Monday, July 23, 2007
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The Aggrieved Baby Boomers
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Posted by:
Dean Barnett at
12:25 PM
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I hope you’ve read my piece on the “9/11 Generation” in this week’s Weekly Standard. I spoke to a lot of men who are risking everything and who are sacrificing much to serve their country at this moment in history. I greatly admire their dedication and devotion, and I hope I did their story justice.
I do feel the need to respond to the charge that some have leveled that I’ve slandered the Baby Boom generation by unfavorably comparing it to the emerging 9/11 generation. Here’s what I said about the Boomers:
In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.
Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers--those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation--took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers' response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.
Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled through the rest of the century. In the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, military service didn't occur to most young people as an option, let alone a duty.
I added the boldface above. Maybe I should have also bolded it in the story, anticipating the reading comprehension problems that so many on the left would have. In criticizing the Baby Boom Generation as a whole, I wasn’t suggesting that every single member of the 76 million person cohort performed unsatisfactorily. Obviously, many Boomers did themselves proud in answering history’s call.
But they weren’t the norm, and everyone knows they weren’t the norm. Hell, the Democrats nominated a guy for president in 2004 whose sole apparent qualification for the office was the fact that he went to Vitnam.
This would often be the part in such an essay where the author nevertheless apologized to anyone he offended. But since all the Vietnam vets I’ve heard from (except one) loved the article, shared my view of their generational cohorts and also felt that on the whole their generation did not acquit itself well during their hour of challenge, I will instead suggest to the offended that in the future they read more closely before jerking their knees.
I also found the accusation that I conveniently deployed a hippie straw man both illogical and unpersuasive. For what it’s worth, my original draft of the story had an additional thought on the generation that read, “If you look at the current crop of viable presidential candidates, only John McCain served. (If you feel like being charitable, you can give the field bonus points for Hillary Clinton’s alleged effort to enlist in the Marines in 1976.)” I had to excise those sentences for space reasons, but I thought what remained made it pretty clear that I wasn’t just tossing blame at the filthy hippies but their more hygienic generational cohorts as well.
THE HOSTILE REACTIONS that have emanated from liberal Boomers have been wonderfully illustrative of characteristic Boomer narcissism. Here’s what I thought was the most interesting passage in the story:
One of the soldiers in Colonel Schlichter's 1-18th is 28-year-old Sergeant Joseph Moseley. The outline of Moseley's story matches the liberal narrative of the "soldier victim." A junior college student, he served four years in the Army and then four years in the National Guard. During his stint in the Guard, Moseley got mobilized. He went to Iraq, where he had a portion of his calf muscle torn away by an IED. He has since returned to the United States and is undergoing a rigorous rehab program, which he describes as "not always going smoothly." It's virtually impossible that Sergeant Moseley will recover fully from his injuries.
Yet when asked about his time in Iraq, Moseley speaks with evident pride. He says the fact that he took the brunt of the IED's blow means he did his job. None of the men serving under him was seriously injured. When asked how he would feel about being characterized as a victim, Sergeant Moseley bristles. "I'm not a victim," he says. "It's insulting. That's what we signed up for. I knew what I was doing."
What I found striking about the aggrieved Boomers’ response to the story is that Sergeant Moseley’s sacrifice and stoicism isn’t what hit them on a gut level but rather what they inaccurately perceived as a blanket disparagement of their entire generation. You know, the 2,000 word story was about the 9/11 Generation, not the Baby Boomers. But rather than wanting to talk about Joe Moseley, they wanted to talk about themselves.
Baby Boomers sometimes remind me of that tiresome woman at a cocktail party who keeps talking about herself and then finally comes up for air and says, “But enough about me. What about you? What do you think about me?”
Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com
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Oh my God! Say it ain't so!
Seriously, though, nothing reveals the shallowness of boomer bashers than their silly, infantile insults about "hipness" and the importance thereof.
You know things have really gotten bad when 35 year olds are accusing 60 year olds of not being hip.
Where did we go wrong as parents? |
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You really do have a bad case of hoof-in-mouth disease,but just too stubborn to admit it. If you had praised the young people serving America and left it at that, I'd have said Amen. After all, I have a son who is in the military and, and who has served two deployments to Iraq, and I know something about the hard work they are doing.
But no, you had to take a swipe at us Boomers. Well, I did my time in the service when young. I've never in my life seen an anti-war rally or sit-in except on TV, and I suspect most people of my age group would say the same. A much higher percentage of my cohort than yours are veterans, so you should give that boomer-bashing a rest.
And for those of you who feel you need to inform us that we're no longer hip: hey we already know that, but thank you just the same.
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lots of us Boomers were working. We didn't have time or resources to schlep around San Francisco wearing flowers in our hair. We had jobs, we had families, we had student loans to pay off, and we had ambitions to achieve.
The small coterie of loudmouths who claim to speak for and represent all 76 million of us are no more representative than are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of the entire Black Race. They are merely the darlings of the Press, who continue to push the envelope so the Press will love them.
Even my hippie sister has gone now to Laos and Cambodia and has prayed forgiveness on her knees for her towering ignorance back then. The small, deeply disturbed gang who still play Sixties on the lawn of the Mall are but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals (or symbols). They represent nothing but a gang of Press Pets who can't give up the spotlight. |
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I wonder how those of you who are reviling everyone born during the "Boomer" years for what a very small percentage did are going to like it when, in about thirty years, your generation is going to be reviled as the do-nothing, anti-American generation who lost the Iraq war and caused the downfall of Western Civilization? |
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You've got some guy who wasn't even alive during the 60s retrospectively criticizing teenagers from that time who grew up understanding that they would eventually be nuked by the Russkies, then having to actually make life decisions during a ten year period they were subject to being drafted to fight the Viet Cong?
