I keep seeing, in comments, people either blaming things on the boomers, or boomers, themselves, taking issue with that. I've done my share of overgeneralizing. My question is, in the age of Obama, does this rankle you guys? Are boomers pissed that we seem to be seeing them all through rather extreme lense of McCain/Ayers/Clinton/Bush?
UPDATE: Wow. Hop on a plane to LA, check back in, and what do we have. Prolly the most venomous thread in this blog's undistinguished history. I always sensed this as an undercurrent in the comments. Didn't realize it ran this deep. Nevertheless. I wanted to hear from Boomers, if anymore are out there...
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I think post-Boomers (as much as I hate to use 'post-' anything at this point!) can get annoyed at the sheer amount of attention and ink given to Boomer events, Boomer stresses, Boomer cultural touchstones. Remember all the hoo-hah over the 25th Anniversary of Woostock, the Bestest Concert Ever and a Cultural Landmark That Means So Much?
It's interesting, though; we may only have two Boomer presidents, which doesn't seem to match the enormous amount of cultural influence and attention they have.
From what I understand, birthdates in 1960-1964 were the original "Gen X" until it ended up being applied to the whole 1961-1981 era. So, Obama's the first Gen X/13th generation president, due to fix up all the messes made by the boomers. It perfectly fits the narrative.
I'll be happiest when we cease to think about boomers and their concerns at all. That's not going to happen anytime soon. But I do suspect we're going to see a shift that goes well beyond the recent campaign.
When boomers were young, they tended to vote along strictly ideological lines. As they aged, their concerns diversified. But as they head into retirement, they're increasingly united - all of them would like the government to pay for their retirement and health care. And since they failed to set aside adequate savings or to enact the structural reforms that would have the government set aside sufficient funds on their behalf, that means that they're really asking for a massive transfer of wealth from the younger generation to the older one.
I happen to be a fan of Social Security and Medicare. We can never go back to the 1920s, when large numbers of the elderly languished in horrific poverty. But although the direct influence of the boomers on most political issues is starting to fade - we're no longer enmeshed in their culture war - their indirect impact is set to grow enormously. I suspect it will prove nearly impossible to scale benefits to match the available resources. That means that entitlement programs are going to eat up ever-larger chunks of the budget, squeezing out other priorities.
We may be past the ideological battles of the boomer generation. But we're only at the beginning of an inter-generational battle over the allocation of resources that's going to get very, very ugly.
I will admit to an anti-boomer bias, though apparently according to those generational rotation theories by Strauss and Howe, it's historically normal for the generation following a Boomer-style generation to dislike them.
What drives me crazy is the tendency toward projecting their own flaws on others and complete lack of awareness. In the culture wars, they simply could not realize that they engaged in the exact same tactics that the folks on the other side were. And even when it's pointed out, there's always some sort of justification about why it's different when they do it. It's still going on (see Prop. 8) and it just doesn't seem like there's any reaching them.
Politically, I find that their overwhelming sense of entitlement interferes with their ability to to actually develop good strategies (again, see Prop. 8 -- not to mention Hillary's entire campaign), and their condescending attitude toward those who are not Baby Boomers makes it a challenge for them to develop relationships with those who live and breathe strategy (like Gen Xers). Many cannot grasp that they are not nearly as smart as they seem to think they are.
McCain isn't a Baby Boomer by the way. He's actually of that generation that fell between the GIs and the Baby Boomers.
Might I add that there's the intervening Generation Jones, of which I am a member. We were too young for Woodstock, too young to have gotten drafted (and we missed the VietNam War as well). We were the kids that got bused for the sake of integration (its a long demographic story, but I was bussed to a predominantly black school in 9th grade).
That one is actually a Jonser, too, by the way.
My biggest problem with the boomers is how they seem to push all these problems off to the next generation. Global warming? Fuck it. An out of control deficit that will reduce the power of any future government? Fuckit. the impending likely hood i won't have social security or medicare (pre obama's election)? fuckit.
Now a lot of this was Bush and the republican congress, and I understand that Republicans are sort of the part of "fuck the next generation, i'm going to get mine now." but i didn't see much fight from my parents or any democratic leaders.
this was my biggest reason for voting for obama in the primary and the general. i wanted someone who seemed to share my sense of urgency that these problems should not be pushed off till later.
i feel like after a certain point, the boomers stopped caring if they were leaving a better country to the next generation. or if they did, then they are just very ineffectual.
ps - in fairness, i guess i should say Republicans are actually the party of "i work hard and will make sure me and mine are provided for. why doesn't everyone else do the same." this is just too narrow a view when confronting issues like the environment and global warming.
Perhaps not.
Maybe if we quit spending nearly as much on defense AS THE REST OF THE F$$KING WORLD COMBINED, and perhaps quit wasting valuable resources fighting the insane war on drugs... and we could actually afford those old-ass Boomers... and those of us who hope to grow old in turn.
Oh, and I forgot the purity tests! Because of the Boomer collectivism on both the left and the right, guilt by association is a grievous sin. The whole Ayers flap was clearly a Boomer strategy that didn't work because non-Boomers just don't look at human relationships that way. They are not as walled off into their two camps the way Boomers seem to be.
Not to mention the fact that huge swaths of voting Americans have no recollection of Ayers or Weather Underground and thus are not automatically fearful about him. And again, that's a Boomer strategic flaw to have assumed that everybody else would.
They're the worst generation. They've pillaged this country of its wealth and have never demonstrated that they give a crap about the next generation. Boomer presidents Clinton and W. Bush both dragged the country through messes thanks to their narcissism and evasion of accountability (Bush's worse than Clinton's, obviously). They're divided amongst themselves and want to drag the country through 60s battles at every opportunity, and demonstrate not a hint of the valuation of selflessness or sense of purpose that characterize the older generation or younger generations.
This Gen Y-er is cheering their exit from the national stage, and not a moment too soon.
What Persia said.
The attention and self-proclaimed self-importance of the Boomers has long been annoying. Just because they happened to be born within a certain set of years that doesn't mean they're any more important than anyone else. But somehow they think they are. That bugs. So I'd suspect that's where a lot of the blame comes from. You build yourself up as The Most Important Generation Evah, you get to shoulder some blame for crap that goes wrong.
As a so-called post-Boomer, yes it bugs me. They're not that important. STFU you stupid Boomers. I'm tired of hearing about you. Seriously. I'll be paying for your retirement for years to come. I don't need to hear about your angst anymore.
I feel similar to Nathan but in a more moderate sense.
It's not that I think all members of my parents' generation are/were delusional, narcissistic etc. but they seemed utterly incapable of pragmatic politics for the most part.
At the same time, I do give some of them credit for getting things done in the arenas of civil rights because they did take the rapid liberalization of the country in the 1960s into public policy where they could.
Obama is going to stump them though, and everyone else because I expect he will be solution-oriented like we haven't seen in a very long time if ever. The question is whether he will find willing partners or whether we'll be "meeting the new boss, same as the old boss."
Well...blaming everything on Boomers is clearly not as pernicious or dangerous as blaming everything on blacks or gays. But, I do think it is just as stupid.
I find the attention paid to boomers (mostly by themselves) sufficiently irritating that I look for ways not to be identified as one, although I was born in late 1960. My cohort has little in common with the experiences and worldviews of Ayers, Clinton, Bush, Rick Warren, or any other totemic boomer.
I realize it's self-serving, but I think there is something to this "Generation Jones" (dumb name) idea. We shared the post-boomer experiences Ivan Ivanovich mentions, but to me the real psychological divide between boomers and whatever-came-later is whether or not you can remember JFK's assassination. I can't. Maybe having a personal memory of 9/11, or of Obama's election, or some crazy thing just around the corner will serve the same function for our kids: dividing those who share some galvanizing collective moment that changed the world from those who don't.
The amount of medical resources and research dollars that have gone into making sure aging Boomer males can get, and maintain, erections, and could have gone elsewhere, is enough reason to find the entire navel-gazing group unutterably loathsome.
Now that they've all lost a third of their net worth, none of them are ever going to retire. They're going to retain jobs that they should vacate, retarding promotion, and clogging the system for those trying to enter the workforce now, as if that weren't hard enough.
You won't see them defending themselves here, because even if they know what a blog is, they certainly wouldn't read one written by a young black man.
FUCK THEM.
As one of the guilty culprits in a previous thread, let me just say that I have nothing against boomers, per se. Some of my best friends are boomers. Really.
But the case Andrew Sullivan made for Obama in Goodbye to All That--that Obama represents a break from "the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation"--struck a chord. Baby boomer idealism and activism shoved this country forward at a time when it desperately need it, but it also seared deep divisions that the generation hasn't been able to recover from. Many haven't been able to move forward and it has grown more debilitating as they have become more entrenched into the power structure. Boomer politicians and journalists almost seemed excited when Sarah Palin threatened to reopen culture war wounds, because it was a familiar battle. But Obama tapped into a growing sense that we can't afford to get bogged down in those types of divisions any more.
Again, I'm not necessarily criticizing boomers as individuals, but as a the generation in charge of... everything. The times have started passing them by, and the boomer worldview can't give us the new type of government, media, and society we need. It's simply time for the torch to be passed. It happens to every generation.
I just don't get the bile. Weird.
They are the most irresponsible human specimen of the last 300years. It was for them that led me to fight with all my vigor to end their calamities on this great nation. It was the great plague--which is more like the age of Pharoh. In the great history book, it is important for us to skip that chapter of horror. They fail us all!
In the word of Andrew: "Goodbye to all that."
I think there's a difference in opinion depending on whether one is Gen X or Gen Y. For us Gen Yers, Boomers are our parents, so there's more of a parent-child, love-hate relationship, whereas I think Gen Xers are more aggravated about Boomer excesses.
I always understood the boomer generation to include folks born from 1946 to 1964 (the Census Bureau agrees with me) -- which puts me and Obama amongst the ranks. Though I understand there's been a move afoot to separate those of us in the '55 to '64 cohort into our own bitter little "Generation Jones" category (and also to blame us for Reagan, whom I, personally, always despised).
Also, as someone else noted, McCain's not a boomer. He's part of what they call the "Silent Generation," it seems.
As for boomers and "boomer presidents" being the source of all our problems, dude, all I have to say is I Blame Reagan and all the "silent generation" and "Generation Jones" idiots who fell for his schtick a lot more than I blame Clinton. Bush the younger, of course, is another kettle of fish, but I think a darned good argument could be made that he'd never have darkened our national political door had Reagan not been vaulted into power by all those bitter, authority-worshipping, Carter-hating "Generation Jones" types I went to college with. So there.
Hard to hate them entirely, since they produced me, but I'm certainly not looking forward to subsidizing their collective obsolescence. I think the victory tour of self-congratulation that we've had to put up with over the last few years with the Woodstock and Summer of Love 20th, 25th, 30th anniversaries has been annoying to no end, especially since they've been completely useless for the last decade. The cultural works they're all so proud of are mostly horrendous (psychedelic art and The Doors being my two least favorite American artistic contributions EVAR). But, I mean, my parents are cool enough.
Yeah, anonymous up at 2:14 makes a good point as pertains to my comment.
Wow. I thought I was the only one who seethed at everything Boomer. Here is my pat rant.
Everything from the Beatles to cocaine bugs the hell out of me. Dennis Hopper as a hack for investments with his 60 is the new 20 line of bullshit makes me scream everytime. My whole life (I'm 39) has been lived in the shadow of boomer smugness. The epitome of which was the day of Kurt Cobain's suicide, Mtv news captured this boomer-on-the-street saying, "I don't know what the big deal is. It's not like this guy was John Lennon or anything." Yeah, fuck you too.
Generational locusts is what they are. Thank them for rampant drug abuse, exotic STDs, debilitating deficits and neo-conservatism. They are the reason I always loved Logan's Run as a kid. Understandably, not so much anymore. Smiley face.
Now, that said, I agree with others that this anger is silly and misguided and far to easy for me to unload all the world's ills onto a group of people. I feel bad for that, but I can't seem to get past the feeling that they are culpable for a lot of the shitness found in the world today.
If boomer cultural excesses are so eeeevil, why'd you kids bring back hip-huggers and bell bottoms (and you did, really, you did, much to my continuing chagrin)?
Oh, and Justin, you're not the only one with no use for The Doors. As has been remarked by others, Dennis' Leary's joke about him should have been the final word.
I was talking to my father when he suddenly hushed me to hear a voice interrupting the music on the radio. Then he leapt from the couch and yelled up the stairs to my mother. Dr. King had been shot.
I finished my cereal and headed for the door to walk for school, then stopped because my mother, standing by the same radio was in tears. Bobby Kennedy was dead.
I was eight years old then, and I’m forty-eight now.
In the long years in between, I’ve voted for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry.
I did it proudly, but I did it knowing I was voting for modest proposals, pared-down visions, and versions of “the best we manage for now.” The overall message was that in a divided country facing trying times, these candidates were offering us a restrained, realistic idea of what could practically be done. It was as though we were working through a generation of grief for lost leaders and past campaigns, doing without big dreams because we couldn’t handle any more failure.
