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I apologize for not making my usual post last week. To make it up to you, this week I have prepared a very special double book review. Both are non-fiction books, and both have a similar topic. The full titles were too long to put in full in the blog heading. They are A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America and Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. I like when a book is up front with its title. Short of emulating Albert Jay Nock and titling the book “Our Enemy, The Boomers”, neither author could have been more direct.

The two books take different angles of attack on their shared target: Gibney’s Generation of Sociopaths is a sweeping odyssey across many different levels of alleged Boomer selfishness, complete with numerical summaries quantifying their malfeasance. Andrews meanwhile takes a more literary approach, modeling her book after Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, and attacking Boomer vices using six prominent members of their generation as the foci of her assault.

Curiously, the two books present slightly different definitions of what qualifies someone as a Boomer. Andrews uses the standard birth years of 1945 to 1964, whereas Gibney includes those born from 1940 on. Either way, the generation (which presumably could also be called Gen W, although I’ve never seen it referred to as such) has many members, and, according to these two, not many of them are good.

Gibney is more vindictive in his attacks. He diagnoses the Boomers as clinically sociopathic, behaving with a total lack of concern for others and a single-minded focus on their own welfare. Much of his book is devoted to detailed examinations of American tax law, dedicated to the thesis that Boomers voted for policies to benefit themselves at the expense of both older and younger cohorts.

Here, the alert reader might raise an objection: isn’t America theoretically a representative government? And might not a representative government be reasonably expected to respond to what a large percentage of its population wants? And since the Boomers are by definition a large percentage of the population, shouldn’t we expect them to vote in their own interest? Isn’t that, like, democracy in action? But this is not good enough for Gibney. The Boomers display, in his view, a lack of the prudence and foresight that was characteristic of previous generations.

Andrews does without the graphs and figures. Her book is much more personal, targeting specific foibles of specific people: Aaron Sorkin is an out-of-touch writer of TV dramas who mistakes his characters for real life. Camille Paglia is a decadent artist who is shocked when the values of her salons translate into reality. Al Sharpton was the last corrupt boss of Tammany Hall-style machine politics. Even Steve Jobs, to whom Andrews is clearly more sympathetic than the others, was at best a flawed hero, insofar as his phones and music players ultimately fueled Boomer-ish conspicuous consumption.

Gibney’s book concludes with an appeal to Carl Schmitt’s Friend/Enemy distinction, exhorting his readers to view the Boomers as a kind of scapegoat on to whom the sins of our nation must be cast, and of whom a ritual sacrifice must be made before there can be absolution. Andrews ends her book with a more meditative note on how millennials can avoid following in the footsteps of their parents. (Interestingly, both books also make approving references to Lord Kenneth Clark’s 1969 television series Civilisation. It is almost as if there is some anti-Boomer Q source from which they are both working.)

What is perhaps most interesting about the books is the different perspectives of the authors. Andrews is a reactionary conservative, Gibney seems to lean progressive with maybe some libertarian influence thrown in. As a result, their analysis of what exactly the Boomers did wrong differs, with Andrews believing they destroyed the fabric of society with their libertine disregard of cultural norms, while Gibney views the social issues that alarm Andrews—feminism, gay marriage, etc.—as mere footnotes. In his view, the overall culture is far more right-wing now than it was when the Boomers were coming up. As he frequently reminds us, Nixon was more left-wing than Obama when it came to expanding the scope of government.

In the end, their diagnosis seems to converge on the idea that the Boomers, growing up in a time of peace and plenty, were spoiled by their material wealth, and selfishly squandered it all, leaving their progeny in a far worse situation economically, politically, and—in Andrews’s case anyway—spiritually.

And here we come to the central point, the specter that haunts both books: the Boomers’ progeny, most of whom are the generation we know as Gen Y, the Millennials, or, if you’re of a mind to use a slur for us as Gibney does for the Boomers, “the Participation Trophy Generation.”

