Generation Kill
They call you the Baby Boomers. Your parents fought in two world wars with a Great Depression sandwiched between. Your parents propelled the United States of America to unprecedented heights. They solidified the United States as a place where dreams can come true. And while they had their own faults, they can be proud of their accomplishments. Their generation is called the greatest without irony.
And yours is the worst.
There are those in the post-WWII generation that are worthy of honor, those who worked tirelessly to stem the downward spiral that their peers launched the United States. But they were overwhelmed by peers that appeared to have made the conscious decision to destroy anything and everything that made the U.S. the envy of the globe.
Yours is the generation of greed and selfishness. When one of your own plunged you into two simultaneous wars and told you that your nation’s very existence was in peril, you demanded tax cuts. Whereas your parents sacrificed everything for the greater good, your leader stood in front of you and demanded the sacrifice of extra travel and consumerism.
You worship the almighty dollar, but shrug while your leaders spent money that belonged to other nations and created a national debt that is beyond normal human comprehension. You turn a blind eye and even have outright hatred for those that capitalism has left behind. And still you demand even more tax cuts.
Yours is the generation of ignorance. It is impossible to fathom that an entire generation has not only deemed education as an unnecessary elite indulgence, as you have done. You have actively campaigned for ignorance. You rail against universities and science. You taught your children that the educated are to be distrusted and that ignorance is bliss.
For your efforts, you have been rewarded with children that lack even a minimal grasp of democracy and what it really means to be free. For your efforts, your children are given political campaigns that are drawn in crayon. And even then they barely understand. And for your efforts, your children actively work to get their own rights taken away from them.
Yours is the generation of waste and hubris. Given a nation that overflowed with bounty, you believed it to be your divine right to strip-mine it. And so you did and continue to do. The planet and the nation’s resources have been nothing more to you than sources of profit and ease and you are still far too proud to admit that is approach is suicidal. You see unprecedented environmental chaos and deny it.
So of course you chant “drill, drill, drill.” It is the option that requires the least from you, after all. And you are proud of being ignorant of the entire energy issue and hold on to the belief the Earth is yours to destroy.
Yours is the generation of paranoia and intolerance. While you regurgitate empty rhetoric of family values, you have driven a wedge between yourselves and your neighbors. You created rumors of razor blades in apples and forced into your children your demented belief that no is to be trusted.
You have demonized those from other countries, those with differing sexuality, those of other races and those with opinions different from your own. You have demonized your own progeny. You feel constantly attacked and threatened, and then lash out violently against targets that have never attacked or threatened you.
Yours is the generation that killed Christ. Because even the most staunch atheists view many of the words and actions attributed to Jesus Christ as wise philosophy. But the simple fact is, you despise the overlying Christian philosophy. If Jesus Christ stood in front of you, you would spit on him and accuse him of being a communist if not worse. You have recast Jesus Christ to conform to your own image. And for that the United States has become one that is hurtling toward outright theocracy of the very worst kind.
In some beliefs, Pontius Pilate felt such guilt for putting the living Christ to death that he eventually took his own life. Yet your sin is far more egregious and you feel not a twinge of guilt. You have created a Christ that mirrors yourself: vindictive, greedy, intolerant and self-aggrandizing. You have murdered Christ by making him the polar opposite of what his original followers intended.
You are Generation Kill. Growing up under the watchful eye of warriors has made you demented. You yearn for battle, regardless of the cause. You have made the United States a nation that can only be respected by force. Because force is the only quality you respect. Your parents showed that Americans would stand and fight for a cause. You have only looked for a cause to fight.
You have found those causes everywhere and Hitlerized leaders from nations of nearly every continent. To make up for own inner lack of self worth, you have outright murdered millions upon millions of innocent civilians throughout the globe. Your generation has been a bloodbath and you have never blinked an eye, and are proud in the most perverted of ways of the death and suffering you’ve wrought.
Yours is a generation that has failed in nearly every aspect of existence. And for your final act of destroying everything your parents gave you, you are hell bent on making the United States of America into the exact replica of the tyrants they so bravely fought.
You are the worst generation. And it’s time for you to get the hell out of the way.
–WKW
September 5th, 2008 at 7:22 am
A+.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Word.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Millions? F
The rest: A+
September 5th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Thanks for listing some obvious truths. While I think it’s the Boomer ruling class and not the generation as a whole you are discussing, I think you accurately pointed out a lot of our flaws as a society right now.
I am sorry the folks at Shakesville reacted like a bunch of Republicans to your post. Words should never be banned, especially when they make you think!
September 5th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I have had almost this same discussion with Hubby. The Baby Boomers, who used to say “Don’t trust anyone over 30″ have become the people over 30 that no one should trust. It is my generation, Gen X, that will have the unenviable task of cleaning up after the boomers.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:08 am
controversial and powerful–it’s a good piece, I think.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Here’s what I think, in a bit more detail:
It might be useful to distinguish between Boomer mythology (which is what I think you’re talking about here) and actual Boomer history. Boomer mythology tells a familiar story of youthful exuberance (we stopped the war!) followed by innocence lost (yuppiedom). Actual Boomer history is much more complex than that; in fact, the very concept of the Boomer is a mythologizing of people’s actual lives. But the Boomer myth has been so powerful that it has tended to obscure reality.
For example, it’s not actually true that the 60s protests stopped the war; what they did, arguably, was throw enough red meat into the heartland to lead to Nixon’s election. It’s also not actually true that the Boomers had everything; the kids who got all the attention were the ones rich enough to go to elite schools (and whose families were wealthy enough that “voluntary poverty” seemed like a cool idea for a couple of years). But lots of others born in the same period were born into real poverty and got no attention at all.
So, I think that to make this piece more coherent, it would be good to distinguish between the Myth of the Boomers and the complexity of history, and to introduce some class analysis into the mix.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Thank you all for the comments.
Chet: Very good points. At this current moment, my real regret is who the last line can (understandably) be viewed as eliminationist rhetoric. And I would agree that it was my own privilege that it failed to set off alarm bells to me. However, at this point, I think it would be cowardice on my part to change it.
And that same privilege kept me from seeing that some would view the entire piece (again, understandably) as ageist. Such was not my intention, but I don’t view intention in others as an excuse, and don’t accept it as one for myself.
As far as your points, that was part of what I hoped the conversation of the piece would bring.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Bill-
Like burning prarie, I’ve had the same discussion with my hubby over the last several years. It’s weird because you nail my frustration but, half the time you were talking to ‘my generation’ ,and the other half you were talking to ‘my dad’. I guess that’s a generation. The ageist accusation is, quite frankly, a humongous load of crap. I can’t believe intelligent people would pull out ageism in response to an opinion that deals with a generation. Bill, you have no control over how old anyone in a generation is, and likely most of what you’ve said will be true when that generation is dead and gone. What will they say then…. Don’t speak ill of the dead! 11! 1!1!
Sara in Chicago has nailed it. She said “it’s not about you, don’t make it about you”. What did the ‘boomers’ do? Well…….I think they sort of proved your point and made it about them. Oh, I was born in 1963.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:58 am
I resent this attack on me.
The so-called greatest generation is called the greatest WITH irony, in my opinion: oppression of women and people of color, institutionalized ageism and sexism, venomous cold war hatred without cause, blatant government corruption. Shall I go on?
No. The generation of greed and selfishness is the one just before us–the people who are in their 70s and worship Rush Limbaugh, who sacrificed for only their own family and insisted that third-world poverty is quaint, who voted for George Bush twice, who raised their children with that sick sense of entitlement, who believe that unquestioning obedience to corporate entities is patriotism (after all, if they disobey, there go the dividends from investments).
Theirs is the generation of greed and selfishness: give them tax cuts, so they can invest more into war-profiteering corporations; freeze the property taxes, so their city infrastructure disintegrates; refuse to vote for school levies, because their children are grown. Shall I go on?
Their generation believes poverty is a character flaw, while insisting on tax cuts that keep the rest of us at near-poverty.
