“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices  to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own – for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.”     Rod Serling

I am reminded of this quote from the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” as I have watched the division between what some call “the boomer generation” and the young being promoted by those with agendas of their own, or by those whose frustrations and anger are fueled by not understanding why the world is in a period of confusion and discontent. But the reasons that are caused this confusion and discontent have less to do with generations than with poor leadership, deliberate mismanagement and the question ‘QUI BONO’? (or cui bono, if you prefer)

I hope the time will come when I no longer have to keep explaining this, but for those who have not grasped this yet:

1) The “boomers” were in two waves: those born between 1946 to 1950 and those born from 1950-1964. That sounds like a strange cut-off, but this is because the government used 1950 as a “cut-off” date when dealing with Social Security. This means boomers can be anywhere from 75 to 57 years old.

2) The boomers grew up when many of their parents and grandparents were just starting to enjoy a beginning of relative prosperity, through a number of government programs (some irony here, more on that later) such as the New Deal and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act (which closed in 1957) and Social Security Act, the establishment of a minimum wage, the GI Bill and so on, that created the middle class, from building a vast highway system to infrastructure development (like dams, etc), to food programs, and so on.
These grandparents and parents had endured great poverty- and many continued to do so- the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, two world wars, some had had everything taken from them and been put in internment camps in the US, many had grown up hard scrabble, veterans had had to march on the capitol to get their promised bonuses; the Tariff Act increased the length of the Depression, tent cities were all over the nation…government programs helped pull these people up. The irony is that some of these same people then become instrumental in the demolishment and reduction in federal programs that had benefited them, while sending many of their own children and grandchildren back into a more hard scrabble life, beginning with their election of Ronald Reagan in 1979.

3) The boomers and many of their parents became a split camp: those who were able to manage college and those who were not; those whose parents had risen into the middle class and those whose parents did not, those who leaned to the left and those who leaned to the right, those who bought into traditional religion and those who did not; those who kept the higher value SS and those (born in 1950 and later) who lost in the SS race and were told to work longer AND saw their promised SS be reduced retroactively; those who retained the racism of their parents and grandparents and those who rejected it, and so on. This meant two camps were solidified and those who stayed “traditional” insisted on things being as they were and those who moved left were part a number of progressive movements, including civil rights marches for equality, women’s equality, the rights of LGBTQ people, the end of the Vietnam War, the first Earth Day in 1970 and the ensuing environmental movement, more interest in other cultures, a growing open acknowledgement about domestic violence and child abuse, the inherent misogyny of too many cultures…the list goes on.

4) From this divide, parents rose, and their parenting also reflected their world views. And while “latchkey children” became a term that scapegoated boomer parents, the truth is, the term originated in 1942 referring to the children left home alone during WWII, and even before that, children of the poor had had to be left alone when parents worked- it’s not a new thing, just a new term. So we had good parents and bad, in both sides of the divide, and some children had loving parents who nurtured them and raised contributing members of society, some had cruel, neglectful parents who repeated cycles of abuse, and others had indulgent parents who taught their children no self-discipline at all and let them wreak havoc in the home and in public… And here’s the Big Truth: parenting has always been that way, poor and good parents are a human experience-  not one single generation is free of that accusation of failure or success. Today, we still have two camps- and if you look at the past four years (2016-2020), you still see that divide, not based on age, but on ideology and world view.

So can we stop the attempts to scapegoat the “boomers” as an entity, recognize that every generation does good or ill by each other and get on with the business of talking about what kind of world we want, and what kind of world, and what sort of ideology, we will bequeath to our children, our grandchildren and ‘the children yet unborn”?

I think everyone has struggles to come, and while I agree some older people had the feast for their entire lives, I know many who never got a seat at the table at any point in their lives.

⁠I know many younger people who are struggling and overworked, and many who are so well-off that they are oblivious to- and don’t concern themselves with- the struggles of those in their own generation or after- or before.

⁠So let us stop the dividing of generations and admit it is more complex than some would have us think. Truth be told- it is more something based in wealth and opportunity  versus struggle and closed doors; something rooted in class systems and obsolete mindsets of consuming versus preserving, of indulgence versus sacrifice for a better world for all, altho apparently it makes more people uncomfortable to attack the class systems that oppress and exploit than to work at dividing the generations…

2021