As a retired Republican engineering manager in the aerospace industry, I’m not planning on going into any airports ever again. How about a chat at a restaurant during the Early Bird Special the next time you’re in the Chicago Suburbs…
"Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen; "City of New Orleans" by Steve Goodman but immortalized by Arlo Guthrie; "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver but maybe better known as a Peter, Paul & Mary hit . . . all great road, train, or plane songs. Thanks for bringing them all to mind with your reverie about ramblin', which of course reminds me of The Alman Brothers! https://youtu.be/68X8o0S7vJc?si=y2TOq0vxa16Nj5dY
Dear Mr. Keillor, Thank you for another thoughtful, introspective rumination on American life.
I'm an old guy myself (67). So I am not an anxiety ridden young American within the self imposed prison of head phones and earbuds; (I have my own anxieties but I don't want to dwell on that here although I may tangentially touch upon it.)
I think young Americans have a good reason to retreat into solipsistic self-absorbed interests and preoccupations (unfortunately sometimes veering into narcissism). This is why I feel this way:
The American world you and I were born into and privileged to come of age in has slowly been taken away over the last 43 years. We grew up in a society where virtually anyone (at least any white male) willing to work diligently could "make it", could enter the great American middle-class.
As America has become an oligarchic society over the past 43 year (and I harp on that particular date for a reason that the discerning reader will understand) the regulations that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal brought to American capitalism have largely been repealed. (With the critically important exceptions of Social Security and Medicare.) Rents have increased exponentially over (most of if not all of) the country and at the same time wages (relative to background inflation) have generally stagnated.
The "American Dream" of a middle-class life has largely been taken away for people my age and younger. One can't make it into the middle-class if one is working for $15 or $16 dollars an hour or , heaven forbid, the federal minimum wage (really a slave wage) of $7.25 which has been stagnant for 15 years now.
One of the difficulties the American establishment confronts in a grossly hierarchical society as the U.S. has become over the last 43 years is to convince (with an emphasis on the "con"), the young people that hard work and education will allow them to "make it" into economic prosperity and a middle-class life style. Increasingly young people are seeing that America (the U.S) is the most caste-like of Western developed societies and that they will probably live out their lives as the "precariate" class (a term coined by the eminent academics Noam Chomsky and the late Zygmunt Bauman to designate an entire social class that lives a precarious existence from day to day) anxious if they can make their rent payment from month to month. And in which their lives are one step away from disaster and penury. (An unanticipated job lay-off; an unexpected medical bill; a sudden rent increase far above the rate of inflation because the landlord knew the tenant had nowhere else to go.)
So it is not difficult to see why young Americans are anxious and self-absorbed; the society they (and all of us) had been promised by the American establishment has largely, like the proverbial rug, been pulled out from beneath their feet.
Having said this, the Biden Administration has, for the first time in 43 years (the first administration to do so) attempted to reorient American society toward politically progressive FDR "New Deal" style democracy and more egalitarian economic principles. Unfortunately President Biden had a considerable head wind of conservative-reactionary forces to sail against. And it will take many more presidential four year terms to return America to full "New Deal" progressivism. If such a turn-about will ever happen at all.
It is for these reasons I think young Americans have a right and a reason to be anxious and self-absorbed. They've seen their society hijacked by a relatively few wealthy oligarchs who have bought up the political system and shifted much of the wealth of society into their own private pockets. (Dr. Noam Chomsky has estimated some 50 Trillion [with a "T"] dollars has been sifted upward into the private hands of the American oligarchs over the past 43 years.)
So if one wonders why the public schools are poor, medical care is declining and infrastructure is failing in this country, now we know why.
Young Americans may see you as an over-privileged white man and give you the middle-finger because their society has largely failed them. They need someone to blame and, unfortunately, you are in their sights. As another older white male, you and I are both in their sights.
One can hope that someday -- it probably won't happen in our life times-- young Americans will wake up to the great confidence game that has been pulled on them. It is not ostensibly "privileged" white men like you and I who have caused their pain but rather a grossly unjust economic system that puts the wealth created by the working and middle-classes into the pockets of a few vastly wealthy oligarchs who have rigged the system (see e.g. Dr Dean Baker, an economist, on how the "system" became "rigged.") to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The next time you happen to see some self absorbed young American hiding behind their head phones and Taylor Swift pop treacle, tell them this.
Oh, my goodness, thank you, this beautifully written response almost brought me to tears. The book "The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing was the first to really bring me to such understanding of what a crappy hand my generation [X] and all that came after mine have been dealt. Thank you so much for understanding and spreading awareness in such a respectful and compassionate way.
Thank you. Guy Standing is a great human being. He is remarkably well informed about economic issues such as hierarchical, class structured societies but just as importantly he has compassion and care for the dispossessed of those societies.
Too many American politicians and shapers of society (I'm particularly thinking of some running for the presidency) barely have any understanding of poverty and the underclass in America and to the limited extent they have knowledge, don't care.
How many Americans will be taken in and "conned" by J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly" faux nostalgia this November election remains to be seen.