Their generation believes that education equals earning capacity and that ethics and arts are not education because you can’t make money from it. They fled to the suburbs and took their tax money with them, so that those within city limits have no hope of learning.
Theirs is the generation of waste and hubris. They truly believe the eaarth is theirs to destroy. They trust no one. They care for no one but their privileged selves.
Children learn from example. Who taught the “boomers” their beliefs? Why are the children of the “boomers” so much better (in your opinion)?
I was born in 1946. I am a life-long pacifist. I voted against Regan and Bush (and probably Nixon, though I’m so damn old that my memory is fuzzy–if I had been old enough to vote against him, I did). I demonstrated FOR peace. I demonstrated FOR women’s rights. In the 35 years that I have been driving, I’ve owned a motor vehicle for 25. I have owned only 3 cars, only one of them brand new. It was a Toyota pick up that I grudgingly sold after 18 years. When I made enough money to invest, I refused to invest in money market funds, because they emphasized HMOs and oil companies. I have recycled, reused, and done without until I could afford something, because my parents taught me well.
I know hundreds of “boomers” like me. I know that most of their parents are ignorant, self-centered, privileged Americans, who refuse to think. Your diatribe is against the privileged of all generations.
Mr. Wolfrum, you need to get out and travel throughout the United States, talking to people. There really is no such thing as a baby boomer. There are two Americas–the privileged and the rest of us. Then write and tell us if there is any hope for the future, after all.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Bill, I agree that this post was powerful.
And I’m … I guess disappointed is the word - with the wrath it has engendered at the crossposted location, although, a part of me wonders if that’s what you were trying to create (and I mean that as a compliment).
September 5th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Pissed off Gen Xer here, disappointed that the post was removed from Shakesville. I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much everything you’ve written here. I would also add that the generation that came after the Boomers, thanks in no small part to the “I’ve got MINE!” leaders they elected, were economically shackled from the moment we entered adulthood. Small example from my own family: My own parents had their college educations and, believe it or not, the down payments on their first houses covered by the Bank of Mom and Dad. They then proceeded to piss away their 20s and 30s in a cloud of pot smoke, waking up around the time of their 40th birthdays to get real jobs. One of their jobs was not, of course, to pay forward their own parents generosity and help their children with their own educations. I have finally finished paying off ~80K in student loans, and work two jobs so that I can help my own (very small) children pay for college someday. The kicker? I just learned that my Boomer parents, now heading into retirement, have amassed credit card debt and trashed their McMansion — and we’re going to have to pick up the pieces.
I say this all not because I’m mad at dear old mom and dad, BUT because the whole situation just seems like such a metaphor for the huge bill our generation has been left as the Boomers’ legacy (trashed infrastructure, huge national debt, starved public education, and so on). And knowing that, of course, it’s manifestly unfair to tar an entire generation with the same brush. But at the end of the day, the folks born in the “Gen X” years will never have political power, because there are so few of us. I eagerly await monies being poured back into public schools ten years from now (too late to help us) when the Millennials need good public schools, probably paid for by cuts to our retirement benefits …
September 5th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I reread my post and it sounds as if I meant it. I was only serious about the last paragraph. Sorry. I get hot-headed sometimes.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:36 am
You are writing from heartbreak, Bill. I get that. The devastation wrought on the planet by the corpo-crats in the name of the citizenry of the US is too appalling, too horrific for us to comprehend.
We try to make sense of it.
We can’t.
We cover our ears and yell.
No one hears.
Then we write.
And we are understood.
XO
WWW
September 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
When I saw your updated post over there I immediately clicked the link here to see what it was your wrote that was such a problem.
Good grief. I wish I’d written this because it neatly sums up my frustrations. Shitstorm or not, you are getting a round of applause from me.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Barack Obama is a baby boomer. Just sayin’….
September 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I think you let the “Greatest Generation” off WAY too easily here.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Like mimi, I feel the need to clarify a bit.
Bill, I do not mean to suggest that your intent was to create a shitstorm.
When I read the post I was, at first, all WTF? about what you were saying. Then, my objectivity and reason kicked in and I realized that it was you writing it, and by the end of the post I was (in a quiet and internal way) cheering.
I clicked on the comments, fully expecting to read comments saying: “When I read the post I was, at first, all WTF? about what you were saying. Then, my objectivity and reason kicked in and I realized that it was you writing it.”
Hence my disappointment when I read what was actually being said.
And I agree that Sara in Chicago (in both her initial comment and the later one explaining that dealing in generalizations is exactly what Social Science is all about) is spot on.
My estimation of several people is now lower than it was when I woke up this morning, and that makes me sad.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:54 am
You know, you are right…. about the half of our generation that stayed in the mainstream and took over - the right half, the conservative half.
You have left out an entire group that hasn’t participated in politics or the mainstream for decades now, after being burned so badly with Nixon and the other right wingers. They gave up on politics, and have been quietly working in the background on things like world hunger, changing the culture to accept more liberal values such as interracial marriages and alternative energy sources. They have been laboring without any support from the visible culture, money and power, in poverty, with a vision of how it could be.
They were the ones that dropped out, and are the counterculture that MEANT it. They have been like monks, secluded while working on practical solutions to the problems they have seen.
So, you are a bit narrow in your definition of “baby boomers.” The problem is there is no paper trail, no obvious traces of the work of the counterculture, so it’s hard to figure out what they have been up to. All that is seen is the horrendous right wingers and their inherent selfish, cruel and arrogant behavior.
Too bad so many of the younger generations think that is all there is to the boomers. Y’all need to look around in the non-technical places, the offline and not on-air places, to find the ones you can admire. They are not the loud ones, not the ones that own the corporate media, so they are not heard or seen.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I’m glad you took this off shakesville.
I and my entire extended family never voted for Reagan, Bush I or Bush II. We’re all taxpaying good Americans, against war, love our neighbors, etc. Whaddya gonna do? Lump ‘us’ in with ‘them’? You’ve described what happened while I’ve been an adult but it’s not my fault.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:02 am
And I just checked out a few comments over there to see what the fuss is all about. I probably generalize too much myself, but my other “problem” is that I expect people to to know where I’m coming from with my rants and know who is really the target of my anger. That’s not precise enough for many folks apparently.
I often rant about white people. But I’m obviously not categorizing all white people as being stupid, insensitive, racist, or ignorant. It’s like Texas: this state sucks on so many levels. It seems entirely fair to call it a solidly Republican conservative state, and that is in no way disrespectful to the liberal folks in Austin and elsewhere.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Bill, I’m a lurker at Shakesville and I wanted to thank you for writing this post, flaws and all. It speaks to many of the frustrations I’ve felt trying to make my way in a world where the power resides with people squarly in the boomer generation. Are all boomers bad? No. Are all bad people boomers? No. But a dispraportionate number of the policies and trends which are hurting this country now, are being driven by people in that age group. As for your closing statement, calling that eliminationist rhetoric is a reach. It’s a request to that generation to stop making everything about them.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Ok, I see what you were trying to do here and why people are applauding , but it still seems like a easy and thin piece of rhetoric aimed with a surprising disregard for a large part of your audience.
I don’t know how you missed that.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:25 am
My estimation of several people is now lower than it was when I woke up this morning, and that makes me sad.
Why is it lower? Because dozens of people take issue with the idea that writing a vitriolic screed about how horrible “Baby Boomers” are is as logical about writing a vitriolic screed about how horrible Virgos are?
“Generation Kill”? Really? Wow.
I am surprised that people some who read Shakesville regularly see no problem with generalizing about an entire group of people that has one thing in common: They were born some time in the same twenty-four-year period.
Logic, people. Logic and reason vice O’Reillyian bloviating.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Bill,
I’d have made two editorial changes to your post, were it my place. First, change every reference to the Boomers to read “the people/power/forces that define boomer culture” or some variant thereof. Second, soften the “get out of the way” closing line. Other than that, I thought it was a perfectly valid description of how the values of that generation have impacted our country.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
it’s pretty sophomoric to put all this on a “generation”. all it proves is that you have no idea who is doing what, and to whom. Age has nothing to do with it. Ex., plenty of gen x’ers in san jose pumping out as much crap as they can for $$ before there are consequences to abusing resources, just for one. and the vc’ers who finance them. and pay for politicians. and the hedge fund managers. you won’t see many of them over 40 or 50.
