By: Jane Stillwater
Why does the White House and Congress seem so hell-bent on killing off what is left of America’s “Greatest Generation” — by making cuts to the Social Security payments that we depend upon to stay alive?
I consider myself to be a junior member of the Greatest Generation and I am truly pissed off that “Death Panel” legislators in Washington who are probably too young to have even served in Vietnam — let alone in World War II — can be monstrous enough to even consider shutting down Social Security’s lifeline to all the veterans who fought in that great war to keep the world safe from corporate control of government (as Mussolini once described National Socialism), and also drastically cut payments to women and children who bravely manned up the Home Front while our soldiers were away fighting Nazis.
Mine is also the last generation to have been raised without television.
And now folks on TV are telling us that, for the sake of balancing the federal budget, we must now give up the Social Security that we all worked so hard for, stop making a fuss, forget our proud legacy of service, die quietly and go peacefully into that great good night. Screw that.
My father fought the Nazis. My mother manned the Home Front. I helped plant our freaking victory garden, had my own personal ration book and collected scrap metal in my little red wagon all throughout World War II. We all put our shoulders to the wheel during World War II and then we worked our arses off for our Social Security benefits after that.
And now some generation raised on the Flintstones is now telling us that THEY are going to cut our Social Security? Screw that.
And now I’m spending at least two hours a day watching TV — and another eight hours a day on the internet. That’s ten or more hours a day that I used to spend HAVING A LIFE. And I bet most of you spend even more time watching TV than that. In fact, do any of you ever even turn the damn thing off?
And what has all this boob-tube-watching gotten us? Nothing. We’re losing our homes, we’re losing our jobs, we’re watching our grandchildren get forced into poverty by a system that wants us to become dumb and uneducated and in debt. Now young Americans are supposed to suffer under the burden of school-loan debt for the rest of their lives just for wanting to go to college and better themselves? When a college education doesn’t even matter any more anyway? Screw that too.
Just keep your dirty little corporatist hands off my Social Security, Washington DC.
I don’t know where all of you modern DC corporatists were during World War II. You probably weren’t even born yet. But if you cut Social Security, then you may find yourself right in the middle of the next war against National Socialism (aka corporatism) — even if the heroic survivors of World War II have to go out and start it ourselves.
Dontcha hate it when corporatists pretend to be Christians, Jews & Muslims?
Hey! All you guys with the billion-dollar bank accounts! Don’t you know that religions were founded on the principle of enriching the human spirit — not on enriching your own personal wealth. Rich men can’t fit through the eye of a needle. End of story. Period. God, I hate people who use religion as a means to get rich.
Would greedy bastards like Bush, Perry, Bachmann, Palin, Boener — or even Obama — ever be able to pass the Jesus test? Hardly. The Sermon on the Mount went right over their heads. Corporatists pretending to be Christians? That’s pathetic.
And what if Abraham or Moses came back to visit us earthlings today? They would both kick Netanyahu’s butt! “Read your Talmud!” they’d yell at him. Corporatists pretending to be Jews? That’s pathetic.
Would Mohammed approve of the Saudis bombing Bahrainian Muslims for fun and profit? Or Sunnis and Shias killing each other by the thousands because of oil disputes? Not on your life! Corporatists pretending to be Muslims? That’s pathetic.
It says “Under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. Do you ever see God approving of the resource wars that are now being conducted in His (or Her) name? Hardly. Do you ever see God approving of cutting Social Security to old folks and essentially giving them a death sentence so that the Pentagon can afford even more million-dollar drones to allow them to kill even more women and children? Dudes, get a grip.
And speaking of our Pledge of Allegiance, it also says, “With Liberty and Justice for all”. I can’t see that happening right now in America either, can you?
In today’s world based on corporate greed, it’s not all about God — or Jesus or Abraham or Mohammed either. It’s all about money. It’s all about worshiping the Golden Calf — and then calling it religion.
Don’t any of you corporatists EVER talk to me about religion ever again. Talk to God about that. And I would love to hear God’s reply. “Go to Hell!”
PS: I bet that if you added up all the human beings that corproratists have killed since the end of World War II (that famous war fought to make the world safe from corporatists!), you might find that corporatists have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, Hitler and Mao combined — hard to believe at first but then if you count in the various resource wars in sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Central and South America plus various other wars for oil and all the monetary fund victims dying from drought, slave wages and/or starvation from Somalia to Haiti to the DRC, and the disastrous War on Drugs plus all the deadly stunts pulled by both Bushes, Johnson, NAFTA, Clinton, Kissinger, Obama, Reagan, etc., I’d be very interested in the results.
