Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 7:37:43 AM
TORONTO (October 11, 2006) -- I am a creature of nostalgia, and every October 11 I celebrate quietly my first landing on foreign soil, October 11, 1969 when my round-the-world cruise docked in London, England. I was 21 years old and an English major and major British Invasion devotee, and I could not wait to experience the world I had only read about til now. This, you'll note, was the Sixties, though, and our ship was loaded with students who were most of us travelling Abroad for the first time, and very soon it was evident that many if not most of my fellow students were intent on exporting to the world the cult of You're Not The Boss Of Me.
As the four-month cruise continued, a lot of these brats found out in the most objective way that not only is the world not just like America only quaint, but in fact a person can be arrested for doing and saying things the world doesn't (didn't) tolerate in anybody, either visitor or resident. We left a couple of our number behind in a Dutch prison, for example, and one of them was only recently released; a good many second thoughts were no doubt prompted when the kid's Daddy rushed to Holland with the chequebook and discovered that when you are arrested for trafficking in LSD in Holland and sentenced to 25 years, you're gonna serve 25 years in Holland. Another eye-opener is that the American Embassy can't do anything but call your Mama and if she will pay for one, find you a local lawyer. One of the most interesting and amusing (to us law-abiding citizens) experiences of our journey happened in Argentina, where a cadre of bearded, dirty male students in ripped jeans and shirts with provocative slogans on them were hauled in for LOOKING like revolutionaries; and when the Dean of Men, who looked equally revolutionary, came to speak for them, he was tossed in the clink along with them. Only when an officer from the Dutch ship's crew appeared on their behalf were they released to his custody and told to keep out of sight til the ship sailed. The most frightening experience we had was in Greece, which had recently suffered a coup; some students were instructed to remove the Peace Symbol from view, and told by unsmiling soldiers that if it reappeared the student would not. I do not know that anybody 'disappeared' but I believe a knot was jerked in the tails of some who suddenly realized that the world was a dangerous place -- for the duration of their stay in Greece, at least. In Turkey we were counted upon arrival and counted before we could leave port, so nobody would escape from Turkey by hiding among us.
I returned to California with an appreciation for the fact that not only was the world NOT just like America, in fact no country in the world was anything like America and I was darned lucky to have been born in a country where the police didn't carry machine guns and arrest you for being dirty and unkempt and rude.
Unfortunately most of my compadres came back to California with the attitude of a kiddie turned loose in a candy store; that is, four months of behaving themselves turned into a war dance of misbehaviour that, 37 years later still rolls on. Their misguided parents, with their desire to "spare" their kids from what they had gone through in both the Depression and World War II, had never taught them self-control (which can, too, be instilled from outside -- just ask your grandmother) and consequently, we're stuck with a country filled with and run by and for grey-haired, ponytailed 'students' who are still convinced that their sole mission in life is to prove that You're Not The Boss Of Me. Parents who never taught them that the point of parenting is preparing the kids to be the Bosses of Themselves and Others have spawned a generation of Veruca Salts, the bratty child who screams "Don't care how, I want it now!" and is epitomized, I think, by the woman in the Bank of America commercial who says firmly, "I just don't think I should have to pay for any of it." In everything from leaving a trail of garbage behind them as they walk down a public street, to sending their daughters to school wearing tank tops and cha cha skirts with salacious invitations stenciled across their breasts and backsides, to insisting that girls have the same right to get stinking drunk with strangers as boys have and not suffer consequences, to screaming at the security gate to the airport "Give me lip gloss or give me death!" and that terrorists have the same right not to be punished for their crimes that they themselves had in their drug-using and drug-dealing days, my generation continues the public embarrassment they began for us 37 years ago when they adopted as their motto You're Not The Boss Of Me.
My prime example, and it's a goodie, is the Mark Foley Brouhaha currently being blabberjabbered 24/7 on every network in America. Mark Foley's generation was taught "if it feels good, do it" and "make love, not war." Mark Foley's generation's children were taught that there are no standards and actions have no consequences. Now the Mark Foleys of the world are preying on the children of the Flower Children and, because they were taught that everybody's entitled to Do What Feels Good, they don't have a defence against their parents' generation's interpretation of this mantra. When they were agitating for their right to have sex with anybody anywhere, they weren't thinking of somebody interpreting this to mean their kids were fair game. But what else could it mean?
You can't teach an old hippie new tricks; it's too late for them to learn that when you spend your whole life defying adults and anyone who would enforce adulthood upon you, then you have given up your right to expect other people to behave like adults as well. And today's America shows what happens when the Majority Opinion is that You're Not The Boss Of Me, and nobody seems to know how to Boss himself either.
Like the parents who believe they can skip their childrens' vaccination because other parents are more responsible than they are and the 'herd' will protect them, today's Boomer Parents are discovering that when you defy disease, the disease will win every time. And sooner or later, as has happened, there aren't enough adults left in the "herd" to make up for those who refused to get the shots, pick up the reins, or take responsibility for their actions.
Sometimes I can't wait to hear one of these aging brats tell some Imam that he's Not The Boss of Him. I hope they broadcast his beheading on CNN. From the mountains where we're hiding out, the last adults in America will cheer.