53. Boomsday
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by: JL Collins
Author: Christopher Buckley
Genre: Fiction, Satire
336 pages, published April 2, 2007
Reading Format: Book
Summary
Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them an ambitious senator seeking the presidency. With the help of Washington’s greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called “transitioning”) all the way to the White House, over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.
Quotes
“My, my, my, how very different are the workings of government from what we all read about in books as children. I wonder, do the Founders weep in heaven?”
“Had he merely dreamed a beautiful dream, or had a United States senator just gone on television to advocate mass suicide as a means of dealing with the deficit?”
“a blue blood in a red meat business”
“like the milk ads, only they’re drinking poison”
My Take
Boomsday is a light, quick read and Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley and author of Thank You for Smoking) does a fairly good job satirizing the Baby Boomers and their insatiable desires. Published in 2007, Boomsday is ahead of its time, but the reckoning over our country’s unsustainable entitlement programs will be here soon.