But at least Hitler, Stalin and Mao didn’t claim to do all their killing in the name of religion.
PPS: And what’s the matter with Berkeley too? It’s not just our national priorities that seem to have lost their way these days. Local priorities are also at risk. For instance, the Berkeley city council just cut all kinds of programs for lower-income folks recently — but will keep paying out large entitlements that benefit those who already have benefits coming out of their ears.
Berkeley used to be the home town of choice for all kinds of artists, writers and visionaries. Not any more. People like Jack Kerouac, Philip K. Dick, Mario Savio, Tre Cool, George Takei, Whoopi Goldberg, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Prior, Gregory Peck, Jimmi Hendrix and the 21 Nobel Peace Prize winners who lived here and made their creative contributions to America back in the day, probably couldn’t even afford to live here any more. Heck, even Patti Hearst probably couldn’t afford to live here any more!
L. A. Breaux
[…] The Greatest Generation Speaks Up: “Hands Off our Social Security!” […]
“Greatest Generation”, my axe! Most of these people were born free and have allowed themselves and their children and grand children to become slaves. Over the last two years I have spoken to maybe 15,000 people of all ages and backgrounds while gathering 7,000 signatures on various petitions. Senior citizens have less of an idea what freedom is about that any other group I speak with. Very few of the WWII vets I speak with believe in freedom for anyone other than themselves and people that think just like they do. In my experience most seniors do not believe that people are entitled to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, unless the other person finds happiness the same way that particular senior does.
Freedom is about allowing other people to do what they want, not just what you want them to do. Freedom is about letting others spend their money the way they want, not making them pay for your support. The “Greatest Generation” would not have let their government tell them it would steal money from their children and grandchildren to pay for their retirement in the first place. The “Greatest Generation” would have demanded to keep the money their employer paid for their services instead of handing it to a bunch of con men. Social security is a ponzi scheme paid to the parents of the “Greatest Generation” and the “Greatest Generation” allowing the government to make slaves of their children.
When many of the “Greatest Generation” were born there was no income tax. There were barely any taxes or government intrusion into daily at all when you were born. That is what freedom is about. The less taxes, the less government we have. The less government we have, the more freedom we have. Our federal government has but two roles. Provide for a common defense and make commerce between the states regular. Where does stealing money from me or my children to pay for your retirement have anything to do with the role of our federal government?
The “Greatest generation” in my book will be the generation that understands that every time the government gives anyone anything it had to take it from someone else to begin with, that governments at all levels take from the poor and give to the rich, taking a little cut for themselves, and that the path to happiness for each of us is in allowing everyone else do what they want as long as it does not actually hurt anyone else.
If you truly want to be the “Greatest Generation”, tell the government to stop stealing from your progeny to pay for your retirement. How about getting the money from them directly without the government taking a cut?
Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform….
William Penn…
I think you have been more than a bit harsh in your criticism of the elderly – seriously, can you blame them for putting their trust in an institution that they have been conditioned to believe in since they were kids?
However, you are most certainly correct about them selling themselves into slavery – albiet unwittingly, these people followed the siren song of the Pearl Harbor attack (which was most likely planed in advance by the U.S. government – there is reason to believe that the U.S. navy knew weeks in advance about the Japanese attack and allowed it to happen so that there would be popular support for the coming war) and began a tradition of a new war every decade since then (Korea, Vietnam, the various Latin American conflicts, the Balkan conflicts, the Afghanistan/Iraq invasions, etc…).
It’s a sad thing to say, but the simple truth here is that most of them are screwed – let them be on object lesson for the rest of us, teaching us a cold, hard reality about government: don’t trust the state, for it will betray you.
Not only is IslandBound harsh (s)he is a bit short-sighted. The social security fund is threatened for two reasons. One, this fund that gained mass during the working years of the post-World War generation is steadily being tapped as these same participants go into their retirement years. Two, instead of placing the funds into a trust that can accumulate interest or into stocks that can increase the return value of the funds, they were emptied out for more government squandering that benefits nobody but the corporates; such as invasive wars to protect corporate interests or lease-sales and grants purportedly to generate jobs and services, but in reality are simply ill-disguised theft of the natural resources. Those who have paid the least percentage of their annual income; the corporates; receive the greatest benefits from our taxes.
