Madame Le Blanc is my 85-year-old neighbor. She lost her husband in World War II and was a peace activist in her younger age. She regrets the materialism that characterizes the modern world and the greed that dominates modern life. She is extremely critical of the policies, the decisions and the behavior of a generation the West likes to call “baby boomers”.

Madame Le Blanc says that baby boomers are, by and large, bad role models for their children and for all future generations. She bases her harsh verdict on the following personal observations.

Powerful baby boomers destroy lives and livelihood with total immunity and occupy or steal lands to which they are not entitled. With their electronic magic wand, they convince the world that the victims are “the dangerous enemy” that must be destroyed and eliminated and that the guilty are “the peaceful, endangered species” that should be saved and protected.

Influential baby boomers employ expensive spin-doctors to hide any shameful act they perform, push despicable facts under the carpet and turn all eyes away from horrors committed in broad daylight.

Wealthy, unscrupulous baby boomers finance and direct a powerful media machine, which corrupts youth, brainwashes the credulous, misleads the naïve, lures the innocent into believing the unbelievable and rallies public opinion in support of unjust causes. Mighty baby boomers slaughter innocent souls, hijack religions, use force and violence to promote values that they call universal and kill the truth when they are caught red-handed.

Investigations carried out by baby boomers are often lengthy, boring and a sham. Court trials conducted by baby boomers often exonerate and absolve the guilty and implicate and punish the innocent.

Cruel baby boomers shut their ears against the screams of severely injured men, women and children, turn their eyes away form piles of dead bodies, overlook pools of innocent blood, bury their heads in deep sand and claim that all is well.

Heartless baby boomers live in lavish palaces, eat more than they can digest and deprive the needy and the hungry of bread, water and shelter. Starvation is the lethal weapon they use to destroy homeless, helpless people they call “the enemy”

Heavily armed children of baby boomers raid and demolish homes, kill unarmed men, women and children in cold blood and brag that their actions are part and parcel of a holy war against the forces of evil.

Baby boomer informants sell “to whom it may concern” inaccurate intelligence that leads to raids on peaceful homes, humiliation, imprisonment, torture and shooting of innocent suspects and paves the way to the invasion of sovereign states.

Baby boomers ban smoking in public places to save the health of people and protect the environment; yet freely use bombs, missiles and chemical weapons that destroy nature, pollute the climate and give birth to known and unknown dangerous diseases. They act against the will of God and claim that they are guided by rules set by the Almighty Above. They create havoc and disorder in the world and pretend that justice, equality, equity, order, and peace are on the march.

Baby boomer managers spend their first year on the job accusing their predecessors of corruption, incompetence and mismanagement in order to dismantle the structures they inherit, to replace long-serving employees with their cronies, or simply to establish for themselves a reputation for being “great reformers”.

Baby boomer war generals rarely set foot in battlefields, always avoid looking danger in the eye, but they never hesitate to honor the funerals of fallen soldiers with their presence. In the austere ceremonies they shed a few crocodile tears, distribute pieces of brass, silver or gold metals to the broken hearted families, praise the courage and patriotism of “the lost heroes” and assure the bereaved relatives that their dead loved ones will always be remembered. The heroes and their families usually fade into oblivion as soon as the coffins are buried, but numerous official radio and TV channels endlessly broadcast the speeches of the gracious generals, play and replay images of the kiss they place on the cheeks of the orphaned children and minutely describe the gentle pat with which they grace the tiny heads and bless the weak shoulders.

Madame Le Blanc is deeply disappointed that baby boomers rarely practice what they preach. This, in her opinion, is a major fault, which renders all teachings meaningless and all words of advice hollow. With her tongue in cheek she says that Dallida’s song “Paroles, paroles, paroles” would be a perfect national anthem for a global village ruled by a generation whose unwholesome actions speak louder than its deceptive, sweet words.