Baby Boomer Blues

Andy Rooney is dead. I'm all you've got, so listen up. This article is about the increasingly third-world-caliber stress levels MOST Americans – in particular, the youngest Baby Boomers such as Barack Obama, who was born three months before yours truly -- now face daily. I like to call it the “politics of poverty” a la Bitty Baby Boomer-style.

I cringe to think that the dire predictions we’re beginning to hear about stresses inflicted on the brattiest Boomers will cause us to be the first generation to die younger than our counterparts. Ironically, we are the least deserving of this cruel fate. We’re the ones who moststruggle to survive within this pathetic, large-scale modern cultural dysfunction that only promises to reach incomprehensibly hideous proportions over the next 15 to 20 years until “retirement.” It almost makes me secretly hopeful that, because Obama is “one of us,” his administration has some sort of trick up the sleeve to bailout the ones who really deserve it. Yeah, what the hell, I guess I want to believe in Santa Claus. I sure didn't get to way back then, when, you guessed it, older sibs, blew his cover for me.

For younger Boomers, the paradigm up until just a few pre-government-whoring-around-with-the-enemy-banks-corporations-bailouts-bernie-made-off-with-the-money (not necessarily Obama's fault) years ago was that people were accountable to certain social constraints. And younger Boomers would have hadat least a close-second quality of life to that of our older counterparts; that is, if not for our prevailing idiocracy.

But there may be hope. Just seeing “Occupiers” protesting all over the world, but especially here in the states, warms my junior Boomer heart, and reminds me of the 1960s, when people took to the streets; yes, I am old enough remember! Thomas Jefferson said, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” Something has to give sooner or later. Things can’t sustain at this level, people! Every one of us should be out there protesting. And protest I did! I took my concerns to the City of Seven Hills council meeting in September, before the following happened, as predicted:  I lost my aging, but still viable, metaphor-of-a-car due to the boggled construction that even the Ohio Department of Transportation said is the worst they’d ever seen anywhere.

This “construction,” completed by Karvo Paving through the City of Seven Hills’ failed administration, resulted in the city’s refusal to compensate, let alone acknowledge, dozens of drivers’ losses -- losses directly related to cavernous holes Karvo refused to fill for three straight days near Broadview and Pleasant Valley Roads in September. Take a guess why government agencies aren't being held accountable for things anymore. That's right, we inherited all the mistakes made by previous administrations. I feel sorry for Obama.

Increasingly countless conundrums like these -- such as the road needing repair sooner because older Boomers overpopulated the planet with teenage drivers -- face younger Boomers, if they’re lucky enough to have a job to drive to. And if they don’t, well, “You’re just not trying hard enough, you little brat!”

Younger boomers also face the stress of mortgages that won’t end for 20+ years. We had the fight of our lives to save our home from the jaws of JP Morgan “Chase Your Tail” (a company probably run by older Boomers) which took hundreds of precious hours over the past three years. I wonder how many years of my life were robbed by that debacle.

Many more majorlife stressors, combined with the “death by a thousand cuts” imposed by modern technologies and infuriatingly incompetent workers everywhere (the progeny of older Boomers) always seem to result in hideous proportions of repeated attempts to resolve even the simplest, most basic tasks. And if you’re low-income, it’s worse -- ranging from lack of affordable health insurance to neighborhood disputes, and from utility bills to dozens of other rip-offs including job scams (at this writing, news is on TV about the craigslist killer). Time, energy and enthusiasm are vaporized, with no one taking any responsibility, except for younger Boomers like me. Can older Boomers relate to the proposition of having to face the next 20+ years in this climate, with no respite? No freaking way!

Our society is too individualized, with the youngest Boomers expected to carry the heaviest weight. Younger Boomers need extended, intricate social networks in an egalitarian society, not nebulous, scatterbrained social networking that does nothing more than eat up precious time that could be better spent walking through the park and getting the Vitamin D3 we’ll need to sustain our bones later in life. Why? Because no one is going to take care of us when we get old.

Something had better happen soon. People had better get their acts together. And please, FOR ONCE, do not ask the youngest Boomers to do it; we deserve the biggest breaks right now! It better happen soon, before we take our 50-year-old-wisdom, energy and integrity somewhere like Costa Rica or Amsterdam, and leave the entire nation wondering how to cope.