Baby boomer goes "boom-boom"

A friend of a friend tells us he called a guy the other day to see how he was doing in his battle with Parkinson's:

The guy almost immediately launched into an anti-Obama tirade...so I knew he was feeling better. This is a guy in his mid-60s who had a six-figure income from the phone company most of his career due to his union job, but is now completely anti-union. He always drove fast cars and big trucks, but now he says he hopes gas goes to $10/gallon so it will freeze the economy and help get rid of Obama. He is devoutly pro-NRA and staunchly pro-gun and thinks people should be able to own machine guns if they wish, and he wants Obama out "before he starts banning guns," but he chooses to overlook Romney's ban on assault weapons when he was in office. The guy is all for Romneycare but completely against Obamacare.     In other words, this guy is just as much a racist as he always was but is now wise enough to do it in code. He is a poster child for the "true boomers" (those born 1945-1950), as opposed to the "screwed boomers" like me who weren't born until after 1950 and therefore had our prime earning years napalmed by the Bushies. If the true boomers' parents were the "greatest generation," the boomers themselves should be called the "selfish generation," and this guy is a poster child for that as well.

What do Moristotle's editors make of this "true boomer" and his tirade?

Ken Marks. What can one say? The world is replete with people who are ignorant, deluded, cantankerous, spiteful, vindictive, and selfish, in all sorts of kaleidoscopic combinations. They are beyond reforming; we can only hope to marginalize them. There are ways to do that, but only generationally. How to do it might make for an interesting column.

motomynd. Your "friend of a friend's" tirade sounds like too many of the one-sided "conversations" I have to suffer through when I visit people I was raised with in Central Virginia. With rare exception these people were raised by bigots who judged others by the color of their skin, their accent, or just the type of car they drove. In true trickle-down fashion the people I was raised with also became small-minded, deeply prejudiced people, as are their children.
    When Barack Obama was elected and people put on their rose-colored glasses and rejoiced in the death of racism, it seemed about as believable as democracy in Russia. Today's racists may be smoother about how they express themselves, and they may at least look around before dropping the "n" word, but the thoughts and instincts are the same now as they were 50 years ago.

Tom Lowe. Having listened, and in younger days tried to argue with, this sort of BS, I’m having a visceral response to the boomer’s tirade. So I’m going to get rhetorical:
    “I’m sorry, sir, that having Parkinson’s has made you face your own mortality (I stick an Insulin needle in me every morning- which is no fun); and I’m sorry that having white skin and balls hasn’t turned out to be a lifelong entitlement. But you do have that medical plan your union negotiated, Bain Capital never got around to your company, and your pension, your mortgage isn’t underwater, and you have friends and relatives-in spite of yourself.
     “Ya know something? From what I’ve seen, those scary people you want to shoot with that automatic weapon have a much scarier life than you. Even with the three jobs they both work, it’s still a long way to the emergency room if anyone gets sick, and there’s too much month left at the end of the money. Their kids may be hearing about the Dream Act in school, but there’s the drug dealers on the corner and that drone hovering over the neighborhood to get past first. ’Cause they don’t see the Land of Opportunity open to them, just struggling, and hoping it will be better for their children. So, go sit over there with the other straw-men, Ray Bolger will be right along to teach you the new routine. We won’t Occupy your Laziboy.”

Morris Dean. I've never thought much about the various distinctions among "boomer generations." The U.S. Census Bureau defines "baby boomer" as "a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom between the years 1946 and 1964." [Wikipedia, which goes on to say:]

The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context...impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition...Ascribing universal attributes to a broad generation is difficult...Nonetheless, many people have attempted to determine the broad cultural similarities and historical impact of the generation, and thus the term has gained widespread popular usage.

    But if our friend of a friend is correct that the generation born between 1945 and 1950 includes a disproportionate number of the Parkinson's guy's type, then we can hope that most of them will have died or succumbed to Alzheimers by 2025 or so, and that the Republican Party may have regained some of its senses and the NRA have lost its strangle-hold on Congress.
    Unfortunately, being a member of the generation born during World War II, I'll likely have died or succumbed myself before then and be unable to witness the presumed improvement in our politics.
_______________
"Welcome contributing editors"