PS, it wasn’t “boomers” who stopped the war, it was college students, when suddenly their tuition didn’t pay for them to avoid the draft any more. suddenly they opposed the war, hmmm.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:43 am
“It’s time for you to get out of the way.”
How do you suggest that happen?
a) Mass suicide.
b) Removing ourselves from all form of public life and public service, as well as media where we might be visible.
c) Quit our jobs so you superior younger people can have them.
d) Mass sterilization so our evils not be perpetrated upon future generations.
Do tell.
And by the way, you don’t even get the ages of Boomers right. The Baby Boom ran from 1944 to 1964. Most of those born between 1950 and 1964 did NOT have parents who served in a World War.
As to xenophobia and genocide, I’m pretty sure earlier generations had that. I mean, I dropped out of college and all, but I read somewhere it wasn’t all new.
And as to Jesus Christ, I really don’t care. Not my God, not my problem.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Ok. I’m obviously in the minority but I saw this as a satire of all of the generation blaming that happens more often than not from an OLDER generation to a YOUNGER generation, How many screeds have we heard about generation X, Y, Z or whatever being selfish, self centered, unable to pay attention, spoiled etc etc? How much finger wagging have Gen Xers had to put up with about our spending habits?
September 5th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I was born in 1958, which means I turned 50 this summer.
I normally enjoy your writing a great deal. I look forward to your work at Shakesville.
I’m glad you decided to remove this post from there, however, because, with all due respect, in this case, I think you’re very, very wrong.
I find it incredible that you would generalize and stereotype in this way, considering that your usual writing is so focused and insightful.
For every member of the generation you bash so relentlessly in this piece, I can introduce you to someone who has tried to battle the forces which you rail against. Not all of them are rich and powerful. Some of them just do the work they can do in whatever tiny neighborhood or classroom or place on the planet they occupy, with whatever resources they can scrounge.
To condemn all for the evil of a few makes no sense. It’s beneath you.
I share your frustrations. I share your anger.
This kind of stuff doesn’t help us at all.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Why is it lower? Because dozens of people take issue with the idea that writing a vitriolic screed about how horrible “Baby Boomers” are is as logical about writing a vitriolic screed about how horrible Virgos are?
No, because people aren’t taking into account that it was Bill Wolfrum, who excels in subtlety and satire, that wrote it.
It seems to me that logic would trump knee-jerk reaction. I’m obviously wrong, or Sara in Chicago wouldn’t have to keep repeating “Again, reading is kinda important.” (yes, I know that her statement refers only to her comments, but it’s just as valid in the larger context.
And, for the record, the date of my birth falls within the parameters of the Baby Boom, for whatever the hell that’s worth.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Okay, I’m back. I just don’t get why so many young bloggers (I’ve seen similar essays several times) think it’s so cool, so 21st Century, to blame the Boomers for the evils of the world.
Please, I beg you, find me any generation in the history of the world where the majority of its members have been selfless and kind and decent, and only a tiny minority have been greedy and short-sighted and xenophobic.
I’ll wait.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I’d have made two editorial changes to your post, were it my place.
As for the last line, I totally agree. But like I said, I wrote it and hit “publish” so I think it would be cowardly on my part to change it now.
As for “Baby Boomers,” I don’t always put all my cards on the table in regards to a piece like this, and often leave things for the individual reader to decide. I wrote a post once called “We the People are murderers” in which I put the onus on Americans for allowing the U.S. to become a dangerous aggressor. Aside from a few right wingers that wanted to string me up, the intended audience seemed to understand my point.
That is not an excuse or an attempt to argue away the offense many have taken. I understand completely. And if people are offended, they are offended and I try to soak in the reasons why and use them to help my evolution as a writer and person rather than narcissisticly and ineffectively try to argue away someone’s personal feelings.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Methinks thou dost protest too much. I guess all of the boomers who fought for civil rights, who fought against the War in Vietnam can be airbrushed away.
The entire 60-70s have been co-opted by a reactionary movement. For the last commenter to say it wasn’t boomer but college students is simply sophstry–those very college students were the baby boomers.
The reforms of the Watergate era have been washed away with the willing acquiescence of non-boomers precisely because the straw man — dirty f—ing hippie–has been concocted by all of the conservative boomers as the root of all that is wrong with this country.
So I will agree partially that boomers like GWB and his Yalie compatriots and all of the titans of the business world that are boomers and all of those who for the last thirty years chose to ignore the impending energy crisis and all of those who relegate any type of environmental concerns to tree hugger anti-growth communists, all of those boomers are to blame precisely because of the entitlement they feel. It’s the cynical Bush’s and Cheneys that avoided actual service that turn around and trash veterans (whether from Vietnam, e.g. John Kerry or from more recent “wars”) who are anti war. Just think how the statements made by Eisenhower at the end of his tenure as president would be received by today’s conservative boomers. And what is worse is that we have even more radical and vehement children of these conservative boomers who have an even greater degree of entitlement and disdain for government (and yet still seem to crave the power).
At least there was a youth movement within the boomers; where have the subsequent generations been when there energy was not merely needed but necessary to counter the “Reagan revolution”. Standing by silently while Jimmie Carter (the only truly “christian” president) was being trashed, inspite of his continued public service directly affecting people of this country.
Please spare me the blame game unless you are going to be a little more nuanced than simply finding another convenient scapegoat.
This is no different than former Hillary supporter stubbornly insisting that Obama is a loser, but that there not giving him the vote will not be the reason he loses.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I posted this at Shakes, Bill, but thought I would repost it here (minus the unclosed tag):
A couple of years ago, I criticized in comments here Steve Gilliard’s minstrel depiction of Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele; in a phrase that pleased me back then but rings with irony now, I said that trading in charged words and images was “work best left to professionals.” Having failed myself a couple of times, in spectacular fashion and on this blog, has left me a little less smug about such matters.
There are lots of ways to fail at communication, and Bill discovered at least a couple of those ways today. The indictment is so broad, so dense, and made intensely personal through the use of the second-person viewpoint. The substance of Bill’s criticism isn’t changed by reading the post in third-person (They call them the Baby Boomers…), and yet that change would have gone a long way towards defusing a rhetorical hand-grenade.
As it stands, the post as a whole is made hard to read through its mounting invective; there’s no room for consideration of any one point because we’re suddenly presented with another charge. It’s frustrating because I can point to one paragraph or another and recognize criticisms I’ve made myself - but not about Boomers in particular. I have trouble thinking in terms of generations, possibly because I’m part of a rather ill-defined generational group. At any rate, I’d have to agree with others that the brush used here is much too broad.
There’s been much response to and dissection of the post, though, and I don’t really need to add to it. However, I do want to acknowledge here the aspect of writing in a space like Shakesville. It’s not just a shared space, but a particular kind; not just political or broadly cultural, but personal for just about everyone who contributes to it, personal in a way that other fora are not. I think it’s possible to forget or overlook the boundaries of such a space - and there are are boundaries, informed by the backgrounds and feelings of everyone here - and you only remember that when you run headlong into them…which is pretty much happened today.
After my last blogging train wreck, I ran across a post that provided timely succor:
“Failure doesn’t stop me from blogging. In fact, I prefer the failure of a blog post to the failure of a newspaper column. Back when I was a columnist and reporter, I had to wait days to redeem myself from a crappy newspaper story, but with my blog I can atone in real time. Blogs are the most forgiving communications tools in history — they are designed to absorb defeat and encourage endless second chances.”
Days like this come and go, Bill. Read you again soon.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:08 am
There are a couple of word changes in that comment - I pasted from a saved version - but the gist is the same, I think.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am
If you didn’t mean to demonize an entire generation, then your post is a failure.
If you did mean to demonize an entire generation, then you have failed your responsibility to yourself.