And then, I woke up after the Iowa caucuses, and knew that age was over. Not just because Obama was great himself, but because he was raising a flag for millions of others who were ready to move on.
My generation's scars are finally not the nation's scars, and new things, big things, are finally possible again.
I am utterly, blissfully ready for Generation X to take the reins.
Yeah, I think it's that a lot of folks are tired of EVERYTHING being about the boomers. I was born in '65, the youngest of my family by a bit, so grew up with parents that were of "The Greatest Generation" and with full-blown boomer siblings. I think those of us who fell just out of the boomers (I never heard of this Generation Jones thing before...) are just fatigued with the "me, me-ness" of that generation. And of hearing of every milestone they hit as though no one has ever done it before. "Look they're turning 60 -- unprecedented!" I'm sure we're going to hear how sales of incontinency meds and adult diapers are increasing in the next 10-20 years...
"I was talking to my father when he suddenly hushed me to hear a voice interrupting the music on the radio. Then he leapt from the couch and yelled up the stairs to my mother. Dr. King had been shot.
I finished my cereal and headed for the door to walk for school, then stopped because my mother, standing by the same radio was in tears. Bobby Kennedy was dead."
It took you two months to finish your cereal? (I'm sorry--i just had to say it).
On the one hand--the better hand--I'm with Peep as to blaming vast groups, and how unfair I would find that if I were, by demographic accident, a member of whichever group it is.
But the other hand is summed up here: I find the attention paid to boomers (mostly by themselves) sufficiently irritating that I look for ways not to be identified as one. I'm not one--born in 68--but I completely get the impulse of those like Obama to define themselves out of the boomer generation.
For me that self-absorption is encapsulated by a woman a decade or so ago writing about how one of her parents had died and now she was a half-orphan! All around her her boomer cohorts were becoming orphans! As though the parents of adults dying were a phenomenon unique in human history, just as boomers leaving the nest, marrying, having children, etc were. Now 50 is the new 30 (I'm 40 and can confidently say, no, 30 you have fewer aches and 50 more). Death will soon be very hip, with requisite soliloquies along the lines of "Sure, previous generations died, but they didn't really understand it and parse it--they weren't affected by it--in the way my own generation, the boomers, are affected. For we were defined by youth....blah blah....get off the lawn!"
McMansions
Tax revolts
SUVs
Environmental problems
Crumbling infrastructure
Gated communities
Viagra
Massive debts
The legacy just seems at odds with the Woodstock/collective ethos by which they try to define themselves. (Well, maybe not the Viagra.) Forget my generation (I'm 27)--they should feel like they let themselves down. I feel that they are a generation that believed that they were entitled to a good life, with little effort. To provide that sense, costs were externalized--to the environment, to the rest of the world, to the future. Then, they could blissfully lie back and enjoy the fruits of the American standard of living, blind to the grind of those who worked, work and will have to work to make it possible. This attitude is of course no means limited to the Boomers. We all who casually drink bottled water are guilty of the same.
I'll just add that, though I have plenty of criticisms for boomers today, they also deserve a lot of credit for pushing the boundaries and moving the ball forward in their earlier days. No president will even consider a draft now, in part because the boomers raised hell when their entire generation was being sent to die in Vietnam. These kids protested and marched during the Civil Rights movement and loosened up an incredibly rigid culture that many in their 20s and 30s can't fathom.
Maybe there were some excesses, and maybe their better days are behind them. But the following generations have it relatively easy because of the boomers--we debate our wars in front of a keyboard and work within the system for our civil rights accomplishments--and we shouldn't completely forget that.
The anger I think is good for one thing, which is to take some of the boomers down a peg. Folks of my parents' generation too often see themselves and their world views as an Undeniable Truth that subsequent generations need to get with, not the other way around.
As a product of Berkeley, CA and an upbringing sufficiently liberal to fit right in there, I remember my father this way. Still today, he'll react with shock if I speak affectionately about a colleague, friend, or public figure with whom he disagrees. "But Jonny, you have to know that so-and-so is a fascist. Oh, he's a really bad dude."
I think my generation (b. 1977) is really defined by growing up in the crack epidemic, the AIDS epidemic... that's if you come from a city I guess. The violence, the polarization, the racial tension of the late 80s/early 90s... Kids these days don't see things the same way. Probably good.
How in the world does Clinton belong with McCain, Ayers, and Bush? Can you clarify? I'm two generations (at least) younger than the boomers but I just don't get what is the problem with Clinton. (You mean Bill, Hillary, or both? Can you clarify?) I do see an extreme lens if I'm looking at commentary on the Web, granted - a lot of the 'liberal' netroots seem to have this intense desire to drive the Clintons out of public life. It's as if they're just as bad as W. I'm not sure why they're treated like this, but maybe the fault is.. the eye of the beholder?
For us Gen Yers, Boomers are our parents, so there's more of a parent-child, love-hate relationship, whereas I think Gen Xers are more aggravated about Boomer excesses.
Plenty of Gen Xers have Boomer parents, myself included. I'm not sure it's that simple. (Is it ever?)
Stoggy's post on January 16, 2009 at 2:28 PM speaks for me as well. Individual boomers are well and good. But the generation? Screw that. Aside from civil rights, where some credit is admittedly due, boomers were best at being self-righteous twits. And now I get to hear them complain as I pay for their retirement and the autumn of their erections? This 35-year-old gen Xer could give a crap.
Wow. Who knew there was such anger directed towards my generation. I suppose it's the same old story, but is easier when you're the one doing the hating rather than being the hated.
I didn't realize my generation was responsible for all over the above listed ills. I was taking TNC's question too simplistically perhaps because my response, before reading all the comments, was this:
Yes, I'm a boomer who gets pissed off at being blamed. I voted for Obama. I worked for Obama. All my friends are boomers who, for the most part, voted for Obama.
Despite my rant, yes, I will give the boomers credit for advancing the Civil Rights movement and the exit from the morass of Vietnam. But what's shocking to me about all that is that they seemed to learn so little from that experience. My grandparents emerged from the Great Depression unwilling to throw a morsel of food down the drain for the rest of their lives and saved money like crazy because they learned their lesson. What did the Boomers learn from the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam? Apparently that Prop 8 is a scourge of civilization and that we should invade countries with uncertain exit strategies.
Sorry. Still bitter.
I was a Hippie who got thrown out of the Radical Bookstore for thinking communism was a really stupid idea that made rational socialism unacceptable. I was a Marine in 'Nam and a Vietnam Veteran Against the War. In my opinion my generation failed to fullfill it's obligation to the nation, both from the left and the right. Patriotism, liberalism, faith, conservatism, Republican, Democrat, bank, broker, insurance. Just some of the words that changed meanings in the last 40 years as we ascended and controlled the nations institutions. We and our parents finally addressed racial hatred, and if you weren't there on one side or the other you don't know how that felt. We addressed the right and wrong of a war, and you don't know how that felt on both sides. The internal conflicts we had over those built up a resevoir of animosity that crippled the generation. What's gone on between the left and right of my generation is a Cold War, the two sides fighting not for the sake of the nation, but to wrest control of the nation from the other. I am overjoyed that the majority of the children of those cold warriors have managed not join the battle. Please, continue to disagree with each other, but never forget that absolute certainty is a posture,not a position.
My biggest issue with boomers is the obsession with Vietnam. It always seemed to me that a great many boomers care more about where people stood on issues 40 years ago rather than how well they are equipped to handle the problems of today. Every Presidential election since 1992 has had the candidates' actions during the Vietnam War as a central issue. I get disgruntled a little bit because I think our choice of leadership sufferred because of this. I look at the Ayers issue as a Boomer way to apply a Vietnam litmus test on somebody who was too young for Vietnam. It just seems like a wound that will never heal and for somebody of a younger generation, I am ready to move on.
How in the world does Clinton belong with McCain, Ayers, and Bush?
I think the sense was "boomers you heard about a lot in the past election." Which would exclude McCain (too old), Palin (too young), Romney (too dull). And perhaps to the extent that the Clintons' sins ("it's Hillary's turn to be president"; Bill's appetite for self-indulgence bringing down his second term) are easy to charicature as Boomer sins. Bush is harder, being more of a generic crazy southern conservative affable doofus. Cheney and Rove should make the list; the draft-dodging of the neocons surely was a defining feature of this late mess... And I agree with the above point that "Ayers! Ayers! Weather underground!" (the site where I get my weather) embodied FAIL for everyone younger than the boomers.
On civil rights: This was played out in miniature in the election, with those civil rights leaders who were endorsing Clinton and then getting threatened with primary challengers from younger folks, evidently a punishment beyond mortal ken. How could their people hold them accountable for stuff they did now--didn't they know what these people did in 1965? Yes, the boomers were absolutely right on civil rights and I give them full credit for fighting things in the streets and then the courts so our way would be easier, and our fights mostly in the courts. But it's not like you get a pass for every navel-gazing essay on "what it means for boomers to turn 30/40/50/60" in the subsequent years.
I don't know; I'm not comfortable at the bashing level of the thread, yet know at some point soon NPR will have another "But let's talk about us and our unique boomer experiences" essay that will grind my teeth. One thing I will say for following generations is they tend to be less amenable to the massive labels that are meant to define everyone in the generation, usually in comparison to the boomers.
Boomer here! The frustration is that the Boomers of circa 1945 to 1952,I believe, were not afraid of risks, learning, social responsibility and did not believe they had all the answers nor were too interested in the quick fix. We went through the 50, 60, 70, etc with a bunch of turmoil which is evident in the wide differences between Clinton and Bush II.
Today's know it alls are in a virtual reality; remember, the gateways to tomorrow are still guarded by the Boomers, and understand them best. Bush/Cheney were the last breath of the Southern Strategy circa 1964-72; their rush to yesterday has ended. Obama is his grandparents with a Blackberry with or without the Secret Service; it is no accident that he had voters from every sector of the society. Give some thought on Gaylord Nelson when you think GREEN. A circle still has 360 degrees! Post Boomers have bought too much of the hype on the virtual world; it is a means to an end not a destination.
Well, if nothing else, I'm getting a good idea of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of some fairly incredulous generalizations.
I can't even respond. It would take me the rest of the day.
You can sum up Baby Boomer attitudes with the subject of divorce:
Liberal Boomer: My happiness and carnal desires are much more important than family stability and harmony for my children. But to make myself feel better about it, I’ll read some pop psychology book that tells me that kids will adjust to any situation, and that they’re really only happy when I’m happy. The irony of that attitude compared to my demands that the citizenry empty their pockets so that government can “take care” of all of the social ills I see in the world will never occur to me.
Conservative Boomer: My happiness and carnal desires are much more important than the family stability and harmony for my children. Even though the only “family value” issue Jesus ever commented on was to condemn divorce, I’m going to conveniently ignore that because my personal wants are paramount. To distract myself from the moral hypocrisy, I’ll publicly condemn a fictitious television character for choosing to become a single mother and loudly complain that gay people are responsible for the breakup of the American family.
You all remind me of a science fiction story I read a long time ago -- so long I don't even remember the author or title. In it a scientist either discovers or creates a race of superhuman, immensely talented children with psychic powers. At the end the children take over by suppressing their elders' ability to act. What I remember the most was the last scene, where the scientist, now living a blissfully perfect life crafted for him by the supergenius children, with no chance of opting out, watches his son with his own children and thinks something like "wait your turn, wait your turn."
Which is a long way of saying hate away. When the next generations throws all your mistakes and stupid behavior in your face -- and being human, you will have them -- remember your sense of superiority. It will be your turn.
Liza-
It's not personal. Some of my best friends are Boomers! Haha.
Seriously though, any discussion about this type of thing is by definition going to result in gross overgeneralizations and impersonality and zero nuance. I don't really see the harm. People my age have been enduring "What's wrong with the kids these days" handwringing our whole lives, now we're dishing back. Just the way it goes, I think.
Overall, I have a positive view of the Baby Boomers. They deserve a great deal of credit for greatly expanding the social liberalism of our country, and for working to end the Vietnam War. However, as a Gen Xer whose parents belong to the pre-Boomer generation (the so-called 'silent generation'), I do chafe at the notion that the Boomers deserve all the credit for those things.
After all, the leaders of many of the social movements of the 60s, and the leaders of the anti-Vietnam war movements, were often people of the pre-Boomer generation. People like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden were actually contemporaries of my parents, not contemporaries of Bubba and Dubya. In addition, as large as the Boomer generation was, it wasn't large enough to change things by itself (even if it had been united on most issues); it took the participation of the silent generation to supply the critical mass needed to effect cultural changes.
