"No other generation in history has shat where it ate more than the Boomers."
Each generation has a moment that defines its time and place in the history of human development. For my father's generation, it was World War Two and what followed, for three decades, when peace turned the clamour of armies at war in Europe dumb.
The working classes of the 1940s were willing to forfeit their lives to built a better economic and social future for their kind because they had been seared by the cauldron of capitalism during the Great Depression, which left them unemployed, starved, without access to medical care and living in precarious housing. .
The Working Class born in the 1920s answered democracy's call in 1939 to defend it against Hitler's Nazism under the condition that their defence of freedom was a battle against want and hunger just as much as fascism.
Affordable housing, universal public healthcare, access to higher education for all citizens, living wages and benefits that provided dignified lives to those unable to work because of illness were all germinated from the blood, sweat and tears of a people who for generations were brutalised and dehumanised by the wealthy.
Our ancestors in 1945 said no more to slums, no more to an early death because of an inability to afford a doctor's care, and no more to lives constrained by wages insufficient to afford joy or hope.
The Post War miracle that lasted for thirty years- where the needs of the working classes were as important to governments as the needs of the middle class, and 1% was both revolutionary and evolutionary. But the Welfare State would never have been born if the 200 years previous to that Golden Age hadn't been steeped in revolutions, industrial progress, and an independent news media's willingness to spread new ideas from radical thinkers to build enlightenment.
Considering the blood lost over the centuries by working people to forge a Welfare State where their existence was pleasurable and purposeful; its premature death at the hands of the 1% who replaced it with neoliberal consumerism is the greatest theft by the entitled in their long history of exploitation.
My generation will be remembered if history can survive our present era, and I have my doubts, as the one who not only destroyed democracy, the environment and the social safety net; but built the shackles for its enslavement as well as for all to come after them.
It didn't have to be this way; we had our 1939 Hitler invades Poland moment of judgement in March 2020 when Covid arrived with the menace of the Black Death. Humanity stood at a cross road, and for the briefest of times, governments for and by the 1% tried to be their brother's keeper. There were lockdowns, furloughs, CERB in Canada and leaders trying to have the back of every community in their nations. But that "we are all in it together," feeling was short-lived. Boris Johnson partied like Nero, while normal folk bid farewell to their loved ones dying from Covid via Skype. In America The Republicans and let’s be truthful The Democrats gave most people the option to die at home penniless from Covid, or die at work from Covid. But die they must for the New York Stock Exchanges daily ticker tape readings.
Covid could have been that juncture in time when the common people took back their societies from the few. But we didn't because we were told by the corporate news media owned by the entitled that we wanted a return to normal. That return to normal we desired, according to the pundits and news personalities who reside in tony postcodes and eat in restaurants where the starter is more than an average person’s daily wage was a booze-up, some fast fashion made by a slave labourer in Bangladesh, and a holiday in the sun bought on credit.
The 2020s could have been a Renaissance for the Welfare State constructed with 21st-century sensibilities. But instead, it birthed a new Gilded Age for the haves and a return to depression-era poverty for the nots.
If you don't believe me ask the four million kids who go to bed hungry every night in Britain. Or enquire to any one of the thousands of homeless tent encampments that now squat in every major and minor city in Canada. Better yet, go to the United States and interview the millions in rent arrears, the millions at the food banks, the millions now on Medicaid or Welfare, who to placate; the 1% desire to never pay taxes, must accept forced labour or be denied the benefits that keep them from perishing like it was a backstreet, in 1890 Chicago.
Anyone who tells you that pessimism for the present and future is wrong is either a fool or has a vested interest in keeping you hopeful so you don't lose your temper and take to the streets as if it was an Arab Spring.
We had a functioning Welfare State, and we gave it up in our life time. We voted it away and we did it gladly. We threw it away like it was a cigarette end flicked from our fingers. During the last two centuries, people were revolutionised to fight for a future that included a Welfare State, whilst we were revolutionised by consumerism that profited the 1% to tear it down. The epitaph for our times will be, "No other generation in history shat where it ate more than the Boomers."
As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help this month. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. This month is proving to be real scramble to get next months together. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John
