It is often commented on that political discourse is so poisoned it is impossible for there to be any meaningful discussion on nearly any topic of importance facing the United States. We have examined the phenomenon before, and have found that while 80 % of the population does not identify themselves to be either extremely conservative nor extremely liberal, it seems to fall to those very extreme elements to define the debate for the rest of us.

Many, starting with George Washington, would lay the blame on the structure of our two-party system, and the how it plays out in our primary elections. There is little doubt that the extreme members of either party are the ones who show up in force at the primaries, and this weights the campaigning towards those extreme views. Most candidates then move center somewhat for victory in the general election. That seems to be pretty well established, and has always been the case.

The thought is now that our politicking is so much more harsh than it has been in the past - that the dirt and muck thrown now is so much worse than it ever has been. We at TPP don't necessarily agree with that view. Newspaper accounts going back to Thomas Jefferson accused him of fathering several children with his slaves. Lincoln had cartoons depicting him as an ape and a hillbilly. Rumors of Grover Cleveland's illegitimate children were fodder for the papers of his day. Truman was too simple for the job. One assessment about Nixon was that "he lied out of both sides of his mouth at the same time". Politics has always been uncivil - it is now just in our face. 24 -7, 365.

We see several causes for this. Many are widely known contributors to the divisiveness. The 24 hour news cycle is widely cited. The glut of news fills the airwaves and the internet with information that not only reports news, but grabs your attention from the literally thousands of news sources popping up like an infinite game of Whack-A-Mole. It's not enough to report the facts, now there must be a juicy and unique angle.

Slow news days are killers. The news machine must keep cranking out stories even when nothing worthy of the name "news" is occurring. With the hard news (wars, economics, national security threats, laws before Congress) being old and stale, suddenly the personal foibles of Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson are considered worthy of the attention of CNN and FoxNews. They really aren't.

The pressure to fill the vacuum with news leads to sloppy journalism as well. We need only to look at this week's fiasco with Andrew Breitbart rising to the bait of a video minus context, to see the destruction wreaked by the urge to get a story out first. We find it sort of dismaying that in the melee that followed the posting, the story morphed from what it was intended to illustrate (the questionable attitude of the members attending the speech) into a media circus focusing on a woman who was trying to share her story of personal growth. We are only glad that a second "Beer Summit" has not been proposed.

One popular demon is "talk radio", which is predominantly conservative. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck et al, are portrayed as stirring up trouble among their brainwashed followers. Even regular listeners will concede that the hosts are bombastic - it makes for entertaining radio. Members of the TPP staff and readers make up some of the regular listeners of conservative talk radio. When TPP is made aware of something particularly outrageous, we fact check. Seldom do we find factual errors in what is reported on these shows, though we may not agree with all conclusions. We find Mr. Beck especially careful in not just piling on with everyone else until he is sure that the facts he is presenting are correct. A good illustration of this is his non-reportage of the Shirley Sherrod story until all of the facts came to light.

We find a high degree of the blame can belong to Andy Warhol's old dictum of everyone becoming famous for 15 minutes. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, anyone can let his opinions and thoughts about anything be known to a limitless audience. A cell phone camera and YouTube have had more of an impact on national politics lately than the old Daley machine of Chicago. We are all in a way George Orwell's Big Brother, watching and waiting for a public figure to do something stupid to catch on video. It's sort of a shame that YouTube doesn't come with Bob Saget and a $10,000 grand prize.

TPP sees a generational trend here. The cause of the incivility shows it's symptoms in the 24 hour news cycle, the need to fill it, the harshness of talk shows, and even the abandonment of bias in reporting. As to the base cause,  we're going to go back and pick on our favorite whipping boy - the Boomers. And no, not all of you - many of us (I'm one myself) became responsible adults living responsible lives.

The Boomer's parents went through the last Great Depression and the Great War. They were a generation called on to sacrifice, and they did. They went to work, provided for their families and did what they had to do. They listened to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite for their news, and read the local paper. They didn't think that they had much of a voice in government beyond their vote, but they did vote. The press covered the news, but kept a respectful distance. JFK's affairs were not in the National Enquirer.

This "greatest generation" (thanks, Tom Brokaw) made the commitment that their children would not have to struggle as hard as they did, and went about making that commitment a reality. The Boomers flourished because the greatest committed their lives to that goal,and succeeded. In a lot of ways that commitment was received by some of the Boomers as "we must deserve all we are getting". Out the window went their parents experience that no one owed them anything, everything must be earned.

