Although the author is writing about America, it applies to Canada as well.
27 Replies to “No Country For Old Men”
Lost the last vestige of connection with today’s Canada when the Emergencies Act was invoked to quash the trucker protest.
A real good synopsis of where we are. I have lived it and I agree with every damn word. I console myself with the fact that I am at the end of my life span and outside of making me uncomfortable and angry there is not much “they” can do other than kill me. Got the Biblical definition of longevity and bit. Sad to see my kids and grandkids turned into mindless robots of the state.
From MaggiesFarmanotherdotcom website:
Aggie says:
I believe we need a new descriptive term for the form of government we are now living under. I don’t think it’s accurate to call it a ‘Representitive Democratic Republic’ any longer. Yes, government positions are still filled in this Constitutional manner, but when you stop and consider it, the actions of government and the symbiotic, complementary actions by corporations are not controlled by legislation, or constrained by the rule of law.
In Italy, they called government control of the media, the national sensibilities, and the corporations ‘Fascism’. But that is not what we have here, now. We have corporations, supposedly independent, filling a complimenting niche to government’s desires that amplify its power. Consider the Canadian banks, seizing the assets of their customers when identified as part of the Trucker’s Protest. Completely extra-legal, and without official sanction; striking terror into the little people who feared everything they owned was now lost, all due to a non-violent protest. And now, even though their accounts were later restored, they are now ‘flagged’ for life with some kind of special classification. Consider the same, sympathetic / extra-legal cooperation enthusiastically provided to the DOJ, phone and credit card activity for people suspected of being involved in the Jan 6 protest. No protections under the law; no due process to secure personal data.
So: What do we call this newly-flexed power by the team of corporate America, the American Media complex, and The Democratic Party. What is this new form of government rule?
Exasperated reply:
I don’t know how to make it succinct. I start with “Der Regulativ(sic) Staat Uber Alles” but this doesn’t capture that it is a corporatacracy, a term used to refer to an economic, political and judicial system controlled by corporations that puts the interests of favored global corporations/industries above all else. Perhaps, corruptacracy isn’t that far off.
Dictatorial tyranny does it for me.
It’s not far off an inverted form of fascism, really. In Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, corporations did the bidding of the state. Today, increasingly, the true power lies in the corporations, especially in the multinationals, and the governments do their bidding.
Now add the coming age of energy poverty into the future and figure out how much civil society can survive that.
Rush Limbaugh used to say the the Democrats no longer determine policy, it’s the media that sets it for them. Sometimes directly (Great party inside the Beltway last night at Fauci’s place, eh?) but most of the time by establishing the “correct narrative” on a given issue.
Yet, there are still many, even here on SDA that take the legacy media at their word… particularly on Ukraine when we should be questioning EVERY LAST SHRED OF DETAIL COMING FROM THEM.
The corporations, journalists, universities were all part of and promoted fascism, but under communism the corporations, journalists, universities were all employees of the state.
Corporate fascism.
Being a latter Baby Boomer I can identify with the sentiment. However, it must be remembered that my generation excelled and enjoyed overthrowing the customs of their fathers. Their enthusiasm for sex, birth control and abortion heralded the ‘Sexual Revolution ‘ which degraded the most intimate of human expressions. You reap what you sow
They say … and it’s true … that our BRAIN is our largest sex organ. I guess I’m a relic from a distant past, but I could never understand the concept of promiscuous sex. Sex with people you don’t really give a shit about. What’s the point? A moment’s pleasure? How is the brain (let alone the heart) involved in that? I suppose there is some component of “forbiddenness” to illicit sex … but that’s a pretty reptilian part of the brain.
While the sexual Revolution did free us from repressive sexual morays … it should never have endorsed sex for sex’s sake. Sex is bound by our human makeup (Godly creation) … to committed relationship. Sex, without deep caring for your partner is just animalistic stimulation. And it is ultimately destructive IMHO.
