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Jeff Keener's avatar

Saw a fascinating documentary on PBS (yes! PBS) about the blowing apart of the black family and community by LBJ's "War on Poverty". For 100 years following Emancipation and the Civil War, black families migrated from southern farms into northern and midwestern cities for cash paying work and built what were called "alley-communities" in which they had nearly complete societies with their own businesses, schools, banks, libraries, etc. It was certainly an apartheid culture and the black alley communities were at the bottom with poor to no sanitation, shared privies and water faucets, however, most everything they needed was within short walking distance and crime was almost non-existent since everyone knew each other. The War on Poverty (WOP) came along and destroyed these communities (in order to build skyscrapers) and moved the families into randomly assigned apartments in low-income housing projects built on the fringes of the cities, putting strangers from different alley communities next door to each other. Not only were the surroundings unfamiliar, but the jobs and stores that put food on the table were located miles away from the projects, forcing commuters and shoppers onto buses & subways. The family separations, the stress of having to leave the home/neighborhood every day, the hostile neighborhoods all contributed to skyrocketing crime and the destruction of the black family. The Think-Gooders of elitist institutions had failed in the grandest fashion, yet.

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Tim Hartin's avatar

“The juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom wrecked the crucial idea of a common culture, and I will tell you exactly how that happened. Two crusades: first, the civil rights campaign, and second, stopping the War in Vietnam, defined the era.”

I often see the civil rights movement described as a Boomer movement, but it was not. The oldest Boomers (born in 1945) were still children and teenagers when the marches and freedom rides took place, and all of 19 when the movement culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I get Boomers wanting to cosplay as civil rights activists, but they just weren’t. The whole hippie thing didn’t really start until after the civil rights movement.

The anti-war/anti-draft movement definitely involved the oldest cohort of Boomers, as they were the ones being drafted.

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Jeff Keener's avatar

That's true. The Civil Rights era was carried by the so-called Silent Generation (born 1925-45), like my parents. And the late members of the Silent Generation were recruited to fight in the various hot & cold stages of the Cold War... from Korea to Viet Nam.... like my dad.

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JohnAZ's avatar

The Greatest Generation fought WW2 and Korea. Boomers fought Viet Nam. I was there. Boomers fought the Cold War battles. The Greatest Generation started the Cold War.

What bridged the gap, IMHO, was the MIC, the start of the Deep State. The same entity that DDE warned us about.

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Jeff Keener's avatar

The Cold War started in 1952. The oldest Boomers were only seven years old at the time. My father's first TDY in VN was in 1964. His final TDY there was 1974-75.

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Pat Wetzel's avatar

Thank you for pointing this out. Born in 1957, I had none of these experiences-except by watching one of 3 tv news stations. This generational warfare is yet another divisive action, this time painting the alleged haves vs have nots. Beware the narrative you buy into and pass along! If it's binary, it's a trap. The world is seldom that simple.

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V. Dominique's avatar

The anti-war movement certainly involved the oldest cohort of "boomers", but if the Chicago 7 (originally the Chicago 8) is any indication the leaders of that movement were members of the "silent" generation, and, in the case of David Dellinger (born 1915), even older.

Also, "boomers" refers to those people born between 1946 and 1964. Not that it should matter. These generational divisions were created as another way to keep us divided and controlled.

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Breck's avatar

"These generational divisions were created as another way to keep us divided and controlled".

No. They were created by Strauss and Howe, sociologists and historians. Came into common parlance via their last book written together, "The Fourth Turning".

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V. Dominique's avatar

Strass and Howe's first book was published in 1991. "The Fourth Turning" was published in 1997. The term "baby boomer" was first used in 1963 and became the popular name of a generation in 1971. The term "gen-x" was taken from a novel by Douglas Coupland that was published in 1991, although Coupland wasn't the first one to use it.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Generational divisions are a natural state. Adolescence breeds rebellion, and is the basis for the changes causing the Fourth Turnings. The PTB definitely use the inter-generational rebellions to their advantage.

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V. Dominique's avatar

Really? Seems to me that generational divisions are unique to western civilizations. Doesn't seem to exist in Asian cultures or in more primitive societies. It also didn't seem to exist in western cultures until the second decade of the 20th century.

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Sharon R. Fiore's avatar

That’s exactly right! It does not breed rebellion anywhere else but places with full propaganda in every single program, TV media, and commercial like the United States.

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JohnAZ's avatar

How about India-Pakistan? Russia- Chechnya? China-Tibet? China and its western Muslims ( I do not remember the name), China-Taiwan? China-Japan? Iran-Iraq? Iran-Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan and everyone?

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V. Dominique's avatar

Those are geopolitical and ethnic divisions, not generational divisions.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Do you think that the issues between parties change from generation to generation?

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V. Dominique's avatar

You're comparing apples to oranges. India and Pakistan have been enemies since before the latter won its independence in 1947. That conflict has religious (i.e., cultural) roots. Religion also plays a role in the Chechyan hostility towards Russia. Likewise, the hostility among countries in western and central Asia were in no small part caused by the artificial boundaries drawn up by Britain and France after the first world war, as well as religious sects (i.e., Sunni vs. Shia). As for China and Tibet or Taiwan, it's hard to know what the truth is concerning those hostilities considering the amount of propaganda being pushed by the European and North American deep states, but whatever the case may be these hostilities have involved at least three generations.

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Jeremiad's avatar

The lines were drawn by the Brits, specifically to keep everyone fighting.

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Jeff Keener's avatar

Though it didn't begin with him, this conflict is a legacy of Gandhi.