Sounds about right coming from those whose teen years were never confronted by anything resembling having to make such decisions, yet alone participate in "duck and cover" drills in grade school.
Most of us who were alive then are pretty tolerant of the decisions most or our boomer classmates made.
But, then again, you had to be there.
Dick Cheney was there, although he isn't technically a baby boomer. His decision was that he had "other priorities" that didn't include going to Vietnam. A fine decision, as was Bush's to glom onto a spot in the Guard instead on enlisting for Nam.
Of course, had they actually been against the War at the time...
Regardless, it's always amusing to hear the judgments and criticisms of those who have only read about it. The armchair quarterbacks of subsequent generations.
How refreshingly arrogant! |
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Slamming baby boomers! Wish I would have thought of that. |
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Gen either ... like every generation before and since, some were saints and some were sinners and most were in between. I cited a few "self-appointed leaders of the so-called Beat Generation" merely to point out that when we boomers were teenagers, we didn't invent social rebellion. We mostly just followed the social trends of the time, most of which were set in motion by our elders.
The generation that included the so-called "Beat Gen" included everyone from Allan Ginsberg to Jack Kirouac, Timothy Leary and Norman Schwartzkopf to later members like Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson ... how do you generalize THAT?
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Scott - I don't know where you get the chickenhawk crap ... that is a political meme that I certainly have never subscribed to or uttered. The chickenhawk argument - i.e., unless you wore the uniform you are not qualified to support the war - is wrongheaded because it suggests that those who don't wear the uniform have no stake in the outcome of the argument, or of the war. Which is of course BS, because all Americans have a stake in the outcome of any our wars. So everyone is entitled to weigh in. We have never had a military government in the United States of America - civilians call the shots in America.
However, at the same time, those who hold themselves up as pseudo-experts in military strategy and tactics are not necessarily entitled to second guess and overrule the strategy and tactics of the Commander in Chief and his subordinates. In other words, most of us would take the word and judgment of a General Petraeus on matters of warfighting any day over the word and judgment of Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, or Hillary Clinton.
Because of that concept, our Founders and Framers of the Constitution specifically provided for a civilian to serve as Commander in Chief, and then he/she alone (not the Congress) is empowered by the Constitution to direct our forces in defense of the Constitution and of the people.
Anybody in America, of course, is entitled to have and to state opinions, smart or stupid as they may be, on any subject in the world. Dean Barnett's principal knowledge of the subject of baby boomer culture, and of our contributions to American culture and institutions, appears to be based mostly upon pop-culture-manufactured myths and propaganda, and/or the statements of a very few self-selected members of that generation who now pretend that their individual experiences constituted the sole complete representation the experiences of tens of millions of others during that period. Don't care how you cut it, that's a pretty p*ss poor basis on which to pitilessly condemn an entire generation.
Scott - you say you were stupid and opposed the war in the late 60s. Therefore, apparently you claim that justifies condemning tens of millions of us as being equally stupid and equally misguided as you.
I say, speak for yourself. Not saying I was smart at age 18 when I signed up, and that those who didn't volunteer were stupid. All I am saying is that, regardless of whether one served or fought or not, most of us - in uniform or not - weren't hippies. Most of us didn't scream "baby killer!" at returning veterans. Most of us did not stink or grovel in filth. Most of us did not rage against the 50s.
Indeed, I believe that Ms. Catalonia confuses the boomers - mere teens in the 60s - with the self-appointed leaders of the so-called "Beat Generation" of the late 50s .... by the late 60s it was the Beat Gen people who were occupying many of the faculty positions in the universities, along with their fellow traveler communist sympathizers, and who attempted to recruit and indoctrinate impressionable and/or dumb teens and early 20-somethings to their revolutionary anti-American causes. That's where the campus marches came from.
Oh, and to echo a couple others of my fellow boomer generation posting here, please don't thank me or anyone else individually for serving. I don't need or want that, and that's certainly not why I served. I didn't join up because I was a patriot. I was just an 18-year old looking for an interesting start to my adult life.
Collectively, however, it would be greatly appreciated by the vast majority of boomers if we were simply not slandered anymore ... either as the mythical baby killers of Oliver Stone's fevered imagination, or as self-absorbed, drug addled, evilly-intentioned fountain frolickers in the so-called "Summer of Love"
(Dean suggests the latter in his selection of a prototypical image of boomers at the top of this page ... I can think of lots of other pics he could have selected that are far more representative of the millions of us who did, indeed, answer the call, in the Army or Navy or Peace Corps or civil rights marches, or waiting patiently at home for our return.
After all, what pic should Dean select to represent today's generation? A shot of a GI holding and comforting a crying Iraqi child, or a cheap shot of a twenty-something dude smoking crack on a street corner, or selling crack to little kids ... it's as easy as that to slander or honor an entire generation, you see).
Most of us were simply ordinary young people caught up in a time of great social change and upheaval, mostly not of our making.
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Stereotyping is usually pretty stupid, and Mr. Barnett has fallen into the trap of making facile comparisons between the media-hype sterotype of Viet Nam era hippies and today's war in Iraq.
What on earth possessed Barnett to write a justifiably complimentary piece on today's fine soldiers but using the sophomoric device of contrasting them with a generation he was not a part of? Why does he buy into an inaccurate and stupid steroptype of an entire generation?
I'm not aggrieved Mr. Barnett - just disappointed in shallow and silly writing. |
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everyone appreciates your service. Since your only posting is on the number of people from the sixties who served, I gotta wonder what's going on with you. Did you miss Dean's point about selfishness of the generation?
And damage was done to the military. Funding was cut. Weapons systems were delayed. The party of the Dems is the party of defeat, and the military suffers in proportion to their political strength. I don't know how you could miss that.
The press is absolutely anti-military. When there are actual failures, they invent them. The educational systems are anti-military. Kerry's comments in the last election about only stupid people going into the military are echoed by the educational establishment.
