Cry Baby Boomers

[Bugfatty300]

So to quickly recap the world white American boomers were born into:

Before being born their great-grandfathers and grandfathers had stood up to strike busters, private mercenaries, and national guard machine guns. For this boomers would enjoy labor unions, minimum wage, bathroom breaks, 40-hour work weeks.

At work boomers also enjoyed the protection profit-stifling safety regulations because their great-grandmothers had suffocated and burned in horrific factory fires and faced slow death and disfigurement by radioactive material, phosphorous, mercury and a host of other industrial and chemicals hazards.

Their fathers and mothers labored and fought to win the largest and mostly costly war in history making the USA a global hegemony in process. For this the boomers would grow up in a staggeringly wealthy, comparatively peaceful, nuclear armed nation of unprecedented power and influence.

Their victorious fathers and grandfathers also dismantled Europe's colonial empires, exploiting nationalist movements to install governments favorable to American economic exploitation and Banana Republicanism. Boomers thus came of age in a US Dollar-dominated globalized market making their generation the greatest hoarders of wealth humanity has ever seen.

And perhaps most relevant to today; white boomers grew up in a deeply-ingrained racist society that favored their advancement at the cost of others.

And to be fair they were unfairly thrown into defending their new empire in Vietnam but they largely even skirted out of that with a racially and wealth blind military draft (with special exemptions) and "McNamara's Morons" policy. So other than a gas crunch and being told to get hair cuts what did exactly did white straight boomers face that newer "spoiled" generations can't relate to?

And why is their such a strong bipartisan narrative among white American boomers that they are the independent stoic self-made entrepreneur generation when in reality they --collectively speaking-- had the world delivered to them on a platter?

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^^ Written without any actual understanding of what it was like to grow up as a boomer.

EDIT: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-for-a-wiki-walk.657443/page-25#post-15866181

 

[Narz]

This thread strikes me as petty, divisive & dull.

What exactly is the point of it?

 

[Narz]

 

[Farm Boy]

It'd have to be a quick recap. Which show is this again, lifestyles of the rich and famous? The Kardashians? I bet it's the butt people show. Hell, even that draft lotto only whet into effect after the draft boards ripped through the farm kids and poor kids to the point where the cities were having no more.

Spoiler 0:55 - 1:44 :

You think it's possible they only acted that way once? No. The sampling in the premise sucks, like the sampling used to disparage kids today, sucks.

 

[rah]

Yeah, when I was born they were routinely lynching black people and not a single black person lived in our suburb. If that's your idea of heaven, I feel for you.
Women stayed at home and did whatever they were told. Except for a few types of jobs they were absent from the workplace. Yes, all rainbows and sprinkles.
Medicare didn't exist.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Your family holidays must be fun.

 

[Berzerker]

I wouldn't have wanted to turn 18 in 1964

 

[stinkubus]

Obligatory.

 

[Berzerker]

an American treasure

 

[Manfred Belheim]

And to be fair they were unfairly thrown into defending their new empire in Vietnam but they largely even skirted out of that with a racially and wealth blind military draft (with special exemptions)

How do you get out of military service if the draft is race and wealth blind? Is it all about the special exemptions? If so, why is that an aside then?

 

[Gorbles]

^^^ Written without any actual understanding of what it was like to grow up as a boomer.

Except that this would be a personal account, whereas the OP is focusing on the general situation. If the general situation is wrong - if the generalised assertions in general are incorrect, then that's what we need to argue.

Inferring that you, or people you knew, or some account somewhere of a boomer growing up contradicts the general assertions isn't helpful.

rah raises some points about what US citizens have now vs. then, but again, what does "we didn't have Medicare" mean. What was healthcare like at that time, and how does it compare to now?

This thread strikes me as petty, divisive & dull.

What exactly is the point of it?

Unlike all the other threads were we end up discussing non-divisive things like "should trans people have equal rights". There's nothing against being divisive - this forum has proven that time and time again.

