas Wolfe’s explanation of the forces that led to the Great Depression.

Few voices throughout the nation lamented our betrayal of the sacrifices and gains made by the Greatest Generation. For it was that generation, with the boost of the Federal government by way of the G. I. Bill, that saw the most equal distribution of wealth in our history. That realignment of wealth helped to usher in the consumer-driven economy that made the United States the world’s most prosperous and powerful nation.

But, once again, “single selfishness and compulsive greed” prompted the plutocrats among us to halt the distribution and recoup their wealth, so that now, according to some recent figures, a mere 1 percent of our population controls 90 percent of our wealth. The “trickle-down economy” has revealed its voodooism by reverting to the old “gobble-up economy.”

Yea, and verily I say unto you, it’s a truism of plutocracy that the poor will always be with us—and so will the homeless, the physically and emotionally wrecked veterans, and the children of the lower and middle classes without the means to get a good education.

Meanwhile, more than just a bridge in Minnesota is falling down: schools, roads, family-owned farms, and family homes around the nation toddle on the brink. For example, in my native Tar Heel state, the Republican-led houses refused to secure a revenue stream that would prevent North Carolina, previously a leader in the South, from rapidly sliding downward to become one of the bottom-feeders among the states in per capita school support.

A pledge to cut taxes rather than a mission to meet the needs of schools prevailed. Verily I say unto you, that much back-slapping self-congratulation filled the chambers of our state government. Plutocrats were joyfully in the saddle . . . and riding mankind.

To my dismay, as a Korean War veteran lifted through the G. I. Bill from the lower middle class to the verge of the upper, I witness hollow and hypocritical praise given to the Greatest Generation and raucous self-empowerment and self-aggrandizement by their grandkids and great grandkids. They have spiked their tea and are now drunk with a sense of power. Woe to anyone pleading for respectful, sober thought. The only way is their way.

That observation, however, and thankfully, has notable exceptions. Some politicians eschew the lure of big bucks and struggle for the common good. May their kind dig foxholes and plant roadside bombs to stop plutocrats from destroying our republic.

May they forever honor the sacrifices and achievements of the Greatest Generation.