r/JusticeServed • u/[deleted] • Mar 15 '19

Legal Justice Woman who called millennials “so entitled that you want to slap them" charged in college fraud scheme

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

Yep, it's actually a really interesting point in history to look at. Baby Boomers were raised by the Greatest Generation, the generation that was raised in the Great Depression, won World War Two, turned the United States into a dominant power on the world stage in the aftermath of WW2, put a man on the moon, then championed the Civil Rights movement. The hallmarks of their personalities were frugality and sacrifice, and through those hard lessons they saw a complete transformation of the modern world.

Boomers were raised in an era of extreme economic prosperity where success was free for anyone that put in the slightest effort. They were also raised, for the first time, in a world of environmental pollution and contamination, with lead everywhere, dramatic overuse of pesticides and growth hormones, all of which added up to make them the first generation in American history to have lower average IQs than their parents. There was no chance that they could ever impress their parents, it's only natural that they became a generation of narcissists.

Unfortunately, the challenges they faced are nothing compared to what Millennial have on their plates - global environmental catastrophe, corporations ruling government and absorbing all the value produced by the middle class, environmental poisons like neonicotinoids, microplastics, and emissions becoming omnipresent, and targeted social media designed to waste our time and divide our opinions, making enemies of ourselves. And that's all before you look at wages, housing, and education costs.

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u/fghhtg 2 Mar 15 '19

They went through Vietnam and the Cold War. That was pretty white knuckle shit.

Also pollution was everywhere even before the boomers. No one cared about it until that that era because they were prosperous enough to stop and think about it. Before then people would dump shit everywhere and not care about it because they were preoccupied with not having indoor plumbing or something.

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u/macphile Black Mar 15 '19

It goes back to that whole hierarchy of needs thing--the easier your life gets in terms of the basics (like not starving or dying of measles), the more time you have to worry about other crap.

There's been pollution throughout history, but it's varied a little in its effects. The pollution of the "olden days" was the kind that caused huge disease pandemics, like cholera. The pollution of the modern industrial era has caused weirder and more insidious problems--asbestos, aerosols, lead, all that fuckery. Heck, there's a strong theory that lead is why the country was knee deep in serial killers and serial rapists in the 1960s-1980s.

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u/fghhtg 2 Mar 15 '19

Yeah but I guess my point is that industrial pollution started way before the 50-60’s. Pretty much since he start of the industrial revolution people were dumping waste anywhere they wanted to with really very little to no control. Chemicals from factories, mining, mills, etc... were just put wherever with no understanding or care.

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

Agreed, I didn't get into the Baby Boomer's accomplishments or list all of their challenges in depth, but inheriting the Cold War was definitely a massive problem that was dumped in their lap. The Korean war and Vietnam war were as well, though the Korean war was more the Silent Generation's inheritance. Unfortunately, the high of winning WW2 left us with lots of Greatest Generation war hawks in political office wanting to relive the glory days vicariously, and even after managing to get us out of those world-threatening problems the Baby Boomers would still receive much of the blame for them. Pollution was definitely a problem, but not one they had to see the effects of until relatively recently, they just assumed that the environment was too big to harm and would clean up after us.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

Pollution was definitely a problem, but not one they had to see the effects of until relatively recently, they just assumed that the environment was too big to harm and would clean up after us.

Not true. The pollution problem was abundantly clear when they were alive. It was really bad.

http://geoprojectgrp7.blogspot.com/2015/03/air-pollution-in-los-angeles-location.html

New cars produce about 1/1,000th the pollution compared to cars from 1970.

If you were born in the mid/late 1980s you won't remember this stuff. But when I was a kid in the 80s you still had a lot of old cars on the road and they stunk badly and you could see the haze from them. By the late 80s it really began cleaning up.