That is what our betters want, a population enslaved to animalistic instincts. Animals are easier to herd. And cull the weak, undesirable, old, ornery
Speak for yourself, Farmerboy. I’m a boomer and I was focused on my education and establishing myself.
The problem is you tolerated the nonsense and allowed the crazies to take over. My parents generation have ruined the world for their grandchildren.
The sentiments expressed therein have uncanny resemblance to real life.
How could that happen in the United States, once the shining light of freedom for the rest of the world.
Nobody is perfect.
If you want perfection and think that you will experience Utopia, good luck.
The absolute maximum best one can do is to struggle for a better today than yesterday.
With debilitating, dehumanizing ideology of socialism/fascism the struggle is that much urgent and difficult. Nonetheless essential.
Painful read only because it seemed like a curtain call but yeah, sadly it’s all true.
Paraphrasing Bishop Sheen…we had all the truth and no zeal, the other side had all zeal and no truth.
Without doubt, the 2020’s is the worst decade since WWII. And it’s going to get unimaginably worse. Remember 2019? Did you even think the next two years were even possible? So, worse than that.
Strangers in our Estranged land
It’s galling to read a Boomer whine about the state of the nation, when they’ve driven it there. From protests in their 20s, to decades at the top of the corporate and political heaps, they’ve had an influence entirely in keeping with their outsized share of the population.
Look in a mirror, or at least at your friends, and cry to someone else.
You sure hate your elders, don’t you?
I’m a blue-collar working-class kid and I’m one of the accursed boomers you so despise. I spent years earning my keep and working on getting an education. I’m sure I’m not the only one on SDA who did something similar.
Now grow up, grow a pair, acquire a spine, and do something to improve yourself instead of waiting for someone else–maybe even the government–to do it for you. That means going to school and getting an education, including actually earning your grades, rather than having them handed to you. If the idea of university doesn’t suit you, then take up a trade, but, then, you might actually have to get yourself dirty once in a while plus you’re expected to do something physical, like picking up a tool and–horrors!–using it properly.
We’ll I’m the child of Boomers. Too many people in my generation were aborted for us to have much of a say on anything. We are outnumbered by the Boomers one on side, and their counterpart the Millenials.
Most of the people I know who are my age really admired our grandparents, the ones who fought WWII. Watching our parents completely disrespect them in their golden years and neglect them has been eye opening.
Of course I admire the Baby Boomers who have been fighting against the tyranny of the left. But I don’t know any personally. They are few and far between in my world.
Speaking as a Gen X’er I feel no sympathy for the Boomers that are now entering their 60’s and 70’s. They lament the country they grew up in is no longer the country they see before them. They don’t recognize it anymore. While they are the reason the country doesn’t resemble its past glory.
When they were in their teens and twenties they rebelled (not all of them) against the established time tested and honoured, traditions and values that made Western Democracies the envy of the world. At every stage of their lives as they moved through the years they challenged every established believe and system attacking them and tearing them down where they could, with no regard for the long term impact of their actions. They were able to do this because no one could really stand in their way as they had the strength in numbers due to them being the largest cohort to pass through western society in recent time.
They claimed they were doing this for the betterment of society and the world. They had lofty ideals or so they claimed but very few of them worked out and many made things worse for everyone especially those they claimed they were trying to help.
A funny yet predictable thing happened as the Boomers moved up in age from their idealistic teens and 20’s in the 60’s and 70’s to their increasingly cynical and greedy 30’s and 40’s in the 80’s. Now getting into positions of authority, rather than trying to keep the playing field level for all they started tilting the playing field in their favour.
Opening up immigration to all not for the betterment of the Western culture but as a means to water it down to the point it was irrelevant. These new immigrants were not expected to be loyal and patriotic to their new home. To the contrary they were expected to keep their culture and not integrate into the broader society. They were expected to be hyphenated Canadians not Canadians with a particular ancestry. Whether this was the intention at the beginning it later on became a great way to divide Canadians on racial, ethnic, religious and culture grounds. Making it easier for the Boomers who now held political offices and ran the universities, hospitals, entertainment and the media organizations to divide and manipulate us. Not to mention undermining the strength and character of these institutions along the way and driving Western Democracies further into debt.