And you know what? None of this in any way detracts from your service and contribution. I really don't understand your ongoing diatribe.
Regarding you comments about my McDonald's uniform instead of a service uniform, actually, I wore neither. I turned 18 in 1969, and was still in high school. My draft number was 185, and they didn't go that high in the draft when I got out of high school and entered college. I was opposed to our action in Vietnam because I was a child of the 60s, surrounded by other children of the 60s, air conditioned rebels, all. We were stupid.
Furthermore, I was raised by liberal democrat parents who never felt that the military had value. They also wanted to grant constitutional protection for every perversity under the sun. They believed that the schools were better served as agents of social liberalism than as agents of education and skills. In this regard, my parents were stupid. So I came by my (now abandoned) liberal youth honestly.
Your ongoing meme has a certain chickenhawk flavor, that only those who served in the military can make comments pro or con about the military. No so, bro. Even former liberals who converted late can see the value of the military, and we know full well our own, and our generation's, contribution to harming the military. |
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And another thing, the BBG never stops aggrandizing: at one time it stopped somewhere in the mid to late 50's, and then it went up to 1959, but with what y or x, whatever, starting around 1965 or 6 there was a gap, which I was happy to be well situated in, and now, now, they keep encroaching--what's that all about?
As to songs that have a message here's mine:
Johnny Be Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0YUA3yTUss
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COMES wisdom...My generation IS the most self-indulgent;narcissistic/self-apotheosizing group of ingrates this nation has ever fielded: It has not merely weakened the ordinary man's common-sense,obligation to Military Service(you don't have to like it...just hace-lo,ese);it has destroyed the integrity and honor belonging to the Traditional Family.It has applauded and subtended 47,000,000 abortions(wiping-out 1/2 a generation;the equivalent of the entire US population at the time of the First American Civil War).It has DECONSTRUCTED the entire American Public School system with racist pandering;PC curriculum;anti-Christian anti-
morality "values".And Logos-less testing agenda that produced a generation of illiterates.
[Boomers fostered sexual and homosexual promiscuity; & foisted MTV/unmittigated violence and pornography-as-entertainment on our youth: "SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN to come Unto Him", has been mocked by "educators"in the name of TOLERANCE).
I've been urban school teacher 26 years.I did time in Vista and(non-combat)service in the Army(USAREUR).But I KNOW about the GAMES(having played my share).I know about the THEATER(Kent State & Columbus~Spring '70).I knew 100's of pseudo's [having lived in Massachusetts 26 years:it is the home of pseudo- Brahmans;intellectual inbreds and THE secularist/
anti-Christian coalition that dominates MSM and breeds the elitist crypto-totalitarian
--though epicene--PROFESSORIATE comprising America's once-formidable colleges and universities]. I am ashamed of THIS Massachusetts of anti-American,MIRROR/MIRROR/on the WALL PC/A-C ism.I've lived in Houston for 26 years. Dean, sir, you need to consider moving.Air may be rich in hydrocarbon-based CO2 but their air is as rare as it can be where sun never shines: Mass~ sorry,dying head of your rightly apparaised, now-reckoned in Dies Irae,(God help USA if Hillary-Lady Macbeth makes it)hopelessly feckless--as ENS--Boomer Generation. Mea-Noster Culpa/Mea-Noster Culpa/Mea-Noster maxima Culpa! Bless you, sir for resurrecting some TRUTH. It may help set...at least a few of...US(A)free.
Arthur McVarish, Houston(27 years) |
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I'm not sure, but I think Cindy Sheehan is closer to your age than your sister.
I tell my son that the sixties were a bunch of idealistic young women who had some high-minded ideals, and a bunch of young men who wanted to avoid the draft and get laid.
Then there were the guys who did their duty. Their country called and they did their duty. And there were those who snaked the system--used whatever connections they could to evade the challenges of the era. Most soldiers behaved honorably. Some behaved contemptibly. But then, war does terrible things to the souls of men.
For the most part, folks learned from their mistakes and became better people. You might be included in that category. Maybe your sister isn't. Maybe she is and you don't recognize it. Or maybe she is retarded in some ways and grown-up in others. We are all like that, I suppose.
Every era presents its own challenges--some more arduous, other easier--but the human heart remains the same. That's why Dean's outlook is uninspired and cliche. Inter-generational indictments are always--always--pretentious. They were pretentious when the Boomers were doing it and they are pretentious now. It is the province of silly youngsters and old people who have no sense. |
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Perhaps they never got over that the "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius" turned out to mean Diddly Squat.
p.s. My sister's still one too. |
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...and read your article already, Dean. Well done. I agree with everything you wrote, and don't have a problem interpreting your words to be insulting to Baby Boomers. As a late Baby Boomer myself (1960), I witnessed all that hippie stuff -- my oldest sister is 9 years older than me, and was one. SHE'S STILL ONE!!! What's WITH those hippies!? Why don't they grow up? Why do they seem perpetually unhappy? Cindy Sheehan is a prototype of the aging hippie, like my sister.
I'm sooooo happy to read about a new generation that isn't as self-absorbed and selfish as the Baby Boomers. Hope lives! |
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The WWII generation had the draft and NO moral ambiguity (we were attacked). The Iraq generation had no draft, but there is moral ambiguity (we were attacked, but not by Iraqis). Vietnam had the draft AND moral ambiguity. In other words, apples to oranges to pears.
You know, youth is an age of moral clarity. Eventually you grow up and the clear idealistic lines of youth are supplanted by the balanced realism of hard moral experience. But young people are ill-equipped to deal with complex moral issues. They are wired for bright lines. They have childish expectations.
