Still Waiting for My Trickle-Down!: Notes from a Pissed-Off Boomer

This collection of political essays, culled from other, more general collections, puts in one place a great many years of reflection, processing, and rants. The author has invested considerable time and effort in all three pursuits, and the results presented herein are as representative as any.

But this is also a generational portrait. The point of view pervading these ponderings is that of a latter-day Baby Boomer – a point of view shaped by a very specific place and time, when the threat of nuclear war was very real; when the Civil Rights movement had laid bare the hypocrisies at the core of the American Dream; when Watergate unveiled the ugliness lurking behind the respectable mask of our more important institutions; when our naivete began to fail us, and we stopped believing Paul Was Dead.

Moreover, it’s the point of view of a fish out of water – a writer not just of the Baby Boom, but a progressive raised among conservatives. Thus it’s no surprise that these pieces reek of disaffection and frustration, vented not just at such obvious targets as Donald Trump and the modern GOP, but at the architects of the entire neoliberal agenda, from Ronald Reagan all the way back to the Walter Lippmann Colloquium. Fortunately, this point of view is not at all isolated, but shared by subsequent generations.

Hopefully, these words will inspire thoughts. And, in a few cases, possibly a smile or two.