I am one of these Millennials, born in 1990 to Boomer parents. As a member of that generation of supposedly disinherited knights that the Washington Post once dubbed “the unluckiest generation in U.S. history”, I am, if Andrews and Gibney are to be believed, a victim who is entitled to redress of his grievances.

And this is the great irony of both books: in each case the authors accuse the Boomers of being rebels without causes, of not respecting the traditions of their ancestors, but instead deriding them, overthrowing them, and stealing their wealth, all while acting as if they are aggrieved and entitled to compensation… and then they each proceed to do exactly the same with the Boomers themselves!

Gibney’s hypocrisy is particularly irritating. He proposes levying large taxes on the Boomers, the proceeds of which should be redirected to California venture capitalists such as himself. His whole book indicts the Boomers for stealing the wealth of others to benefit themselves, and then he ends by proposing to do the very same thing. He justifies this by saying that “a Schmittian menace does motivate society, sometimes to good ends, if the Us is genuinely commendable and the Other, not so much.”

In other words, “we are the good guys, and anything we do is therefore also good.” Does it ever occur to Gibney that this is also what the original students of Carl Schmitt were thinking?

Anyway, before Gibney starts building wicker men for Boomers in the hopes that next year’s crop will be better, I would point out that failure to show respect for the ancestors is one of the major sins across virtually all cultures in history. That the Boomers may have been guilty of it is no excuse for their successors to do the same.

Back to that Washington Post article, and specifically this chart, which demonstrates that Millennials enjoyed the least growth in GDP per capita of any generation. Very unlucky! Not nearly as “lucky” as the G.I. Generation (b.1900-1924) or the Silent Generation (b. 1925-1945). Look at the economic growth they enjoyed during their first years in the workforce. What luck! I’m sure, as they were about to storm the beaches at Normandy, they were all thinking how incredibly lucky they were to have been born at this time!

To my fellow Millennials (and Gen Zers–those who can read), I say this: yes, we inherited a mess from previous generations. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see what they might have done differently. But every generation in history could say the same. No one was ever gifted a perfect world, and if they were, mythology suggests they would lose it almost immediately. If we are going to at least set our lands in order, we cannot do it by heaping scorn upon those who went before us. We can only study what they did right, what they did wrong, and use that knowledge to make ourselves better. We can still be, as that wonderful work of Millennial fiction Samantha, 25, on October 31 says, “the generation that changes it all.” But

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

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Remember that book, CCRU Writings: 1997 – 2003 that I reviewed last Fall? The one full of weird occult philosophical ramblings about AI, techno-demons, and inhuman pseudo-mythology?

If you read that review, or the book itself, and thought, “that was good, but it’s just not bizarre enough”, well, my friend, have I got good news for you!

Cyclonopedia is written in an academic style. Or rather, it’s what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote in an academic style while on acid.

The book is framed as a found manuscript discovered by an American tourist on a trip to the Middle East. What she finds is a disordered collection of notes loosely centered on the works of a Dr. Hamid Parsani, who has developed an esoteric theory of the world, particularly the Muslim world, and the Global War on Terror.

Dr. Parsani’s thesis, insofar as it can be discerned from the many cryptic documents and references, is that the Middle East is actually a conscious organism, powered by a dark god that lives beneath its surface. This viscous Lovecraftian xeno-intelligence is the substance we know as “oil”, and it subtly shapes humanity to suit its purposes. It runs our machines, drives our economies, and provides the impetus for massive wars, all in an effort to increase its control over the Earth as it seeks to burn as bright as its nemesis, the Sun.

Scattered throughout the writing by and about Parsani are references to other characters, including an American soldier called “Colonel West”, a Kurtz-like figure who has begun to understand the bizarre and occult nature of the battlefield and gone rogue, leading a renegade Delta Force unit on brutal sorties informed by his and Dr. Parsani’s research into the esoteric nature of the desert and the demonic forces that rule it.

This West character is especially interesting to me because in certain respects he parallels the real-life Lt. Col. Allen West, who was tried for the use of unnecessary force during the Iraq War, even down to such minor details as the fictional West’s fascination with oil and the real-life West’s line that “if it’s about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can,” which he said by way of defending his actions. Is this literary license, satire, hyperstition, or mere coincidence?