And when they don't acquit themselves well, as many did not in the Vietnam era, anyone with a modicum of moral sense, with even a molecule of moral self-knowledge, will figure that such moral shortcomings are a prerogative of youth. Youth is the time to make bad choices. For boomers, unfortunately, those bad choices were being played on a world-historic stage--what with the draft on the one side and senseless warfare on the other.
Whenever I read Dean's sort of intergenerational critque, it kind of reminds me of people today who criticize Jefferson for being a slaveholder or Lincoln for being a racial separatist. Moral character is eternal, but we are also products of our time. Dean wagging his finger at Boomers is like somebody challenging the character of Bobby Jones because he did not allow African Americans into Augusta. Comes a point--if you are an adult, and looking at history as an adult would, and not a child gazing upon heroes and villans--when you accept and redeem. Everyone pretty much does the best they can with what they know at the time.
Historic evolution is not really a generational sequence. I think Plato said something like: "gold parents may have silver children and silver parents may have golden children, but the species remains the same from generation to generation."
Yes, we Americans are different from Americans in the mid-century or Americans at the turn of the last century or Civil War Americans and etc. And yes, people have an instinct for those who are their age--it makes biological sense, since they are the ones we travel through life with.
But it really misses the boat--in fact, its a kind of pseudo-analysis--to say 'the Boomers were X and the WWII generation (or the 9/11 generation) was Y.' We are of a piece, and while I accept the idea that this is a "generation of swine," it hardly has its origins in the Boomers. It roots are deeper, I'm afraid. The Boomers are just part of the progression--and not a uniquely terrible part at that. |
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"I think it is presumptuous beyond belief for someone who was an infant to be writing about an enormously influential generation, as if he knows anything about what it meant and means to be part of that generation."
Balderdash. I suppose historians can't write about the Civil War because they weren't alive during that period. Or that blacks can't write about whites, or that men can't write about women, or liberals about conservatives, or Americans about Iraqis, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
By the same token, I suppose, you shouldn't be writing about Dean because you aren't Dean.
Do you see the problem?
Reset and try again. Why don't you just say, "I don't like what Dean says about Boomers; he's a pooh-pooh head." That would be more accurate, more concise, and about as articulate. |
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Beach Baby
First Class
Do you remember back in old L.A. (Oh, oh, oh)
When everybody drove a Chevrolet (Oh, oh, oh)
Whatever happened to the boy next door
The sun-tanned, crew-cut, All-American male?
Remember dancing at the high school hop?
The dress I ruined with the soda pop?
I didn't recognize the girl next door
With beat up sneakers and a pony tail
Beach baby, beach baby, give me your hand
Give me something that I can remember
Just like before we can walk by the shore in the moonlight
Beach baby, beach baby, there on the sand
From July to the end of September
Surfin' was fun we'd be out in the sun every day
Ooooh, I never thought that it could end
Ooooh, and I was everybody's friend
Long hot days
Blue sea haze
Jukebox plays
But now it's fading away
[break]
We couldn't wait for graduation day (Oh, oh, oh)
We took the car and drove to San Jose (Oh, oh, oh)
That's where you told me that you'd wear my ring
I guess you don't remember anything
Beach baby, beach baby, give me your hand
Give me something that I can remember
Just like before we can walk by the shore in the moonlight
Beach baby, beach baby, there on the sand
From July til the end of September
Surfin' was fun we'd be out in the sun every day
Ahhh,ahhh,ahhh
Ahhh,ahhh,ahhh
Beach baby, beach baby, give me your hand
Give me something that I can remember
Just like before we can walk by the shore in the moonlight
Beach baby, beach baby, there on the sand
From July til the end of September
Surfin' was fun we'd be out in the sun every day
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what Dean thinks or writes? Sometimes I agree with his columns and perspectives; other times, I don't. I don't in any way agree with this particular missive.
But overall, truly, it doesn't matter. He is one blogger and is read by a few hundred or a few thousand people. He is mostly entertainment, occasionally thought provoking -- but his writings aren't going to change the world.
Personally, I think it is presumptuous beyond belief for someone who was an infant to be writing about an enormously influential generation, as if he knows anything about what it meant and means to be part of that generation. Just like -- I wouldn't write about rodeos or teaching or Club Med, stuff I don't know about. But, I wonder if it is a hallmark of Dean's generation to do so. Hmmm.... |
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I was wondering which of us would break out the Norman Greenbaum.
Good job....! |
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Sorry....
As I started to say, we need one for Kimber:
"One is the loneliest number that you'll ever doooooo......"
...and I apologize for starting this, AND Col. Guano please shoot me.... |
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to all for what I started with the songs....
Col. Guano....please shoot me! |
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end of this justification session........Boomers are a big group, with different decade oriented generations.(Lots of changes per decade.) But, the the biggest political screw-up was creating a military that was based on (1) Rich kids go to College, and (2) Poor kids go to Vietnam! Most of todays scumbag upper level management(Mid fifties to early sixties)and elected Government officials were the ones in College, while the working mans son was drafted and hauled off to Nam!(NO CONGRESSMAN OR SENATOR'S SON DIED IN NAM).....It is amazing to hear all of these mens stories between the age of 54-65 explain why they were never in the military?................Because a passing grade in anything would give you a draft-deferment!..................But, political families are smart enough to build the "Phoney non-combative military stint" for future elections.(George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, is in Naval Inteligence).......... Corporate America is filled with these SIXTIES college boys that are now eliminating the American Jobs of the servicemens sons in the name of GLOBALISM!.....The same families always chase the dollar, and the same families always defend their right to chase the dollar! |
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My daddy went to work everyday. I asked him about all the hippies and he said he just didn't have time to be a hippy.
And now here's some more from my stack of hot wax:
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
Prepare yourself you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
Gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
That's where you're gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You're gonna go to the place that's the best
Never been a sinner I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with
The spirit in the sky
Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
I'm gonna go to the place that's the best
Go to the place that's the best
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athingortwo,
You expended 12 paragraphs to say, basically, that the boomers have no tendencies that differentiate them in any significant way from generations prior or subsequent.