Generation Kill, really?
September 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Reading this for the first time here; haven’t looked at any of the comments back at Shakesville.
My reaction: wtf?
First of all, why do assume that the boomers are all, basically, Republicans? Plenty of boomers became nurses, social workers, public school teachers, Peace Corp volunteers, and so on. Are they not “real” boomers?
As pointed out above, Obama is a boomer who draws heavily on boomer imagery (JFK, Camelot). So your point is….. ?
Boomers were an important part of the civil rights, gay rights, feminist, native american rights movements. Are you saying that the activism of the ’70s didn’t happen, didn’t matter, wasn’t done by boomers, or that the people involved don’t typify boomers?
Full disclosure: I am classic Gen-Xer, the daughter of a classic boomer (born 1949). And mom is every bit the fighty feminist, anti-war, lefty that she’s always been, thank you very much.
This piece is not very well thought out (IMHO). The us-vs-them, we’re-better-than-you, nothing-you-did-means-anything-even-though-I-am-the-beneficiary-of-your-activism mentality, by the way, is what turned me off about Obama’s campaign. Don’t much like it in this piece either.
Sorry.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Well, Bill, I guess the big lesson to learn here is that one should not ever criticize the Boomer generation. It seems there’s a one for all and all for one mentality that transcends anything else.
From my pre-Shaker days.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am
i am completely misunderstanding something in the anger over this post at shakesville.
i’ve been unpacking my knapsack for awhile now. and when i go over and read the angryblackwoman blog, i understand that when the person talks about white people, not all white people are being referred to, only those who are guilty of the things being talked about. same when men are being talked about. it doesn’t apply to every man, only the ones who do the stuff being talked about. the explanation of that was all “don’t make it about you, because if you aren’t doing it, then it’s not about you.”
why is this under seemingly different rules?
September 5th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Okay, I’m back. I just don’t get why so many young bloggers (I’ve seen similar essays several times) think it’s so cool, so 21st Century, to blame the Boomers for the evils of the world.
Short answer: Clout. Look how many Boomers there are versus how many Gen Xers there are. Not that I agree entirely with this piece, but one thing that the Boomer generation did do was make it an unshakeable article of faith that power always eventually passed from the hands of the elder generation to the next, usually when the younger generation was at its peak, because that’s exactly what happened to them. That was their “normal,” and a lot of things the Baby Boomers found “normal” became that way, one way or another. Nothing personal, just a numbers game. It’s not a slight, it’s an economic and sociopolitical fact. When you have a single cohort that’s so large it overshadows every other cohort around it (regardless of whether that cohort is based on age), it’s going to get a lot of bones thrown its way just out of sheer numerical power.
However, those of us born in the demographic nadir (the cutely named “Baby Bust”) are never going to see that happen, because the Boomers simply swing too much demographic weight for them to ever cease to be a force to be reckoned with. Also, power isn’t likely to pass effectively to us demographic-slump sorts, because by the time the Boomers thin out enough to even things out, the so-called Millennials will be all grown up, competent and professional, and waiting with their hands out, and we’ll all be over the hill.
So satire or no, I do kind of get it.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
WKW: At this current moment, my real regret is who the last line can (understandably) be viewed as eliminationist rhetoric.
And that same privilege kept me from seeing that some would view the entire piece (again, understandably) as ageist.
These strike me as not very helpful, because you are just pushing off the problem onto the people who recognize the eliminationist rhetoric and ageism in your post.
JA: i’ve been unpacking my knapsack for awhile now. and when i go over and read the angryblackwoman blog, i understand that when the person talks about white people, not all white people are being referred to, only those who are guilty of the things being talked about. same when men are being talked about. it doesn’t apply to every man, only the ones who do the stuff being talked about. the explanation of that was all “don’t make it about you, because if you aren’t doing it, then it’s not about you.”
Apples and oranges, apples and oranges.
The bloody uncomfortable truth is that none of the forms of injustice he rails against discriminates on the basis of age. NOT ONE FUCKING THING. And throughout that entire generational tantrum the ugly and bloody fact that people over the age of 50 are being hammered and victimized by governmental incompetence is brushed away with a single paragraph.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Bill –
Thanks for this post. While I think of it as intentional hyperbole, it does make an excellent, valid point about the Baby Boomers as a generation. (Like all generalizations, it isn’t universally true.) The way the Boomers seem to monopolize our cultural discourse is infuriating to me. Like some other commenters, my husband and I have had many frustrated conversations about this very topic. We even have a running joke about the never-ending Bob Dylan references on NPR. As Interrobang points out, this is probably just a sad side effect of demographic pull. But one often wishes that those Baby Boomers in power had chosen to excersise their power in a more positive way.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Like some other commenters, my husband and I have had many frustrated conversations about this very topic. We even have a running joke about the never-ending Bob Dylan references on NPR.
You know, it’s something like this that demonstrates to me how pathetically, vain, shallow, and privileged this whole discussion is. Bob Dylan? Is this some kind of a fucking joke? Bob fucking Dylan? I wish my generational issues were as fucking trivial as what gets played on the radio.
Instead, I’m coming to grips with the fact that my mother is facing multiple disabilities, unemployment, and a live savings invested in a house that’s now underwater. I’m looking at the probability that her health care system is going to be my spare bedroom. I’m wondering how my eldest uncle is going to live when his father dies because I’m running out of spare bedrooms.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Great post. I too have thought about these issues. And I thought your acknowledgement that those in the Boomer generation who do not have a sense of entitlement have been overwhelmed by those who do was spot on.
I don’t think JA was comparing apples and oranges because WKW is only talking to those Boomers who do have that ‘me first’ mentality. And it has been a generational thing - it’s not hard and fast and there’s plenty of Xers who’ve jumped on that train as well as pre-Boomers who started the ball rolling.
I really don’t get the ageism charge because it is not the Boomers’ age that has created the current problems, but the cultural beliefs common to many of that generation. Finally, I don’t think those cultural beliefs are split on Repub/Dem lines: they seem more to be core values about the naturalness of human dominance, which exist not only in the US but in most of the Western World.
I really enjoyed this post - thought-provoking.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
WKW: Found the thread @ Shakesville, followed the link here, & felt the need to offer my $.02 to the discussion.
First of all, you are one hell of a writer — in addition to having a masterful command of the language, your willingness to ruffle the occasional feather (and do so in such a skillful, literary manner) makes your posts must-read destinations on my daily lap ’round the internets.
But enough about you
If those who comment on your pieces had 1/2 the grace, humility, & open-mindedness that you do, the blogosphere would be a much more enjoyable & enlightened place to be. The dignity with which you comport yourself during the inevitable shitstorms that follow some of your more “provocative” writings should be required reading for all who hope to write about topics of significance (especially online).
As we all know, it’s supremely easy to “narrowcast” on the ‘net — that is, find a receptive audience & “feed the beast” with rehashed platitudes that reinforce the superiority of all who congregate ’round your writings. You, on the other hand, have the audacity to put into words those uncomfortable thoughts that so many of us have but so few are willing to admit. Your acknowledgements of your — and, by extension, our — shortcomings & failures — may be commercially risky, but it is the stuff of greatness.
I hope your weekend ends up being much better than it began, & I can’t wait to read your next post.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I don’t think JA was comparing apples and oranges because WKW is only talking to those Boomers who do have that ‘me first’ mentality. And it has been a generational thing - it’s not hard and fast and there’s plenty of Xers who’ve jumped on that train as well as pre-Boomers who started the ball rolling.
But he didn’t make the distinction clear and if that’s who he meant, he needed to have said so. Second, if it’s not hard and fast, why make the argument in that false, shaky place when the argument against entitlement and privilege is a stronger one?
I think Rana said this back on the Shakes thread, just because something feels good doesn’t make it right.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Wow! I was born in 1953 to a union family that idealized FDR. If the Boomers are being followed by a generation that thinks society and politics are driven by age groups rather than class, racism, and sexism we really did fail.
