Actually this generation has had

it pretty good in the last 59 years.
No large asteroids or meteors have hit the earth since 1908 in Russia.
No pandemics of note since 1918.
No major wars since 1945.
No major economic depressions since the 1930s. (without welfare and unemployment insurance we probably would have had some)
No food shortages except the rationing in WWII

Can anyone add anymore?

A song called "Between The Wheels" by Rush. It says:


From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to "Brother can you spare..."
Another war
Another wasteland
And another lost generation

something.

... that it's our turn to experience the phenomenon of history repeating itself. The wheels are falling off the wagon, and it's spinning out of control, and there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

After the cold war essentially ended and the threat of imminent nuclear holocaust waned, I felt as if we'd been spared. We were, for a short while, and those years were fun, and carefree, and precious.

I was naive to think we'd escaped.

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Instead of dealing with and understanding and attempting to solve a situation, we've exacerbated it.

Every time I turn on the television, it's a daily horror show.

the wagon, it gets harder to steer with every wheel that falls.

out of control and maybe it can be turned around. I hope, I hope, I hope.

I am not sure we do not get what we ask for. It does seem like the bully thing. When they think they can take every one in the school yard and have their friends backing them up, the bully goes for all. Trouble is it has not worked for long.There is no getting around the fact that about half the people in this country love the power they have. Great powers like to use that powers and now we have a lot of people who like the power using God's right to use it. Plus we have the added thing is oil runs this place and we do not have enough. If power and fighting for it is not some thing that makes the heart pound, I will miss my guess. Now that they have their God behind them, or so say the terrorist, we are in for it. Which do you think will stop and talk about this? Just look how long it took other countries and terrorist to get to the heart of the matter.Since none of this is working, are we going to control Saudi and Iraq oil)Middle East oil) what do we do now? I do not think killing one more alQaeda top man is going to do it. We have been killing the top men for years now.

Now we need to think about treatment options. Voting for Kerry will certainly help. :)

I'm 50 and have lived a lower-middle class life that gave me better health, home life and food than the vast majority of the worlds population. No major disasters, no pandemics, no major wars, no major economic dislocations, no food shortages......

To that, I'll add that I can comfortably live with my male partner in a small southern town. I've experienced only a minuscule amount of discrimination in my life (admittedly, I lived a "semi-closeted" life until I was 35 and I don't "act gay").

I was born Beaver Cleaver, survived "The Wonder Years", have vague memories of the years in "That 70's Show" and currently live my own bizarre version of "Queer as Folk" mixed with "Will and Grace"

Yes, life has been VERY good to me.

You seem like an interesting dude. :)

but I've still got a couple of friends from college that have put up with me for 30 years and one real nut case who has lived with me for the last 15 years. Not sure what they see in me, but there must be something there...

Facetiously, I would say that the woman in NZ who had a meteorite come crashing through her kitchen ceiling last week doesn't think so.

More seriously, we have had pandemics after 1918, most notably AIDS, which has the potential to kill some 40 million people, particularly in Africa, in the near future.

Maybe you don't consider Viet Nam a major war, but the Vietnamese do. We killed about two million of its citizens between 1958 and 1975, and I consider the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on Iraq wars more or less major.

No major economic depressions? In this country, perhaps. Spend more time in the third world, especially places such as Nigeria, Liberia, Haiti and Myanmar. It looks a lot different from those vantage points. Even here, in the US, some areas of the country have localized pockets of what is, in fact, a depression, chronically. A depression is defined as 15% of the available work force unemployed. Combine the chronically unemployed, those who have stopped looking for work and those who have fallen off the reporting rolls when the benefits stop and the chronically under-employed, and we're perilously close to that percentage.

No food shortages? See above. And note that we still have problems with chronic poverty in this country. Families completely dependent on food stamps exhaust them, on average, after twenty-five days, each month. The need for food kitchens and shelters is growing--demand is greater than the services provided.

The number of working poor is growing. The number of people not covered by health insurance in this country is growing, according to recent reports, not to mention that access to health care is virtually non-existent, except on a crisis basis, in a goodly portion of the world today.

I could go on, but, I'm simply trying to emphasize that sometimes one's perceptions are based on cultural and geographic terms from one's own vantage point.

For a fair amount of our population, things haven't been so bad. A lot of people in this country did not have to fight in Viet Nam. A lot of people continue to make pretty good money and live, in statistical terms, fairly well.

But, politically and culturally, things aren't always what they seem. The gulf between rich and poor in this country grows exponentially. We're rich in raw wealth, but becoming quickly poorer in the distribution of that wealth. Increasingly, every action by our government is predicated on one principle--does this benefit the people who pay for our re-election?

I don't think that's a quality of life worth crowing about. Sorry.

Cheers.

Cheers.

but amend - would you count the Korean War as a major war? Its kinda back and forth for me - more on the major side

Yep - some 50,000 lives lost - I would consider that major - and for what? and why the fuck where there two Koreas in the first place?

The meteor/asteroid
in Russia flattened trees for miles around..would have been a huge disaster if it had been over a large city.

By major war, I meant in terms of numbers of countries involved. WWII had almost all countries in the world fighting.

In terms of depression, I envisioned the 1930s depression which enveloped not only the United States, but Europe also.

By pandemic, in 1918-1919 bodies were being stacked like cord-wood at hospitals because they couldn't dispose of them fast enough. Dozens were dying per day at the hospitals. Very dissimilar to AIDS which I'll concede it is a pandemic but much slower acting.

These are much different scenarios than anything that has happened in the last 59 years.

Vietnam pretty much had a major impact impact on the way the country functioned - and thought - at least until now - and what about the 58,000+ dead and the many more who came home to less that something resembling a "welcome" or "thanks"? Major impact there, as well...

genealogy website for the county I live in and have listed all the deaths for this county alone for all the wars from the Civil War forward. All that I could find anyway so I am aware of the loss of life.

The point was still valid though - life has gotten considerably easier the past few decades

ANY war should be a major one. People shouldn't go into wars without good reason. Killing is not a light issue, never should it be.

</moralizing>

My wife and I are around 40.
We were both raised lower-middle, or maybe even upper-lower class.
We have decent jobs and just bought our first rental house that is going to generate 300 a month profit starting next week.

Life is good, in fact, it seem to be improving.
Yet, both of us feel like we're bracing, sub-consciouly, and financially for the "other shoe" to drop.
We have no idea what it is, but it just feels like some impending doom that we can't place out finger on.

Thank you Mr. Bush, for this feeling of uncertainty and doom!

Just slower.

I ask because the picture hasn't been quite that rosey for minorities or female heads of households.

My parents had it much better (the system). My kids, esp. the girls, will have it better. I unfortunately fall in between those eras, as do many blacks and other minorities.

Also, I was forced to leave my home town looking for work in 1985 because of 30% unemployment....that's a pretty major economic depression (albeit a local one).

Food shortages - as a single working woman, I had food shortages starting out in that I couldn't afford to buy much food in the beginning. Definitely no beef. But then I started getting paid more.

So I guess it depends on your point of view. But you're right in a way...it could've been worse. It can always be worse.

that life is better because I know it's not. It's extremely difficult right now for many many Americans. I just made the observation that earth shattering events have not occurred for some time. I fully expect a shoe to drop one of these days and I also expect our current president will have a good deal to do with it.

wars to those who participated, unless you don't think dying, or being seriously wounded not a major event. obviously you were not an adult during vietnam, one of the worst things to ever happen to our country.