August 13, 2019: Generation of Swine, Report Card, High Culture.

It is difficult to embrace the union of the Generation of Swine with high culture; it is clearly a contradiction; it is nearly an oxymoron.  But our intrepid essayist, nevertheless, gives it the old Boomer try.  Opining in The New York Times,(1) Brooks’, nevertheless, finds himself here constrained, writing:

“The boomers entered college just as universities were expanding and becoming more specialized and professionalized.  This produced the most educated generation up to that time, but the specialization and ghettoization of intellectual and artistic life took its toll on the nation’s culture.

“It’s not that people aren’t producing good work, but its influence tends to be confined to the academy or specialized subcultures.  Art, classical music and novels have lost cultural influence.  Boomer writers do not play the same roles as Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Maya Angelou, Thomas Pynchon, Phillip Larkin, John Updike and Toni Morrison.  Many of the most influential living philosophers are pre-boomer like Amartya Sen, Charles Taylor and Alasdaire MacIntyre. (1)

Brooks is quite right about the specialization of knowledge and the generalization of ignorance, but he forgets that is was the Swine in the first place who, upon being granted entrance to the hallowed halls of academe, demanded that the curricula be transformed from classical into mere vocational education.  Where once was taught history and political economy, we now learn hotel and motel management.  No Latin to be learned here, better yet underwater basket weaving.

Brooks is hard pressed to give the Swine a “Gentleman’s C”—the lowest grade currently granted at our best universities, granting the “Boomers” a mere C-

What he overlooks was the collateral damage done by these swine.  Not only did they proceed to privatize much of our nations education and strip the public schools of much needed funding but they closed the doors behind them when, after having taken advantage of nearly free university education, they cut federal aid forcing their children and grandchildren to gamble that the mountain of debt accrued will somehow pay off in an increasingly hostile economy; making that degree in hotel and motel management as hollow and worthless as their subsequent understanding of how the world is organized.  No, they have traded the family cow for a handful of beans and we are poorer for the bargain, for we now have an orang giant atop the beanstalk threatening to crash down upon the landscape.

An Br’er Putin, he jus’ laugh and laugh.

Grade F.

Impeach and Imprison.

 ___________

1.     Ibid.  See previous posts.