The average person going into retirement has punched a clock for at least forty years. That’s forty years worth of social security taxes removed from the paycheck; monies that would have been better secured if the employee had been given the choice to invest them in gold or silver instead. It’s always easy to criticize the past when you are living in the future. It’s not so easy to learn from the past.
The truth is, in recent years, our taxes have gone mainly to defense and commerce; i.e., our expanded militia, our burgeoning law enforcement and protective coverage for unethical trade monopolies. The Social Security fund is the only remaining program initiated by F.D.R. to pull the United States out of a deep depression that started in exactly the same manner as the one we are going through today.
There is a good chance the social security will eventually be dismantled. It has been raided. The generations coming up behind the post World War II generation have been growing smaller and smaller. They will probably have to work out their own solutions for retirement, but the ones who have already put in a life time of hard labor really deserve the retirement they were promised.
On another note, let’s keep “elder” in perspective. There are those who age foolishly, who squander their whole lives on self-indulgence and destructive behavior, but there are others who mature over the years and accumulate wisdom. These are the elders intelligent young people learn to respect. Without the Vietnam protests, there would have been no questions as to the authenticity of our countless wars. Baby boomers and a neat little book by George Orwell called 1984 taught us this. Baby boomers were the first to protest the nuclear arms and nuclear power build-up. Baby boomers were the first to point out the harmful chemicals in our foods, and the harmful effects agri-business had on the environment. The baby boomers are the educators of the well-informed youth of today.
The biggest criticism i have of the post World War II generation is for those who knew that age of awareness that flourished in the sixties and seventies, but instead of using that awareness to advance the qualities of life, ethics and International relations, joined the corporate enemy they had once renounced.
I see your point Karlsie and can relate to the outrage of the elderly over the dismantling of Social Security – however, it is essential that we recognize this institution for what it is: a measure instituted by FDR to placate labor and undercut any real chance of revolution (which threatened to destroy the industrialists, and posibly the state itself if the anarchists won out…) – that is, it was a *bribe* to keep a politically-active (and potentially violent) working class from rising up and overturning the established order. Those revolutionary conditions are what led to “reforms” like Social Security (and, in my own opinion, to U.S. involvement in WWII – nothing like a common enemy to make discontented persons circle the wagons around the state that oppreses them…).
Today, most of the industrial jobs that were once protected by labor unions have been outsourced and most people are living on the edge of backruptcy – cheap, foreign labor has devalued the services of the U.S. working class and people living paycheck to paycheck won’t even think of striking. In other words, these “reforms” have outlived their purpose as far as the state is concerned: that’s why they are being dismantled under the guise of “austerity” – they state wants to redirect those resources away from the common people so that it can use them to build weapons to go kill people in foreign lands and, eventually, here at home when civil war inevitably breaks out!
In short, we are all getting fucked by the state – the only way it will end is if the state is destroyed.
“The Greatest Genaration”- a largely Republican one, holds the lion’s share of blame for the situation we are in fiscally. It was the car in every garage attitude towards spending after the War that drove us towards our unchecked consumerism. The spending on credit came about then too whereas before people would save their money.
Be that as it may, everyone who has payed SSI deserves it back. If we as a nation want to change SSI and/or stop it we need to stop pulling it out of people’s paychecks.
The so-called “Greatest Generation” are the ones who kept re-electing the commie rat FDR to office so he could keep destroying our freedoms by implementing his socialist policies, most of which are still in place to this very day. They are the ones who allowed traitors like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White to infiltrate the highest levels of government and subvert our Constitution. It seems to me that even back then most people were sheeple who’s motto was “In the government we trust.” Yeah, FDR, communist appeaser who fought the Nazis with one hand while stabbing us in the back with the other, a two-faced rat through and through! It is this so-called “greatest generation” who started us down the road to this entitlement mentality we have today. They acted like FDR was some kind of savior, which he was not. If they were smart, they would have realized that all socialism is contrary to the laws of God and the Bible, it is un-Christian to the core. FDR was of the devil! They didn’t save us from anything, they brought socialism and parasitic government on all of us! WW2 was brought on us because of the globalist policies of Woodrow Wilson, his lackey Edwin Mandel House, and other internationalist parasites. Evidently the “greatest generation” was already dumbed down to a large extent. You can’t entirely fault them though, the only kind of information they had in those days was the propaganda put out by the newspapers and radio stations. Today we have the internet and the truth is out there for those who dilligently seek it. Perhaps we people of today can be the greatest generation of them all by defeating socialism and the antichrist New World Order. The ball is in our court, we have the power to do this, it is up to us.