I’m probably making this sound more compelling than it is. Parts of it read like a really dry and incredibly confusing dissertation, punctuated by moments of bizarre horror that aren’t as shocking as they might be simply because they feel so out-of-left-field. Still, like CCRU, the book does manage to gradually instill a sense of gnawing unease in the reader.

And also like CCRU, most of this unease comes from the fact that its central insane thesis seems to align with observable facts. If the Middle East really is a sentient force that compels humanity to wage eternal war over the black gold beneath it, we would expect to see exactly what we do see in the real world.

More curious still are some of the things that the philosophy of Cyclonopedia implies rather than stating outright. For instance, the curious fact that the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originated in the Middle East, and slowly but surely defeated and subjugated the sun-worshipping religions—a fact which dovetails with the supposed envy the dark god oil harbors against the sun. (“Since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to destroy the sun!“)

It’s worth noting that the basic concept here isn’t all that different from Dune: a mysterious desert populated by a adherents of an esoteric religion, and a vital resource that is key to control of the universe. Frank Herbert based his story on the Muslim world to begin with; Cyclonopedia is like what would happen if you removed the sci-fi setting, and restored Dune‘s weird, psychedelic vibe to Mesopotamia proper. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Cyclonopedia is stranger than both.

Now, this is where I need to step back and acknowledge that most people are not like me. Most people like a story with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, and do not like to feel like their understanding of reality is slowly unraveling when they read a book. So I probably have a higher tolerance for this sort of mind-bending madness than most. And even I was getting impatient after a while. In a lot of ways, the book felt like it was building up to a payoff that it never delivered.

So, should you read it? If you love bizarre esoteric theory-fiction that requires a huge amount of close reading to even begin to understand. Since I think that only describes about nine people in the entire world, it’s likely not for you. But if you’re one of the nine, you’ll probably love it.

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There’s an old line which I’ve seen attributed to Pericles: “just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” I am very skeptical as to whether Pericles said this, but the sentiment is fundamentally sound. Politics exists in all nations at all times, and can be defined simply as the endless competition for the power of governing. In democracies, people compete for votes. In oligarchies, for the support of the strongest factions. In monarchies, for the favor of the crown.

Thus, there will always be politics. In the latest Brad and Karen thriller, the pair are both caught up in developments stemming directly from government policy changes. Brad in that much of his research funding has been terminated and Karen in that she is having to work with a much more aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Both are affected when one of Brad’s colleagues is taken into ICE custody and then mysteriously murdered. As usual, the duo works to solve the murder, though this time getting information through Karen’s usual channels is more difficult, as the federal authorities are very secretive about their operations.

If you’re a fan of Brad and Karen thrillers, I probably don’t have to tell you to read this. Unless, perhaps, you are also so horrified by current events that you don’t want anything that reminds you of them. There were a few, I think, who declined to read Mark Paxson’s wonderful novella The Jump for that very reason. And that’s a pity, because it really was a phenomenal book that explains current events far better than most mainstream news outlets.

So, my advice to prospective readers of this book is to be undeterred by the political themes. Even if you don’t agree with them! As you might guess, the distribution of ratings for this book is bimodal, with some long-time readers of the series being alienated due to the beliefs held by the main characters.

This may be a controversial opinion in itself, but this review just makes me sad. When did people lose the ability to read a story even if they disagree with some of its ideas? Are some people unable to read Kidnapped just because they are not Jacobites? Political disputes, up to and including wars, get forgotten with time. (“Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor…”) What doesn’t get forgotten are good stories.

Well, anyway, back to the book itself: in the end it practically turns into a spy-thriller tale, complete with secret agents leading double lives and a dramatic cycle of betrayal and revenge. And I love a good spy story.

Pick up The ICE Murders. Yes, it might force you to think about things outside of your normal perspective. But isn’t that what books are for?