I’m not buying it. While it may be true that “every generation thinks they invented sex, and invented fun, and thinks that their predecessors had it all wrong in life”, it is also undeniably true that not every generation has enjoyed such an outsized influence on the body politic as have the boomers, particularly since so many boomers became politically active at a far younger age than was typical. And while individuals may vary, it is entirely fair to identify generational tendencies and to analyze how these have affected our society in the past and present. In short, people who grew up in a certain period have a set of experiences that affects their worldview. I argue only that boomers cling to their worldview to a degree that other generations have not, and that I believe this clinging is having a negative affect given that this worldview is based on a social context rooted so many decades in the past. Thus my reference to tie-dyed top hats. It’s been 40 years since the era of the die-dyed t-shirt, and I still see them around. It was 40 years between 1928 and 1968, yet you never saw anybody in 1968 wearing fashions like the top hat. Use fashion as a metaphor for politics, or anything really, and I think the distinction is significant. In short, applying Vietnam or Civil Rights era templates to 21st century America is like donning a top hat at a Huey Newton Black Panther rally and raging against the inequities of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The only reason you don’t notice how backwards and irritating this tendency is to those younger than you is because boomers still have an OUTSIZED influence in the media, Hollywood, etc., etc., etc.
What you are arguing –- that boomers have no generational proclivities unique to their era -- is ahistorical, and frankly, impossible. |
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I can smell the boomers in that pix from here!! Another name for them could be the "No Soap Generation!" I'm a tail-end boomer (1961) and can tell you that my Pavlov-type first thought to the phrase "Baby-Boomer" is exactly the photo above. Baby boomers are narcissists, "free thinkers," drug experimenters, and over-sexed brats that aren't aging well is a quite common belief of that time in my circles. That exceptions to that "rule," such as athingortwo, is a usually forgotten about given is rather sad, but the culture then and today celebrates the "maggot infested, dope-smoking hippies" (as Limbaugh would say) depicted by the photo above versus those that stuck their necks out for this country such that the hippies could smoke their dope and pick maggots off each other unmolested by communist "freedom fighters" that produced such worker paradises as Cambodia. However, athingortwo is engaging in an assumption of Dean's article that commits the same error he accuses Barnett of - namely lumping all Boomers into the category depicted in the photo. Fortunately for all of us they were not. The Boomers represented by the photo were the ones that got all the cultural attention (aka infamy) for tuning in, turning on, dropping out, etc, etc, while good people sacrificed much. That's the truly saddest aspect of my generation so I too will cheer on this generation and their sense of duty vs. rights. They know what's at stake for them and theirs on the far side of the world. |
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In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
[In The Year 2525 lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing. Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535 {fade} |
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you get that song out of your head!
May I suggest this?
(Candy man)
(Hey, Candy man)
Alright everybody gather 'round
The Candy Man is here
What kind of candy do you want
Sweet choc'late
Choc'late malted candy
Gum drops
Anything you want
You've come to the right man
'Cause I'm the Candy Man
Who can take a sunrise (who can take a sunrise)
Sprinkle it with dew (sprinkle it with dew)
Cover it with choc'late and a miracle or two
The Candy Man (the Candy Man)
Oh, the Candy Man can (the Candy Man can)
The Candy Man can
'Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good
(Makes the world taste good)
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I think the relationship between the millitary and civilian leadership ultimately defines the historical legacy of the millitary. Say what you will about any branch of the service that was occupied predominately by Boomers, but look very hard at the overall civillian leadership of that time. I'm not just talking about Kennedy ,Johnson and Nixon, but also about Sam Rayburn, Mike Mansfield, Johnson in the Senate and others.
It wasn't until 1980 that a strong Executive actually led our Armed Sevices. Liberals will deny this forever, but as many millitary leaders said after Reagan's eight years, "he filled the bins" with ammunition. He openly embraced the services and their leaders. He led by example: he put Caspar Weinberger at Defense and told him to restore our might. Take at look at Defense expenditures then as a percentage of GNP compared to today. Reagan placed a lot of our national treasure on the table and openly told the Sovs to match it. Their is no doubt that this gave great encouragement to our millitary leaders at the time. Look what we have to show for it now. The finest millitary in the world.
I don't see this so much as who was a better soldier then and now but rather who had an Executive that would lead. And don't forget, Reagan did these things without control of both houses of Congress. He didn't let a Mansfield or Rayburn deter him. He just went over their heads and straight to the people. |
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I joined the ROTC in 1964, and entered the Army in 1968. I did it for the nation, and for my self-respect in not being willing to let someone else take my place. I did not serve for cowards like the Weekly Standard leader Bill Kristol who were too busy or had other priorities. So don't send me any of those phony thanks for serving.
This generation is full of cowards willing to let other people die for their dreams of grandeur, and because they are so frightened of the scary terrorists. They are easy to identify. They write trash like this. |
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Are I and my fellow boomers accountable for anything? Sure each of us is fully accountable for what we do or did in life, but we are also individuals who are not accountable for what any other idiot, slacker, commie, draft-dodger, traitor, drug dealer, wife-beater, child molester, racist KKKer, or any other sorry son of a b*tch did or didn't do with their life. Nor are we as individuals responsible for what Walter Cronkite or Babwa Wawa or Oliver Stone or Jane Fonda pretended that we did or didn't do.
I think young Mech Eye said it well ... "it's not that simple ... it never was" (referring to thoughtless generalizations, I believe).