Personally, I was amazed at how much the generation that came after me bought into Reagan fantasy.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
ms pointsetta: I don’t think JA was comparing apples and oranges because WKW is only talking to those Boomers who do have that ‘me first’ mentality. And it has been a generational thing - it’s not hard and fast and there’s plenty of Xers who’ve jumped on that train as well as pre-Boomers who started the ball rolling.
Bullshit. The myth of generational cohorts as having a unified ideology and politic is inherently racist, sexist, and classist lie. It should be fucking obvious to any leftist with a lick of common sense given that this mythical representative boomer is invariably white, male, and middle-upper class. Those who invoke this myth are guilty not only of ageism, but blind racism, sexism and classism as well.
Is it not the job of liberals, progressives, leftists to shine a critical eye on such bullshit rather than parroting it and serve it with a dollop of eliminationist rhetoric on the side?
September 5th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
It’s been hours of thinking about this post. I’m grateful that I had something to think about that has no real answer, so far. WKW spoke truth to power. Pity he insulted those who are powerless, or feel powerless, at the same time.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Ronald Reagan, before him Barry Goldwater. The war criminals Nixon and Kissinger. McCarthy. Jesse Helms. Strom Thurmond. George Wallace.
I am in my 50s, and these people are about the same age as my parents. The heights that that generation lifted the country to? After WW2? My Lai? The Bay of Pigs? The secret wars in Central America? Cambodia? Laos? Maybe you don’t remember stagflation in the 1970s brought on by Nixonian economic policies? Maybe you didn’t count the number of women doctors and lawyers in 1965 compared to now? Maybe you have forgotten how even liberal people thought about gay people in the 1960s? The murders of MLK, JFK and RFK?
Time is a continuum, and definitions of generations are arbitrary, and the seeds for the present all lie in the past.
This post is utter bullshit.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Good column, but I don’t think you can pin it on a generation. Every generation has its share of assholes.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
RedEmma Says:
“But one often wishes that those Baby Boomers in power had chosen to excersise their power in a more positive way.”
Remove the words “Baby Boomer” from that sentence and you’re talking.
Those in power have nothing to do with any but the tiniest percentage of Baby Boomers, but everything to do with those in power who came before and after them.
We happened to get very lucky with FDR. That’s not an everyday thing - not then, and not since.
When I got onto the internet in ‘94 I was shocked at what I found there - a lot of people who were not Boomers, and who were steeped in libertarian mythology. They existed in a fantasyland where it was unnecessary to support the ACLU and to fight for our civil liberties because technology had now solved all of those problems. They believed racism no longer existed. They were completely unconcerned by the threat of a corporatocracy/oligarchy taking control of our lives. They apparently believed Reagan was a hero for freeing “business” from the constraints of concern for communities, countries, workers. They believed that when Boomers talked about these things they were living in the past.
Richard Mellon Scaife was born in 1932. Andrew Sullivan was born in 1963. Neither of them are, or represent, anything that I would recognize as a part of Boomer ideology or psychology. Yet they have had considerably more to do with what you think Boomers “created” than any Boomer I have ever personally known.
(Boomers I actually know would include people like Nadine Strossen and Susie Bright. See the difference?)
Of course, I don’t actually know people like George Walker Bush, nor do any of the many Boomers I know. Wait, I tell a lie - I have a friend who once dated Robert Bork’s son, briefly, in college - but she reckoned he was an asshole. But people like Bush associate with other people who are like them, in every age group. I know sure as hell that Monica Goodling certainly isn’t part of mine. And I doubt that any of the kids I went to ordinary American public schools with would have been dumb enough to think they “took an oath to the president”.
If you went by the bright young things who have been hired by the Bush administration, you’d have to think theirs is Generation Kill. Or at least Generation Shit-Stupid.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
We didn’t start the fire/It was always burning since the world’s been turning/
We didn’t start the fire/No, we didn’t light it but we tried to fight it/
I always think of that song when I see anti-Generation [blank] screeds. The story I heard was, Billy Joel wrote that song after his kids told him it was his fault the world was so screwed up. I used to have all the lyrics memorized- to remind myself that this country has been f*ed up for a long, long time. Since before its founding, even.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Gee, I can’t wait for your next analyses. Here are some titles for your consideration:
Stupid, Inferior Women
Why Black People Ruin Everything
Mexicans are Lazy
Those CHeating Chinese
Is any stupid, inane stereotype really worthy of being taken seriously — even if it is written with all the fervor of a highly educated concern troll? You lumped millions of people who just happened to have been born during a couple of decades into your big, convenient theory. I guess the same reasoning worked for Hitler. And he was a contemporary of those Greatest Generation people! I think I’m beginning to get it!
Maybe it’s just me — I mean, I was born in 1964 which means I’m on the tail end of your scumbag generation. I’ll sign off and go back to ruining the world now. (I borrowed some of Generation X’s notorious sarcasm to write this post. Look at that — I’m stealing from you again!!!)
Please rethink this whole thing. Honestly, I know you’re a decent guy and much smarter than this post would have people believe. I’ve really enjoyed your satirical writing but for the love of christ (oops, WE KILLED HIM! AGHHHHH!) stop being such a hectoring, self-important jackass.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
“You turn a blind eye and even have outright hatred for those that capitalism has left behind.”
So that’s why all the other boomers hate me! Capitalism HAS left me behind! Somehow during the last 30 years, I became a poor person, and I noticed that people my own age have started to avoid me.
I am glad you wrote this, because I know now I have not been doing a good job as a “boomer”. Because of your essay, I now know the rules. No one ever explained it to me before. Or I was absent that day.
“But they were overwhelmed by peers that appeared to have made the conscious decision to destroy anything and everything that made the U.S. the envy of the globe.”
I think that there were a few years when we had a form of democracy, and maybe that is what you think people envied. You are right about democracy being destroyed. But I don’t know if the rest of the world really values democracy anymore. I think they envy our jeans.
“The planet and the nation’s resources have been nothing more to you than sources of profit and ease”
So boomers are not expected to recycle? Cool! And I can I replace my old Toyota with an SUV? And my husband can quit riding his bike to work? These boomer rules are great, and will save me a lot of time. And won’t I look awesome in an SUV?
“And still you demand even more tax cuts.”
I didn’t know that as a boomer I should have been asking for tax cuts.
I have been voting for tax increases to pay for public transportation, school bonds, better health care and senior citizen support.
And I gotta quit going to those anti-war rallies! I noticed that all the people there were under 40, but I didn’t understand that boomers were not expected to attend. I didn’t know that boomers are “are proud in the most perverted of ways of the death and suffering (you’ve) wrought.”
******************************
OK, satire aside, as a person who believes that the only way any of us will ever make progress is to “Push the discussion”, I loved this essay.
When I began to read the piece, I thought it was satire. Then I realized that it might not be satire. By the end, I thought it was satire again.
I am coming down on the side of satire. But it is still hard to take, and parts of it are not perfect. Writers strive for perfection at all times, and manage it some of the time. But not always, and we have to keep writing and trying harder, despite our failures.
I thought this part was perfect :
“you are hell bent on making the United States of America into the exact replica of the tyrants they so bravely fought.”
I do feel that the tyrants are prevailing here in the US. What has happened to journalists in the last week has frightened me more then anything else that has happened in this awful but historical year.
As the first amendment has been overturned repeatedly by forces of the government in St. Paul, all anyone has talked about is the “Hockey Mom”.
Why does no one care about the journalists and peace marchers who were oppressed at the RNC? It didn’t even make the national TV news. You would think that the MSM would care about their own. Who will speak out about the hundreds of people whose civil rights were violated this week? Where is the outrage?
And I agree that the religious right has made it almost impossible for Christians to act like Christians, that is, to be a compassionate person.
(My favorite moment of 20 years of Simpsons episodes was when Maude Flanders, the wife of the minister, went to a Christian camp to “learn to be more judgemental”).
I say that any essay that forces people to think and discuss (fight?) gets an A+. And people ARE thinking about this essay.