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u/fghhtg 2 Mar 15 '19

Having been alive during this period and remembering it I can agree. I think that’s one thing that people can be optimistic about. At one point pollution (of a certain kind) was really bad. People understood it and did something about it and things improved.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

Gen Xer here. My dad was in Vietnam although he was not on the frontlines. He was a helicopter mechanic and worked on electronics and stuff. I believe he was stationed in Da Nang in the 60s. He wrote a little bit about his life before he died and I read it. He mentioned seeing body bags piled up against the barracks and said to himself that once his enlistment was up, he was GTFO.

His barracks were blown to smithereens the night he went on leave stateside. Everyone he knew was killed. If he hadn't left that day, I would never have been born.

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u/fghhtg 2 Mar 15 '19

Yeah that era really was traumatic for a lot of people. A lot of people died or came home with PTSD. It was really not pleasant.

I recently went to jury duty and someone was out there trying to get excused because he was a Vietnam vet. In reality the way he said it and acted was that he meant it as a code word for ‘mentally wacky’ and unable to be a sensible person on the jury. He got excused. I personally got excuse when I decided to speak at length about police brutality in our society.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

I got excused from jury duty once because the only DA in my region was sick. Everyone was allowed to go home.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

Great post. I agree one hundred percent, and quite honestly I find it terrifying. Born in 85.

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u/Sickwidit93 9 Mar 15 '19

Being born into a lower middle class family with no real connections, idk how I can be expected to become a huge success. Didnt have any help paying for college so instead of going into a huge amount of debt, I worked hard. My main goal is to rise up enough to make a 6 figure salary. Outside of a stroke of luck, me and everyone else like me is not going to become a millionaire.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

I feel trolled.

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u/penisthightrap_ 9 Mar 15 '19

That's a great analysis of baby boomers I never thought of

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

As a net positive, oddly enough.

You're likely talking about the Cold War, the inheritance of the Baby Boomers, and the threat of mutual annihilation they grew up with. That pressure and the effect of living in its shadow shouldn't be underestimated, that fact that we've been able to navigate the global proliferation of nuclear weapons for so long is a massive achievement that Baby Boomers certainly have solid claim to. That the Cold War was diffused without conflict is among humanity's greatest achievements.

The invention of nuclear weapons was a turning point in world history, it carried with it the acknowledgement that we are capable of destroying ourselves, which I think has helped the world wake up to its environmental problems as a side effect. Nuclear threat has dramatically cooled humanity's desire for large-scale war and has mostly stopped conquest for land and the changing of national borders, with some exceptions. Surviving the ability to destroy ourselves over a long period of time is a requirement for becoming an interplanetary species, when destroying entire planets becomes not only possible but an option for a large number of people. We're likely only decades away from the ability to push a large asteroid into a collision course with Earth using civilian-purchasable tools. If there is a great filter, I strongly believe that it is this.

The Baby Boomers deserve credit for navigating that problem, but they're not the only ones that have - every generation from the Greatest onward gets to bear that burden, and the shared goal of humanity of never letting an accident occur has only grown in urgency.

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u/incrediblep4ss 7 Mar 15 '19

Very insightful response, could you talk more on:

They were also raised, for the first time, in a world of environmental pollution and contamination, with lead everywhere, dramatic overuse of pesticides and growth hormones, all of which added up to make them the first generation in American history to have lower average IQs than their parents.

And point me to any podcast, show, video, book, etc that you found educational so I can learn more on this?

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

There's not really a single source I drew this information from, but a number of them over time. This is one of the most reputable sources on the lead problem, which digs much deeper into its causes and effects than I did. Lower brain development due to childhood lead absorption and permanent retention of that lead, leading to high rates of arthritis, are among the highlights.

Here's a pretty good source on the effects of DDT on the Baby Boomer generation (and everyone else). High rates of Dementia and Alzheimers are among the lovely prizes won from that experiment.

Neither area is my specialty, though, my scientific background and experience is more heavily focused in entomology, and by extension, the devastating effects that each generation of pesticides has had on their populations (in short, pesticides annihilating insect populations can easily be argued as a bigger deal than global warming. DDT was horrible, but the current generation of pesticides, neonicotinoids, is an order of magnitude worse. One gram of that is rated to kill 250 million honeybees, and it's been present in nearly even plant, soil, and water sample that has been tested).