The Baby Boomer generation isn't the only generation that tends to get too much credit. The WW2 generation also tends to get too much credit. Yes, the WW2 generation was magnificent in its battle against global fascism, but it do so through the leadership of people like FDR and Churchill and Eisenhower, who belonged to the First World War generation. The Greatest Generation were magnificent soldiers, but weren't necessarily good leaders. If you compare our WW2 generation presidents (JFK to Bush I) and compare then to WW1 generation presidents FDR, Truman, and Ike, the WW2 generation doesn't look so good in comparison. Of course, if the you compare the WW2 generation presidents to the Boomer presidents (Clinton and Dubya), the WW2 generation looks much better in comparison.
Born in 1960. If I remember JFK's death, it's as a time when everyone got sad; but that could also have been from the births of my next two siblings, both with birth defects and one lost at 3 weeks of age. I was 3.5 when my living brother was born.
Civil rights, pollution, women's rights -- all of these issues were 'settled' when we were kids, they were the "current events," we heard in grade school.
Living through the 1980's, we discovered it was all pretend.
Obama and my generation, always in the shadow of the boomers who supposedly did those great things, view it as our jobs to live up to that standard we heard in grade school. We're the adults, following after the child-dreamers.
Joe @ January 16, 2009 3:14 PM:
We will have "moved on" from Vietnam when we stop invading countries that pose no threat to us.
And as far as the Boomers go: much like our soon-to-be-former President, the things left undone are somehow even more damning than the "missions" that were "accomplished."
I was born in June 1963, so some call my cohort Boomers, others call us Generation Jones or even Gen X. I prefer the Jones moniker, myself. I figure if you don't remember the JFK assassination, and you never bought a Beatles record as soon as it came out, you're born too late to be a Boomer.
I think it's hilarious to read the anger and vitriol from the younger people here who have no use for Boomer artists like the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. Those guys are so old-fashioned! That's exactly how I used to talk about Elvis and Hank Williams and Frank Sinatra. Y'all's kids are going to poke fun at your taste, which you think is so frakkin' awesome. They'll say: "Jay-Z? You listened to that and actually liked it?"
The thing that really makes me laugh is the criticism that Boomers are so darn self-involved, how they treat every milestone as something new under the sun. My local newspaper has a staff writer (late 20s, early 30s) who pens weekly columns about what it's like to be a new mother. Just like the Boomers, just like the Silents and the Joneses, she thinks this particular milestone -- motherhood -- is a new thing, and that she experiences it in a different way than anyone else ever did.
Xers and Yers, you gotta get hip to the notion of projection. When you get really pissed off about someone else's foibles, you better look in the mirror and ask if you have those same foibles, and you hate yourself for it and you're unloading those negative feelings onto a scapegoat.
Instead of getting pissed off, try laughing in solidarity when confronted by other folks' weaknesses, because human nature doesn't change, and you have those same weaknesses. Don't believe me? Well, the Boomers didn't think they shared their predecessors' weaknesses, either.
Me, I have a front-row seat as a bystander sandwiched between the two biggest American generations in history: the self-indulgent Boomers, and their equally self-indulgent children.
This is just another way for human beings to divide themselves up into factions and make "them" out of what could be "us." Youth becomes age, and we all find ourselves on the other side of that divide sooner than we can imagine.
The vaster the generalization, the less meaningful it becomes: Palin and Obama are of the same generation, whatever you name you give it.
The Boomers annoy the hell out of me for three things:
1. Complete and utter narscissim. Holdie's example and teen movies/music aside, the Boomer presence/control of the media is deafening. "60 is the new 20, indeed."
2. Endlessly refighting the (domestic) Vietnam war.
3. Being, in a lot of ways, horrible parents to generation X & Y (not me, but a lot my peers).
Boomers have done alot, in their time. Nothing against them but their time has passed. Boomers trying to will the show at their terms is alot like Michael Jordan playing for the wizards.
We're the same age, Holdie! I've never been sure what generation I belonged to either!
I think all of us are going to have to face the hard fact that brave, selfless people like ourselves are unusual in every generation.
@ Holdie: The narcissism of journalists defies generational identities. I say this as a journalist.
You know, hearing all of us dishing this out on our (roughly) parent's generation, including the accusation that boomers think of themselves as unique and uniquely important makes me wonder: Boomers, what did you think of your parents? Basically this kind of stuff?
Which is a long way of saying hate away. When the next generations throws all your mistakes and stupid behavior in your face -- and being human, you will have them -- remember your sense of superiority. It will be your turn.
Actually, in a lot of ways, it will never be the turn of Generation X and Y in the way it will have been for the Boomers. There aren't enough of us. It's impossible for there to be enough of us. In fact, I think that's where some of the resentment comes from-- there are just so damn many Baby Boomers around that they generally end up setting the tone. Would the Bill Ayers 'controversy' been as prominent as it was if we didn't already have it drilled into our heads that Everything That Happened In the Sixties Was Vitally Important (and, to be sure, much of it was)? I doubt it.
Um, yeah, pretend I closed those italic tags after 'many,' mmkay?
Boomers, what did you think of your parents? Basically this kind of stuff?
Posted by onzi | January 16, 2009 4:08 PM
Oh, jeez, It's all they talked about when they weren't talking about the war back then. Dig up any stock footage form the era and you'll see some bliss-faced stink-pot flashing a piece sign and calling their parents squares or bemoaning the FACT that their parents weren't sufficiently tuned-in. Puke.
Look, my kids will throw all my foibles back at me just like we're dishing on the boomers. I accept that. The difference is that I know we don't have the self-aggrandizing rhetoric or the legacy of promises broke that the gen before mine owns.
Yet.
If there is one thing I hope to have learned from the "generation that stopped a war" and promised to "save the planet" is to not let my mouth get me into a place my ass can't get me out of.
Obama and I are both members of what is often called Generation Jones. We are the late Boomers (1954-1965). And no one has done more eye rolling and holding our tongues over the Boomers than we have. No one, positively no one, could be as sick of the Boomers than we are. We are the most overlooked and undervalued because we were too young for the 60s, too cynical for the 70s, too old for the 80s.
Unlike the Boomers, GenX, and GenY, no one ever heard of Generation Jonesers. But we're the ones who have lived with the messes the Boomers left in their wake and tried to engage the Xs and Ys with no success.
I am hoping that now that we have our very president, we get the glory that is and always has been our due. LOL!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones
Actually Persia, Gen Xers outnumber Baby Boomers now and apparently have since some point in the 1990s.
It's really more of a facet of: 1) Baby Boomer reluctance to give up control; and 2) Gen Xer reluctance to take control given our generalized perception of the failures of the institutions that were supposed to have been protecting us growing up.
I was reading Radley Balko's recent screed about the failures of the drug war and discovered that Richard Nixon coined the term in 1971, the year I was born. I'm as old as the drug war and all the failures and destruction that has resulted.
What I will give Baby Boomers credit for is what I perceive as a notable improvement in the education system (This probably is ironic credit, because Boomers themselves think the system has gotten worse, when it actually has improved).
I was born in '59, was never quite comfortable being lumped in to this big club with members up to 12 or 13 years older than me. I remember being a kid, watching Cronkite give the body count numbers in Vietnam but I had no sense of what they meant. I remember when they desegregated the public schools in our town when I was about 8 years old, hearing my parents expecting "trouble." I guess I enjoyed being part of a generation, enjoyed pointing the finger, hell I still do. Don't much care to have the finger pointed at me or a huge group of people I have little else in common with. It's almost like the feeling I get when Arabs rant about America. Hey, I'm an American, but I'm not part of that whole Bush thing, I want to say. I worry about whether I will be able to retire one day, like my Dad did, and I'm resigned to working into my 70's, if my health holds out. I guess there's some value in drawing all these boundaries, but I agree with Cassia that when you draw a generational line with Obama on one side and Palin on another, you're making pretty artificial distinctions that risk losing any helpful explanatory value. As for me, I'm fired up and ready to go. I've waited since 2000 to get rid of these idiots, and we've got a huge mess on our hands. I think our real issues certainly cut across generational lines. (But I do hate thinking that my kids will inherit my mess.)
TNC, where is that terri gross interview at? Can't find it anywhere man...
TNC said he thinks it will air Monday 1/19. Fresh Air doesn't seem to announce guests on their upcoming shows ahead of time.
@Scott II, I agree with you 100 percent about the narcissism of journalists. And I say this as a journalist.
But truly, every generation thinks they invented mind-blowing sex, and parenthood, and the indignities of getting old, no matter what they do for a living.
"My local newspaper has a staff writer (late 20s, early 30s) who pens weekly columns about what it's like to be a new mother. Just like the Boomers, just like the Silents and the Joneses, she thinks this particular milestone -- motherhood -- is a new thing, and that she experiences it in a different way than anyone else ever did."
As a Gen Xer (40), I can tell you, and will predict, that Boomers & Millenials share an idealism, a narcissism, and a taste for cash success that are eerily similar. Guess the apple doesn't fall far form the tree, maybe? That's not wholly negative stuff, mind you, it's just not as pure or pretty -- or interesting -- as Boomer PR makes out.
I mean, as long as we're generalizing . . .
I actually was born a few days before the magic date that would make me a baby-boomer, Jan 46. I remember JFK very well (lived in Maryland in those days; thru a wonderful Jr Hi Civics teacher's effort--saw JFK announce the Test Ban Treaty at Am U), was in VietNam ('66-'67--the dates are significant to us), protested VietNam, was run out of a southern town (Jackson Tn) in '70 over racial issues, etc etc. I'm dad to two really great post-boomers, granddad to 5 more. My own father recently died. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while. A few thoughts:
Our parents had to put off parenthood and marriages and starting their own homelife and families. So when the Depression and WW2 were put away and along came the boomers--a lot of expectations were laid on us. We were going to redeem the difficulties that our parents had endured. Our life was going to be as great as their's had been hard. So the boomer's 'narcisism' was taught to many of us from the cradle. No doubt it is not less annoying because of that. But there it is (to use a boomer-ism).
The Civil Rights Movement and the VietNam War became a kind of amalgam that split the boomers into a rebellious, leftie faction and a loyal-to-our-parents, conservative one. This kind of conflict gets very intense (cf-Caine v Abel, Oedepus, et al). Clinton v GWBush is only a small example of the conflict. We have not been able to heal the breach in our time; I expect that the Nursing Homes that all you younger folks pick out for us will be scenes of conflict based on this division (Country music again!!! We had the Stones at dinner, fuckhead!!!) You will have your revenge when you come visit us.
Finally, wait until your kids have a chance to criticise YOU. When you really really wanted to make things better for them but all kinds of shit kept getting in the way. Honest.
The boomers were right about civil rights for the right reason, right about Viet Nam for the wrong reasons, and wrong about nearly everything else (so it doesn't matter what the reasons were.)
I love my parents, but I think the Boomer generation is way too long on self-regard and way too short on prudential wisdom.
Scott II,
"All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them" -- George Orwell
It's very tempting to let some of the shallower and more extreme and ridiculous rants here just pass by. Not tempting enough, though. I was born in 1950, and here is what I learned and when I learned it:
Oct. 1962: The adults cannot protect you and the entire world can blow up at any moment, and on TV.
Nov. 1963: Same as Oct 1962, but add that the adults cannot protect the President either.
Also in 1963: This is a racist, apartheid country.
1964: Thanks to four lovable moptops and the integration of music, everything is going to be all right.
1968: The adults can't protect presidential candidates or civil rights leaders, and land wars in Asia do not work. The best available person to lead the country is Richard M. Nixon.
1970: Gunning down Asians for ideological reasons is so important to the US that being against it will get you gunned down in cold blood on a college campus.
1972: Despite all of the above, and incredible crimes and psychopathy, the best person to lead the country is still Richard M. Nixon.
1980: The adults cannot protect John Lennon, and despite the fact that dependence on foreign oil can bring the country crashing down overnight, someone who simply smiles and talks about the fact that it's 'morning in America,' a former B-movie actor who costarred with a chimpanzee and was a spokesperson for 20 Mule Team Borax, is the best person to lead the country.
Somehow, having learned all that in the first thirty years of our lives, the best minds of my generation managed to play a major role in civil rights, women's rights, the antiwar movement, an excellent legacy of music, films, and writing, and the creation of a totally new medium, the Internet (I have been on it for 22 years... green screen, terminal emulation, email, newsgroups, and FTP file transfer... ASCII art).
Obama won this year because, unlike in 1972, or 1980, or even 2000, WE are the old people. Y'all should be damned grateful, that thanks to me and my ilk, we made it this far. All we could do was make it a little better and barely keep it going. Y'all younguns want to make it perfect. Then get to work and stop complaining about the old people! The media narrative about 'boomers' is as valid, that is basically NOT AT ALL, as it is about anything... you should know that already if you've been paying attention, and if not, well now you've been told.
What Greg Panfile said. And I've noticed not one of you young things has YET answered for bringing back bell bottoms . . .