Thanks for writing this.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Wow, I thought the most depressing thing I’d seen today was when I went to Zazzle.com and typed “Liberal” into the search box for t-shirts and came up with mostly vile hate-spewing conservative republican crap. And then I wander around the internet universe & come across Shakesville which leads me to here and, at first, I’m just speechless - did I come across another one of those fascist right-wing radical insano blogs again? Evidently no but Cheezus H., I gotta wonder…what the hell did your parents do to you - burn you with cigarettes or what? And…what generation are you from then…the one we boomers spawned that can barely understand political campaigns done in crayon? Read a history book boy. The first “boomer” we’ve had as chief was Clinton - whose hands were tied most of the time by a Repug (and, mostly “Greatest Generation”) Congress. I have been fighting for humanist values for most of my 53 years - and, thru the 80’s & 90’s a lot of the people (voters) I had to fight against were like the Young Republicans - with their Fuck everybody else - I’m gonna get mine attitudes…people, it appears, about your age, Sonny Boy.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I’m just not getting this charge of ageism in this (and now racism, classism, sexism, and istism and ismist whatever else).
Any -ism is about the powerful majority discriminating against the less powerful minority. Are we really arguing that Baby Boomers are a less powerful minority in the US?
Also, ageism refers to discrimination against older folks, as in when my grandfather couldn’t find a job at 55 yrs old b/c no one wanted to pay him for his experience, deal with health issues common to 50+ yr olds and get only 10 yrs of work out of him. That’s ageism.
This? This is criticizing a powerful majority in our society. Oh, and as for classist, racist and sexist, it is because the experience of Baby Boomers was/is classist, racist and sexist. Powerful majority, remember? Besides, age changes unlike those other things. The class you are born into is the class you are going to be statistically speaking. The race you are born is the race you will die a member of. The gender you are born is the gender you will have for a lifetime.* But age? Age changes. One can’t get younger but with any luck, we’ll ALL get older. And we’ll all do so in step with the same group of people who remember the things we do, experienced the same events we did.
Now, that’s insulting and intellectually dishonest. My mother is facing multiple disabilities. As a matter of fact, my sister has been supporting her for 10 yrs. My grandfather is being bilked by my uncle of every penny he has left and my father and stepmother have placed conditions on when and how he can leave there and come to live with them and the man’s not even here and they’re already bitching about how much money it’ll cost. I have a 16 yr old and a 7yr old for whom I can barely scrape together school supply money and I’m looking at having to have my grandfather move in with me b/c my parents’ selfishness will kill my grandfather before he should be gone. Oh! Not to mention that my parents themselves haven’t saved an effing dime for THEIR retirement so when the inevitable happens, I’ll be supporting their sorry butts too. So, yeah, hearing Bob Dylan on the radio as a backdrop to all the self-congratulatory back patting about what a great and selfless generation the Baby Boomers are/were (99% of the time a Baby Boomer saying it) makes me twitch a bit, too.
Oh, and they vote Republican and tout the “why won’t the family take care of these people instead of using my tax money?” crap. The hypocrisy infuriates me.
So I wish my generational issues were only TWO generation’s worth instead of 4.
*I believe that trans folks are born the gender they identify as; intersex folks are intersex at birth. Gender, like sexuality, isn’t a dichotomy, it’s a continuum.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
find me any generation in the history of the world where the majority of its members have been selfless and kind and decent, and only a tiny minority have been greedy and short-sighted and xenophobic
How about you take charge of shutting down the self-congratulatory rhetoric and back-patting about how utterly transformational the Largest Generation has been to every institution in our society, and then those of us who are stuck with the bills will waive our right to complain?
I will never see a Social Security check with my name on it; Medicare is not going to care for me; my kid is going to have to be able to manage numerous economic and environmental problems that were caused by her grandparents inheriting the most stable and open economy in the history of humanity only to piss away that inheritance voting for Republican asshats who told them to resent taxes.
Yes, some of us whose kids will live to pay the piper are damn bitter. Not wrong, as such, but bitter. It would be a bit easier to tolerate all the problems we’re facing without the exhausting self-congratulatory praise for the Boomer generation, dished out with the obligatory Dylan backdrop.
Thanks, Bill. It needed to be said.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Don’t trust any of yiz…
Pre-boomer Grandma
September 5th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Know what else the Evil Boomers have done, Bill? They’ve made tremendous strides in cancer treatments. Tons of research, new drugs, new approaches.
Assholes. They really suck, don’t they?
September 5th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
No, because people aren’t taking into account that it was Bill Wolfrum, who excels in subtlety and satire, that wrote it.
Bill’s pretty clear that it wasn’t satire. Read his comments.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Know what else the Evil Boomers have done, Bill? They’ve made tremendous strides in cancer treatments. Tons of research, new drugs, new approaches.
Given the amount of carcinogenic chemical compounds they’ve unleashed on the public during their “Better Living Through Chemistry” phase, their complicity in keeping the full health effects of tobacco out of the public eye, and their pushing to make the US a car culture, they ought to be pretty motivated to cure cancer.
Still, most of the new drugs and treatments are coming out of labs headed by Gen Jonesers and Xers these days, and Generation Y is starting to take over most of the actual research, damn kids.
Thanks for chemo, though, Boomers. It’s swell.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Whatever else is wrong with the post, and I think there’s plenty, even while I admire it in many respect, it’s silly to label it ageist. Ageism is discrimination or prejudice against individuals or groups on the basis of age. The post doesn’t attack anyone on the basis of age; it attacks a generation for its alleged failings, failings which are not tied to age but to behavior. The only role age plays in the discussion is that it functions to identify the persons attacked: it marks out the class of persons the author believes deserves attack, but age is not the basis of the attack.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I said: find me any generation in the history of the world where the majority of its members have been selfless and kind and decent, and only a tiny minority have been greedy and short-sighted and xenophobic
and PhoenixRising said: How about you take charge of shutting down the self-congratulatory rhetoric and back-patting about how utterly transformational the Largest Generation has been to every institution in our society, and then those of us who are stuck with the bills will waive our right to complain?
————-
Please PR, explain to me where in the paragraph you pulled to quote, or indeed in anything I posted here (or indeed in ANYTHING I’ve ever written on the ‘net or in print) where the self-congratulatory rhetoric is.
And after that, explain to me how I, born in 1961, don’t pay the same fucking bills you do? Did the year of my birth pay my mortgage for me? Have I been exempted from having Social Security taxes taken from my paycheck? Is my retirement more secured because of some magic trick involving the year of my birth? What are you paying that I am not?
You are bitter at a 38 year span of demographic, and choose my post to quote to spew your bitterness at, but I do not understand what you are so bitter about that affects you and not me.
Indeed, what you quoted me saying, above, is that EVERY generation in human history has mostly fucked up. The “greatest generation” spawned Hitler as well as the brave men & women who fought him (sorry for violating Godwin’s Law, but it’s the perfect equal-and-opposite to the Greatest Generation trope). There was, I dunno, an Inquisition during the “Age of Enlightenment.”
Every generation in history has both done wonderful things and fucked the world royally. Every. And to write this screed or to agree with it is both mean-spirited and a massive failure to understand history.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Maybe I should shoot myself. Because, ya know, the fucking generations before me did such a good job. I guess my great grandad, fighting the great Boar war, for queen and country and all that, really knew what it was all about.
They really knew how to take care of business. At least they didn’t have to listen to the loud rock and roll. But, hey, It’s the fucking boomer generation that’s the root of all evil.
September 6th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Bill: I always thought many of your posts are Mark Twain-ish (inventing words here), in attitude, if not in style. This one is a good example of later Twain.
September 6th, 2008 at 3:30 am
I posted this at Shakesville and wanted to crosspost it here - Bill
So, what I’d like to know is why he posted this in the first place, we still never got a good explanation.
I left a couple comments on this thread and at my place, but no one engaged me so I just read the comments and thought about them. And I’m not saying that in a “hurrumph” kind of way at all, I just figured I’d wait until asked and take the time to reflect.
