The Great Wall Challenge: Fill & Download for Free

Because all other signs, save capricorn are of the light. Cancer and pisces are of the dusk, the very ending of light, but scorpio is of the darkness. Its children are able to perceive and wield the various powers of the occult, with intent (unlike malleable, ephemeral pisces - whose powers come and go), and with a cool head (unlike emotionally ruled cancer, who’s victim mentality often nips any powers in the bud.)A scorpio, (well, a true scorpio, not simply an astrology addict who says they are one, in hopes of seeming mysterious and cool,) is unsurprised by spectral appearances, psychic abilities and magic. They, from birth, read body language so well, it comes across as mind reading, and are able to influence all those around them, by their mere charismatic presence. As children, they are fascinated by the idea of sins; by the improbity in seemingly ‘good christian folks’; and by the existence of various types of evil. They see right through exteriors to each rotten core, and tend to be the passive recipients of many an adult’s secrets.They love competition of any kind, as they tend to win easily, and are compassionate leaders to their loyal followers, of which they will have a tight knit group that rarely admits outsiders. They love to know things, like geminis, but will go much deeper into a topic, relentlessly seeking the limits of human knowledge. This is where their fascination with the occult kicks in. It is a limitless well, which also helps them to get a handle on all the weird shit they see clearly going on, that other people don’t seem to notice, and cannot satisfactorily explain away. Books on demonology, witchcraft, the inquisition and other dark histories, etc. will mysteriously find their way into their hot little hands, no matter how vigilantly despotic the parent or guardian.Scorpios, like Aquarians, are born feeling ‘other’, yet with a keen, cool headed, superior intelligence, that can outwit any adult who comes between the little tyke and what they want. Not that they wake each day wanting to break rules! Its just that If there is a locked box, cupboard, or room, or a forbidden property, or area (and god alone knows why there ALWAYS IS), little Scorpios will be right there, with a close mate or two, figuring out how to get in and out without getting into trouble. And figure it out, they most certainly will. Many a Scorpio tykes mom or dad has asked the eternal question: “So, what did you do today?”, only to be met with a blank stare, as the Scorpio chews thoughtfully on their dinner, and doesnt respond. Better to say nothing, than lie pointlessly is a Scorpio motto. And it Works. They find out early that ordinary humans dont like silence, or conflict, and will babble to fill a vacuum, enabling the kid to dodge any uncomfortable lines of questioning, with ease.A great naughty gift for such a child, would be a fuctioning set of lockpicks;) and this would keep them enraptured of the giver, Forever. Another would be books: a history of the universe, of the earth, a book about natural mysteries, the pharoahs, the greeks… its advisable to be a parent who gives books to this kid in plenty, thereby subtly guiding their thirst and intake, if you catch my drift. (The bible will entertain for a time, but if you are a religious zealot, do you really want to arm the kid with lucid arguments that crush your faith on the daily?) Better to keep him or her busy with well researched, in depth histories of the world around them.You pretty much cannot overestimate their intelligence, and kids tend to blank out assuredly adult concepts until they are mature enough to care about them. Provide a dictionary with books on topics like the human mind, physics, philosophy, and get the kid to teach you what they have learned that day. This is a sneaky way to maintain a line of communication that the kid will enjoy keeping open, and will keep you informed of the direction of their preoccupation. Something you will be grateful for when they become taciturn teenagers, ever more distant and troubling in their habitual secrecy.And then, they become Adults: here we go…First off, the secrecy. The tendency to deceit which accompanies emotional and physical infidelity. The tendency to see the opposite sex as playthings, and their own gender as pawns in a massive theatrical chess game… the way they can look you dead in the eye, and lie so effectively, that you are temporarily gaslighted, allowing them to make good their escape. Their tendency to love deeply, obsessively, passionately, and yet the ability to cut someone off completely, once they are proven disloyal, or worse, traitorous. The capacity for ruthlessness in the pursuit of goals, and worst of all, their well known taste for revenge - adding to their karmic problems, rather than allowing the universe to judge and sentence those they are mad at, for them.All of these traits are the darkness, bestowing