Jesus, what a bunch of ignorant whining and ahistorical ranting. I wouldn't defend or blame anyone for anything on generational grounds, but some of these comments are clearly from people who are totally clueless and/or shallow. Also, some absolutely crank economics, particularly on the Social Security "crisis" that would make a half-baked crank like Newt Gingrich proud of his ability to miseducate the masses. Do your fucking homework before you vent...
This is just another way for human beings to divide themselves up into factions and make "them" out of what could be "us." --Cassia
Very true. And yet my memory is that as I came of age, and my generation defined ourselves as "not baby boomers" or "definitely not baby boomers," it was the baby boomers who insisted we needed a name, eventually settling on Gen X. For a while the Globe had a column, the X-files, which the young hip Gen-X writer took pains to note was not his idea for a column title.
The vaster the generalization, the less meaningful it becomes: Palin and Obama are of the same generation, whatever name you give it.
There has GOT to be a way to parse this so Palin is in her own little personal generation. I refuse to share generation generalizations with her.
Okay, okay, a humbling reminder that each generation has its embarrassing exemplar to bear.
Re: These kids protested and marched during the Civil Rights movement
The Civil Rights movement was not a Boomer achievement. They were still in grade school (or not even born) when Brown vs Board of Education was handed down. They were barely adults (and many weren't) when the Voting Rights Act was pushed through in the 60s.
Re: You can sum up Baby Boomer attitudes with the subject of divorce
It was really the Boomers' parents who made divorce a standard rite of passage. The Boomers certainly followed suit, but they learned that rite at home.
There would be no Obama without the groundwork laid by Howard Dean, incidentally. This has been a display, mostly, of moronic "conventional wisdom."
One of the dumbest threads ever.
Wow. I may be going out on a limb here, but didn't a LOT of boomers vote for Obama? To read most of the posts, you'd think not. I'm a boomer (hate that word) and have always voted liberally and tried to live my life in a responsible, progressive, involved way. Yes, boomers continued (but didn't start) the rape of our planet, yes, they started some really stupid wars, but again, didn't exactly invent the concept. And they also have raised a generation of children who have an extreme sense of entitlement (McMansions and SUVs, at least where I live, are owned by the children of the boomers, and the grandchildren of the boomers). But to ignore people in this age group who don't fit the stereotype...oh,I don't know. All I can do at this point is second the people who have said just wait until your kids start criticizing your generation for Hummers.
Aren't you all just so precious! You think you're different!
And I've noticed not one of you young things has YET answered for bringing back bell bottoms . . .
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I've noticed that the only people who wore the damned things this time were people too young to remember them from the first time around - and the same goes for most of other 70s-redux fashions we've seen in the past 15 years. I'm still going to blame the boomers for inflicting them on us in the first place.
Generations of Americans are defined as one of the following:
Greatest Generation
Lost Generation
Baby Boomers
Gen X
Millennial, it seems
Gen Y and Generation Jones are not real, IMO. Jonathan Alter had a good story in Newsweek during the primaries explaining why Obama was Generation Jones and Hillary a Boomer. His ultimate conclusion was that the only thing the Boomers have ever done well is raise children.
In any case, the Boomers are not responsible for the Civil Rights Movement in America. The Lost Generation is. John Lewis, one of the youngest members of the Movement, was born in 1940. The oldest of the Boomers would have been 20 when the Civil Rights Act was signed by Johnson. As children, they may have agreed with the Movement, but they did not really participate.
I would be very interested to know if Ta-Nehisi believes that Boomer groups like the Black Panthers damaged the Civil Rights Movement. It seems from my Gen X vantage that once Stokely Carmichael deemed non-violent resistance a tactic, the culture wars exploded violently without much social gain.
I gotta shake my head. It's like you guys haven't been paying attention to what TNC has been writing, or have failed to generalize it.
There is no such thing as a "boomer opinion". There is no such thing as a "boomer spokesperson".
Boomers were no more the cause that Prop 8 passed than black people were. The oldest baby boomers turn 61 this year. There's lots of older voters, and they are the biggest supporters of Prop 8.
According to the Wikipedia, most demographers end the baby boom in 1964. That makes Obama a boomer.
The worst actors on the political stage were, in general, not boomers.
Many of your complaints are misplaced. Yeah, there's a lot of irritation at those who pine for the "good old days". But that's just a fool, who happens to be a certain age.
I recognize very little of myself in most of your comments. Does that make me "postgenerational"? I like the Beatles and I like the All-American Rejects. I hated Shawn Cassidy and I hate NSync. So does my 18-year-old son, on both counts. Wait, are people now going to say I'm not "boomer enough"?
If you want to reject the politics of the past, the politics of division and identity, I'm with you. If you want to move the country forward, I'm with you. If you want to put an end to wars of preemption, I'm with you. I have always been here. Don't insult me based on my age.
The venom here is a reaction to the mountain of disasters passed along to us to fix:
-global warming
-environmental contamination
-crumbled infrastructure
-even before the financial meltdown, the staggering federal debt (not to mention off- balance sheet Iraq and Afghanistan costs)
-coming out of college and trying to start with 5- or 6-figure debt
This list goes on, of course, but the point is that most of this list exists because the problems were just ignored and passed along. This is what feels selfish and indulgent. Rather than pay your taxes and modify your behavior you just figure it's not harming you now so maybe it will magically go away or someone else fix it.
I could care less about the silly fights about whose music/art is better.
The boomers on here shouldn't get their feathers up. It's not an individual thing. Plus, I'm sure you all are the good ones. ;)
All hail! The Boomers have spoken and are fighting back!
Greg Panfile has set us straight. He and his Boomer peers were witness to events so horrific and unique in history that all of us younger folk can only thank them for absorbing the pain in our behalf. Was their nation torn asunder and plunged into a war over the fundamental worth and rights of human beings, one which claimed the lives of half the male population? Did they endure a decade of economic collapse and near famine? Were they first responders to a global conflict that wiped out millions in horrific fashion and pitted nearly every nation on Earth against each other?
No, they got to watch coverage of the assassinations of some public figures on the news. And to really add further dignity to the (truly) tragic deaths of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, et al, Greg Panfile sees fit to include the bizarre killing of a pop artist by a deranged lunatic, so as to put them all an equal plane. Because the death of John Lennon is the cherry on top of their childhood of pain and suffering, the Boomers will now see fit to spend their children and grandchildren’s money to ensure a comfortable, well-medicated old age. We all owe it to them for the pain they endured on our behalf.
And somehow, having absorbed all this human misery truly unique to them and no other era in recorded history, the Boomers will happily pad their resume with accomplishments they didn’t even have a part in (the Civil Rights movement, as noted in earlier comments) because they are The Source of All Great Social Change.
Ah….but they’re not done. Having placed “Integrating Society” in their trophy case, they’ll now take credit for the election of President Obama. Greg Panfile & Friends held strong against that tide of younger voters eager to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the nuclear codebook. They saved us once again!
Oh, and for JonF at 6:10 pm: the divorce rate reached its height in 1981. That’s prime Boomer marriage years there. Divorce was “the thing to do” in the late 70’s and early 80’s, part of that “it’s time to attend to what makes me happy” attitude that must spring from having saved the world time and time again.
Alright then, children -- quit yer bitchin' --get on with it -- if it's so easy, go save the world and make it perfect.
Chili, chill. And keep in mind that a lot of the people getting divorced circa 1981 were people like my parents (divorced after 20 years of marriage, and definitely not boomers -- mom born in 1937, dad in 1935). A large part of that statistic is in no small part due to the rise in "no fault" divorce laws through the '70s -- not to young boomers irresponsibly marrying, then divorcing, their partners. That's a bible belt vice, not a hippie boomer vice. What boomers hauled off and did was live together, silly, not buy into the "bourgeois institution" of marriage.
The curious thing to me about this anti-Boomer-itis the attempt by Gen X- and Yers to count the President-elect as one of their own. I believe this is just identity-starved younguns grasping at something in order to validate themselves.
It's a mild form of class warfare and completely contrary to a lot of what Obama represents.
One of the issues here is all the varying definitions of who a Boomer is. While a real concensus has not yet emerged, it is certainly true that these days many experts feel it breaks down more or less this way:
Boomers--born 1942-1953
Generation Jones--born 1954-1965
Generation X--born 1966-1978
While there is little or no ambiguity that there was a demographic boom in births from 1946-1964, there are few respected experts at this point who would argue that only one cultural generation was born during these years. It's obvious to most that there were two generations born during the baby boom.
Personally, I relate very much to my identity as part of Generation Jones. I was born in 1960 and remember my peers and I back when we were teens ridiculing the ridiculous idea that we were part of the Boomer Generation.
Google Generation Jones, and you'll find that many top commentators from many top publications and networks (New York Times, Time Magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) are using that term now, and specifically referring to Obama, born in 1961, as part of Generation Jones.
Hey kiddies - FYI, boomers inherited a much larger national debt as a % of gross domestic product than younger folks have. That relative index declined steadily UNTIL Reagan, who sadly shaped the half-baked perspective of lots of post-boomer "smarties." William Kristol and other boomer-era rightwing cranks were relative anomalies in a generational context - the wave of Jr. Assholes who currently populate National Review were rather typical of the post-boomer zietgeist. Clinton started bringing down the nationa debt again, and of course Bush sent it skyrocketing. And, of course, few boomers are retiring on fixed pension, like many of the "greatest generation."
Learn some rudimentary economics, at the very least before popping off on issues that have deeper roots and greater complexity than random attitude.
I hate to ask this, but I am anyway. Is this a white people thing? I'm a black Gen Xer with pre-Boomer parents, and I just don't understand any of the animosity expressed in these comments. Any black people relate to this? I know I don't.
Just Karl: the "Lost Generation" is really attached to the generation that reached adulthood in the late teens and early twenties when western culture was turned on its head because of World War I. The Victorian mindset was completely rejected by this generation. The generation you are referring to as "Lost" is called the "Silent" generation. They were children during the depression and were too young to have been drafted in WWII. They went along for the most part with the social structure kept in place by the G.I.s. The Baby Boomers rejected it and built things according to their visions (as flawed and outlandish as some of them were).
Frankly, compared to the children dying in Gaza, I can't say I giving a flying... well, you know what... about the boomers.
I'm a certified boomer, one of the oldest. What I don't like is the generalization. I don't like hearing "Black people do this...", "Young people are all....", "Women are emotional....", whatever the stereotype may be. I feel the same way about boomers, thanks for asking!
Like Scott II, saying "I find that their overwhelming sense of entitlement interferes with their ability to to actually develop good strategies (again, see Prop. 8 -- not to mention Hillary's entire campaign), and their condescending attitude toward those who are not Baby Boomers makes it a challenge for them to develop relationships with those who live and breathe strategy (like Gen Xers)." WHAT? I don't have an "overwhelming sense of entitlement" or a "condescending attitude" toward non-boomers. And since when do Gen Xers (all of them?) "live and breathe strategy"?
And Cynic above says "When boomers were young, they tended to vote along strictly ideological lines." Again, WHAT? Which ideology? Some of us were liberal, some were very conservative, some ignored politics just like in every other generation. It's not a monolithic group.
And people are also talking above about how we "expect" the young to support us. I will tell you that up until a few years ago, social security was a small part of my retirement plans. In the past several years both my husband's employer and mine did away completely with defined-benefit pensions. Then our 401(k)s tanked along with everyone else's. Now social security looks more important to our ability to (ever) retire, but we didn't plan it that way, and I do think the burden is unsustainable as currently structured. Republicans mocked Al Gore for his "lockbox", but that's where the surplus social security taxes we have all (Boomers and non-boomers alike) been paying should have been kept.
Regarding voting for Obama....those of you who think he perplexes boomers or we can't understand his appeal should consider that he got a lot of "boomer" votes as well as yours. Some of what is attributed to boomers above is more the current version of Republicanism (not the classic version I grew up with) than it is boomers per se. I've seen plenty of obnoxious "me first" opinions expressed by those in their twenties as well.
fanita, I think a lot of this has to do with some people having a hard time parsing conservative propaganda.
If'n you goin' to keep up with the boomer generalizations, y'all has got to get off my lawn....
All right!!! I was born in 1954. I read this entire thread thinking that you people meant me, and now I learn that I am actually Generation Jones. Woo-hoo! Yeah, screw you, Boomers! Neener, neener. We're great, you suck.
Ton, you are right. My apologies.
While there is little or no ambiguity that there was a demographic boom in births from 1946-1964, there are few respected experts at this point who would argue that only one cultural generation was born during these years.
I see not cultural generations but biological ones. Interestingly, were are currently experiencing a baby boomlet. My theory is that Gen Xers postponed having children longer than Gen Y. Now both are having children at the same time. The reason Gen X waited was not a war, but the results are the same as the baby boom of the 50's.
The "boomers" which, as marketing executives have needed to lump middle aged people into one touchable group, have gotten a wider and wider range (20 years people? that's ridiculous!), are a fabrication. Most didn't smoke pot or wear tie dye shirts. Most just lived their lives without being a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary.