I doubt feel sorry for them as they are the ones that set us upon this path so many decades ago and even though they lament the results of their intended labour they still refuse to get out of the way so that generations younger than theirs can fix the cancer they ignorantly or arrogantly introduced into the system that they reshaped into their ever changing vision of themselves. Perhaps the reason they don’t recognize it is because they don’t see it because they don’t look at it. For to look at it would be like looking into a mirror and recognizing the ugliness staring back at them.
One day about ten or so years from now the Boomers ranks will have been thinned out enough that they no longer have the numbers to run roughshod over Western society anymore. It will be at that time that we will be able to restore some semblance values and traditions back into the culture and get it back on the path it should never have strayed from.
Jimbo, you don’t know shit about Boomer me or my circle of Boomer friends. How do I know that? ‘Cause none, zero, nada, of what you wrote applies to a single one of us.
As RedPop notes below, you’re so fucking stupid you don’t know what a Commie is. The actions & attitudes noted in your screed above belong to Progs. That some of them may be Boomers is secondary to the issue.
It’s unfortunate that you never learned critical thinking in school, unlike Boomers.
I think people my age are upset that Boomers like you weren’t actually able to do anything to stop the problems we are doomed to live with after you are gone.
That’s simply a fact.
The Boomer’s worst sin by far was being horrible fucking parents.
Three generations of useless, broken twits have followed.
May Gaia have mercy on you soulless fucks.
A few people here don’t know the difference between Boomers and Communists.
Today is not today because of people born before 1964.
I’ve noted it here before, RedPop: Somebody needs to show these ignorant assholes a Venn diagram, with Progs dead center.
Look, you failed. Just own it and the people you failed will be ready to forgive.
Lost the last vestige of connection with today’s Canada when the Emergencies Act was invoked to quash the trucker protest.
A real good synopsis of where we are. I have lived it and I agree with every damn word. I console myself with the fact that I am at the end of my life span and outside of making me uncomfortable and angry there is not much “they” can do other than kill me. Got the Biblical definition of longevity and bit. Sad to see my kids and grandkids turned into mindless robots of the state.
From MaggiesFarmanotherdotcom website:
Aggie says:
I believe we need a new descriptive term for the form of government we are now living under. I don’t think it’s accurate to call it a ‘Representitive Democratic Republic’ any longer. Yes, government positions are still filled in this Constitutional manner, but when you stop and consider it, the actions of government and the symbiotic, complementary actions by corporations are not controlled by legislation, or constrained by the rule of law.
In Italy, they called government control of the media, the national sensibilities, and the corporations ‘Fascism’. But that is not what we have here, now. We have corporations, supposedly independent, filling a complimenting niche to government’s desires that amplify its power. Consider the Canadian banks, seizing the assets of their customers when identified as part of the Trucker’s Protest. Completely extra-legal, and without official sanction; striking terror into the little people who feared everything they owned was now lost, all due to a non-violent protest. And now, even though their accounts were later restored, they are now ‘flagged’ for life with some kind of special classification. Consider the same, sympathetic / extra-legal cooperation enthusiastically provided to the DOJ, phone and credit card activity for people suspected of being involved in the Jan 6 protest. No protections under the law; no due process to secure personal data.
So: What do we call this newly-flexed power by the team of corporate America, the American Media complex, and The Democratic Party. What is this new form of government rule?
Exasperated reply:
I don’t know how to make it succinct. I start with “Der Regulativ(sic) Staat Uber Alles” but this doesn’t capture that it is a corporatacracy, a term used to refer to an economic, political and judicial system controlled by corporations that puts the interests of favored global corporations/industries above all else. Perhaps, corruptacracy isn’t that far off.