its gifts, which, if turned to skills used for good, bring enlightenment. Secret keeping brings and bestows loyalty; the ability deceive, is also the ability to protect; seeing people as playthings? Leadership. The chess game? Achievement of goals for the benefit of the many. To love so deeply, is also painful, through which they learn compassion. Ruthlessness is disciplined drive. And lastly, revenge is faithlessness, which, once they learn faith, turns to surrender to a higher power; freeing them from mysterious unexplained punishments, delivered from their bad karma.Lucifer, the lightbringer, is the patron saint of Scorpios. He was the choirmaster in heaven before making his debut as chief rehabilitator to mankind in the in-between place.Scorpios respond strongly to music, purity and beauty. These aspects are likewise drawn to them. You will find plenty of scorpios pursuing music in many ways, as promoters, composers, dj’s, dancers, sound engineers, band fanatics, instrumentalists, hobbyists. This is a passion they All share, including its negation - a dislike of music. Every individual i have so far met, who claimed a disinterest in music? Yes. Bloody Scorpios. Btw, such tend to be focussed on a single, all encompassing subject, like war, and are rather withdrawn. You could almost call them autistic scorpios.Yes, they are suckers for youthful innocence, but in appearance only, because you also need a razor sharp, well informed, and challenging mind, as well as occult gifts of your own, to keep them around long enough to become interested in you as a long term prospect. They plow through virgins at a despicable rate, and only still themselves if bewitched. Those they develop feelings for, are subjected to a steep cliff, made of abandonment, rejection, and obstruction. Should the person be worthy, they will climb the edifice, to claim their prize: a key to phase two: aquaintanceship… Realistically, it takes about a decade of serious commitment to get to know a Scorpio at all. Some Scorpios may seem easy going and even informative on the surface, but that is because you are confusing a wall of babel, for knowledge of their self. A scorpio can talk for hours and say nothing important, or talk for 5 minutes and reveal their core. Only the discerning know the difference.All this, is only giving you enough information to get a day pass in a hall of mirrors. As i said, it would take committed decades to get close to a scorpio, and you know you are getting close because you get stung. Dont freak out. This is a test. If you pass, you will be a leetle closer, but Still, miles away from really knowing them at all… endlessly challenging and fascinating, Scorpios are not for the casual or faint hearted. Remember, each step closer to their inner sanctum will find you violently stung and raked over the coals, checking for purity of intent, loyalty, and continuing value. Your ultimate crime? Boring them, and/or betraying their trust in you. They will turn away, never to darken your door again. (Interestingly, also the way to dodge a narcissist. Be boring. They will leave you, quick smart, in hot pursuit of a fresh victim…)I think, if you passed Every test, with love, it would be a bit like seeing the unmasked face of an archangel. Life changingly beautiful,serene and pure.But thats just me.And this is why Scorpios feel so different to other, more mortal souls. They see and experience a world mostly hidden from others, and they are able to control and manipulate reality to bend to their every whim. Isolating for anyone.Dont think all scorpionic rejection is a test. The key is whether you catch them looking at you a lot, or not at all…

The following article goes far to dispel the myth of a happy Scandinavia. After reading it you will be as clinically depressed as they really are:Dark lands: the grim truth behind the 'Scandinavian miracle'Television in Denmark is rubbish, Finnish men like a drink – and Sweden is not exactly a model of democracy. Why, asks one expert, does everybody think the Nordic region is a utopia?Norway … the nice side, at least. Photograph: AlamyFor the past few years the world has been in thrall to all things Nordic (for which purpose we must of course add Iceland and Finland to the Viking nations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden). "The Sweet Danish Life: Copenhagen: Cool, Creative, Carefree," simpered National Geographic; "The Nordic Countries: The Next Supermodel", boomed the Economist; "Copenhagen really is wonderful for so many reasons," gushed the Guardian.Whether it is Denmark's happiness, its restaurants, or TV dramas; Sweden's gender equality, crime novels and retail giants; Finland's schools; Norway's oil wealth and weird songs about foxes; or Iceland's bounce-back from the financial abyss, we have an insatiable appetite for positive Nordic news stories. After decades dreaming of life among olive trees and vineyards, these days for some reason, we Brits