That whole 60s unpleasantness with anti-war demonstrations and civil rights struggles is dead now – thank God!So does the last phase of the post-partisan rhetoric – baby boomers are dead and he allegedly invented centrism.

The rationalizations abund for why everything worth living and fighting for is just not cool anymore.

Garrychapelhill in his analysis of the AP “generational revolution” dreg asks

So if he’s not a boomer, and not an Xer, then what?   Hell, they’ve made all this other shit up, why stop now?

Why indeed? They have a new one indeed, with the help of a political consultant:

Generation Jones, as in the slang word ‘jonesing,’ or craving, and as in a generation that’s lost in the shuffle.

Jonesers are idealistic, Pontell says, but not ideological like boomers. “Boomers were flower children out changing the world. We Jonesers were wide-eyed, not tie-dyed.”

See? Idealistic, not ideologues – like those dirty hippies and their civil rights excesses. But is it new? Glen Greenwald has seen it before:

Because this election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence. It’s not about overthrowing governments in Central America. It’s about creating good jobs in middle America.

Who said that? Bill Clinton? Nope, Michael Dukakis, in his acceptance speech :

“This election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence.”  That was Michael Dukakis’ battle-cry more than 20 years ago in order to prove that he wasn’t beholden to those dreaded leftist ideologues in his party, that he was instead devoted to pragmatic solutions, to “whatever works.”

and the media is celebrating this new fangled thinghie

celebrating as “remarkable” — that a national Democratic politician is alienating “the Left” and embracing the center-right in the name of transcending ideological and partisan conflicts — is about the least new dynamic that one can imagine.  That’s what the most trite Beltway mavens — from David Broder and Mickey Kaus to Joe Klein and The New Republic — have been demanding since forever, and it’s what Democratic leaders have done for as long as one can remember.

So, those of you jonesing for social justice, ending of the war, equality – tough luck. You are passe, the idealist Jonesians want “hope” that looks good on teevee, not actual transformation.

Ideology is dead, long live tax cuts, bigotry, deregulations and unchecked executive power (psst! that would be someone else’s ideology, but don’t tell Joneses that – it’s not cool)