Mind your Gaps and Carters.
I'm not a fan of generational politics having, as a young man been seriously on the wrong side that concept. It's most often used by the media and the right-wing as a natural wedge issue. Oedipus and Elektra sell. Of course, we had the answer for that one by simply declaring that a credibility gap was growing between the Johnson administration and the public, all of it ad hoc of course, we were young, pretty, and fast on our feet and it all came so easily for us The war wasn't peace like death wasn't life, and if love was all you needed. Love is not all you need. The two gaps were more that they could even get their heads around at the time. We almost got away with it, too. The generation gap meme survived in theory and the credibility gap, only in practice.
The next true generational gap emerged in the world of anti-labor union movement of the 1980's. The two-tier wage system. This was beauty itself, the management proposed that from date forward all new hires would payed on a different (lower) scale for the same work, less pay, and down the line you have your union locals made up of two factions, two classes of members, with a gap in their wages. The wage gap. I was a mailman then, a member of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers when they voted for this contract horror on the grounds that they would be allowed to wear baseball caps in the summer and the winter. I voted no to the contract, and the caps and yes to authorize a strike in 1984, and was promptly dismissed on the grounds of insubordination. The NALC refused to pay for arbitration, I tipped my cap to them, and went on about my way. I remember Earth, Wind & Fire playing on the ...After the love is gone.
 Winter cap  Summer cap
A prodigy, I retired on disability from the Defense Department at age 47 and began receiving full retirement benefits at the age of 50. Young, even for a boomer. But I find that I have crossed yet another divide in our society, liberal and conservative, and frankly, I'm too old school to be a conservative. I was brought up and have lived my life around revolutionary and radically progressive principles which I have not surrendered even in the face of the most mindless neo-con sophistries. Where's the gap? It widened into a chasm, long since. Look down or you'll fall in, Shorty.
If you read the popular blogs like Eschaton or some of the more thoughtful and grateful ones for the comments left and you will see the work of people who are not in thrall of what Joe Klien calls the "Spirit of the Times", and have rejected the conservative orthodoxy which has turned, particularly higher education, and the workforce into a rat race of spiraling costs of survival and diminished, pay and educational prospects for the underclass, while providing endless opportunities for the wealthy and indolent or the physically gifted to indulge the upper class fetish for academic imprimatur upon their elevated status in society or the NBA. Legasy's only of course.
One PHd and the other a man of letters it's educated guy's like Dinky-Dunky Black who figure they deserve their place at the head of the line for turning in assignments on time, neatly typed and double spaced, and those like Joe Klein, pseudo-self-made men who think they've earned a place in the sun, are both sides of the same hole they both crawled out of, pulling the ladder up with them, and ready, for their own seperate reasons to kick you and me back down in it, should we dare try to climb up onto the surface. The twin guardians of the portal, while different in their methods, are alike in their ultimate quest, the advancement of Duncan Black, Phd and Joe Klein, celebrity pundit.
2:55:44 PM 
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