As to the why: One of the things I use as a writing device is use intentional hyperbole. I did it here in a post called “We the People are murderers” in which I put accountability on all Americans for the U.S. becoming a rogue aggressor. I understood that there are millions and millions of Americans that have over the years fought against that, but that we are where we are.
In other instances, I included all Americans when I asked “Who are We?” in regard to the U.S. becoming de-enlightened on abortion issues. I wrote that Americans need to apologize to the military for using them so uncaringly and then treating Veterans with disrespect. I didn’t differentiate between those that have legitimate distrust about their government and a fear-profiteer like Alex Jones.
What I tend to do anyway as a writer is to not put all the cards on the table, and allow them to be turned over by the reader or via discussion. I understand there’s a danger to that and will usually use at least some type of qualifier or try and leave obvious hints. In the piece above I used a qualifier, and intentionally started my list of rants with the tax thing thinking that it would set the tone for whom I was referring.
I understand that this type of writing device can be cheap and/or hit or miss. But one of my views is that we are defined by the ruling class and generally in very stark terms. Reality may have a liberal bias, but history has an extremely conservative one. In the end we will all be generalized into a monolithic group with future generations wondering what the hell was wrong with us. One would hope, however, that a few more Howard Zinn’s show up to tell the stories of the vast majority of the American public, rather than the story of the patriarchy that controls the nation’s policy and reputation.
Finally, and most importantly to me is to address the ageism that many took away from the post. This was by no means my intention, but I don’t let others get away with using intention as an excuse, so I don’t allow myself. I think it’s quite accurate to say that my own privilege kept me from hearing the alarm bells that should have been going off, especially as far as the last line is concerned. I easily see the reasoning for calling ageism. I have no excuse and apologize for that.
All I can really offer is that it is something I understand, take seriously and will digest. I have written, thought or communicated things in the past that have screamed sexism, racism, ageism, and homophobia, among other things. I do my best not to be hypocritical, so I take no issue with being honestly called on anything that smacks of discrimination. I feel the claims of ageism are fair and not something I wish to try and explain away, but rather honestly look at my own attitudes and belief system and try and truly digest.
I agree and support Melissa’s decision to remove the post from Shakesville. That she left a link lays waste to any claims of censorship or “banning.” She has never once told me what to write or not write on this blog. She is my friend and ally, and upon reflection, I agree completely with her above note (except the asshole part).
I do thank those above, at my thread, and in e-mails that have been supportive of me whether they agreed or not with what I posted. I understand I can often come off as impersonal, but a situation like this does leave me with a fairly condensed ball in the pit of my stomach. I never strive to offend, and feel very bad when I do. So I thank those who responded to that.
Thanks for letting me express my thoughts on this after some reflection. If anyone has any question they’d like to ask whether her or via EM, I’ll do my best to answer as honestly as I can.
Bill
September 6th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Interesting.
So some took this to be a swipe at ‘all’ members of the baby boom generation and not at the the general trend of American history and policy brought about under their watch?
And it seems that some would put all the blame on the privileged members of the baby boom generation who had disproportionate influence on American culture and government policy?
Yet, the previous generation as a whole typically gets credit for escaping the depression and victory in WW2.
Personally, I mostly agree with your sentiment that something drastic changed between my grandparent’s generation and my parent’s generation. And whatever exactly that change was has been doubled by my generation.
September 6th, 2008 at 5:47 am
The post doesn’t attack anyone on the basis of age; it attacks a generation
Hmmm. “Generation” is defined by “age.”
So some took this to be a swipe at ‘all’ members of the baby boom generation and not at the the general trend of American history and policy brought about under their watch?
Because that’s not what the post said. The post said “You, you, you, you, YOU, you, you.”
Re: the “thanks for the chemo” comment, whichever asshole said it: Since about a dozen of my friends who would have DIED 20 years ago are now alive because of advances made in treating cancer: fuck you.
September 6th, 2008 at 7:40 am
If you substituted “Republican” for “baby boomer” this post might make sense. I don’t see any point at all in pointing this vitriol at everyone born in a nearly 40-year span.
By the way, I wasn’t born until 1977. But I’m offended on behalf of my parents and so many others of this generation who have never voted for a Republican in their lives, nor fit anything remotely resembling a “yuppie”. Personally, I have take far more issue with many people of “the greatest generation” who spew racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks.
Anyway, it is many of the people born prior to the Baby Boom (e.g., Dick Cheney and his crowd) that are actually responsible for problems and attitudes you describe.
September 6th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Sorry, I meant 20 year span.
September 6th, 2008 at 7:47 am
> Because that’s not what the post said. The post said “You, you, you, you, YOU, you, you.”
Yes, but this is an artsy fartsy fancy writing way of saying something else.
Saying ‘you’ is not meant as ‘you’ plural, but rather a personification of what has transpired in our country since the baby boomers came of age.
Or at least that’s how I read it.
Anyway, Bill can get ‘out there’ sometimes, and I can see where it could offend some, but shit, we need to be offended occasionally, it challenges the way we look at stuff.
I don’t agree with Bill on everything myself. I am a southern baptist (being born again is great, and a lot less messy than the first time) and have a little social conservatism in my bag of tricks (it’s a wonderful bag, with a leather strap and a pocket book).
But even when I don’t agree with him I just take his opinion for what it’s worth and click on some of his adsense adverts. (But only when it is something I am genuinely interested in. *cough*)
September 6th, 2008 at 7:55 am
click on some of his adsense adverts.
I had a hunch that was you.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Dear Bill,
I first read this at Shakesville, but was at work, so didn’t have time to comment. By the time I did have time to comment, the post had been
removed and there were 300 comments on the thread.
I’m a 1968 baby, so early end of Gen X. I felt winded after reading your post, but thought, “Ok, I’ll leave it to percolate.” My second thought was that it was well-written and very powerful. My third - after quite a while - was, “Ok, Irim, this is Bill, and he’s not a tosser, so he’s not being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. Is he angry? Being provocative? What does he need our help to think through?”
I could feel the frustration (and heartache, as one perceptive Shaker said) turned to anger through it. When ahazydelirium said, “while it’s foolish to make generalizations based on arbitrarily constructed generations, it is possible to discern within those constructs dominant cultural trends that affect many people across class, gender, age and status,” I thought, “That’s it, that’s what Bill was referring to.”
A few things:
1. We all stand on the shoulders of those before us and within the milieu we’re born into - our choices only have degrees of freedom, not complete freedom. Your post seemed to treat the Baby Boomers as if they had been born into a vacuum, not quite attached to those who came before them, after them or to the culture they were born into: a culture with a lot of promise, but also segregated and stultifying in many ways.
2. In the last century, the pace of change has accelerated - think of how 15 years ago, CERN was probably the only place that had something resembling the internet. That means that people are often REacting, rather than acting, and I suspect the baby boomers were the first generation to really have to deal with that (and think of all the things they’ve contributed). We’re light-years behind when it comes to grappling with issue thrown up by recent technology/changes because thinking things through takes *time*. That’s not anyone’s fault. This will be a simplistic example, but think of cleaning out your room and the stage where it’s all chaos before there’s order again. I suspect a number of systems work like that.
3. I suspect you might agree with me that the real decline came with Reagan and Thatcher (her infamous quote, “There is no society, just an aggregate of individuals” expresses the 80s theme of selfishness perfectly). Born 1911 and 1925, respectively.
Having said that, I really appreciated being challenged - but it was easier for me to step back, since I’m not a Baby Boomer, and I can understand why others were hurt and offended. I just wish they’d been able to stop and say, “Wait, this is Bill, he wouldn’t mean to hurt me.”
[I understand I can often come off as impersonal, but a situation like this does leave me with a fairly condensed ball in the pit of my stomach. I never strive to offend, and feel very bad when I do.]
((((Bill))))
You strike me as someone who might come across as impersonal because you care so much? You’re a wonderful writer with huge passion and loads of integrity. If we’re ever in the same neck of the woods, I’d love to have a drink with you at a real pub.