I think all this categorization is because people need to think of themselves and where they came from as somehow special and unique. For the most part though, it's all hooha.
This argument's a little silly. I know it's a little immature, but we 'children' look at our parent's generation and we see a lot of people who had pretty decent lives, who couldn't manage to do much more with what they had than sit around neurotically worrying about their personal lives like so many Woody Allens.
There are obviously exceptions to every rule, and I'm not saying our generation is any better, but how can you blame us for feeling that way? Boomers are our parents and teachers and we need guidance and direction from them. We want answers, but there aren't any coming, just a two term realization of all our worst fears.
But wait! Here's a quote from Fight Club (written by a boomer):
"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives.”
Boomer's Mommies and Daddies didn't give them any answers either, did they? But back to Woody Allen, who’s no boomer. Here’s what his character Sandy says in Stardust Memories, after watching the Bicycle Thief:
“…forget about a social problem. If you can’t get enough to eat, or something, the issues are very clear cut, but what if you live in a more affluent society? Then the problem becomes how can I fall in love, or, more accurately, why can’t I fall in love, and how can I find some kind of meaning…”
Let’s stop trying to pin our problems on one generation or another? Our problems are the product of human behavior. When human beings are comfortable, they don’t have to worry about social issues. They worry about themselves. I don’t see any indication that my generation is any different. Just listen to all that emo.
This country won’t change until it has to. That’s why the ‘greatest generation’ was so ‘great’. It wasn’t the puppy chow. There was an unavoidable challenge that the whole country had to deal with. Nothing you could call ‘good’ that’s happened in human history, was not preceded by something ‘bad’.
Let’s not blame the boomers for being human? Instead maybe we should think about what it means to be human, and how best to go about living with ourselves and each other? Our generation’s challenge will be coming down the pike soon enough, and part of me hopes it gets bad enough that we can’t just kick the can down the road some more.
My Boomer Friends,
A lot of the hate stems from confusion. My parents were hippie-ass-hippies. They told me how avarice was crass, how war was evil, how freedom of expression was sacred, and how awesome the drugs were back in the spring of their youth. Then, Reagan won in a landslide, ushering in an age of materialism, Grenada (among others), the Great Porn Crackdown/PMRC, and "Just Say No."
I mention landslide, because, although I'm sure no Boomers here were responsible, many (if not most) of your peers were. Some of us might feel like your generation sold us out for a goose-stepping puppet with shellacked hair and a perma-grin. Morning in America, my tits.
In any case, the words "mixed messages" do not even begin to describe coming up in my generation. Did your parents also say one thing and do the exact opposite? Is this how it always was?
Thanks,
A Member of the Generation You Named X.
What is with all the hostility about medical technology extending lives? I'm a little defensive about it because I have, suddenly and quite freakishly, at a young age, (26) become dependent on a gigantic array of pharmaceuticals, and that time is coming for everyone who currently has the "Just die already, olds," attitude. I am lapping my grandparents in medical dependency, unfortunately. If I'm way ahead of both them and my parents,
And keep in mind that a lot of the people getting divorced circa 1981 were people like my parents (divorced after 20 years of marriage, and definitely not boomers -- mom born in 1937, dad in 1935). A large part of that statistic is in no small part due to the rise in "no fault" divorce laws through the '70s -- not to young boomers irresponsibly marrying, then divorcing, their partners.
That's an excellent point. And I do admit that Gen X makes more of their parents' Horrible Divorces than is perhaps necessary.
There is no such thing as a "boomer opinion". There is no such thing as a "boomer spokesperson".
No, there isn't. But just as we'd be crazy to pretend there's no 'white' and 'black', we should recognize that there are some generational divisions-- with different ideals and different shared experiences.
Shorter GKM: David Brooks' hippie parents were responsible for the triumph of Reaganism and a right-wing consensus that has brought the nation to its knees.
GKM makes a great point. Where is the ME Generation? Who claims Gordon Gecko? Michael Milken is certainly a boomer.
"That's an excellent point. And I do admit that Gen X makes more of their parents' Horrible Divorces than is perhaps necessary."
There are generalizations and then there are generalizations.
Most Xers I know are nothing if not clear-eyed and practical (hat tip to my introductory sentence). Those of us whose parents didn't divorce when we were younger kinda wished they would have.
I was the youngest kid in my family and the first person in our, um, line to go to college. My folks split my third year at school, and I was like (to myself), Really, you're kidding me? Now? It just seemed terrible to me that they didn't have the courage or resources or permission to do it much, much sooner. Are you sure it's not the marriages, rather than the divorces, that dog the "Xers" you reference?
Anyway, I hope TNC isn't regretting his question, and I hope there's a little window here, in our generational dismay, for individual self-reflection -- if nothing else.
Seems to me that the boomer generation ultimately gave us Barack Obama. Believe it or not (and from this thread, most won't) boomers are just like every generation - even yours. No generation marches in lockstep with one another, much less the generation before or the generation that follows. Boomers had their visionaries and activists who actually did good things for all the right reasons - like Obama's mother who made a real difference in the world. And like the current generation, boomers saw their world divided into anti/pro, right/left, status quo/change. The arguments raging today are as old as the generation gap. These are not arguments caused by a generation gap but because each generation must try to find its own way through life. As you chastise and demonize the boomers, remember this - you're next.
Is this some Mildred Pierce stuff or what? If most of us Boomers had a fraction of what we have (lovingly) spent on our children over the past thirty or so years, we wouldn't be wringing our hands over our diminished 401(k)s. Deal with it, kids. Instead of trying to buy our children the best of everything, we should have modeled our Depression-era parents' frugality. Talk about no good deed going unpunished. Yikes! As I advise my kids, tell your therapist.
Boomer,
The problem with your assessment is that you boomer who fought vigorously during your time, don't want to leave without destroying the country beyond repair. The Silence Generation surrendered to you guys with less fight. For you guys, it was more of a death or alive.
I am sorry, but you guys are mean destroyers with no remorse. Look at your last product Bush on his mistakes--he classified lack of WMD as a disappointment. What a mindless generation. Bill Clinton who inhale but did not snip.
I am 54. That makes me a boomer, right? I spent from 22-present attending demos (anti-nuclear, women's rights, anti-racism, lgbt rights, women's right to choose) working my ass off, adopting three children, campaigning for Gore, Kerry and Obama, and trying to thrive in a world that sees things in terms of "stuff".
I truly don't understand this discussion. Don't we all do what we can with what we have, from where we are?
Why is blame even necessary? Aren't we ALL responsible?
Kathleen
Heh. Nice can of worms you opened there TNC.
From the perspective of someone who's neither a boomer nor a child of one, the boomers' biggest mistake was raising a bunch of narcissists who have been having a non-stop temper tantrum ever since they realized that contrary to what their parents lead them to believe, everything isn't all about them after all.
Is this some Mildred Pierce stuff or what? If most of us Boomers had a fraction of what we have (lovingly) spent on our children over the past thirty or so years, we wouldn't be wringing our hands over our diminished 401(k)s. Deal with it, kids. Instead of trying to buy our children the best of everything, we should have modeled our Depression-era parents' frugality. Talk about no good deed going unpunished. Yikes! As I advise my kids, tell your therapist.
OH, and another thing about Boomers! False binary choices everywhere. Either you're with us or against us! Either I buy my child the best of everything or we live like Okies in "The Grapes of Wrath." The road of life has a middle lane, you know. If your kids knew that those purchases would someday turn out to be a loan rather than a gift, maybe they would have preferred a little restraint. My Boomer dad (whom I love dearly) gave me what he could (which wasn't much) but certainly didn't spoil me. I paid for college myself. And now rather than one being dependent on the other, we're both self-sufficient and managing to get by in the current economy (knock on wood).
Anyway, to walk it back a little bit (I'm not sure I'm allowed to use that phrase), of course everybody doesn't fit into a generalization of a generation (such as my own dad). But it's silly to pretend that people who share the same cultural experiences during similar times in their social development won't end up with observable commonalities. Particularly when there's so much observable history.
It's been real fun reading all the posts whaling away on Boomers. I agree with most of them. I remember JFK's assassination, and all the other crap that followed.
I tend to think that me and mine HAVE generally been a waste of oxygen, except that we produced a pretty savvy and tough generation that seems to have the chops to clean up our messes.
Oh, and for the record: I at least had the good sense to listen to my son, who told me first about this Obama fellow. I became a fan, even to the point of running as a candidate for delegate in our state's primary for Obama.
I'm reduced to tears at the idea that we finally, finally did something right by electing him, and pray that it's not too late.
So listen, guys. We didn't do such a good job. I hope you don't fuck it up now, 'cause it's your problem. I'm sorry we didn't leave the place in better shape. We sure showed you what not to do, at least. Try to forgive.
Now, go ahead and make the dream live in ways we never could.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. -- Henry V, Shakespeare.
Thanks for the lectures.
I didn't know I had this generation Jones cop out. Hey my oldest sib doesn't quite fit the beginning of the era either. But we cope.
I remember my dad telling me about all the old farts of his day saying the greatest generation wasn't worth a loaf of damp bread. My mother's oldest sib was a genuine Roaring 20's gal.
If some crazy m-f'er shoots Obama I guarantee that anyone of sentient age won't be forgetting and getting over it for the rest of their life. They'll always be ready to talk about where they were that day the way survivors of earth quakes and hurricanes retell their stories.
And if two or three other promising leaders like Barack get gunned down I look forward to your lectures on how to let it go and move on.
And if you were in Vietnam, or had a brother or son there, then you know that our people fighting overseas now, and their friends and relations, won't get over it on anyone's time-line in this thread.
You people don't even seem to remember the fight over who lost China -- much less Vietnam. We better have our game ready about who lost Iraq. Because they will be back, and sooner than you may expect.
You too will remember the days of your youth. I have no idea what your mileage markers will be.
Do not go gentle into that good night. --Dylan Thomas
OK, I'm self-aware enough to know that generational blame-games are stupid.
But Boomers do have a sense of collective identity that can be extremely irritating to those outside the collective.
I do, sincerely, realize that boomers are good and bad like any reasonably large group of folk. The bitching comes from there being so many of them. And posts like Greg Panfile on January 16, 2009 at 5:47 PM, above, confirm every shallow, self-involved stereotype about this generation. I can only hope that it's a made-up post. (Guess what, Greg: it's tragic that John Lennon died -- smart dude and all -- but folks in the 40s had lived through a depression and were dying to defeat Hitler. Not really a comparison, is it?)
The definition of a Boomer is someone born sometime between the end of WWII and the start of the US war on Viet Nam who is convinced that his/her generation stopped a war, suffered the loss of innocence when its leaders (and foot soldiers of all kinds--no one has mentioned Kent State yet?!??) were gunned down on live TV, and worked its way through college when that cost $900 a year in today's dollars.
The definition of a GenXer is someone born after JFK was elected and before Carter got his legs under him in the middle of his term who is convinced that his/her generation will die cold, hungry and alone because our parents invented new ways to turn nothing into wealth and spent it all before they moved into our back bedrooms, but only had two kids because they didn't want the bother of a large family.
If neither role resonates, you're not party to this argument and may move along.
I don't think enough credit is being given to the Boomer generation here (and I'm 30). They certainly controlled the national conversation for far, far too long, and I think we almost all agree that it's absurd to be fighting the battles of 1968 forty years later. But back when they were young? Do you all have an idea of what the 1940s and 50s were like, socially and culturally? I mean, I have a personal affinity for 40s and 50s culture and style, and even I can't overlook the degree to which the quote-unquote "sixties" generation (read, teenagers and twenty-somethings in the late 60s and early 70s) blew the culture the fuck up, opened up possibilities that had never existed for social and cultural freedom, anti-parochialism, forms of beauty that had been stifled for a long, long time.
I guess I think that in many ways "we're all Boomers now," and that our criticisms of them would hardly even be possible without them; we wouldn't even have the necessary vocabulary or concepts. That's not to say that the criticisms aren't valid. Honor your idols; kill your idols.
I too am not happy with the world that the Boomers have made and left us. But as a "pre-Boomer" the one thing that I despise them for is that they spawned your lot. As we said in the "old days" the best part of your lot ran down your daddy's leg.
"Post-Boomer"? Oh, god no. Can we please just say Gen X or Y? The last thing we need is Boomers as a point of reference for everyone else to orbit around. ANY MORE. EVER.
The Gen Jones thing is news to me. Of course any truly generational divide is going to span enough years to have markedly different experiences within it; I don't identify at all with those born at the latter end of Gen X (born 1970 myself). If we're going to cite cultural demarcations, the 2nd half of Gen X is due for another name too.
Several of y'all up there clearly need to look up the word "generalization." People get offended that they don't fit what was described as a generalization? Sigh. Because at this point we're not trading in particulars. Natch. How many of us have prefaced comments with "some of my best friends are Boomers"? Lots. So if the shoe don't fit, don't wear it and move on, k? Easy. But there are enough people with justifiable anger, from poker red to white hot, that you can't just dismiss the grievances out of hand.
