Paranoia Strikes Deep - Baby Boomers and the Culture of Fear

The boogie man will get you if you don't watch out. As the Greatest Generation leaves us behind, Mommy and Daddy dying, leaving the Baby Boomers holding the bag, said boomers react in a most peculiar manner. This is the generation that rose up against their parents and the status-quo, the generation that was going to make things right and fight injustice to create a world of peace and joy and brotherhood. And as the parents fade into the plastic faux woodwork of nursing homes, the baby Boomers are ruining the country.

You'd think that the US would have changed into a better place, all about fairness, spirituality and plants. When the Greatest Generation with their 'we can do it' Rosie the Riveter philosophy feared nothing but fear itself, America today is in love with fear. Whether we actually feel the fear, or are being instructed to my certain groups of other baby Boomers, we're all shuffling along in the shadows, looking over our collective shoulder, toting lists of secret passwords like children at playing ineffectual spies.

One of the biggest expenses today is security - personal security systems, Homeland Security and the long drawn out war to keep America safe by destroying a country that had nothing to do with 911.

A terrorist is an idiot on a plane who sets his own underpants on fire. So we want to introduce full body scanners at $200,000 a pop so total strangers can view naked granny in case she's wearing a plastique corset. Don't worry about whatever it is they scan you with - it's nothing! You don't worry about dental X-rays, do you? Of course, there aren't a lot of people who get dental X-rays several times a week.

Our children have become fat, lazy, ADD afflicted diabetics because they aren't allowed to play outside in the dangerous sun. Or because the neighborhood may be harboring child molesters asking kids to help find fictitious kittens.

Urban children are kept indoors because the streets are full of gun toting gangsters swathed in hoodies, scuttling through the shadows in fear of other hoodied hoods. Meanwhile, the poor kiddies huddle in front of the TV or a video game, slowly loosing what minds they have after living on a diet of strange foods that would have been unrecognizable as food 80 years ago.

Schools are cracking down on hugging! Officials have noticed a marked increase in hugging. Young folks seem to hug their friends in greeting! A Highly inappropriate and dangerous activity.

Meanwhile, the Baby Boomers hunker down, waiting for the ax at work, watching their 401K dissolve. Pensions are a thing of the past. The sword of Damicles hangs over Social Security and we'll all have to sell apples on the street corner to make ends meet because nobody will hire us except WalMart and how many greeters can crowd the doorway?

While people who used to hate the president feared he was either stupid or in cahoots with the opposition, now he's portrayed as an imposter - a secret Muslim terrorist commie who is probably an illegal alien!
Fear is all around us. It's the driving force in America today and, at the end of the day, I'm sick of it.