These are not the Boomers who marked the 60's by getting good grades and good jobs. These are not the Boomers who sought to be of service to their country as their parents had before them.These are not the Boomers who sought greater justice for all in this country.

The Boomers we speak of gave us the 60's as we remember them on the newsreels. The "if it feels good, do it" crowd. A self-indulgent bunch who did what felt good regardless of consequence, and were indignant when questioned on it. The era of "me" was born, and all other considerations were secondary. If it doesn't feel right to me, then it isn't right.

The culmination of the "me " movement of the 60's was the counter-culture. The hippies and Yippies who wouldn't trust anyone over 30. They sought to bring about a change for "me" modeling their strategy along the lines of the civil rights movement, but not so much with the non-violence. It was the first surfacing of rude and "in your face" in the political landscape.

While the civil rights movement marched singing hymns such as "We Will Overcome", the counter-culture, deciding that it had better things to do than visit Vietnam, chanted "Hey, Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?" We're still not clear on if they meant Vietnamese kids or American kids being shipped over there, but that was the slogan. There were marches, and sit-ins and sleep-ins. I never got that it was an argument on the morality of the war. All I heard was that they didn't want to go. Yet many did, honoring their country and their parents. Many of those soldiers returning were spat on by demonstrators waiting for a uniform to pass by. That was over the top. At least they seem to have learned that lesson.

The eloquence of the movement was further extended in the 1972 Presidential campaign pitting George McGovern against Richard Nixon. One of the prominent slogans of the older but not wiser counter-culture was "Don't change D**ks in the middle of a screw, vote for Nixon in 72". Who could deny that well-reasoned argument?

The counter-culture got jobs, eventually, but never lost the "me" first attitude. One of the lucky job-getters, Al Franken, now senator from Minnesota, ushered in the 80's as the "Me" decade. Come on -we all remember it - "How does this affect ME, Al Franken?" At the same time, as children rebel against their parents, a new conservatism was growing in the next generation, dubbed "X". This was first examined as Michael J. Fox's suit wearing, dollar driven Alex Keaton in "Family Ties".

So, we're on our third Boomer President. Bill Clinton brought all of the counter-culture excess in a charming package. He got punk-slapped by the American voters in 1994, and decided that it was in his best interest to be relevant in history. He chose to work with the opposition majority in Congress, and bimbo eruptions aside, did a fair portion of good for the country domestically. George Bush number 2 fulfilled his pledge to "keep us safe" , but no one can deny he spent money like a drunken sailor (no offense to drunken sailors), and abandoned fiscal conservatism in an effort to not inconvenience the public at large.

Obama presents a unique circumstance as the last of the Boomers, who is also the child of a Boomer. That makes him a product of his circumstance more so than most. It often seems that his sense of self-worth gets in the way of him being properly prepared or sufficiently informed. It is generally characterized as arrogance, and that word works as well as any. It is certainly kinder than clueless.

Common Sense Dictates

TPP sees the current rudeness and intolerance in political discourse to be a direct result of the "me first" attitude embodied by the members of the counter culture. A good amount of them went into government work, justifying the choice of embracing the enemy as working from the inside to bring about change. They have done that. When once Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill could meet over a beer and work out a solution for Social Security, now no one feels free to talk to the other side. We're not sure that change has been constructive.

This "me first" attitude has spilled into the media to the point that there are no journalists any more. News is reported and subjected to instant punditry. The public is told what is important, and what they should think about it. There is no longer even a veil covering the naked partisanship of so-called news outlets. There is no debate anymore, just yelling down the opposition. From the media, this behavior has bled out into society and become acceptable behavior. The current political climate in this country is the nightmare that George Washington warned about over 200 years ago.

TPP sees the way forward for America as generational as well as functional. The time of the "me" generation has been less than satisfactory. I consider that a horrible indictment on my generation. Perhaps it is that the way the system works, it is unattractive to the better of us, or it is overly attractive to the vain attention whores that love to live in front of the cameras, no matter how badly they come off. Since the "greatest" have largely left their Boomer offspring in charge, and the Boomers are starting to enter retirement, We see hope in those serious minded Gen Xers. We look to the Gen Xers to save the country from the self serving attitude embodied by those Boomers who took rather than gave,and who placed self first and foremost. I close with a quote from JFK, a man who would be disowned for his own policies by his party today. We should "ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". That was a Common Sense sentiment. We agree with it one hundred percent.

RLB