The Worst Generation

$18 billion in Wall Street bonuses, a multi-million dollar redecoration of Merrill Lynch’s chief executive’s office, former Senator Tom Daschle’s $5 million income in two years, Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

How can I read all this and not conclude that the Baby Boomer generation is the exact opposite of the World War II generation that preceded it – the Greatest Generation as Tom Brokaw so aptly put it.

The boomers had it all handed to them by parents who survived the Depression and won the last truly just war. The boomer elites were given the best educations money could buy and the financial and moral wealth of the greatest country in history. And what did they do with it? They spent it on themselves.

They exploited the system to enrich themselves and leave the next generations with a decaying infrastructure, a degraded environment, a failing educational system and debt as far as the eye can see. They left the next generations with a system that I can only describe as corrupt, where the top 1% take the spoils, and everyone else is left to scrape by.

President Obama represents a new generation tasked with cleaning up the garbage left behind by the boomers. It is a monumental task that will take another generation to complete. He needs to both re-build the country’s physical infrastructure, and more importantly, our moral infrastructure and the belief that the American system is both just and fair. He needs and deserves our support.