are now projecting our need for the existence of an earthly paradise northwards.I have contributed to the relentless Tetris shower of print columns on the wonders of Scandinavia myself over the years but now I say: enough! Nu er det nok! Enough with foraging for dinner. Enough with the impractical minimalist interiors. Enough with the envious reports on the abolition of gender-specific pronouns. Enough of the unblinking idolatry of all things knitted, bearded, rye bread-based and licorice-laced. It is time to redress the imbalance, shed a little light Beyond the Wall.Take the Danes, for instance. True, they claim to be the happiest people in the world, but why no mention of the fact they are second only to Iceland when it comes to consuming anti- depressants? And Sweden? If, as a headline in this paper once claimed, it is "the most successful society the world has ever seen", why aren't more of you dreaming of "a little place" in Umeå?Actually, I have lived in Denmark – on and off – for about a decade, because my wife's work is here (and she's Danish). Life here is pretty comfortable, more so for indigenous families than for immigrants or ambitious go-getters (Google "Jantelov" for more on this), but as with all the Nordic nations, it remains largely free of armed conflict, extreme poverty, natural disasters and Jeremy Kyle.So let's remove those rose-tinted ski goggles and take a closer look at the objects of our infatuation …Protesters clash with police at an asylum centre near Copenhagen in 2008. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesDENMARKWhy do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they also work fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four times as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to obtain goods and services.Perhaps the Danes' dirtiest secret is that, according to a 2012 report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, they have the fourth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US. Those offshore windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, but Denmark burns an awful lot of coal. Worth bearing that in mind the next time a Dane wags her finger at your patio heater.I'm afraid I have to set you straight on Danish television too. Their big new drama series, Arvingerne (The Legacy, when it comes to BBC4 later this year) is stunning, but the reality of prime-time Danish TV is day-to-day, wall-to-wall reruns of 15-year-old episodes of Midsomer Murders and documentaries on pig welfare. The Danes of course also have highest taxes in the world (though only the sixth-highest wages – hence the debt, I guess). As a spokesperson I interviewed at the Danish centre-right thinktank Cepos put it, they effectively work until Thursday lunchtime for the state's coffers, and the other day and half for themselves.Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best public services? According to the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark's schools lag behind even the UK's. Its health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at my local A&E to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can't help feeling rather misunderstands the nature of the service.) According to the World Cancer Research Fund, the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet. "But at least the trains run on time!" I hear you say. No, that was Italy under Mussolini. The Danish national rail company has skirted bankruptcy in recent years, and the trains most assuredly do not run on time. Somehow, though, the government still managed to find £2m to fund a two-year tax-scandal investigation largely concerned, as far as I can make out, with the sexual orientation of the prime minister's husband, Stephen Kinnock.Most seriously of all, economic equality – which many believe is the foundation of societal success – is decreasing. According to a report in Politiken this month, the proportion of people below the poverty line has doubled over the last decade. Denmark is becoming a nation divided, essentially, between the places which have a branch of Sticks'n'Sushi (Copenhagen) and the rest. Denmark's provinces have become a social dumping ground for non-western immigrants, the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable who live alongside Denmark's 22m intensively farmed pigs, raised 10 to a pen and pumped full of antibiotics (the pigs, that is).Other awkward truths? There is more than a whiff of the police state about the fact that Danish policeman refuse to display ID numbers and can refuse to give their names. The Danes are aggressively jingoistic, waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest provocation. Like the Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm (even the ambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularly unsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of black people with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon in the national press). And if you think a move across the North Sea would help you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodging corporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I'm afraid I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.Plus side? No one talks about cricket.NORWAYThe dignity and resolve of the Norwegian people in the wake of the attacks by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011 was deeply impressive, but in September the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of which Breivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the vote in the general election, enough to elevate it into coalition government for the first time in its history. There remains a disturbing Islamophobic sub-subculture in Norway. Ask the Danes, and they will tell you that the Norwegians are the most insular and xenophobic of all the Scandinavians, and it is true that since they came into a bit of money in the 1970s the Norwegians have become increasingly Scrooge-like, hoarding their gold, fearful of outsiders.Though 2013 saw a record number of asylum applications to Norway, it granted asylum to fewer than half of them (around 5,000 people), a third of the number that less wealthy Sweden admits (Sweden accepted over 9,000 from Syria alone). In his book Petromania, journalist Simon Sætre warns that the powerful oil lobby is "isolating us and making the country asocial". According to him, his countrymen have been corrupted by their oil money, are working less, retiring earlier, and calling in sick more frequently. And while previous governments have controlled the spending of oil revenues, the new bunch are threatening a splurge which many warn could lead to full-blown Dutch disease.Like the dealer who never touches his own supply, those dirty frackers the Norwegians boast of using only renewable energy sources, all the while amassing the world's largest sovereign wealth fund selling fossil fuels to the rest of us. As Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen put it to me when I visited his office in Oslo University: "We've always been used to thinking of ourselves as part of the solution, and with the oil we suddenly became part of the problem. Most people are really in denial."Finns … having a quiet drink Photograph: Martti Kainulainen/REXICELANDWe need not detain ourselves here too long. Only 320,000 – it would appear rather greedy and irresponsible – people cling to this breathtaking, yet borderline uninhabitable rock in the North Atlantic. Further attention will only encourage them.FINLANDI am very fond of the Finns, a most pragmatic, redoubtable people with a Sahara-dry sense of humour. But would I want to live in Finland? In summer, you'll be plagued by mosquitos, in winter, you'll freeze – that's assuming no one shoots you, or you don't shoot yourself. Finland ranks third in global gun ownership behind only America and Yemen; has the highest murder rate in western Europe, double that of the UK; and by far the highest suicide rate in the Nordic countries.The Finns are epic Friday-night bingers and alcohol is now the leading cause of death for Finnish men. "At some point in the evening around 11.30pm, people start behaving aggressively, throwing punches, wrestling," Heikki Aittokoski, foreign editor of Helsingin Sanomat, told me. "The next day, people laugh about it. In the US, they'd have an intervention."With its tarnished crown jewel, Nokia, devoured by Microsoft, Finland's hitherto robust economy is more dependent than ever on selling paper – mostly I was told, to Russian porn barons. Luckily, judging by a recent journey I took with my eldest son the length of the country by train, the place appears to be 99% trees. The view was a bit samey.A car burning after riots in Stockholm in 2013. Photograph: EPAThe nation once dubbed "the west's reigning educational superpower" (the Atlantic) has slipped in the latest Pisa rankings. This follows some unfortunate incidents involving Finnish students – the burning of Porvoo cathedral by an 18-year-old in 2006; the Jokela shootings (another disgruntled 18-year-old) in 2007, and the shooting of 10 more students by a peer in 2008 – which led some to speculate whether Finnish schools were quite as wonderful as their reputation would have us believe.If you do decide to move there, don't expect scintillating conversation. Finland's is a reactive, listening culture, burdened by taboos too many to mention (civil war, second world war and cold war-related, mostly). They're not big on chat. Look up the word "reticent" in the dictionary and you won't find a picture of an awkward Finn standing in a corner looking at his shoelaces, but you should."We would always prefer to be alone," a Finnish woman once admitted to me. She worked for the tourist board.SwedenAnything I say about the Swedes will pale in comparison to their own excoriating self-image. A few years ago, the Swedish Institute of Public