 

[Narz]

Except that this would be a personal account, whereas the OP is focusing on the general situation.

Lol, "all people of your race/creed/sex are @holes",
"I'm not"
"That's just a personal account"

Unlike all the other threads were we end up discussing non-divisive things like "should trans people have equal rights". There's nothing against being divisive - this forum has proven that time and time again.

Just makes you look like a troll.

Also, despite many folks opinions who I disagree with I haven't noticed many posters arguing against equal rights.

 

[amadeus]

So other than a gas crunch and being told to get hair cuts what did exactly did white straight boomers face that newer "spoiled" generations can't relate to?

Growing up and being reminded daily that waking up to this was not a remote possibility.

 

[Gorbles]

Lol, "all people of your race/creed/sex are @holes",
"I'm not"
"That's just a personal account"

If any of that was said, you might have a point. As it is, it's just made of straw.

Just makes you look like a troll.

Also, despite many folks opinions who I disagree with I haven't noticed many posters arguing against equal rights.

What you notice isn't really relevant here. Because that is, as usual, the whole argument in of itself. I was using it as an example of repeated, longform threads where people debate divisive things until the cows come home. Debate is hard to sustain unless someone, somewhere, disagrees with a specific premise. That happens a lot.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

This thread strikes me as petty, divisive & dull.

What exactly is the point of it?

That is what I also wonder.

 

[Angst]

View attachment 565254

Growing up and being reminded daily that waking up to this was not a remote possibility.

sup climate change is knocking

("someone might do this" vs "we're already doing this")

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This thread strikes me as petty, divisive & dull.

What exactly is the point of it?

Very good question. The OP's position can be summed up as "You people (born in 1964 or earlier) had a cushy life, we who were born after 1964 have a terrible life, you need to stop complaining, because nothing bad ever happened to you."

View attachment 565254

Growing up and being reminded daily that waking up to this was not a remote possibility.

Exactly. I was born near the end of the baby boomer years, but I'm old enough to remember "duck and cover" drills in school. My mother was pregnant with me during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so if that situation had escalated... and before anyone says, "But Valka, you were stuck on an acreage out in the middle of nowhere, you've told enough stories about it", not that far away from us was a CFB base, with an underground facility called the "Diefenbunker." Yeah, this area was a potential target.

Between the drills in school, the teachers telling us what to do if we heard that siren go off (nowadays we know that everything they told us to do would have been useless against a real bomb), and the WWIII/post-apocalyse stuff on the curriculum in high school English and social studies, not to mention what was on the nightly news, the '70s was a pretty depressing decade at times. It was in the early '80s that I joined a peace group. And yeah, it was a relief when things de-escalated in the late '80s.

But I have never forgotten my high school social studies teacher relating how he was in university at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and everyone was expecting World War III to start. This teacher told us that in his view, if/when we do get a third world war, it will start in or around the Middle East. There have been situations that could have escalated into that, might still, for that matter, we could be in the opening stages now and don't even realize it - no matter where it starts.

Of course I hope this doesn't happen. But growing up with the constant reminders that war has happened, war could happen any day, because of human willfulness or even by accident (ie. mistaking a flock of birds for an incoming missile and retaliating), being hammered with this in social studies classes and having a number of post-apocalypse/dystopian stories, novels, and poems on the required reading list in English... I ended up with nightmares, and an anxiety attack that had my cat so freaked out that she bit me to get me calmed down (I was 16 when this happened).

Was my life easy otherwise, then? In the '70s, yeah. That was before most of my major health issues kicked in; that didn't happen until the '80s.

If I'd been older in the '60s and '70s no doubt my perspective would have been different. But already in the late '70s I was having arguments with my grandfather over his notion that "girls aren't entitled to their own opinion until they're married, and then their opinions will be whatever their husband's opinions are." Back then he expected my opinions to match his "because I'm the boss in this house."

