High Five Nation

Brooks reminisces in the NYT about older times when people were more humble, you know, like when our country won the biggest war in the history of the planet. Making it through a decade long depression and a war where real rationing (not this health care b.s.) took place would be a cause for massive taunting and braggarded-ness-esque things, right? Let's see what the Mr. Bing Crosby had to say:

“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.

Whoa, big talk. I guess when most people actually know someone who died in the war and you had to grow your own vegetables (the horror) you don't really feel like doing an end zone dance in your enemies face.

Nowadays we're all a little too trophy-happy. Anytime we knock a few heads we get to roll out the big "Mission Accomplished" banners. FDR really should have taken the time to bump his #'s a bit more after Midway or the Sicily invasion with a lavish victory parade. Oh, wait, he actually had dignity.

And I'd just like to toss out something the baby boomers, the self-centered offspring of the greatest generation, brought as their gift to our culture. Rampant individualism.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

Seems like working behind a plow doesn't offer as many ways to express oneself as smoking dope and taking time off that degree in Beat poetry to write a psychedelic rock album. Don't forget to facebook me. My kids are way more exciting than your kids.