Opinion Research asked young Swedes to describe their compatriots. The top eight adjectives they chose were: envious, stiff, industrious, nature loving, quiet, honest, dishonest, xenophobic.I met with Åke Daun, Sweden's most venerable ethnologist. "Swedes seem not to 'feel as strongly' as certain other people", Daun writes in his excellent book, Swedish Mentality. "Swedish women try to moan as little as possible during childbirth and they often ask, when it is all over, whether they screamed very much. They are very pleased to be told they did not." Apparently, crying at funerals is frowned upon and "remembered long afterwards". The Swedes are, he says, "highly adept at insulating themselves from each other". They will do anything to avoid sharing a lift with a stranger, as I found out during a day-long experiment behaving as un-Swedishly as possible in Stockholm.Effectively a one-party state – albeit supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families – for much of the 20th century, "neutral" Sweden (one of the world largest arms exporters) continues to thrive economically thanks to its distinctive brand of totalitarian modernism, which curbs freedoms, suppresses dissent in the name of consensus, and seems hell-bent on severing the bonds between wife and husband, children and parents, and elderly on their children. Think of it as the China of the north.Youth unemployment is higher than the UK's and higher than the EU average; integration is an ongoing challenge; and as with Norway and Denmark, the Swedish right is on the rise. A spokesman for the Sweden Democrats (currently at an all-time high of close to 10% in the polls) insisted to me that immigrants were "more prone to violence". I pointed out that Sweden was one of the most bloodthirsty nations on earth for much of the last millennium. I was told we'd run out of time.Ask the Finns and they will tell you that Swedish ultra-feminism has emasculated their men, but they will struggle to drown their sorrows. Their state-run alcohol monopoly stores, the dreaded Systembolaget, were described by Susan Sontag as "part funeral parlour, part back-room abortionist".The myriad successes of the Nordic countries are no miracle, they were born of a combination of Lutheran modesty, peasant parsimony, geographical determinism and ruthless pragmatism ("The Russians are attacking? Join the Nazis! The Nazis are losing? Join the Allies!"). These societies function well for those who conform to the collective median, but they aren't much fun for tall poppies. Schools rein in higher achievers for the sake of the less gifted; "elite" is a dirty word; displays of success, ambition or wealth are frowned upon. If you can cope with this, and the cost, and the cold (both metaphorical and inter-personal), then by all means join me in my adopted hyggelige home. I've rustled up a sorrel salad and there's some expensive, weak beer in the fridge. Pull up an Egg. I hear Taggart's on again!The Almost Nearly Perfect People – The Truth About the Nordic Miracle (Jonathan Cape), by Michael Booth, is published on 6 February. It will be BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week from 10 February

By modern senior citizens, I assume we are talking about the newly minted elders: Baby Boomers. The GI generation (1909-1926) or the Silent generation (1927-45) were really different from the Boomers at the same age because their lives weren't that easy. I grew up in South Florida during the 1970s and 80s, and I knew the GIs and Silents quite well because they were my teachers and mentors rather than the Boomers, who even then was too busy with their own lives to bother with kids. I am as old a person alive today as anyone who has a first-hand opinion about all three generations but who is not a member of any one generation currently considered “senior.”Here is my list of things that have changed since the Baby Boomers became elders. There's no doubt the Hippie/Jones generation is changing the face of aging, but not in a good way.1. Bankruptcy rates/Thrift/Inheritances. In just the past 25 years, senior bankruptcy rates have increased over 500% from 2.1 percent to over 12%. Its not just that Boomers are more impoverished heading into old age, it is also a problem of scale. Boomers have embraced the endless expansion of materialism all their lives and the notion of downsizing is against their perception of reality and self-care. Growing up post-WWII left the Boomers with no skills or self control when it comes to spending, so if they have it, they spend it. No amount of social planning can fix a population so bent on self destruction while still displaying a remarkable degree of arrogance. GI/Silent generation retirees were able to down size and sell out in order to be self-supporting. The Boomers will never make it and are far more likely to bankrupt than to succeed. Boomers with wealth have also gone in a different direction than their parents. Some 50-70% of