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Paul P Westhelle's avatar

I was born in 1968. In downtown Chicago, actually, during the chaotic Democratic Convention.

So here’s one brutal GenX take on your generation: you’re all haunted. Unable to detangle yourselves from the political traumas and skepticism of the 60s and 70s. And now, to be honest, you’ve lost your edge, and it’s becoming painfully obvious that retirement does not agree with you. Or rather, the kinds of retirement you’re living are sorting and cleaving you from mainline society.

We don’t know what to do with you. But we still admire you and wish you’d stop poisoning yourself with garbage media infotainment, parroting the political nonsense there, and feeling like everything in the news is about prosecuting the debates of your day in perpetuity.

Because it isn’t. And, sorry, but it’s no longer about you.

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Cheryl's avatar

Oh how precious. Go outside and play and let the grownups talk

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Sedgwick C. Hartung's avatar

Paul P Westhelle, courtesy of ChatGPT

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Paul P Westhelle's avatar

Nah. I have toe fungus. Pretty sure that disqualifies me.

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ezinmn's avatar

Nothing like learning from your elders, and respecting them. You're not much younger than me Paul, but I for one appreciate the wisdom being handed down to me by thoughtful, experienced people who share this wisdom with those who follow. As for all time, healthy societies will always look to, and learn from, older and wiser individuals such as many of those on this site, and provide them the dignity their years deserve.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Punks run revolutions.

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Joseph Grills's avatar

And after the revolution they are the first to get their throats cut

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Paul P Westhelle's avatar

Wishful thinking of the deposed. Don't expect it. We have just enough energy remaining to dance on the graves of disrespectful elders. Or perhaps enough to spin tunes in the DJ booth so that the younger ones can really tear it up.

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Breck's avatar

Welp Paul P. both Jim Kunstler and I were born in 1948 and I don't think we'd agree that we are "poisoning [ourself] with garbage media infotainment...".

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Paul P Westhelle's avatar

When Jim was my age, he was lucid enough to criticize it. Now, sometimes, he sounds afflicted by it. And while it's regrettable to read that result of that devolution at times, he has a good audience, that, I hope and imagine, it helping pad his retirement. So maybe he is out to demonstrate that there is something virtuous to the PT Barnum's strategy of fleecing suckers?

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