Dictatorial tyranny does it for me.
It’s not far off an inverted form of fascism, really. In Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, corporations did the bidding of the state. Today, increasingly, the true power lies in the corporations, especially in the multinationals, and the governments do their bidding.
Now add the coming age of energy poverty into the future and figure out how much civil society can survive that.
Rush Limbaugh used to say the the Democrats no longer determine policy, it’s the media that sets it for them. Sometimes directly (Great party inside the Beltway last night at Fauci’s place, eh?) but most of the time by establishing the “correct narrative” on a given issue.
Yet, there are still many, even here on SDA that take the legacy media at their word… particularly on Ukraine when we should be questioning EVERY LAST SHRED OF DETAIL COMING FROM THEM.
The corporations, journalists, universities were all part of and promoted fascism, but under communism the corporations, journalists, universities were all employees of the state.
Corporate fascism.
Being a latter Baby Boomer I can identify with the sentiment. However, it must be remembered that my generation excelled and enjoyed overthrowing the customs of their fathers. Their enthusiasm for sex, birth control and abortion heralded the ‘Sexual Revolution ‘ which degraded the most intimate of human expressions. You reap what you sow
They say … and it’s true … that our BRAIN is our largest sex organ. I guess I’m a relic from a distant past, but I could never understand the concept of promiscuous sex. Sex with people you don’t really give a shit about. What’s the point? A moment’s pleasure? How is the brain (let alone the heart) involved in that? I suppose there is some component of “forbiddenness” to illicit sex … but that’s a pretty reptilian part of the brain.
While the sexual Revolution did free us from repressive sexual morays … it should never have endorsed sex for sex’s sake. Sex is bound by our human makeup (Godly creation) … to committed relationship. Sex, without deep caring for your partner is just animalistic stimulation. And it is ultimately destructive IMHO.
That is what our betters want, a population enslaved to animalistic instincts. Animals are easier to herd. And cull the weak, undesirable, old, ornery
Speak for yourself, Farmerboy. I’m a boomer and I was focused on my education and establishing myself.
The problem is you tolerated the nonsense and allowed the crazies to take over. My parents generation have ruined the world for their grandchildren.
The sentiments expressed therein have uncanny resemblance to real life.
How could that happen in the United States, once the shining light of freedom for the rest of the world.
Nobody is perfect.
If you want perfection and think that you will experience Utopia, good luck.
The absolute maximum best one can do is to struggle for a better today than yesterday.
With debilitating, dehumanizing ideology of socialism/fascism the struggle is that much urgent and difficult. Nonetheless essential.
Painful read only because it seemed like a curtain call but yeah, sadly it’s all true.
Paraphrasing Bishop Sheen…we had all the truth and no zeal, the other side had all zeal and no truth.
Without doubt, the 2020’s is the worst decade since WWII. And it’s going to get unimaginably worse. Remember 2019? Did you even think the next two years were even possible? So, worse than that.
Strangers in our Estranged land
It’s galling to read a Boomer whine about the state of the nation, when they’ve driven it there. From protests in their 20s, to decades at the top of the corporate and political heaps, they’ve had an influence entirely in keeping with their outsized share of the population.
Look in a mirror, or at least at your friends, and cry to someone else.
You sure hate your elders, don’t you?
I’m a blue-collar working-class kid and I’m one of the accursed boomers you so despise. I spent years earning my keep and working on getting an education. I’m sure I’m not the only one on SDA who did something similar.
Now grow up, grow a pair, acquire a spine, and do something to improve yourself instead of waiting for someone else–maybe even the government–to do it for you. That means going to school and getting an education, including actually earning your grades, rather than having them handed to you. If the idea of university doesn’t suit you, then take up a trade, but, then, you might actually have to get yourself dirty once in a while plus you’re expected to do something physical, like picking up a tool and–horrors!–using it properly.