They can't all have headphones and one or two might actually be reading a book. Also if they're taking a flight at an airport, they're not all that under-privileged themselves. Us older folks might find their world confusing and sometimes even alien, but I expect our parents were somewhat confused and upset by our youthful behaviour. As Tom Herzog so cogently pointed out, in many ways the youth in both the US and the UK have it much harder than we did, especially if they don't fall into the small percentage that have wealthy parents. Yet, they are less dissimilar to how we used to be than you imagine. Many are intelligent, kind, generous and even idealistic, but even these individuals won't appreciate being pigeonholed by your assessment of them. I suggest you take a chance, admire a young person's shoes or book choice and who knows you mght get into an interesting conversation that might give you some material for a futue column or podcast. As well as possibly learning something from them, they in turn might learn something from you. After all what you may now lack in youthful vigour, you more than make up for in experience and humour. However old or young people are, most of us still like to share a joke. Who knows one of those young dudes with the headphones might even be listening to one of your podcasts.
You signed a book for me in the Minneapolis airport in 2003 and during our conversation, I told you I was an Air Force navigator. In your inscription, you referred to me as, “a fly-by-night navigator.” I loved it and tell that story often. Thanks for all the laughs!
My classic greeting line in the Amtrak dining car is straight out of the only opera Aaron Copland wrote. The opera was a failure, for the record, for multiple reasons. I won’t get into it, but the line is “Where ‘ya from, and where ‘ya goin’?”
I can’t use that in an airport because I haven’t flown anywhere in 26 years, but the diner experience is something I crave. Sometimes you meet people who take half an hour to get their noses out of their phones and start talking, but most people eventually strike up a conversation. I try not to monopolize the conversation, but sit back and see where it goes. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. That scenario is where I meet real people and figure out what they like and how they think. I refuse to let politicians and marketers tell me what my fellow Americans think, because the marketers are wrong.
I am a 44-year-old white male with no direct family. That doesn’t mean I don’t care.
Let’s hope it hasn’t come to that. Give ‘em a smile!
As a retired Republican engineering manager in the aerospace industry, I’m not planning on going into any airports ever again. How about a chat at a restaurant during the Early Bird Special the next time you’re in the Chicago Suburbs…
Good afternoon Garrison
Today’s piece reminds of a writing challenge I have for you if you’re intersted
(I hate the term “writing prompt”):
Compose a limerick using as many airport codes as possible, e.g. ORD, JFK, LGA, etc.
(It has to make sense, of course, and can only use real airport codes,
but the limerick should use as few non-code words as humanly possible.)
(Inspired by your wonderful limerick ending “WTF, OMG, BBQ!!”, I’ve been trying to
write this limerick myself for years. But my efforts have been totally without success,
so I thought I would appeal to master.)
"Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen; "City of New Orleans" by Steve Goodman but immortalized by Arlo Guthrie; "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver but maybe better known as a Peter, Paul & Mary hit . . . all great road, train, or plane songs. Thanks for bringing them all to mind with your reverie about ramblin', which of course reminds me of The Alman Brothers! https://youtu.be/68X8o0S7vJc?si=y2TOq0vxa16Nj5dY
You pronounced Lancaster correctly. Impressive.
Dear Mr. Keillor, Thank you for another thoughtful, introspective rumination on American life.
I'm an old guy myself (67). So I am not an anxiety ridden young American within the self imposed prison of head phones and earbuds; (I have my own anxieties but I don't want to dwell on that here although I may tangentially touch upon it.)
I think young Americans have a good reason to retreat into solipsistic self-absorbed interests and preoccupations (unfortunately sometimes veering into narcissism). This is why I feel this way:
The American world you and I were born into and privileged to come of age in has slowly been taken away over the last 43 years. We grew up in a society where virtually anyone (at least any white male) willing to work diligently could "make it", could enter the great American middle-class.
As America has become an oligarchic society over the past 43 year (and I harp on that particular date for a reason that the discerning reader will understand) the regulations that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal brought to American capitalism have largely been repealed. (With the critically important exceptions of Social Security and Medicare.) Rents have increased exponentially over (most of if not all of) the country and at the same time wages (relative to background inflation) have generally stagnated.
The "American Dream" of a middle-class life has largely been taken away for people my age and younger. One can't make it into the middle-class if one is working for $15 or $16 dollars an hour or , heaven forbid, the federal minimum wage (really a slave wage) of $7.25 which has been stagnant for 15 years now.
One of the difficulties the American establishment confronts in a grossly hierarchical society as the U.S. has become over the last 43 years is to convince (with an emphasis on the "con"), the young people that hard work and education will allow them to "make it" into economic prosperity and a middle-class life style. Increasingly young people are seeing that America (the U.S) is the most caste-like of Western developed societies and that they will probably live out their lives as the "precariate" class (a term coined by the eminent academics Noam Chomsky and the late Zygmunt Bauman to designate an entire social class that lives a precarious existence from day to day) anxious if they can make their rent payment from month to month. And in which their lives are one step away from disaster and penury. (An unanticipated job lay-off; an unexpected medical bill; a sudden rent increase far above the rate of inflation because the landlord knew the tenant had nowhere else to go.)