all estates over 3 million are expected to go direct to charity and not to the deceased's offspring (the Steve Jobs syndrome). This effectively inverts the inheritance pattern of the GI/Silent generation, some of whom created trust funds to limit Boomer access, but who still left behind the family fortune to an offspring. By choosing charity over family, Boomers have effectively disinherited subsequent generations. Inheritances are often a major economic advantage that help the young buy a first house, pay for an education or start a family of their own. That advantage is not going to be passed on to Gen X or the Millennials from wealthy Boomers, so the coming economy will inevitably involve a lot of charity, and considering how negatively Boomers have also treated social welfare programs, the combination isn't looking pretty or likely to result in better generational relationships.2. Disability rates. Baby Boomers have been studied and compared to their parents, and their physical disability rates are far higher. Boomers take 10x the high blood pressure medication, use 3-4 times the prescription canes, walkers and wheelchairs, and have 4 times the heart attacks, 6 times the cancer rates. Boomers have lower rates of mobility and self-care capacity than either their parents or grandparents at the same age.3. Divorce rates. Boomers have long had the highest divorce rates of any living group. Divorce does more than simply end a marriage – it also divides resources and offspring loyalties, as well as greatly increase isolation, making efficient in-home care more difficult. More Boomers are living alone at older ages even as their offspring from blended families may have multiple parents, grandparents, foster parents, and step-parents to care for assuming they are not already alienated. Most studies have found that Boomers are more alienated from their offspring than prior generations, Gen X more than Millennial. Grandparent's rights are heating up as Boomers with resources to burn litigate in hope of forcing their adult offspring into grandchildren access. It isn't a pretty sight, and something I advocate against regularly.4. Murder rates / elders on a rampage. Another striking difference between Boomers and prior generations is a remarkably high murder rate in their 50s, 60s and even 70s. Sure, a few old coots would pop off from time to time in the 70s and 80s, but it was extremely rare. Today, it is not unusual for the gunman to be 60something, like the Mandalay/music festival shooter in Las Vegas. Mass shootings by the elderly were unheard of in the 70s.5. Suicide rates / elders unself-realized. Boomers are unprepared for the realities of old age. Boomers are killing themselves at rates similar to teenagers, and it is obvious that their physical health isn't always the issue but rather high rates of depression and anxiety. Boomers were never willing to embrace universal mental health for all – and it shows in their suicide rates. If we want to save the elders from themselves, we had better plan on doing it fast.6. Home ownership and Wall Street Stocks. Wealthy Boomers sought to financialize everything in their world in an effort to “die with all the toys” and a few of them did make it to the top. (Not since the Gilded Age have the rich been so absolutely rich compared to everyone else. Boomers are known for romanticizing big, easy money in their creative works.) More far right than either prior generation, Boomers with cash use the housing and stock markets to control most opportunities, and channel the younger generation's labor power into a usable commodity for themselves. The idea they owe something to the future, or future generations, has never been a serious concern for Boomer intellectuals. Mostly, Boomers have glamorized and admired wealth building schemes – I note that even their evangelical movements preach wealth theology and prosperity faith. For the Boomers, wealth means being in God’s grace, a direct challenge to the books Mathew, Mark, Luke and John as I understand them.7. Apocalyptic and Cult involvement. Boomers are remarkably arrogant for a group so easily led by religious promise, passion and self-indulgence. Boomers have also been apocalyptic on both sides of the political spectrum, yet that didn't cause them to react boldly, but rather they resigned themselves (and their progeny) to fate. Y2K is a good example of Boomer herding that ultimately turned out to be nothing but an effective marketing scheme. Reactions to 9/11 is another set of examples as well as the Boomer reactions to the AIDS and Opioid Drug crisis. At the time, Boomers absolutely believed they were the only ones in touch with the real reality, much like QAnon and the Trump administration makes them feel today. Boomers were more likely to join a cult group that requires strict conformance to the cult's worldview than Gen X who had the same opportunities, if not more chances to give up and ride. Boomers