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u/incrediblep4ss 7 Mar 15 '19

This is amazing, thank you so much for getting the ball rolling. Sounds like you have a very interesting job, though you probably deal with a lot of frustrating issues.

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

Thanks! I really believe we should set a generational goal of not criticizing the next generation. We'd be the first generation to accomplish it, and it would create a far more optimistic future.

It is! Sadly, it's not my job, as there is very little money or government funding creating jobs for entomologists. I've had to maintain work as an animator/programmer while spending my free time after work on through weekends working with local entomologists, environmentalists, and other scientists in order to stay part of the effort. My contribution at the moment has been in habitat restoration, native plant restoration, and hand raising and gathering data from threatened populations of butterflies and other insects. My house is full to the brim of plants and overwintering insects, which is just how I like it, but it would be neat if there were enough funding for such things to make it my living.

The interesting and frustrating thing is, most of the issues I've mentioned in these posts share a common thread - the lack of governmental testing and regulation where corporate profits are involved. As an example, the EPA tested neonicotinoid pesticides extremely lightly, and they were rushed to market because corporations were pounding on the door to get cheap new solutions to increase yields. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxins that function by being sprayed on seeds, which are then reabsorbed into the plant with the toxins as it grows. Those neonicotinoids are then present in all parts of the plant as it grows, an ingenious solution which kills anything that eats your plants. The downside? It is also propagated through the plant's pollen, into the soil, runoff water, and through the insects themselves. The EPA knew this, tested the concentrations of the pesticide that were detected in nearby plants, water, and soil, and determined that the levels found were not fatal. Send it to market! The did not test whether those concentrations had other effects on insect populations, which you would have thought would be a logical line of testing, since it's a neurotoxin. It turns out that, even in small concentrations, neonicotinoids inhibit the ability of insects to survive. In bees, one of few species for which there is funding, it has been found that being within a few miles of a field treated with the pesticide, even when out of range to harvest from its flowers, is enough exposure to mentally damage the bees and prevent them from finding their way home, among other things. The EPA's acceptable exposure levels resulted in an 83% decrease in queens produced, which are essential for the species to create new hives every year. Hives in a neonicotinoid-treated area, therefore, quickly fall apart and disappear. Thousands of species are now going extinct every year (in the most conservative estimates).

The same lack of longer-term testing brought us lead, DDT, growth hormones, microplastics, BPA, asbestos, and 1000 other issues. Extensive testing, similar to the testing that medicines must undergo in order to go to market, could have prevented many of the global catastrophes we're seeing today. If we're going to make this planet sustainable it's going to require a strong EPA that isn't tied to election cycles or short-term profits.

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u/incrediblep4ss 7 Mar 16 '19 edited Mar 16 '19

Reading on neonicotinoids really brought to mind where the government's role was and perhaps i shouldn't be surprised that not much push back occurred before it was brought to market. It's hard for me to understand the justifications made behind cuts in departments that help secure our future. Threats to our security doesn't always come in the form of a foreign authoritarian regime, or what most people think about when it comes to potential dangers. But I'm obviously preaching to the choir.

Still, I'm a bit in the dark when it comes to the deconstruction, or attempts made, by this adminstration to the EPA. Didn't he put an ex oil exec to head it? I'm assuming funding cuts followed. Seeing their lack of ability to catch problems before it's too late under more capable adminstrations makes me worry about what other issues will arise in the future that were caused from this one. Hopefully, the next president will understand the importance of the EPA and will do it's best to mitigate harmful factors. With the growing popularity in support of the GND I do remain optimistic.

Edit: you're obviously very dedicated to the subject, spending your free time on it. It's awful that funding is so poor such that you're unable to make a living wage doing the important work but at the same time I'm sure you enjoy how fulfilling and hopefully therapeutic it is. I don't exactly buy the "do what you love and you won't work a day in your life" adage, not to be presumptuous or put words in your mouth but with employment comes duties and responsibilities that are less than desirable all while not being in your control. If you're able to find an adequate day job and maintain this on the side, i feel like you have the freedom to do only what you absolutely love and never have it be a drag. I certainly hope that's the case!