You and other commenters spout this stuff about boomers being massively involved in some sort of rage against the 50s. I guess that has some traction in psychobabble or Modern American Lit circles somewhere, but most of us baby boomers were too young to even know or care what the hell was going on in the 50s, let alone rage against it. I mean, my birthdate falls squarely in the middle of the boomer generation (1954), so I was all of 6 years old at the end of the decade. I never did any raging that I can remember.
My older brother was born in the first year of the boomer generation, as it's commonly defined - i.e., 1946. In 1967, when he enlisted in the US Army and got his butt shipped to Nha Trang and Cam Ranh Bay not long before TET, I don't recall him preaching to me or anyone else about the evils of bourgoise American middle-class materialism and such. I mostly remember him being focused on getting drunk, getting laid, and getting home safe and in one piece from Nam ... not necessarily in that order!
I mean, geez people, we had a different social context from today, I suppose, in those days, and the technology then was pretty primitive in light of where we are today ... we listened to rock music on LPs and FM radio, some of us took drugs, we all tried to get laid, and we were happy that the really big war that threatened America was merely "cold", and not an all-encompassing "hot" one like my parents had to deal with in Europe and the Pacific in their youth.
But if anyone seriously believes that more than an almost immeasurably small proportion of my generation demonstrated on campuses, or frolicked in Haight-Ashbury during the so-called "summer of love", or that we took pride in living in filth and degradation, I'm scratching my head and wondering how such a wrong-headed myth can dominate people's perceptions. This is really a cartoon image of life in the 60s and early 70s ... life as the media portrayed it, but not life as most of us lived it.
Thaale is right that this image was not of our collective making, but has been created and nurtured by self-appointed pop culture gurus and Hollywood image makers who had a bone to pick and a buck to pick. I suppose that a couple of generations of young Americans brought up on crap like "Appocalypse Now" and "Platoon" think that all American servicemen in the 60s and early 70s were depraved, baby killing monsters who loved the smell of napalm in the morning. Were some of the guys in that war crazy like that? Possibly ... I certainly can't deny it. But it doesn't ring of reality ... any more than the crazed writings of that anonymous guy over at TNR, about current American soldiers running around wearing children's skull bones as hats rings true today. Which is what started the current article by Barnett and this thread.
My brother told me stories of the crap that he witnessed or was part of in Nam ... not the crap in Hollywood flicks, but rather, just a bunch of 18-25 year old guys trying to survive a war that didn't look like the one they grew up on in the Hollywood movies of the 40s and 50s. It was a war partly of bloody urban counter-insurgency (i.e., with respect to the Viet Cong) and partly of major maneuvering armies in the field (with the NVA). And how he learned to deal with a population of Viet Namese who were caught in the middle of a shooting war they did not want. It wasn't heroic, but it wasn't about big bad Americans beating hell out of innocent children, either.
In my case, I never knew a single of my classmates in High School who demonstrated against the war. We had a few "hippies" who were dirty and stinky and strung out on drugs - but most of us avoided the hippies and generally mocked them and ostracized them from daily High School social life. We wanted to go to football games, attend college, or get a job, or join the military. We all wanted to drink and get laid and basically experience life.
Sorry to be so philosophical in my response, Catalonia, but you asked for a philosophical response.
I think in the end, me and my friends and classmates were mostly like most of the young people of today .. no better or worse, no smarter or dumber.
Of course, every generation thinks they invented sex, and invented fun, and thinks that their predecessors had it all wrong in life. My mother told me how she thought they were so cool in the early 30s when she graduated from high school, they were far smarter and more sophisticated than were her stodgy parents who grew up in the early 1900s. And who fought the war that was so stupendously stupid, it would literally end all wars. Little did they know.
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Excellent point. I am certain that is why Charles Rangel insists on re-introducing that proposal every once in a while. From what I see, it's "cool" among young people to be in the military. It's important to remember how vulnerable young people are to trends. It's one thing to succumb to "23 skidoo" and poodle skirts. It's another to succumb to a political attitude posing as fashion. The boomers were the first to have that trap sprung on them. Was is unforgiveable is that too many of us refused to grow up. Some earlier commenter nailed it by citing how so many of us still think we are cool when the ship sailed 35-40 years ago. It is a scandal what my self-centered generation is doing to those presently serving. And it is no accident that the target date for leaving Iraq is April 30. That's when the killing fields were opened for business in Vietnam and Cambodia. |
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And agree ... but I wish instead of referring to those you speak as the baby-boomers ... maybe just refer to the woodstock, hippie, draft dodger types.
My father applied to the Air Force Academy in '68 and was denied. He then went into ROTC. Had the war not ended before he graduated, he'd have gladly gone.
My mother met, dated, and married my father at a time when doing so (dating a servicemen) was seen as tantamount to supporting the war. They have been married for 28 years.
My father STILL serves his country today. He's still active duty. Still flying planes, and still ready to go wherever his country sends him.
He is representative of what the greatest generation spawned ... not really the spoiled kids you're talking about. Though I do see your point and like your article ... I just think that rather than characterizing the many by what I view as the few ... you'd try and see what the "normal" folks were doing.
And as my post already states ... I'm the product of the best of that generation ... and clearly very biased ... |
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I greatly honor those young men and women who, like Pat Tilman, choose to join up and serve after 9/11. They are true heroes and should be seen as such.
However, given the lack of a draft, the on and off recruiting troubles most of the services have had in the past few years, and the current wide spread opposition to the Iraq War, I would expect that if we reinstituted the draft, you'd see a lot more opposition from young people that would look just like what some Boomers did in the 60's. |
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...I've been thoroughly disgusted with and ashamed of my generation since I came out of my self-induced 60's fog somewhere around 1979. While there are numerous exceptions, generally we were the most spoiled, self-indulgent, whiney, ungrateful, disrespectful group of misinformed brats that ever drew breath. How Americans could go from the "greatest" generation to the "worst-possible" in the very next generation boggles the mind! Unfortunately, our country is still paying for (and will continue for some time to come) the idiotic mistakes we've made. I truly worry that we may never recover.