That's not a mindset I've noticed much in the last 20-30 years, among most people I've met. Women aren't expected to kowtow to their husbands' opinions, women can be the breadwinners of the family without anyone batting an eye (in most places), nobody looks down on women who live alone, women who work at jobs not in the 'traditional' areas of teaching, nursing, or secretarial... or at least not as much as before.

There's still a long way to go. Canada's Governor-General, Julie Payette, is close to my age, and she's had a professional life that anyone should respect. Back in the 1500s/1600s, if she were male, she'd be hailed as a "Renaissance man" - knowledgeable and skilled in a wide variety of areas and much smarter than the average person. Well, Julie Payette is what I call a "modern Renaissance woman" - engineer, pilot, musician, athlete, scientist, and astronaut who's been on the shuttle twice and the International Space Station once. Yet the right-wing contingent here dismisses her as "space cadet" and won't answer if I ask them if they'd be so dismissive if one of Canada's male astronauts (ie. Chris Hadfield) had been appointed Governor-General.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The 1960s through 2020 is a interesting weaving of four generations (Greatest, Silent, Boomer, & GenX). Their stories and contribution to the events of the day and implications for the future are are not simple. I'm thinking about how to put that into a post or two. But to begin there is this:

The Boomers (born 1946-1964) were the largest generation on record.
The leading edge (those born in 1948 as representative) turned 30 in 1978 and turned 40 in 1988; and turned 65 in 2013.
The trailing edge (born 1962) turned 30 in 1992, 40 in 2002 and are now ~58 years old.

The Greatest Generation (1910-1924) on average (born 1917) were 40 in 1957 and 65 in 1982. They created the boomers.
The Silent Generation (1925-1945) on average (born 1935) were 40 in 1975 and 65 in 2000.

Folks in their 20s and 30s are entering careers, finishing up education and building families. People enter peak earning years around 40 and at that point begin to exert more power within communities, governments and companies. As a generation reaches 65, its power and influence tend to give way to the next cohorts.

There is more, much more, but this is the structural framework of generational influence over the past 70 years.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The youth market
In the sixties, some Greatest/Silent Generation executives figured out that the upcoming, yet to be named, boomer generation, would be the not only the biggest ever, but a rich one too. The youth of America were their kids and the nation was prosperous. These kids would have money to spend. We became the targets of a huge marketing campaign to get us to buy things. That effort followed boomers for years. We were the demographic and consumers of choice for much of American industry. That demographic was mostly white and mostly middle class. Our consumer riches came from our parents who could not only give to us generously, but they also spent generously. Economic growth in the US grew faster than the population and that put money in everyone's pocket.

Culture changes
Building on the racial unrest of the fifties and early sixties in which middle class silent generation young people participated in civil rights actions, we learned that social action not only worked, we could participate. The war in Vietnam, racial changes in the civil rights act and integration, and the social messaging found in folk music opened the door for the cultural shift of the late sixties. And that change was huge: music became front and center as a means to influence change, drugs entered the picture for the middle class, feminism went mainstream, racial inclusivity was practiced at a social level, all across the national spectrum. Experimentation was the word of the day among those leading edge boomers. All of the issues that have been fought over in the past 40 years were set out on the table in the late 60s and early 70s: race, LBG, feminism, abortion, war (foreign policy), drugs, capitalism, income inequality, media, family, religion. The fire of and energy of empowered youth drove the forces for change. In many ways because of TV, music (radio) and magazine segmentation, people's focus shifted from regional and local to more national. Folks in the east paid attention to what was happening in the Midwest and west and vice versa. In 1968 I remember reading an article in Life Magazine about the only hippy in some small Pennsylvania town (I think it was Shippensburg). Change was coming there and it started with one person. For a decade the leading edge of the boomers lived in a world (their world) in which they had integrated solutions to all of those issues or were working to solve them.

The upheaval was huge and fed itself for a decade. Our parents were pretty sure it as just a passing fad.

more to come