Irim xx
September 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Pants, seeing tinfoil hattie’s post, I remember what I wanted to add from her post over at Shakesville:
[Bill, I would say the huge difference between this post and your others that employ unintentional hyperbole is “we” vs. “you.”]
THAT is very perceptive and definitely worth bearing in mind for future posts. Qualifiers can make a world of difference. xx
September 6th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I’m arguing that “Baby Boomers” are just another rhetorical big lie created primarily to promote the myth of a generational consensus. And that lie should be challenged whenever it is invoked.
Is it really? The statistical reality is that a majority of that group is the target of at least one form of oppression within American culture. So exactly who is that powerful majority that you speak of? Is it women over the age of 50? Ethnic minorities over the age of 50? People living at or below the poverty line over the age of 50? Homeless over the age of 50?
Um, hello? Who is creating that mythology and for what end?
That’s really the problem here. People are repeating the propaganda and not bothering to really take a hard LOOK at it, and wonder whether the almost exclusive white, upper-middle class, masculine and heterosexual myth of the Baby Boomer who changed the world really matches the socio-economic reality?
And insulting? Well tough. The shallow pettiness of people who complain about Dylan and structure their critiques around ignorant parroting of generational propaganda should be mocked until they figure out that the problems of SES, racism and gender do not have generational barriers or markers.
Well, the backpatting may be a bit extreme. But the activists who came before me DID make some huge transformations in our society. The state of queer rights and feminism is the way it is because of activists who pushed for changes in law and employment practice. Criticisms of malfeasance by the Bush Administration are direct descendants of Watergate and Iran-Contra.
But, do you buy the claim that Coke is “The Real Thing,” or that Nike shoes will improve your athletic performance? Or perhaps most importantly, do you buy the notion that “Leave it to Beaver” really reflected family life in the 50s?
These generational myths are marketing. And while those marketing efforts may appropriate nice and safe aspects of environmentalism, feminism, queer liberation, and economic justice, they exist to support the status quo.
But a critical look at these myths should demonstrate that they are transparent myths. A majority of people over the age of 55 are the target of at least one form of oppression, and millions are the target of multiple oppressions. A significant plurality of Americans opposed WWII before Pearl Harbor. High Fidelity, a film where three white guys talk about music, isn’t representative of a multi-ethnic Generation X.
September 6th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Dear William:
I am 53 years old. I am a baby boomer. I have been fighting the progressive battle since I was thirteen years old, stuffing envelopes and running the mimeograph machine in my solidly Republican town to get a progressive Democrat elected to Congress. And may I request of you, with all due respect, that you f— yourself.
Nice progressive you are, William, tarring an entire group — in this case a generation — with the same brush. Would you write a post like this about women, or about black people, or about immigrants? No, because it would be antithetical to the progressive notion of treating people like individuals. So what the hell makes you think it’s OK to treat baby boomers as if we were all George W. Bush clones?
I read the other blog for which you write, and I see a bunch of women spitting on the fight that women like me have waged for thirty years to keep a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body; to keep her from being treated as an empty vessel. They are spitting on us because they’re angry because a woman — a baby boomer woman, I might add — didn’t get the nomination. And now you have the fucking nerve to write a bile-filled screed that would be anathema to the notion of being a progressive blogger if it were written about any other group.
You know what? I’m out of work. I’m 53 and trying to find a job. I know you think I should just go away and fucking die, but I’m not going to. I’m going to live just to spite people like you. But I’ll tell you this much: I’m not fighting your battles any more while you call yourself a fucking progressive and resort to tarring members of a group with the same brush. To the extent that I continue to fight the good fight, it’s for the children of my friends, who are going to have to live in the world we’re going to get under McCain/Palin because a bunch of spoiled brats didn’t get the nominee they wanted.
I’ve linked to your posts in the past, but no more. Because you, sir, have just proven that you are as much a bigot and an asshole as anyone on the right.
Good day, sir.
September 6th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
because a bunch of spoiled brats didn’t get the nominee they wanted.
Oh, teh irony … it burrrrnnnnnnssss!
you, [ma’am], have just proven that you are as much a bigot and an asshole as anyone on the right.
September 7th, 2008 at 3:39 am
I read the other blog for which you write, and I see a bunch of women spitting on the fight that women like me have waged for thirty years to keep a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body; to keep her from being treated as an empty vessel. They are spitting on us because they’re angry because a woman — a baby boomer woman, I might add — didn’t get the nomination.
Erm, Jill, I don’t know any blog that fights as hard for women’s - well, everyone’s - rights as hard as Shakesville does. And it is unquestionably pro-choice. Yes, people may be upset that Hilary didn’t win the nomination, but that’s making them fight harder.
write a bile-filled screed
And your response was what, exactly? It doesn’t exactly display the tolerance you claim to have. So, does one post erase a world of good? Did you even READ Bill’s letter upthread?
Being an activist and having to fight uphill battles doesn’t give you the right to lash out at everyone. By all means, be angry, but be civil, thoughtful and stop to listen. And yes, even if you think someone attacked you directly. If everyone keeps escalating, how will it all end?
You had every right to be upset with the post, no one is arguing that. But your extreme reaction indicates that this isn’t all about Bill or this post, though it clearly lit the fuse. With all due respect, maybe a lot of that rage needs to be taken to the places/people it belongs to.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:25 am
[…] September 7, 2008 Posted by casualt in No-Cat. trackback Like, wow man, that’s some boomer hating. When I hate on boomers it’s not for who orwhat they are. Everyone is what they is. It’s just there’s so damn many of them and they’ll all live as long as Noah. And just to be clear: it was basically the swift boat attacks that got me feeling this way, and now the endless recycling of themes from Vietnam. It seems we’re doomed to focus our elections on Vietnam until 2072. […]
September 7th, 2008 at 11:48 am
You know, I’ve had a little more time to examine my reaction to this post, and I hope I can be articulate enough to make some sense out of my thoughts.
I think there are at least two different levels on which this post has struck a chord for me: the level of policy decisions, and the level of cultural discourse. Judging from other comments, this has been true for many others, too. And I think a lot of the anger that has come out of this has been because of a conflation of the two.
I was born in 1976, and I have quite a bit of anger in me about having always lived in a culture that was defined by the concerns of the Baby Boom generation. Objectively, this is simply because people in my generation are outnumbered. But it’s really frustrating to feel that no matter what your age or accomplishments, you’ll always be relegated to the kids’ table. Sometimes I think that my generation’s concerns will never be considered “serious” or “important.” Whereas everything the Boomers ever did — OMG Vietnam! OMG retirement! — was hailed as a major cultural shift.
So I think a lot of the X-er’s — me included — who responded positively to this post were really feeling that. AND I think that a lot of the Boomers who responded negatively were feeling their privilege being questioned — “What do you mean our generation is self-centered?! How dare you?!” (Yes, I really do think that a lot of Boomers have an unexamined privilege in this regard. Not every single Boomer on the planet. Obviously.)
But one of the things that made this post really inflammatory was the conflation of political leadership with an entire generation — a generation whose demographic weight helped put those leaders in power. I know, Bill, you said above that you were using this as a rhetorical device. And clearly it’s a powerful one, based on the reactions you got.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that those of us who had hot, angry reactions to this post (one way or the other) were letting our feelings about cultural narratives overwhelm our rational thoughts about political realities. Which, given the style in which the post was written, isn’t surprising.
In spite of all this, I still think that you had a valid point to make, Bill. I hope that those whose emotions were aroused, like me, can still see the larger trend you were trying to point out. Please don’t give up on trying to express it.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Thank you very much for that, RedEmma. Watching the GOP convention and how it rested on one main theme - no one should ever pay taxes ever, for any reason - was really the impetus for it, and to me I associated it with the Reagan, greed-is-good crowd.
The reaction really made me think about it as well, and I’m still thinking and examining my own motivations for it. Which is good.
I’m glad it made you think. And I’m especially glad it made you think something other than “Bill’s an asshole.”
September 8th, 2008 at 4:43 am
But you are an asshole…and really cute too.