OK. I admit, I'm an early 'boomer', so this subject hits a little close to home. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on June 10th about blaming the 'boomers'. I haven't linked to it because I believe it is on the subscription side of the website, but I will try to condense it for you.
"Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, 60 years old, told the graduating class of Butler University last month that boomers have been "self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish."
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, 55, told Grinnell College graduates in Iowa that his was "the grasshopper generation, eating through just about everything like hungry locusts."
And Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, at 44 barely a boomer himself, told seniors at Colorado College that the national creed of one generation standing on the shoulders of the next was at risk "because our generation has not been faithful enough to our grandparents' example.""
Good grief!! When are we going to roll up our sleeves, do whatever is necessary, and stop blaming everyone else. Yes, the boomers were a bunch of selfish, overindulged, self-centered jerks who knew everything--just like a lot of generations before them. The thing was--there were a whole lot more of them and they formed a major demographic. You still see evidence of that--oldies stations. Generally speaking, the oldies stations play music from about 1965 to 1975 or so. That represents the teenage years of a large part of the boomers. We are still a scary group demographically. But let's look at some other aspects of the group.
Boomers in the mid to late 1960's were a very split group. Because of the draft, the high school graduates in the mid 1960's either went into college or the military. Our colleges were beginning to lean left at that point--when the USSR fell, it was revealed that there were Soviet agents on our campuses enlisting people in the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and other organizations. It was fashionable on college campuses of the 1960's to hate America. The graduates that went into the military saw an entirely different world. Some went to Viet Nam and never really came home (even if they came home physically). Others got married and struggled in the seventies to keep things together through rising inflation and stagnant wages. Others discovered drugs and never came home from those experiences.
Boomers were used to being influencial. The majority of boomers were idealistic and believed that with love they could create a 'fairer' world. They had to be competitive because there were a lot of them. Many of them turned very far left. I believe our current President has the mindset of an early boomer educated in American colleges in the mid-1960's. To me, that is not a good thing.
The boomers are not really to blame for anything. Society accepted our rebellion against its morals and the later boomers carried that rebellion to degrees we never dreamed of. Human nature seems to always push the envelope--we just steamed it open a little.
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