To GENERALIZE, Gen X is the latchkey generation whose cynicism is an inevitable product of watching Boomer hypocrisy in action, as self-congratulatory hippies sold out to materialism in the '80s, all the while never, ever stopping with the stories about the peace, love, and equality they brought to the world, as if because they participated in the '60s they were exempt from fighting any of the other wars and environmental destruction and greed and social ills going on around us. Sure, plenty kept on, but as a whole, I watched the Boomers abandon any sense of responsible stewardship for the world and generations that followed. It's been one depressing, aggravating ride. (And doesn't mean I haven't been working in my own ways to better the world, thanks very much.)
So for all of you who say it's the same with every generation, no it isn't. My parents are of the silent generation. Indeed it was silent, compared to the deafening roar of the Boomers. I may find my parents frustratingly conservative, but they don't live their whole lives from some insanely self-referential bubble, nor talk about how great their generation was. (Great points above that the civil rights leaders and so many others were silent generation members.) Someone tell me why Time magazine et al keep up with the effing features on Boomers Turn 30... 40... 50... 60... I don't recall any similar treatment of the generation before or after.
Atlantic neighbour Andrew Sullivan is guilty of adoring Gen Y (a tad premature, don't you think?), which I find truly nauseating. Whatever, kids. In the end, Gen X's quiet contributions will be profound; we may not ever get the kleig lights for our troubles, but who cares, as long as we make real change happen.
Oh look, a rant! This topic gets me every time. A shout-out to the Boomers and nonBoomers alike who GET IT and have written such incisive comments above. No comment on the rest; I've already gone on too long.
Baby boomers killed the dinosaurs.
Wow, what a lot of anger. I don't think we should assign so much agency to something as nebulous as a generation, it's not really a useful tool for thinking about history. Think about the expansion of technology, spurred by the war, that took place during the Boomers' lifetimes. A lot of the exploitation of the environment and expansion of lifestyle didn't take place because the Boomers were bad people, it took place because it COULD take place now that we had nuclear power and stable air travel and advancing car technology and a million other things. That isn't to say the Boomers couldn't have handled it better, but they were a product of the world, not the cause of it. The Greatest Generation wouldn't have been what they were if the war in Germany hadn't started when it did. To assign credit or blame for world events to a generation as a whole is to put the proverbial cart before the...well, you know.
We also have to realize the psychological effect of being born in a huge population bubble like the Boomers were. Schools and other necessary services were at capacities to handle a pre-war generation, and the resulting glut would have created incredible local competition among children, which carries through as those same people mature and enter the workplace. It's a difficult environment in which to excel, and resource depletion and selfishness is the only logical result.
I'm certainly defending the Boomers here, but I feel a lot of the same things that have been expressed above. I'm twenty five years old, just entering the high earning period of my life, right at the leading edge of the Mellinials, and the reality is that it's probably going to be impossible for me and those after me to provide the Boomers with all of the benefits that, frankly, they promised themselves and didn't set aside the money to pay for. But we aren't going to let people starve. We aren't going to throw Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa out on the street. After all, we were born for the most part during a downturn in the growth rate, and we got the benefit of all those colleges and all those institutions built to service the Boomers. So maybe I, at least, should be thanking them for that.
>
This gets at the core of what is bothering me about this thread.
As a Gen Jones I got a view of what the folks ahead of me did: they did crack the world open, with everyone from Life magazine on looking at the from their birth on: the focus on that generation was NOT invented by them, but by their parents, fixated on the awesome peacetime, post WWII Baby Boom, part of the great American Productivity.
That stared at bunch of kids said "no" and managed, clumsily, loudly, erratically,passionately, often stupidly to make it stick some of the time, sort of. That in itself was amazing...that they helped push the culture clearly in a different direction, and are indeed helping to continue to push it.
Still more, they did help create a culture that sees Obama as a great possibility, Prop 8 as a BAD idea, not a good one, global warming as something to be fought...
The fact that, in the face of blinding resistance that continues to this day, the liberals of the Boomer Gen did not manage to reach the end point on much of anything is not surprising, it is inevitable. They ran a lap in a relay race, not a one-lap sprint. They took the torch an AMAZINGLY long way. The above scorn of the critics, and the very passionate advocacy of the very ideals the Boomers picked up (from their own predecessors)says how far they carried that torch.
Their bitter division tells how passionately they fought, and how steep the resistance was. Reagan was not elected by all Boomers, but by older generations PLUS Boomers grown desperately weary fo the race, yearning for a rest from something that seemed unending and un-winable. That split between the libs and the conservatives exists because so many of the Boomers did live change, did fight for change, did open doors, did alter assumptions...and then they had to live with change they or their peers had created which they and the culture were not ready for, used to...
It is easy to inherit the crown, while scoffing at the old lag soldiers who won the promised land but then bored you silly with war stories and a failure to see what the Promised Land was really about, good and bad. But the crown and the ideals came from those ugly, tiresome, self-centered old farts, among others.
The big question is not whether they earned their medals and their right to sit and bore their youngers to death. They did what they did, and are still trying, for better or worse. They accomplished a lot of what they set out to do. The question is how far ANY of the rest of us are going to carry the torch in OUR lap of the relay.
At least we all voted for Obama. One inch further along the race track. Hup-hiddly-ho, good fellows! Raise the flame a bit higher, though, so the world can see it. What are WE going to give the future, eh?
I'm mostly over it now, but when I was in high school, I had a lot of resentment toward the Boomers because everything was All About Them. Duran Duran was crap, but the Beatles were like unto God and never, ever did any simplistic pop songs. All art was culturally relevant and made a statement. The hit show on TV was Thirtysomething, or, "Whiny White Boomers Angsting".
At the same time, I had a front-row seat to the beneficiaries of the changes of the '60's doing their damndest to pull the ladders up after them. All of a sudden working women were selfish bitches who boiled bunnies, while Real Women were the saintly stay-at-home-moms. Clarence Thomas and his black conservative buddies benefited from affirmative action, but they were sure as hell not going to let anyone else catch a break. Greed was good and USA #1 and the generation that shouted "Question Authority!" now stood up and saluted.
And of course, I told myself, I was never going to change like that when I got older.
*looks around, whistles*
"I could care less about the silly fights about whose music/art is better."
No, but seriously, I'm never going to forgive y'all for The Doors. Ever. Speaking as a 24 year old who counts The Who, The Kinks, and basically the entire output of 1960's soul as the greatest music ever, I'm still never going to let you get away with Jim Morrison. Otherwise, good points, boomers.
Now that Boomers have taken the credit for Obama (before he has been sworn in), will they also accept the blame (when he disappoints)? Will Boomers accept responsibility for one goddamn thing? Just one.
Let me get the ball rolling. In 2000 (my first election), I voted 3rd party. GWB got elected. If some of my peers and I could have forgiven the 80's and moved on, maybe things wouldn't have turned out the way they did. Our idealism blinded us to the reality of politics, and now we all will pay the price, perhaps for generations.
Now you. Seriously. Stop making excuses. We all fuck up. It really isn't that difficult to admit how perfect you're not. Please try. It would mitigate the hate in a big way.
All things old are new again.
Check this out, kiddies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvmLDkAgAM
Oh, just to clarify. This Crispin's Day speech...
I'm thinking of the start of something new, on Nov. 20. Not '68. Let the dead bury the dead.
Somehow, having learned all that in the first thirty years of our lives, the best minds of my generation managed to play a major role in civil rights, women's rights, the antiwar movement,
This is my biggest problem with some in that generation, it is how they take way too much credit for things. Just look at the civil rights movement. The various acts in the 60's, most importantly the 1964 Act and the Voting Rights Act passed through Congress without a single vote by a boomer, because none of them were old enough to be in Congress at the time. Rosa Parks, MLK, JFK, RFK, LBJ were all born well before 1945.
I understand that people of my generation like to blame the boomers for screwing stuff up, which is fun to do, but it is ultimately lame and abdicates my own generation's personal respondsibility to correct the course. So my biggest complaint with boomers and yuppies has always been the narcissism, the self-centerness, not that they messed the world up. Like in the South Park episode "Smug Alert" where George Clooney takes credit for the Civil Rights Movement.
Wow. Talking Boomer stuff. I luv it. Vaccinations, antibiotics, TV, record players, money to spend, lots of cars, interstates and the pill. Chill yall. And Morrison was like, you know, a god or something.
I was the youngest kid in my family and the first person in our, um, line to go to college. My folks split my third year at school, and I was like (to myself), Really, you're kidding me? Now? It just seemed terrible to me that they didn't have the courage or resources or permission to do it much, much sooner. Are you sure it's not the marriages, rather than the divorces, that dog the "Xers" you reference?
A little of both? I've noticed a lot of backlash-- here and elsewhere-- specifically about divorce. I wonder if it's fallout from all the cultural changes, including no-fault divorce, but it seems like people who were in that first divorce wave were just not very good at it. Most of the children of divorce I knew in school had fathers who were just gone. And that effect was immediate and unpleasant. (Maybe this is part of the white/black divide, too, as there were already plenty of single moms in the black community?) The ones whose fathers were still part of their lives were much happier and did much better.
I wonder if in that first wave the assumption was still 'the kid's the mother's' and a lot of negative fallout came from there, and now that the culture values fatherhood more things are better (at least they seem to be better).
I'm fascinated when people can identify with a sports team when their "ingroup" is a city of a few million people.
But to identify with or hate a group of a hundred million seems pure lunacy -- it's like hating men because they've been responsible for 99.9% of the violence in this world. Wait -- maybe I do hate men.
Double wow.
1. I just parsed through this whole thread. As a the child and grandchild of poor, largely undereducated but intelligent and hard working immigrants, I really might not have much to add here, except maybe an outside view. Every American generation has a level of self-entitlement. Where that level is is what varies.
2. whichever generation invented the term "Welfare queens" is evil. Sorry. My mom was on and off welfare, which kept a roof over the heads me and my bro at vulnerable points in the 80s, and also that of the next president during the 60 or 70. Welfare doesn't give you a Caddy, it gives you a roof, and opportunity for your children
3. I've always been fascinated by generational demarcations. This Gen Jones thing sounds like some late boomer cop-out. I've always understood Boomers (at least my Boomer teachers) describing themselves as 46-60, the only non-20 year generation, because there were so few children born between 41-45.
4. The biggest Boomer positive is the progression of commercialized environmentalism.
As an Irishman by birth and an American by choice I find this to be a peculiarly American discussion. Who but the products of an age obsessed youth culture would define themselves in this way, claiming the reflected glories of their generational peers and smugly embracing successes of their "generation" while dismissing the "failures" of others deemed "not one of us". All of you, grow the f**k up.....
This thread may be dead, but another thing that annoys me is how Boomers have wanted to freeze the progressive paradigm as they understood it forever. Think of how second-wave feminists have wasted a lot of ink attacking third and fourth wave feminists as not real feminists. Think of how the Dworkins have completely dropped the ball on gay rights because they cannot understand how sex can ever be pleasurable. Think of how during the primaries, Boomers wanted to re-assert their generation's understanding of progressivism (which had become a liberal crouching stance on issues but combat on meaningless crap) while flailing around in anger at the suggestion younger people had a better idea how to enact liberal ideas. The primary this past year in particular brought a lot of these inter-generational fights to the fore.
I love it. Even though Gen Xers and Gen Yers voted for Obama in the majority and in higher percentages, Boomers are taking credit for his victory. Hysterical.
I am the king of posting to dead threads. Still, wanted to note that this thread has single-handedly convinced me that the generational distinctions cited throughout have no real merit. It's always going to be valid to say "During [period of time], [a group of people within a certain age range with a particular ideology or purpose] did [something]. We're desperate to assign some overarching meaning or theme or banner so we can sell t-shirts or books, but it's really just one human race stumbling concurrently thru dim light toward a better future. One group of people (NOT an entire generation of people, it should be noted) stormed the beaches at Normandy, another group became really proficient at texting. Each moment in time provides different opportunities to different groups of people. As things go, yes, Normandy is much more impressive in terms of character and resolve, but I get the feeling that if we tried to storm the beaches of Normandy today, we'd just annoy the French.
This thread, however, reaffirms that the political divide is alive and well, and has a strong throughline that can probably be traced back in an entirely valid way all the way back to colonial times. When I hear people critiquing boomers for the lack of progress in the 80's, it's like they don't understand the notion of ebb tide. Reagan was able to render impotent vast legions of progressive-minded people, as W did in this last eight years. The pendulum has swung back, so 'we' have a chance to achieve something, catalyzed by the favorable momentum that we've been wishing for. But the 'we' won't be millenials or boomers or Joneses, it'll be like-minded people of all generations. How will they be able to categorize it, after we complete it?
Oh yeah, I left one thing out in my interminable, so stupid it must be fictitious narrative of actual facts. This one:
"On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States held a lottery to determine the order of draft (induction) into the U.S. Army for the Vietnam War."