We’ll I’m the child of Boomers. Too many people in my generation were aborted for us to have much of a say on anything. We are outnumbered by the Boomers one on side, and their counterpart the Millenials.
Most of the people I know who are my age really admired our grandparents, the ones who fought WWII. Watching our parents completely disrespect them in their golden years and neglect them has been eye opening.
Of course I admire the Baby Boomers who have been fighting against the tyranny of the left. But I don’t know any personally. They are few and far between in my world.
Speaking as a Gen X’er I feel no sympathy for the Boomers that are now entering their 60’s and 70’s. They lament the country they grew up in is no longer the country they see before them. They don’t recognize it anymore. While they are the reason the country doesn’t resemble its past glory.
When they were in their teens and twenties they rebelled (not all of them) against the established time tested and honoured, traditions and values that made Western Democracies the envy of the world. At every stage of their lives as they moved through the years they challenged every established believe and system attacking them and tearing them down where they could, with no regard for the long term impact of their actions. They were able to do this because no one could really stand in their way as they had the strength in numbers due to them being the largest cohort to pass through western society in recent time.
They claimed they were doing this for the betterment of society and the world. They had lofty ideals or so they claimed but very few of them worked out and many made things worse for everyone especially those they claimed they were trying to help.
A funny yet predictable thing happened as the Boomers moved up in age from their idealistic teens and 20’s in the 60’s and 70’s to their increasingly cynical and greedy 30’s and 40’s in the 80’s. Now getting into positions of authority, rather than trying to keep the playing field level for all they started tilting the playing field in their favour.
Opening up immigration to all not for the betterment of the Western culture but as a means to water it down to the point it was irrelevant. These new immigrants were not expected to be loyal and patriotic to their new home. To the contrary they were expected to keep their culture and not integrate into the broader society. They were expected to be hyphenated Canadians not Canadians with a particular ancestry. Whether this was the intention at the beginning it later on became a great way to divide Canadians on racial, ethnic, religious and culture grounds. Making it easier for the Boomers who now held political offices and ran the universities, hospitals, entertainment and the media organizations to divide and manipulate us. Not to mention undermining the strength and character of these institutions along the way and driving Western Democracies further into debt.
I doubt feel sorry for them as they are the ones that set us upon this path so many decades ago and even though they lament the results of their intended labour they still refuse to get out of the way so that generations younger than theirs can fix the cancer they ignorantly or arrogantly introduced into the system that they reshaped into their ever changing vision of themselves. Perhaps the reason they don’t recognize it is because they don’t see it because they don’t look at it. For to look at it would be like looking into a mirror and recognizing the ugliness staring back at them.
One day about ten or so years from now the Boomers ranks will have been thinned out enough that they no longer have the numbers to run roughshod over Western society anymore. It will be at that time that we will be able to restore some semblance values and traditions back into the culture and get it back on the path it should never have strayed from.
Jimbo, you don’t know shit about Boomer me or my circle of Boomer friends. How do I know that? ‘Cause none, zero, nada, of what you wrote applies to a single one of us.
As RedPop notes below, you’re so fucking stupid you don’t know what a Commie is. The actions & attitudes noted in your screed above belong to Progs. That some of them may be Boomers is secondary to the issue.
It’s unfortunate that you never learned critical thinking in school, unlike Boomers.
I think people my age are upset that Boomers like you weren’t actually able to do anything to stop the problems we are doomed to live with after you are gone.
That’s simply a fact.
The Boomer’s worst sin by far was being horrible fucking parents.
Three generations of useless, broken twits have followed.
May Gaia have mercy on you soulless fucks.
A few people here don’t know the difference between Boomers and Communists.
Today is not today because of people born before 1964.
I’ve noted it here before, RedPop: Somebody needs to show these ignorant assholes a Venn diagram, with Progs dead center.
Look, you failed. Just own it and the people you failed will be ready to forgive.