were clearly far more susceptible to cult influence than the Millennials, a group more aware than any other of the pitfalls of belonging and believing. While Boomers were terrified for themselves in a collapse, they were completely numb to climate change, a topic available for discussion since the late 1970s, but rejected as too difficult or conspiratorial to accomplish by the Boomers. By way of example, the GI/Silent generations dithered over ozone layer concerns for a few years before they finally acted to eliminate ozone depleting products from the marketplace, so today, we can’t use aerosol cans like we use to, and we have the GI/Silent generation's political will to thank for that small effort for our collective commons (as well as for our national parks ;)).8. Total population weight as a political bulwark in a gerontocracy. Boomers are sufficiently political to use traditional age requirements for public office to their advantage as well as channeling Racism/Sexism in the open via political incorrectness, that old 60s argument. Boomers are more likely to be reactionaries against Civil Rights, not leaders of progressive Civil Rights activism. More Boomers participated in anti-abortion movements and militia movements in the 80s to the 00s than Boomers participated in anti-war demonstrations or the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s. Collectively, the Boomers are much further right, along with significant portions of older Gen X (Think: Alex Jones school of “journalism” – an arena that largely panders to an older audience born before 1975) than either the GI generation (1909-1926) or the Silent generation (1927-45), at the same age. However much the Russians might have influenced the 2016 US elections, most Boomer voter wanted Trump, and the Electoral College was comprised of over 80% Baby Boomer electors, so there's no possible argument that Boomers aren't Trump supporters, or aren't in charge of the political arena today. The Tea Party of the 00s and early Teens were also largely comprised of Boomer age voters.9. International Arrogance / “Chinese” Wall solutions to immigration includes damaging young children, the most expendable people in the elder's world. Using children for political purposes is hardly new for the Boomers. They have incarcerated more youth offenders for life than any other generation in our history. These offenders have done wrong, no doubt, but the Boomers have always been comfortable with draconian punishments, especially for a population that is overwhelming black and male. The rest of Boomer international politics can also be understood in racial terms. Only the elders fail to see what is obvious to everyone else.10. Pan-Conspiracy Theories that attempt to explain how Boomers wound up in charge of everything without doing anything wrong, ie., the Boomers were hoodwinked by the powerful: their parents and their offspring, but not a crumb of personal responsibility. Much of the elder's sense of angst is the drive to deny any personal involvement in how we got here, not an angst aimed at changing the world – it is a rear guard action by a generation tired out over 20 years ago. The GI generation and Silents did in some small ways attempt to critique their own performance. While it did not result in much change to their course, they were still capable of that much self reflection as death approached. For example, the GI/Silent generations did question the A-Bomb decision on a level the Boomers have never soul searched about their endless oil wars, or how soon, the Boomers will be sending their offspring off to wars that were started before the soldiers were even born.There you have it – my top 10 differences between Boomers, Silents and GI generation in old age. The GI/Silent generation largely took care of themselves in old age with a little help from Social Security. The Boomers are looking at a completely changed landscape, mostly of their own making, and have little hope of a comfortable, secure old age, much less retirement in the form it took for their parents. All three living generations born after the Boomers (Gen X, Millennials, Citizens) are faced with a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in our elderly generation on top of the ecological crisis made much worse during the Boomer's political era. One recent article describes how climate change could have been averted if the US had found the political will to change in the 1980s. One thing strikes me about this article is the time frame of its focus: 1979 to 1989. The oldest Baby Boomers were between the ages of 33 and 43, in denial about middle age, the youngest between 14 and 24, and yet none were willing to forsake any of their dreams of personal growth in the interest of the greater good. Compared to the Millennials of the same age, Boomers slept through their young adulthood and middle age. Boomer lifestyles and choices are a timely lesson for us all.Thanks for reading.