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Wednesday, June 5, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
O
Jonah
Goldberg
WELCOME
SISTERS
RODEO
PARTICIPANTS
& PATRONS!
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
The letter written by Elizabeth Burns last
week is so disturbing that I just have to com-
ment on it. It9s so wrong in so many ways.
I9m a lifelong educator, as well 4 which I9m
embarrassed to say after reading her letter.
Her statement automatically pinning the
blame on people because of their sex, color
and age, is disgusting. <Like so much in this
country old white men ....= So to follow her
logic, young non-white women are auto-
matically not ever at fault? What about older
women then? What about non-white males?
Or all white women? All equally disgusting
assumptions. That9s exactly what we are try-
ing to avoid in America. Aren9t we? That kind
of knee-jerk statement and those assumptions?
She decries <Cronyism and favoritism,=
then turns right around and does exactly that
herself. To paraphrase her: <Many of the
children have been part of the community for
years. The coaches have been here for mere
months.= OMG! That9s rank cronyism and
favoritism RIGHT THERE! Can9t you see?
Automatically good people and bad people,
based on how long they have lived in our
town. That9s really how to rank people? Think
about it. Virtually all of us were newcomers to
Sisters at some point. That9s an awful, awful
assumption. Dead wrong, too.
Then to top it off: <Children are to be
believed.= Well, OK, but believed just as much
as the adults/others involved. No more, and no
less. Fair is fair, right? Only an in depth inves-
tigation or a court can actually determine who
is telling the whole truth and who is not. Wait
and see. Until then the accused are presumed
innocent 4 unless that has changed in the last
See LETTERS on page 35
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I9ve changed my mind (a
little) about how we discuss
generations. First, let me
illustrate my longstanding
gripe.
<I am probably the big-
gest fan of the millennials
you9ll ever meet,= retired
Navy Admiral William H.
McRaven, who oversaw the
raid that killed Osama bin
Laden, said in a recent CBS
interview. <[Critics] talk
about millennials being soft
and pampered and entitled?
Well, I9m quick to say that
you9ve never seen them in a
firefight in Afghanistan. ...
This is a fabulous genera-
tion, and anybody that wor-
ries about the future of the
United States, I don9t think
you need to worry.=
I can9t stand that kind of
talk.
Imagine that I said, <I am
probably the biggest critic of
millennials you9ll ever meet.
Fans talk about millennials
being brave and courageous.
Well, I9m quick to say that
you9ve never seen them
mooching beer money in a
7-Eleven parking lot.=
This might instantly
strike you as unfair 4 and it
is! That9s the point.
There are some 83 mil-
lion millennials, defined as
Americans born between
1981 and 1996. It9s difficult
to generalize about a group
of people this large.
I would leap at the oppor-
tunity to buy beer for the
millennials who raided bin
Laden9s compound. But
some random guy who was
playing video games when
bin Laden was taken out?
He can buy his own beer.
In other words, charac-
teristics can be generalized,
but character is formed by
individual deeds. There is
no transitive property to
glory or blame. A hero in
one generation isn9t less
heroic because of the mis-
deeds of someone else his
age. Generational pride is
the cheapest form of identity
politics.
On the other hand, it9s
true that you can make some
useful generalizations about
various generations.
Joseph Sternberg, an
editorial writer for The
Wall Street Journal, has
a new book, <The Theft
of a Decade: How the
Baby Boomers Stole the
Millennials9 Economic
Future.= He casts a thought-
ful, nuanced and important
light on the plight of millen-
nials. Crucially, Sternberg
does it from a center-
right, pro-market perspec-
tive rather than from the
more familiar center-left
view that often gets mired
in larger identity-politics
formulations.
Millennials entered the
workforce in large num-
bers around the time of the
financial crisis of 2007-
2008 and the deep recession
that followed it. That, along
with policies in areas such
as housing and education
pushed by allegedly self-
interested baby boomers,
had dire consequences for a
large swath of young people.
Sternberg9s argument
that millennials 4 whether
they fought in Afghanistan
or not 4 have legitimate
complaints about how
the system is failing them
strikes me as a valuable and
worthwhile form of gen-
erational stereotyping. It9s
rooted in empirical facts and
figures.
But Sternberg9s attempt
to blame the boomers for
the millennials9 travails
strikes me as the wrong kind
of generational stereotyp-
ing. And I say that as a Gen
Xer for whom bashing baby
boomers is a birthright.
I have no doubt that
some of the policy missteps
Sternberg lays at the feet of
the boomers can be attrib-
uted to certain generational
attitudes. (They were the
damn hippies, after all.) But
many of those attitudes were
inherited from the <Greatest
Generation= or earlier.
More to the point, the
policies the boomers imple-
mented were hotly debated
among boomers them-
selves, and virtually none
of them expressly argued
from a desire to self-deal
for their own generation
at the expense of others.
Just as there are millennial
socialists and millennial
anarcho-capitalists, there
are boomers in those catego-
ries as well. If we9re going
to assign blame 4 and why
not? 4it9s more helpful to
put it on those who were
wrong rather than indicting
an entire generation of some
75 million people.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.