As we Baby Boomers turn the corners on our lives, we're staring down all kinds of insecurities and fears from our lifestyles and our wastefully-led economic past practices.
We spent money like crazy, and helped turn the Credit Card industry into a legally sanctioned Mafia with vigs and juice loan rates higher than those charged by the organized crime.
We claimed we were open and supported civil rights, but all we did was brush racism and bigotry under a carpet, still living in relatively segregated neighborhoods divided not as much by color but by economic barriers.
Yes, we Baby Boomers helped to build the mess we're in today and when someone comes along and tries to fix it, we scream like babies and we allow right-wing demagogues to pander to our near-death fears and our failed economic dreams and an anger that grows with age.
President Barack Obama has proposed a plan to give healthcare to some 47 million Americans who 40 years ago would have been the beneficiaries of Baby Boomer activism. We fought for civil rights and helping the poor.
Now, as the Baby Boomers transform from a help-thy-neighbor to a "where's my" phenomena, we are willing to swallow every fear-mongering claim by the hate-mongers like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck.
Are today's seniors really that stupid or are they losing their ability to think for themselves, the one asset we celebrated that set us apart from every other generation?
Despite the histrionics of Sarah Palin, the disgraced former governor of Alaska, Obama's health care plan does not provide a mechanism so her Downs Syndrome baby would be killed. Calling Obama's healthcare plan "evil" only exposes her total ignorance and inability to be taken as a serious leader.
The plan does provide some funds to allow families with their physicians to consider end-of-life options. And if people want to debate that provision, it can be done without Palin's "terrorist rhetoric."
Everyone is arguing that anything controlled by the government is a failure. Is government worse than the health insurance industry? Is government worse than the banking and credit card industries? Is government really that bad, or are we just stupid and accept any stereotype without serious reasoned thought?
The Veterans Administration program is run well by the government.
Medicare is NOT a government run agency. It is subsidized by government and run outside government.
If American Government is so bad, why is it that the people doing most of the complaining are the government? Republicans and conservatives who controlled the White House, Congress, the U.S. Senate and other government agencies for years. Or, are they just squealing like a lynch mob because they happen to be out of power?
Obama's healthcare will not force people to lose their healthcare coverage. In fact, if a business were to cancel a healthcare policy, the individual -- any American citizens -- would be given the option to get a new private health care policy or get the publicly offered program with help from the government.
Senior citizens are supposed to be the people with the most experience. And experience is supposed to be the one education tract in life that allows human beings to rationalize through complex problems.
Instead of acting like intelligent people, today's seniors, the Baby Boomers, are acting like crybabies who have set aside everything they once held sacred in order to insure that their selfish interests and their comfortable healthcare options are protected.
They like it the way it is and to hell with the rest of America.
As a baby Boomer myself, I'm ashamed of how dumb some seniors have become.
Obama's healthcare plan only threatens one thing: the insiders who are profiting from our suffering and our poor health care coverage. The insurance industry moguls whose criminal misconduct in denying healthcare to those in need through exclusions, riders and denials, are the crooks.
And so are the politicians who are taking their money and looking for any reason to trash an effort to make health care better and see to it that every American has prepare health care.
For the rest of us, "change" always looks frightening. But sometimes, in change, with some sacrifices from a very few, we can help protect the larger society in a good way.
Ray Hanana is an award winning columnist, author and Chicago Radio Talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com when he's not taking a senior nap or experiencing a senior moment.