What I learned: in the greatest country ever, a democracy where the individual was valued, under God, they could pick you AT RANDOM to die in a war against people who had never attacked you at an age when you were still too young to vote... and you could see it on TV! And watch in real time as people in the room with you who were born on a certain day found out they would be the first to go, for that 'reason.' It was not only legal, it was a crime to not comply with it...
Joe South said it the best, albeit by cribbing some from the natives of this land:
Walk a mile in my shoes,
and before you accuse, criticize, and abuse,
walk a mile in my shoes.
The following is directed at Greg Panfile:
Sweet Jeebus, whine much?! Look, you do bring up the "whys" of your generation. And, indeed, the psychological trauma you experienced was significant. To an extent, Boomer foibles are understandable. Buttttt.....
You let your trauma degenerate into perpetual victimization, whining, and worst of all cynicism. Yes, you went through a lot, but history neither begins NOR ends with your generation. It is not 1968 anymore. Vietnam ended 34 yrs. ago.
Speaking for others, I only ask this: Please, please enter the 21st century! Stop being utterly beholden to the past
The whole concept of generations is marketing nonsense--or more precisely, the idea that a cohort of people born in a certain period is defined by some shared experience is a commonplace, and the reification of that banal reality is marketing nonsense. Let's not dignify it any further.
Complain all you want, kids, more than you realize you sound like your parents did when they were young. And that's fine: we're the ones who taught you to question authority in the first place. Nevertheless, polls indicate that Boomers have been great parents: their children have high self-esteem, high ideals, and are strongly disposed to service. Who taught them that? Boomers did. The parents of deservedly-admired service people in Iraq? Boomers. The tenure of Boomers has also seen a dramatic increase in private, largely volunteer-run social services, availability of psychological and crisis counseling, putting aside self-limiting self-reliance and getting help when you need it. Because of Boomers we have rape relief, domestic abuse shelters, substance abuse programs, and a dizzying array of counseling options for every sort of problem. When we arrived on the scene there was nothing but Freudian analysis, which was useless. Oprah Winfrey? A Boomer. The idea that Boomers take much in the way of social services from the government, per capita, is a myth perpetrated by the same conservative punditocracy that has gotten everything else wrong in the past decade. The real beneficiaries of government services were the Greatest Generation. They benefited life-long from the original G.I. Bill (defunct when the Vietnam vets showed up), massive increases in social services, inflated union wages of the 1950s and 1960s, which Boomer workers have been giving back ever since, or watching while their good industrial jobs have been exported. The period of the Baby Boomers has been marked throughout by declines in government services that date from the Reagan era. The computer revolution? Boomers started it. Work ethic? It's the Boomer generation that began a tradition of two-income families that has made it possible for almost everyone to aspire to a middle-class life, and to be educated well enough to begin to do social criticism of the kind found in this forum. (Sorry if we didn't meet all your expectations, but no parents ever do.) Well, and so now you're in charge. Let's see what you can do. Hope i'm around in thirty years to see what your kids have to say about you.
"And that's fine: we're the ones who taught you to question authority in the first place."
For the love of all that's holy, please pick up and read an American history book. Any of them. Anywhere. You didn't teach anybody, anywhere how to question authority. History taught you just like it taught the rest of us.
"For the love of all that's holy, please pick up and read an American history book. Any of them. Anywhere. You didn't teach anybody, anywhere how to question authority. History taught you just like it taught the rest of us.
Posted by Scott II | January 18, 2009 2:23 AM"
What, you don't remember when the Boomers taught us to throw out the Redcoats?
I haven't read a comment in this thread, but I'll go ahead and state that Boomers are the reason why he had the years ranging from Reagan to Bush II. The supposed cultural game changers folded like pussies in the face of having to develop a career and family. For every one of their self-indulgent realizations, they handed political power to the most corrupt generation of politicians since the gilded age. The boomers are the humiliated children of the "greatest generation" (i put in quotes because they were the most traumatized and gullible of generations), that then went on and eventually conceded their lame, repressed parents. To put it succinctly, to be a boomer is to be one whore of a sellout. All talk followed by retreat and accommodation to the worst of our society.
I can't wait until they don't have a say in our society.
I could not read all these comments, but what a fascinating cultural record they make. Print them out and put them in a library, please, so future generations of sociologists can work on them!
I think there's a difference in opinion depending on whether one is Gen X or Gen Y. For us Gen Yers, Boomers are our parents, so there's more of a parent-child, love-hate relationship, whereas I think Gen Xers are more aggravated about Boomer excesses.
This is an important dynamic. As an Xer, born of 'lost generation parents' born in the 30s, Boomers were like aliens in our house. There was one uncle born after the war who became a prominant environmental lawyer, and we were proud of him. An aunt in the other side who was a boomer drifted away into drugs and living in a van with some scumbag, but she came around after a few years, remarried, raised kids and did the square, relatively happy thing the rest of us were doing. In the family, boomers are ambitious, idealistic people who made hard decisions and realized some great accomplishments, and we love them.
In the working world, boomers are insufferable and impossible. For upper middle class professional types like me, boomers are the ones that wrecked the working world. Law firms, accounting firms, businesses of all kinds are clogged up with rapine boomers who have stripped the institutions down, plundered them, and left Xers and Yers with few opportunities and prospects. Huge amounts of resentment there - the boomers all look out for themselves, and the other generations can't wait for the boomers to retire so that the institutions can be rebuilt.
The same goes for politics and religion. So while we owe so much progress to boomers, we can't progress any further until they get out of the way - real resentment.
As an Xer I'd like to remind my generational peers that all this boomer hating if well and good, but to keep in mind that we'll be the ones in charge soon, and all those Millenials will be (fairly and unfairly) blaming all the ills of the world on us and our navel gazing, "Whatever dude" cynicism. Stereotyping cuts both ways.
GKM says: "Let me get the ball rolling. In 2000 (my first election), I voted 3rd party. GWB got elected. If some of my peers and I could have forgiven the 80's and moved on, maybe things wouldn't have turned out the way they did. Our idealism blinded us to the reality of politics, and now we all will pay the price, perhaps for generations.
Now you. Seriously. Stop making excuses. We all fuck up. It really isn't that difficult to admit how perfect you're not. Please try. It would mitigate the hate in a big way."
This is an example of what is wrong with this whole thread. GKM voted third party and accepts responsibility, but then also tries to spread the blame to his whole generation, when in fact, probably a lot of the people who voted third-party were in other generations as well, and most people in his generation did not.
As an individual I take responsibility for my actions, including my mistakes, as GKM starts out to do. As a "boomer", I don't feel a collective responsibility for what any other person or group my age may have done or not done.
And all the "anniversary" articles that seem to drive people wild, like the 25th/30th/40th etc. of Woodstock? Those aren't written by boomers. They're written to try to sell magazines or newspapers. I wasn't at Woodstock, wouldn't have gone because you could see it was going to be a logistical disaster before it even started. Yes, there are innumerable and incessant articles about it, but don't blame me for them!
The worst thing about those horrible boomers is the generation of nasty, bitter, overgeneralizing brats they raised.
A little sophomoric "history" steeped in self-satisfaction and garnished with self-pity there, Bradford ? And I thought we "boomers" were more than a bit prone to preening and finger-pointing ! My assumption when I read stuff like that is that the commenter has never read a serious work of economics, history or politics and has developed a world-view from watching cable news and reading USA Today.
Worst Thread Ever !
Incidentally, it's hard to unpack the "boomer" support for Reagan in '80 because the statistics I've seen don't split out the first boomers from those born in the previous decade, but by '84 young voters - the first "post-boomer" generation supported Reagan's re-election in numbers matched only by their grandparents. Good going !!!! Maybe Bradford wants to have a word with them.
I liked the suggestion that boomers are defined by whether they remember the J Kennedy assassination. I think that's right, and so I'm clearly one of them.
I've found this thread heartening. For most of my life, I've considered us a depraved generation. Half of us continued to scream at our parents long after we were grandparents, and the other half claimed to defend traditional values by acting as an oppressed majority. (Be grateful that you don't get the emails about immigrants and atheists and all.)
Anyway, I was a bit worried because our children seemed to identify with us and our popular culture. It's good to know that, more generally, we are properly despised.
The thing I most worry about is that we will remain unwilling to get off the fucking stage. When the markets crashed this past fall, what depressed me most was not the impact on my personal fortunes, but the fact that it gives my peers one more excuse to keep working long beyond where we are making a real contribution. I feel for middle aged workers who can't advance in their careers because some boomer won't get out of the way. Innovation requires new ideas, and new ideas require new people. To that extent, my generation is a real barrier to progress.
I honestly don't know how to get around this problem, but if knowing that our coworkers hate us helps in any way, I'm all for it.
boo hoo someone said something critical of the majority generation...
"Individual boomers are well and good. But the generation? Screw that. Aside from civil rights, where some credit is admittedly due, boomers were best at being self-righteous twits. And now I get to hear them complain as I pay for their retirement and the autumn of their erections? This 35-year-old gen Xer could give a crap."
Is that you von? The one from ObiWi? I see by the note below that I can't really express my opinion of this kind of generational bigotry in the terms that it deserves, but perhaps "self-righteous twit" will do nicely. I can't even imagine thinking the way you do--I like or dislike individuals based on what they do and say, but lumping people together by generation and condemning them all, except for individuals? How does that work exactly? Can you apply it to some ethnic group so that I could understand it a little better? Your rant is beneath contempt, but you have a lot of company here. Maybe there is some truth to the notion that blogging brings out the craziness in people.
"Can you apply it to some ethnic group so that I could understand it a little better? "
To be a little clearer, as I'm not always very clear when I'm angry, anti-generational bias makes just about as much sense as racism or any other form of bigotry. I suppose people here think it's a respectable form of hatred because nobody has been stupid enough to act on it in any way besides typing moronic comments in a blog thread. It's a way you can have your tribe, designate a different tribe, hate that tribe, and not feel like you're a scum. Hey, sounds like fun. Me, I hate the fans of certain TV shows myself.
And having put it in perspective, I'm out of here.
So, the bright lights among the citizens born after the so-called boomers find all fault lies with a generational divide. Not an economic class divide, or class exploitation, with the accompanying strategies and tactics used by the plutocracy to keep persons from organizing for their own economic and social interests--nothing analytical like that.
It's all about how those damn boomers are keeping us down, how the damn greedy old boomers are taking more than their fair share.
Do an analysis of your situation. Find out who profits and who doesn't. Find a way of thinking about what disturbs you that doesn't have you kicking the bars of your goddamn playpens. And fucking grow up.
To address Ta-Nehisi's initial question, I don't sense that my fellow Boomers (capitalized for the benefit of the more frothing commenters above) feel particularly injured by lump categorizations with McCain / Ayers / Clinton / Bush. I imagine a lot of Boomers have the same reaction I do when I read the vitriol - awfully overheated and the criticisms don't apply to me anyway. And I presume my reaction applies to lots of cases of individuals reading about "themselves" in generalizations.
(For a quick lesson in what I mean, pop over to Megan's blog and find a post where she and her commenters go off on how "liberals" think about X, Y or Z.)
So, no, we Boomers are not all bent out of shape over it, certainly no more than the Greatest Generation nursed hurt feelings when the Boomers dumped on them.
Or however much the Xers, Yers, Slackers, et al will nurse their pain when subsequent generations take them to task. (Though it would be delicious to see how some of the more vocal idiots above will react when the shoe's on the other foot.)
You won't see them defending themselves here, because even if they know what a blog is, they certainly wouldn't read one written by a young black man.
You're right - couldn't happen.
-ltc, born 1954
FUCK THEM.
Whatever.
Look, I'm not going to defend my g-g-generation, beyond saying that it's not the root of all evil. It was clearly a very divided generation; yeah sure, the 1960s and antiwar protests and stuff, but Reagan and Bush Sr. didn't get three terms just out of nowhere. And once we lefties grew up and went to work, there wasn't any network to hold us together.
And it took us a long time to figure out what the hell was going on, and why we weren't able to effect change. For 12 years (and especially from 1986 on, after the Dems re-took Congress), we could say that the President was standing in the way of progress, and when Clinton was elected, we had high hopes. Instead, we got the disasters of Clintoncare, Paula Jones, and the 1994 midterms. From then on, it was Gingrich, DeLay, and finally Bush and Cheney.
In fact, it was really only with MoveOn that we left-leaning Boomers finally had a means of joining in the game and making our presence felt (since we didn't have anything like the network of evangelical churches that conservative whites were able to organize through), and only with the rise of the blogosphere was there a means of putting the picture together that didn't rely on the Broderistas of the mainstream media to make their sense of it all for us.
In a way, we've gone through our best years, politically speaking, without the set of tools that would enable us to concentrate our force and make a difference politically.
But you guys won't have that disadvantage as you grow into your productive years. In these Intertubes, you've got the means of finding out how we really got here, and the means of organizing to make a far bigger difference than we have so far. We Boomers can lend a hand, but we're not the ones in the driver's seat on this ride, and that's fine with me.
