Meaning, my grandfathers and father came of age after WWII and the Korean War. I was raised Catholic, so all the families in my parochial school in the early 60's had a bunch of kids. I was the youngest of 3 in my family, because my mother almost died during delivery and the doctor graciously defied Church doctrine and tied her tubes. Or maybe he just hated Catholics. You know, "those people" who "breed too much".



My father served one term in the Navy, and told story after story of just how racist, sexist, classist and cruel were his superiors. He became adamantly against his sons joining the military after that. And, of course, we grew up in the "Dead-end Sixties" during the Vietnam era. My parents were solidly 50's in their mentality, and us kids were really too young to become hippies.



The first presidential election in which I was able to vote was 1980. I thought for sure no one in their right mind would choose someone to run the government who proudly proclaimed that "government WAS the problem." What were THEY smoking? Well, actually, they were snorting it up their noses.. The cocaine/meth-fueled "Roaring Eighties" seemed a redux of the Roaring Twenties.



If you look at income inequality, it all really started in 1978, the year I graduated high school. My parents were pretty poor, so affording college was difficult even then, and I eventually dropped out. Particularly since the fields I was interested in were not "marketable". Somewhere along the way, Personnel Departments transmogrified into Human Resource Departments. A subtle but startling change, indicating people had been quietly moved from the Assets to the Liabilities column on business balance sheets.



I grew up with the Civics Lesson, which is the subject of this post. But apparently, that was meant for us "rubes" at the bottom of the social pyramid, with the top echelons continuing to be reserved for the Bannon/Trump types. The White Christian Nationalists, basically. They've always believed that this is THEIR country, and all the rest of us don't really belong here. Manifest Destiny, white-washing slavery out of history books, mercilessly crushing the "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius"...



I have often felt that our current predicament is like our older brothers and sisters, having always envied and hated us, are now using their power to punish us out of existence. Being born between, roughly, 1955 and 1965 makes you part of the "write-off" generation. You worked and slaved and hustled away your whole life, always falling behind monetarily, always paying for the Great Generation (my Grandmother was on Social Security for 40 years!), and the baby-boom bubble in their old ages. And now that it is our time to retire, it's "sorry, but there's not enough for you."



That ladder keeps being pulled up just before I reach it. Now I am getting too old to even see it in the distance. Elvis has left the building. The Love Boat has departed. And Charlie Brown lays on his back.