So it is not difficult to see why young Americans are anxious and self-absorbed; the society they (and all of us) had been promised by the American establishment has largely, like the proverbial rug, been pulled out from beneath their feet.
Having said this, the Biden Administration has, for the first time in 43 years (the first administration to do so) attempted to reorient American society toward politically progressive FDR "New Deal" style democracy and more egalitarian economic principles. Unfortunately President Biden had a considerable head wind of conservative-reactionary forces to sail against. And it will take many more presidential four year terms to return America to full "New Deal" progressivism. If such a turn-about will ever happen at all.
It is for these reasons I think young Americans have a right and a reason to be anxious and self-absorbed. They've seen their society hijacked by a relatively few wealthy oligarchs who have bought up the political system and shifted much of the wealth of society into their own private pockets. (Dr. Noam Chomsky has estimated some 50 Trillion [with a "T"] dollars has been sifted upward into the private hands of the American oligarchs over the past 43 years.)
So if one wonders why the public schools are poor, medical care is declining and infrastructure is failing in this country, now we know why.
Young Americans may see you as an over-privileged white man and give you the middle-finger because their society has largely failed them. They need someone to blame and, unfortunately, you are in their sights. As another older white male, you and I are both in their sights.
One can hope that someday -- it probably won't happen in our life times-- young Americans will wake up to the great confidence game that has been pulled on them. It is not ostensibly "privileged" white men like you and I who have caused their pain but rather a grossly unjust economic system that puts the wealth created by the working and middle-classes into the pockets of a few vastly wealthy oligarchs who have rigged the system (see e.g. Dr Dean Baker, an economist, on how the "system" became "rigged.") to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The next time you happen to see some self absorbed young American hiding behind their head phones and Taylor Swift pop treacle, tell them this.
Oh, my goodness, thank you, this beautifully written response almost brought me to tears. The book "The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing was the first to really bring me to such understanding of what a crappy hand my generation [X] and all that came after mine have been dealt. Thank you so much for understanding and spreading awareness in such a respectful and compassionate way.
Thank you. Guy Standing is a great human being. He is remarkably well informed about economic issues such as hierarchical, class structured societies but just as importantly he has compassion and care for the dispossessed of those societies.
Too many American politicians and shapers of society (I'm particularly thinking of some running for the presidency) barely have any understanding of poverty and the underclass in America and to the limited extent they have knowledge, don't care.
How many Americans will be taken in and "conned" by J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly" faux nostalgia this November election remains to be seen.
Always refreshing to read you
Hold on!! Your kids are boomers and millennials? You skipped my generation, good Sir. 😂😳
They can't all have headphones and one or two might actually be reading a book. Also if they're taking a flight at an airport, they're not all that under-privileged themselves. Us older folks might find their world confusing and sometimes even alien, but I expect our parents were somewhat confused and upset by our youthful behaviour. As Tom Herzog so cogently pointed out, in many ways the youth in both the US and the UK have it much harder than we did, especially if they don't fall into the small percentage that have wealthy parents. Yet, they are less dissimilar to how we used to be than you imagine. Many are intelligent, kind, generous and even idealistic, but even these individuals won't appreciate being pigeonholed by your assessment of them. I suggest you take a chance, admire a young person's shoes or book choice and who knows you mght get into an interesting conversation that might give you some material for a futue column or podcast. As well as possibly learning something from them, they in turn might learn something from you. After all what you may now lack in youthful vigour, you more than make up for in experience and humour. However old or young people are, most of us still like to share a joke. Who knows one of those young dudes with the headphones might even be listening to one of your podcasts.
Give a listen to Taylor Swift’s song, The Lakes, on her Folklore album.
Don’t be so judgmental about young people.
You signed a book for me in the Minneapolis airport in 2003 and during our conversation, I told you I was an Air Force navigator. In your inscription, you referred to me as, “a fly-by-night navigator.” I loved it and tell that story often. Thanks for all the laughs!
Well. Truth be told: you ARE a privileged white male. With eyes that see.
Nothing wrong with being who you are. I’m a white male and like myself and everybody else that isn’t a white male.
no argument there.
Good to hear your voice. It’s been many years since I’ve heard you. Still calming and entertaining show. Thanks for staying at it.
My classic greeting line in the Amtrak dining car is straight out of the only opera Aaron Copland wrote. The opera was a failure, for the record, for multiple reasons. I won’t get into it, but the line is “Where ‘ya from, and where ‘ya goin’?”
I can’t use that in an airport because I haven’t flown anywhere in 26 years, but the diner experience is something I crave. Sometimes you meet people who take half an hour to get their noses out of their phones and start talking, but most people eventually strike up a conversation. I try not to monopolize the conversation, but sit back and see where it goes. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. That scenario is where I meet real people and figure out what they like and how they think. I refuse to let politicians and marketers tell me what my fellow Americans think, because the marketers are wrong.
I am a 44-year-old white male with no direct family. That doesn’t mean I don’t care.