And yeah, I'm as tired of hearing about the 1960s as anyone who was born too late for them must be. The '60s were a looooooooong time ago: 40 years - the better part of an average lifetime - have come and gone since that decade came to a conclusion. I don't want to re-fight its political battles, I don't want to listen to its music anymore (anything that's on the 'classic rock' playlist needs a 20-year moratorium from the airwaves, it's all been so overplayed), I don't want to hear about Woodstock or the Summer of Love or any of that shit.
There's no new gold in that mine. No new life or meaning in those memories. They're as played out as played out can get. It's time to tell a new story, time to make a new story.
Let's get on with it.
Re: but by '84 young voters - the first "post-boomer" generation supported Reagan's re-election in numbers matched only by their grandparents.
Huh? In 1984 only the very oldest of the post-boomers were able to vote. I'm in the early Gen X cohort, and I was first able to vote in the off year elections of 1986.
Hmmm. Interesting observation if only because of the magnitude of your ignorance. Let's see, I was born in 1957, I was one of the designers of the chip that makes the network connection in your PC possible, which allows you to connect to the Internet to inflict your brand of ignorance on the world. (On a side note, I've been using for far more productive purposes than you since 1980).
In 1981, I invented a programming language called ABEL, which in turn fed the growth of the programmable logic sector of the semiconductor industry. The programmable logic device companies leveraged other technical advances and became the Broadcoms and Qualcomms of the world. In other words, most of those wonderful little electronic gadgets that your generation cannot seem to live without are the result of either directly or indirectly work that I and my contemporaries did in the 80's and 90's in Silicon Valley.
Yesterday, when the games were over, an ad appeared exhorting fans to log onto NFL.com to share in their teams' victories. Funny that my (according to you) ignorant boomer ass predicted this in a talk I gave at the Entertainment Netowkring Conference in 1994 at UCLA on convergence and the future of the cable TV business.
As for being ignorant about Black people on the internet, I suggest you Google me. I was the author of the Technology Breakdown column on eurweb.com for nine years. As you'll see, TNC was not the first Black man on the net.
Consider yourself pwn'ed
I think the reason younger people are reacting so strongly against the boomers is because at some level they see that they and whatever marketing generation sub group they belong to has the same flaws that they are criticizing, (which in reality were brought about by some of the immense cultural changes that happened to this country post WWII). It's easier to blame something as huge and amorphous as an entire generation than to look at one's own behavior critically.
Are Gen X and Y-ers fundamentally all that different from the boomers in our sense of entitlement, our narcissism, our selfishness, our wastefulness? Sure the Boomers were the first to get here (and let us not forget all the good things that happened because of their political activism when they were young) but their generational sin, if you can call it that, is due more to the generation's size, and the fact that they were the first to encounter a world changed by US power, new technologies, new ability to travel, the Sixties (c'mon, let's face it, that was a fucked-up decade), an expanded middle class, etc.
I've been bashing boomers since the impending Social Security shortfall started dawning on all of us 15 years ago, but let's be honest here: we have a lot more in common with them than we do with people who grew up in the Depression and before . . . The fact that everyone here's whining and pointing fingers might be example #1 of that.
"I was one of the designers of the chip that makes the network connection in your PC possible"
What? You mean all that stuff didn't just appear out of nowhere to be picked up and used by us? Boomers had something to do with it?
NOOOOO!
Anyhow, I was born in '69 so maybe I'm not the authority but it seems to me that there is a pretty sharp differentiation between people who were at least teenagers on their way to college by 1969 and those who sere not. Its sort of like there are the boomers and then their younger siblings. Really, two waves and Obama is actually part of wave two.
The boomer generation tended to be radicalized on one side or the other. A bunch, guys like Micheal Savage and David Horwitz come to mind, started on one extreme side and then went to the other. They have really marked politics for the last generation as trench warfare with ,as Obama has pointed out, the same damn arguments from college dorm rooms in the sixties carrying on and on and on. For God's sake, the '04 political campaign was all about Vietnam and old grudges. AAAAAH!
I think that those born around '55 and later have tended to be more pragmatic and forward looking. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were born in '55. Contrast them to Richard Stallman who was born in '53. Stallman has made great contributions that we are all indebted to him for but he's kind of an unreasonable idealouge. He's ended up butting heads with the much more pragmatic Linus Torvaldis ('69).
None of these rules are written in stone of course but I think a sense of passion dominated everyone who was old enough to be fully politically culturally aware in the sixties. There has been kind of a hectoring tendency from the to consider 1969 as the high point of American culture and those of use who came later lacked passion and commitment. So we've been forced to look back at it all our lives. I've known way to many people my ago whom look back and feel like they missed everything.
But those who where there for it seem to have been stuck in unreasonable radical stasis on one side or the other and need to be set out pasture now so that we can get a more reasonable perspective.
For those who think GenXers are going to be shocked to find themselves criticized and called failures when we get older, I'd like to point out that we already grew up in this dynamic. Does anybody remember what the media said about the GenXers in the '80s? And now that we're adults and haven't actually destroyed the world with apathy the way people seemed to think we would, nobody actually talks about GenXers at all anymore?
Heck we don't even talk about ourselves much. I think there have been more references to GenX on this thread than I've seen in years. Russd talks about boomer tech inventions of high-tech devices, but it's actually thousands of GenX problem-solvers that perfected these systems to make them consumer friendly. These powerful technological achievements over the past 20 years are a result of two generations of inventors working together, not just one.
There probably is a bit of subconscious envy on our part (maybe even not that subconscious). Boomers grew up in an era where they were taught that they could accomplish anything. We ... were not so much. So now even when we do accomplish things, we don't even expect much attention for it.
I really like your analysis. I used to always say that I was born 4 years too late -- I was on the sidelines in Jr. High during '69 - '71 when the antiwar movement hit its peak, and earlier when the civil rights movement peaked between '65 - '68. (I still remember when they called James Brown "the man who saved Boston" because he gave a concert in Boston on Friday April 11, 1968 while the BPD was on full riot alert).
In any event, I think you have the dividing line between the two waves pretty much spot on.
Also, I didn't mean to come off so angry in my previous post. I was in a bad mood and that person touched a nerve.
Hey, don't feel bad. It was a well done and well deserved smackdown. ("damn kids today, grumble, grumble") The fellow obviously had no technical knowledge whatsoever. It was my generation that came up with innovations like the blog and even the Linux Kernel and Apache webserver but its not like any of that would be there if somebody hadn't managed to put the hardware and basic software infrastructure together in the first place.
For me, the challenging thing about Boomers is the juxtaposition between great individuals and a horrible, COLLECTIVE result. Admittedly, I don't know all that many conservative Boomers very well (friend's parents is not that close of a tie) but the challenge I have is looking at this individual WONDERFUL people who care about so many of the things I do....and then see the collective state of where we were as a nation when they started in politics and where we are now.
My mother is nearly 60...her first vote was 68...she is a passionate liberal...but you think that based on where the country has gone....she would do ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING TO MAKE SURE WE DIDN'T FOLLOW HER PATH!
There's the disconnect....great individuals who have collective let/caused/opposed ineffectually/were trampled by forces that made the world a much worse place.
I think I'll pass on them as my trusty leaders and advisers thank you very much.
The whole bullshit idea of "generations" as a defining trait of society is the product of a couple of Baby Boomers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss_and_Howe
The way it's seeped into our zeitgeist is emblematic of the Boomer mentality: there are the generations before the Boomers (the "Greatest Generation"); the Baby Boomers themselves; and then a couple of generations that came afterwards (since they are otherwise unremarkable, we shall call them "X" and "Y" for the sake of convenience).
It's amazing how the Boomers keep taking credit for "the Civil Rights movement". Anyone born in 1946 wouldn't have been able to vote in 1963, when the first civil rights act was passed. The Civil Rights Movement (as we usually understand it) was organized in the mid-1940s and capped decades of success with the progress of the 1960s. Perhaps it's fairer to say that the civil rights movement came to a halt as soon as the Boomers came of age.
The Boomers were born from 1946-1960. Examine the period from 1968 to 1988. Draw your own conclusions.
Actually, I don't think so.
Numbers count as well. A moral stand without numbers to back it up does very little (see civil rights and Asian Americans). Civil rights for blacks needed the warm bodies the white boomers supplied (that's why they called it a mass movement). Cut them out from the civil rights movement and there goes the legal, economic and political clout that backed up effective enforcement of those rights.
The one time that Asian American was able to win that sort of victory, the redress and reparations of Japanese Americans for WWII internment in the 1980s, I know for a fact that they were able to command political support among the wider population (and, of course, some of the lead lawyers were boomers...)
To those in this thread who have been so vehemently anti-"boomer": I am amazed at the degree of generalization, stereotyping, vitriol and downright cruelty expressed toward people simply for being born within a particular time frame. I would ask just one thing: save this thread, and when you're as old as I am now (and you will be, if you're fortunate), take another good look at the things you've said here.
Dialogue between generations, or between any groups of people, is one thing. Excoriating a whole generation as if all of us who fall within that generation have the same ideas or attitudes or as if we're somehow responsible for all the ills of the world is something else entirely. I find it particularly amazing that many of the anti-boomer commenters appear to be supporters of Barack Obama--a man whose entire candidacy has been about bringing us all together.
Ethan Salto: So you think no 56 year old white guys read this blog? Not only am I a "late boomer" but also a "little person" (dwarfism) and I understand how it feels to be singled out. Ageism resembles racism in its effects. We should be focused on class as discriminatory against merit, ability and talent as a tiny percentage of our US population own and earn almost everything. Most of us who work gross under 34K, little more than a bare living in our environment. The "rules of the game" dictate collusion among the wealthy and powerful and co-optation of those unstoppable ones from below. Every generation learns fresh the meaning of "selling out", usually when it's too late. Obama is being absorbed by his biggest problem, the black hole of debt created by the elite. It could pull the life out of us all and leave our half-assed country unsalvageable. The lamest part is that it's all a game: Money is a figment of the social contract. I would think younger generations would be formulating an alternative, but I've heard none of your plans. Are yours the most colonized and conformist minds ever produced in our media entranced zombie world?
Do you ever have IDEAS Ethan Salto?
P.S. Blame Ta-Nehisi Coates for letting me in here. I'm a Baltimore alum too.
"No, but seriously, I'm never going to forgive y'all for The Doors. Ever. Speaking as a 24 year old who counts The Who, The Kinks, and basically the entire output of 1960's soul as the greatest music ever, I'm still never going to let you get away with Jim Morrison. Otherwise, good points, boomers."
Thank you. I automatically boycott any "classic rock" station that plays Riders on the Storm even once. Mandatory purgatory for Boomers just for that song.
The worst thing about those horrible boomers is the generation of nasty, bitter, overgeneralizing brats they raised.
Posted by AdamK | January 18, 2009 3:52 PM
-----------
Touche!
I think the only thing that the Boomers should be worried about is the type of euthanasia that will be administered once their completely liberalized children realize that there is nothing wrong with "dignified death" especially when it helps the bottom-line of the socialist state.
Wow--I've learned a lot here. I had no idea boomers were held in such contempt or that people born as late as 1964 were considered boomers. I was born in 46 and graduated from high school in 64, and don't feel a sense of shared experience with people born in 64. I went through a long period of generational self-loathing. It seemed like we started out with so much promise, the way we took on civil rights and the war and rigid conformity. And the level of creativity was astonishing. For years I believed that we just got stoned and forgot about it. Only recently I've come to understand the effects of how much death and violence we went through. Think of it: our most loved leaders assassinated, one after another. We accepted the idea of being jailed and, in the case of the South, beaten, for our activism. But Nixon and Mayor Daly were out for blood. Students were killed at Kent State and Jackson State for protesting, and then came the 68 Convention where police just beat the shit out of hundreds of kids. And our parents were saying we deserved to be beaten and killed for rebelling against their comfortable world and their racism and their war. A lot of us died in Vietnam too. We did some good things, but we weren't prepared for all that violence, and the hatred that went with it. So I guess we turned tail and hid.
But I'm grateful and ecstatic to see another generation taking over the reigns. We got too self-absorbed, too self-destructive, too divided, too disillusioned. But not so disillusioned that we can't see that Obama is a man of extraordinary gifts and was the only candidate who had a chance of getting this country going again. At least some of us worked at getting him elected and are more than ready to drop all the bickering and the stupid labels and false dichotomies. So maybe we deserve the contempt. I have to admit that Bush and the Clinton's are in the same generation as me and represented the worst of what we might have offered. I have not said the pledge of allegiance or sang the national anthem or done anything else respectful of my country and government since I was very young, and it's a mighty strange feeling at my age to once again feel some pride in being American and profound optimism for what we can possibly do now with such a leader as we have. Anyway, that's how I see the past and the future, and I'm so glad to have lived to see what's happening now.