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Lugh's avatar

You've bought into the illusion of endless growth and "change". So naturally that applies to people too - just another product!

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tom clark's avatar

Any aging boomers still have their draft card and recall their draft lottery number from 1970?

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Mark Livingston's avatar

I just posted my number from 1971. Then I realized I put my birthday online so I deleted it. Hint.

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Tony Lauria's avatar

Yup. 126.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Nope, I was in the Navy.

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tom clark's avatar

And now, Jeff, the white family is being blown apart, too. The Long Emergency continues...

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Disinfected's avatar

Very astute lo' t. It's a bottoms up process. Start with the dregs and then work their way up. As many astute analysts have noted, globalization will have come to full fruition when labor the world over - and thus the cultures they're a part of as well - has been reduced to ignorant third-world pauper status. We've arrived!

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JohnAZ's avatar

Say it again, feudalism. What stopped feudalism during the Renaissance? The ascent of the Middle Class, the "Bourgoisie", those rotten entrepenuers that Marx hated so much. Take away the Middle Class, which our socialistic slant is doing world wide, and we will return to feudalism where the Upper Class rules the working class with little chance of social elevation.

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striketheroot's avatar

Marx married into one of the wealthiest industriEList families in Europe. His assignment was to infiltrate and neuter the labor movement of his day and he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, seeding the world with a B.S Satanic religion that is alive and "well" today. The workers never got their revolution thanks to Marx. We all need to remember that "history (not facts) is written by the winners."

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Disinfected's avatar

Indeed. "Neo-feudalism," as the cool kids are wont to say these days. Or "feudalism with democratic characteristics," as it's eventually likely to be marketed.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Good catch. If society is bi-lateral, PTB(Kings and royalty) and serfs(proletariat), there is no democracy. The PTB just tell everyone what to do. As all the feudal attempts have embraced hereditary succession in the PTB, no need for voting. Democracy dies with feudalism, exactly what the NWO wants.

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Disinfected's avatar

The voting illusion is a great trick, though. Give the prisoners the illusion of choice, all pre-selected and neutered of course.

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Sharon R. Fiore's avatar

Definitely! There is no way they would ever leave a big decision to us. They are all working together. And there are higher-ups that tell Trump and all the other fakes on television what to do.

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Lugh's avatar

As Herr Fuentes said, America could lose for a hundred years and could still stay our beloved homeland. If we "win" the way Az and Musk want us to win, we will lose everything, both our nation and our souls.

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

I don't think they failed. I think this was their goal all along. The old rule of divide and conquer is in full force to this day.

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David "JC" Penny's avatar

"The War on Poverty (WOP) came along and destroyed these communities (in order to build skyscrapers) and moved the families into randomly assigned apartments in low-income housing projects built on the fringes of the cities, putting strangers from different alley communities next door to each other. "

Actually, the WOP was the answer to dilemma after they "destroyed these communities" to build freeways - not skyscrapers. The Eisenhower Interstate System was a great idea. The only problem is that the Big City Fat Cats had to get that interstate into their city...which meant eminent domain takings. What better place to take land than the Black Alleys? Urban Renewal began with Ike. LBJ just revived the slave class with WOP.

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Alzaebo's avatar

That is a remarkably good catch!

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Jeff Keener's avatar

Yep, that, too.

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Navigator18's avatar

Don't forget a Planned Parenthood within a mile of every housing project. Sell them the idea that the way out of poverty is killing their offspring and…voila!

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Ida George's avatar

The destruction of the black family under the guise of helping was the most terrible thing! Offering women money if they were unmarried and had babies was designed to divide and destroy!

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The Real Mary Rose's avatar

Same with white professionals.

White women opted not to have children at all, or put 'em in daycare, divorce is rampant, because women want to "have it all" or feel the pressure to, or be considered "only a housewife."

This was also by design. Gloria Steinem was a CIA asset, after all... she bragged about it.

And some of us bought the narrative.

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TriTorch's avatar

"The Think-Gooders of elitist institutions had failed in the grandest fashion, yet."

When it comes to government institutions: Never attribute to good intentions what should aptly be attributed to malice.

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Bobby Lime's avatar

It isn't directly pertinent to your comment, but I'm reading a novelist I had heard about for years but never gotten to, Chester Himes. In the late 1950s, Himes, who was black, began to write a series of novels, The Harlem Detectives Series, about two black detectives on the NYPD who are detailed to Harlem. Himes was an original, hard to describe. I'm reading "Cotton Comes to Harlem." It's cold eyed, brutal, hilarious, close to hallucinatory at times. So far, my thought is that these novels provide what literature usually does better than journalism, a scanning of people's souls.

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Jeff Keener's avatar

Now that sounds interesting. I'll look for it and thank you!

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Bobby Lime's avatar

It's unlike anything I've ever read. There is a movie of “Cotton Comes to Harlem” which was made circa 1970. I intend to watch it when I finish the novel if only because it starred Godfrey Cambridge, who was one of the funniest men of that generation, and whose early death consigned him to be unjustly all but forgotten.

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Jeff Keener's avatar

I'm going to have to check that out, too.👍

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Phil Denter's avatar

And crack. Lots and lots of crack.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Right, lots of crime. People who have had their opportunity taken away from them will survive, as we are learning today. I anticipate a large increase in crime everywhere as the world adjusts to its loss of opportunity due to high tech.

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Bee Gentry's avatar

Yes. If a Universal Basic Income isn’t quickly and successfully established (is that even possible?) we’re in for hellish crime.

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JohnAZ's avatar

Agreed. The changes in DC will make the difference.

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