RC |
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Agreement from a regular fellah who put in his 3 years, 11 months and 21 days. USASAFS Berlin. You want to know who won the Cold War? WE did, sitting up there on top of Teufelsberg, figuring out what the Soviets were up to. We had a job to do, and we did it very, very well. And when we were off-duty -- well, we enjoyed ourselves, and then went back to doing our jobs. |
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Of course you’re right that being sent off to war when you’re 20, for good or ill, doesn’t reflect on you, it reflects on the much older politicians and generals. But I have always though that the GG’s true claims to fame were the genuine civil rights advances of the 50s and early 60s. Of course WW2 was actually won by the variously aged (though all older then the GG) Churchill, FDR, Ike, Monty, MacArthur, Patton, etc.
And I think everyone agrees that each generation has people of every opinion spread all across the spectrum. But I think what Dean was talking about, and what I have been talking about, is the perception of a generation and era, which is a much more simplistic thing. The face that was put on the Boomers, fairly or not (and in reality, it’s partially fair or unfair in a different way for each of 40 million different people) was that of the rebellious generation who eschewed all responsibility and threw away the past.
As I said in my first post, this wasn’t even a self-portrait, it was one they were painted into by mostly older commentators who wished (or feared) it to be so. But the official story is what becomes the ultimate story. That’s where I differed with Dean in thinking that Gen Y would be allowed to be the generation that fought to defend us after 9/11. They will be the generation of Woodstock 99, of self-indulgent moralizing, of endlessly prating to those with vastly more knowledge.
Every generation has such youth – how old is the word sophomoric? 3,000 years? The difference that started with the Boomers – and it has continued with Y and to a certain extent X – is that the loudest and most ignorant were allowed to define the generation, and very early on in its life. Perhaps it was the change in the voting age to 18, or the sexualization of youth. In the 1960s, for the first time in human history, supposedly sane adults starting taking the position not that teens had opinions-which had always been true and known-but that these opinions mattered.
Where I disagree with SonnyJim in is disparaging those who did answer the call (not necessarily militarily; after all, half of the BB generation is women). He seems to think the problem was lax Boomers bringing down the military from the inside. I don’t see that and I see why you take exception to it. |
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athingortwo,
A quote you attributed to me actually came from somebody else.
But I’d like to note that I have not blamed the boomers for the social upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s -- not yet anyway -- I blame the boomers for not having moved on from the social upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s (and culturally doing battle with the 1950s). Do you understand the difference? My main basic thesis is that boomers lack a certain generational perspective about themselves that other generations possess, as demonstrated by your basic defense of the boomers as having won both Vietnam and the Cold War, and having ‘undone’ the New Deal and Great Society because Reagan reduced taxes and Clinton signed a bill ending welfare-for-life. Clinton was a boomer and therefore takes credit for ‘undoing’ (?) the Great Society; Reagan was not a boomer, but boomers were 40 years old or so during his presidency so clearly boomers get the credit for reducing taxes and getting the Soviet Union to stand down. Meanwhile, you lecture other generations about blaming boomers for the ills of today, while simultaneously tagging other generations as being responsible for losing the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of the 1960s/1970s.
Do you hold yourself accountable for anything? Anything at all? Do you understand what the problem is? |
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I am a former Marine, just barely a baby boomer having been born circa 1962, and hold a white belt in Krav Maga. I am therefore qualified to render the following pronouncement: Dean's article, per usual, is, "on the nuts."
That, and hippies suck. |
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"Jobnikim": People who serve in the Israeli army, but are only doing so because they HAVE to, and are really just idiots and disgraces to their uniforms.
I believe this is what SonnyJim is talking about... |
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My Long Resonse:
I understand why you are upset, and I certainly sympathize. I think, however, that you are getting a little carried away. If you took a second to cool off, you might find that, as much as you might dislike Dean Barnett (and as much as you seem to have an agenda against hughhewitt.com), you both seem to agree about much more than you think.
Before I respond to you, I want to lay out my "credentials" so that I don't get the usual chickenhawk/"you never served" B.S. arguments (one doesn't need to serve in order to have an opinion about the service - but here goes): I have close family members in the Marine Corps, close family members who have served in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), my closest childhood friend is now a Tayas (pilot) in the IAF (Israeli Air Force) - the most elite unit in the IDF. I dreamed for years of serving in the United States Military, but am unable to because of religious reasons, so I will instead serve in the IDF, and I hope to also (in addition to my service) participate in a program that develops good relations with the United States Military, and makes it easier for religious American Jews (like myself) to serve the country that has given them everything they have: the United States of America.
Now, you say:
"...if you spent any time studying what actually happened in Viet Nam, you will realize that American forces won virtually every single significant battle in that war, right up through and well beyond the Tet Offensive. That the American government (led by Greatest Generation types) tired of the war, and decided to throw in the towel, was never because our supposed crappy Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines were defeated in the field by the NVA and VC! That was a myth that still lives on - that our GIs were beaten. It was anything but."
I can virtually guarantee that you and Dean Barnett agree on this most crucial point. But in stating what it was that was responsible for "losing" the war, you left out one key factor that Dean would include (and I hope you would, too): the anti-war/anti-military public.
Now, you can certainly say that they were a minority (in fact, you do say that - many, many times), but that does not take away from the fact that they were an extremely VOCAL and INFLUENTIAL minority - a minority that played a vitally important role in shaping "Boomer Era" policy.
You note, correctly, that soldiers from the 9/11 generation "make up a far smaller proportion of the current population of the USA today than did the boomers of their America (about 4% today vs. about 8.5% in 1968)." This is a fair point that should not be casually dismissed. Indeed, it seems fair to say that there are many from the Boomer generation who DID answer the call (yourself included). I would point out, however, that Dean devoted an entire post just now, to conceding this exact point.
