|
Edited on Fri Dec-08-06 02:32 PM by HereSince1628
though they also brought about the Congress that made the Great Society programs possible, and they made the "space race" to the moon possible. And their generation gave us Salk and Sabin.
But they weren't perfect anymore than we are doomed to be the Failed Generation.
The whole notion of American Greatness that drives the hegemonic desires of neocons is the spawn of their attitude toward the world. And I give you the recently dead Jean Kirkpatrick as an example of one of the mothers of that movement.
Yes they suffered the Depression and they sacrificed during WWII, I don't mean to diminish that, but they weren't superhuman, and they had their share of mistakes some of which we are going to pay for for a long time.
It was the Greatest Generation that while understanding the excess of their own Tail-gunner Joe, nonetheless bought into the notion of THE RED SCARE, and gave us perpetual cold-war and the need for family and neighborhood fallout shelters, intercontinental heavy bombers, MRV'd ICBMs and the ballistic submarine. With scions of the Greatest Generation like Dick Cheney and Condi Rice still running around we still aren't over all that yet.
They attacked post WWII life like a military juggernaut creating suburb tract housing of endless acres of identical ticky-tacky houses, suburban sprawl, superhighways, white flight, the supermarket, indoor shopping malls (including shoe stores complete with unsupervised use of x-ray machines for parents to check the fit of their kids Red Goose shoes,big box retailing and the 40 acre parking lot.
They pushed "the American Way" which wasn't very warm and fuzzy down the throats of nations through-out the world. Many of them lived in an addicted stupor to economic, military and industrial power and had little environmental awareness or respect. Their insistence on bringing more children into the world through the wonders of modern chemistry brought us armless and legless thalidomide babies and their failure to practice birth control led to the now dreadful economic cloud of the baby-boom.
They supported the nationwide application of DDT and found more and better ways to mass produce it and its toxic kin and to spread them into every terrestrial and aquatic food chain in the nation. Its great to know our apples had no worms but we were dosed with dieldrin. They were largely oblivious to the toxic world they helped create around them and ignored the release of industrial wastes into the air and water until they were shamed by the advocacy of radicals, students (their children) in the 1960's.
They were great. There is no denying they had truly great accomplishments. but they also made mistakes some of them in equal proportion to that greatness.
|