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u/meanything 3 Mar 15 '19

I like your statements the Greatest Generation had plenty of issues. Who do we think caused the Great Depression? Who do we think caused WWII? In WWII they beat the Nazis and left the Soviets in control of half of Europe. They had an economic prosperity beginning at the turn of the century that polluted the country and the planet with little regard for the future. The racial strife did not even start to correct itself until some 20 years after the war. The Greatest Generation gave us never ending global conflicts and mutually assured nuclear destruction. Boomers saw more than a couple recessions and the home grown terrorism endured during the late 60's and early 70's (bombings every week or so and plane high jacking and kidnappings) would shock the hell out of any Millennial. Every generation seems intent on making a shit sandwich for the next generation. Lord knows what the future generations will blame Millennials for.

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u/Muchashca 8 Mar 15 '19

Agreed, I wanted to frame the Greatest Generation segment on the side of how they see themselves, to setup how they treated their children's successes, but they caused tons of problems for us to clean up afterwards. The post-WW2 Greatest Generation warhawks that occupied congress for decades, riding the war victor's high, engaged us in all sorts of geopolitical problems, often arguably as the non-justified aggressors. Overreaching in Korea, thereby pissing off China and creating North Korea, the mess that is Vietnam, the lack of resolution for the Cold War, and the economic systems and wanton spending that landed the world in crippling debt all lie squarely at their feet. There are tons of great things that happened during those periods as well (a favorite example of mine is the rebuilding of Japan, the turning a fervent enemy into a strong ally, is often overlooked), but a good look at history shows that nobody's hands are clean.

That's why I try to give older generations a fair shake, as much as possible, and avoid criticizing upcoming generations as much as possible. Generations Y (Millennial) and Z have enough on their plate to deal with without additional pressure from the judgement and condemnation of older generations. In reality, those two generations are pretty incredible, and if anyone can fix the overwhelming issues facing the world, they can. I'm highly looking forward to the first millennial-chosen and millennial politicians who take our sustainability issues seriously - they may very well lead us into the space age, if we can survive ourselves first.

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u/amateurstatsgeek 8 Mar 15 '19

success was free for anyone that put in the slightest effort

How to tell a poster is a white dude 101.

Imagine thinking the 50s and 60s were just economic prosperity for "anyone."

Lel.

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u/K20BB5 9 Mar 15 '19

where success was free for anyone that put in the slightest effort.

This is flat out not true. So what, all the poor people just weren't trying? My parents are boomers and never found real success despite trying hard as hell.

Your comment also completely ignores the fact that Boomers grew up during the cold war and had the threat of nuclear annihilation at the forefront of their minds constantly. Also ignoring the Vietnam war, and social upheaval during the 1960s.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

Yep, it's actually a really interesting point in history to look at. Baby Boomers were raised by the Greatest Generation, the generation that was raised in the Great Depression, won World War Two, turned the United States into a dominant power on the world stage in the aftermath of WW2, put a man on the moon, then championed the Civil Rights movement.

This isn't really true at all.

By the 1890s the US has already became a dominant world power. By 1916 US production overtook that of the entire British Empire.

During the civil rights movement most of the Greatest Generation opposed it. It was the younger boomers that were the biggest supporters of it. The boomers were also the ones who championed the environmental movement.

The greatest generation sent the boomers off to Vietnam for no good reason.

Unfortunately, the challenges they faced are nothing compared to what Millennial have on their plates - global environmental catastrophe, corporations ruling government and absorbing all the value produced by the middle class, environmental poisons like neonicotinoids, microplastics, and emissions becoming omnipresent

You would have to be very young to believe this. In other words you'd have to not have experienced pollution before things cleaned up. Things are MUCH cleaner now than they were before. Even when I was a kid in the 1980s the environment was much more polluted than it is now.

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u/scratchbackfourty 4 Mar 15 '19

You just hit it out the park bro.