Amen, Brutha'

Lileks:

Ah -- phone's ringing. Sunday night; has to be Dad.
And so it was.
The traditional Sunday night parental check-in. He's doing fine; drove the semi out to fill the trains the previous night, although he hasn't been doing as much nocturnal train-filling as a few months ago. (His company supplies the juice for trains that pause, parched, at the rim of North Dakota, exhausted from their trek across the steppes. For years they filled the trains for a produce-shipping concern; this sent me to college.) He is perfectly content to get up at 3 AM, drive one of his ginormous trucks sloshing with flammable fluid to the butt-end of town, and gas up the huffing beasts becalmed on the tracks. But it's not like he doesn't know how to relax -- he said he drove his Harley to the lakes the other day. A spring morning, smooth dry road, seventy-five miles to the shore.
In a month he turns 80.
War vet, businessman, pilot, biker, rifleman, trucker, by-God American Man: if he didn't put ice cubes in his wine he'd be my hero in every possible way.
Note: to his generation, not a single one of those attributes was particularly remarkable.

This was my grandmother, her 4 sisters, her 4 brothers, her parents. Greatest generation, indeed. Their work ethic, no-nonsense maturity and heart? Wow... Truly incredible.

Their children? Ha! Easily the most self-centered, weak, spineless, namby-pamby, "me-me-me", the-hell-with-everyone-else-if-I-don't-get-my-way-right-now, woosie SCOUNDRELS who've breached from the loins of America. Ever. (And I say that as the second child of a pair of Boomers.) They've shirked their responsibility (and screwed their kids ROYALLY) in every possible way with their attempts to stay forever young, irresponsible and entitled to the spotlight.

Gens X & Y must quietly pick up the pieces left by the Boomers and carry on the legacy of the Greatest Generation or America is doomed.

It's my life's mission, personally.