The Albuquerque Tribune does me the honor of publishing my column the fourth Thursday of each month. Here is yesterday's:
A Dying Breed
‘Me’ nation replacing middle-class ‘we’ generation, which gladly joined
to propel greater good
Where are the belly laughs?
The President tells us Social Security is in "crisis," then it’s not He says Social Security will go bankrupt unless we act now but his plan, the White House confirms, won’t prevent it. Still, to move Social Security dollars to Wall Street, he contemplates borrowing billions.
Inane? Sure. We should be guffawing. Instead, folks with straight faces engage in serious debate. Why? Follow me to the obituary page. I think I’ve found the answer
Understand. I read the obits every day, happily, inspired and educated by how people lived their lives.
Watching the World War II generation move swiftly off-stage, for example, I re-learn the meaning of the phrase, "rising to the occasion." Almost all obits tell triumphal stories of men and women navigating this brief voyage bravely and with caring. (Dear Aaron Copland. Love "Fanfare for the Common Man", but the title’s stupid! They don’t exist.)
When a venerable Mrs. Candelaria recently passed away, the obit said, "Her Catholic faith was an important part of her life." Lots of older folks had faith and thereby found community. It makes sense. What’s the Torah but the account of a people learning to live together as God demanded? What’s Christianity without social justice? (No, Pat Robertson’s version doesn’t count.)
Mind you, when these old folks grew up, they had to hang together. You don’t fight joblessness, the banks or Dust Bowl alone. Family, neighbors, eventually the whole nation had to lend a hand.
Came Pearl Harbor. I was a kid and memory’s a trickster, but I believe we’ve never since been so united.
In 1945, Americans set about making life better for everybody. We taxed ourselves to pave roads to suburbia, help families buy houses. Even picked up the tab so GIs might improve themselves at college.
It’s called cooperation. It produced the middle class.
Yet folks tell me I’m naïve. This is a new era of self-made Americans. Oh yes, they do it themselves.
I observe these self-made folks. They’re dynamic. Charitable, too.
But they have no sense of "us."
So when the Mob puts out a contract on Social Security they shrug. It’s a Ponzi scheme, they say. If I had a buck for every mid-boomer who’s said that, I’d be on the beach at Cannes. Young workers paying for the secure retirement of older folks? Gotta be a scam.
I explain how insurance and investments differ. How adjustments can preserve the system. They’re deaf, their total focus on the potential return from stocks and bonds. As if Social Security was about "return."
Finally, I get it. They come in ones. Untied. Each will rise on individual merit to Trump-dom.
Who’s naïve now - or delusional, rather? A generation born on second base that thinks it hit a double. And that the market shall save us.
Some fogies like Allan Greenspan, who once worshipped Ayn Rand, agree. Today’s Libertarians, too, deify naked individualism, disdaining a religious or secular common good.
So say goodnight, Gracie, to the ties cherished by Mrs. Candelaria and her church friends, the CCC guys and Okies and Greatest Generation. Forget social justice, Arthur Miller.
The nation’s not roaring at the President’s "reform" because Americans who believe in "we" are dying - which I don’t find that funny.
Alpert, a semi-retired newsman from Albuquerque, writes a Web log at www.alpertstruth.com. His column appears in Insight and Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.