Having said that, I think you are a little too cavalier in dismissing, what you characterize as the "Oh, well, they were all drafted, you know, so that doesn't count" argument.
I think that in your anger, you have not sufficiently considered this point. Obviously there will be more soldiers in a draft army, than a volunteer army. Your response ("but they didn't have to report") is not a hypothesis that would survive any type of real scrutiny. In fact, what I think would happen is that we would find that SonnyJim is correct on this one. A lot of people joined the army, but then, a lot of them were fools.
In Israel (where there is compulsory universal service), you find this very phenomenon. It is so common that there is even a slang term for it: "jobnik," (plural, "jobnikim").
By the way, the same debate is played out in Israel. Dean's argument is actually the consensus view, at this point. This generation of Israelis, while it certainly has a lot of heroes who love their country, is the "Boomer generation," to the "Greatest generation" that fought the 6 Day War.
Your other argument, that the Boomer generation could not be so bad if it produced the leadership that won the Gulf War, and is winning the current conflict (MSM to the contrary, be damned), is also a little misleading. You are doing exactly what you accuse Dean of doing - treating a minority as representative of the majority. Boomers that went on to become military leaders make up a miniscule (statistically insignificant would be an understatement) percentage of Boomer soldiers. How can you claim that they represent Boomer soldiers?
The real different between what I just described you doing, and what you accuse Dean of doing is this: Dean's minority really IS, by any metric that matters, culturally, socially, historically, etc. the representative of the Boomer generation. They took over the media, they shaped policy (foreign and domestic), they shaped pop culture, they shaped the historical narrative, and they gave us a failed Vietnam (the truly admirable efforts of real heroes like yourself notwithstanding). The same cannot be said for YOUR minority.
So, you have no issue with Dean's praise of the current crop of warriors; you have no issue with the (generally) conservative view of the Vietnam War as a political, not a military, failure; you have no issue with Dean's portrayal of Boomers as it pertains to the minority of Boomers; you (should) have no issue with Dean's alleged slight against the many honorable Boomers because he has clarified that he was not speaking about them.
The only issue on which you disagree is whether or not that minority can fairly represent the Boomer generation. If it can, then Dean is right; if not, then you would be right in saying that Dean should have stuck to praise of the 9/11 generation, instead of comparing them with the Boomers. |
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Thanks to you, I've got "Let the Sunshine In" stuck in my head.
I'll let it go this time, but if it happens again, we are not brothers.....! |
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So the self-hatred of one's peers demonstrated in here is astounding.
All the noise and the hair-pulling over all these "hippies" (who are apparently still doing be-ins at your local rec center or smoking weed downtown) makes Townhall and its audience look like they're stuck with Tommy Chong in the 60s.
I fully expect the next commenter to start whining about long-hairs.
This is pop-sociology at its worst -- as if scores of millions of Americans can be so easily labeled as "Baby Boomers" or that self-consciously worshipful phrase "The Greatest Generation." It's not that simple -- it never was.
Nice work on re-launching the Victory Caucus, btw -- goodness knows that if you wish hard enough, you can turn this dog of a war into a pony.
DU
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The Silent Generation has had relatively little voice in our nation’s affairs, compared to the more visible WW2 and BB gens. Unless McCain is elected, it will go down as not having had a president chosen from it; which is perhaps what it is most famous for. |
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Aside from the fact that I have the greatest respect for my parents and their contemporaries (popularly called the "Greatest Generation") now (I'll admit, a lot more today than I gave them as a teenager, of course!), this business of generational generalization just doesn't wash. The GG people didn't solve many problems in the 40s as you suggest, they mostly did what they were told by their elders ... in the late 40s and early 50s mostly they were just trying to get back to normal from the war years - get an education, get a job, get married, and raise a family ... by the 60s and 70s, however, they were indeed in power, and what did they do with that power?
Well, the Greatest Generation did some bad and dumb stuff: they surrendered to the pacifists in '75; they liberalized social institutions in the 60s and 70s in sometimes deleterious ways; they raised our taxes; they greatly increased governmental intrusion in our everyday lives, and so on and so forth ... the usual litany of social and political ills from the 60s and 70s when they were in charge.
But the Greatest Generation also did some very smart and good stuff too: they institutionalized civil rights for black Americans; realizing the error of their ways, they reversed course and freed America from excessive taxation and regulation such that a tremendous multi-decade boom began in the 80s, still going on today; they dumped the pacifism and won the Cold War (but using a cadre of military leaders from the dreaded boomer generation); and they created a high tech revolution that continues today.
In doing each of these good and bad, or dumb and smart things, the Greatest Generation, as it came into more and more authority, relied more and more upon successive generations to carry out its will. You can't credit the victory in the Cold War without crediting both Ronald Reagan, and his generation, as well as guys like Tommy Franks and Peter Pace, and also the guys who served under Franks and Pace and who are now mid-to-senior-level officers and non-coms in today's force. As the United States Military Academy puts it, they're all part of a "long gray line", stretching continuously back to the Founders.
That some people like SonnyJim seem to have a bit of pathological resentment of those guys who preceded him is kind of out of character for Americans. We as a people have always valued all the members of the "long gray line", or its equivalent expression of continuity in our institutions, both military and civilian, upon whose accomplishments and lessons learned all current human endeavor is built. |
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Ah, 'Little Papi', what has thou wrought?
Reading all of the above has given me a large headache. I have been trying to determine what generation I am from. Born in 1936, I am too late to be the 'greatest' and too early to be a 'boomer'. As an enlistee in 1956, I was too late for Korea and too early for Vietnam [managed to change that in 1962 however]. As an NCO, I watched the deterioration of the Army throughout the sixties, finally giving it up in 1970 [no pension is worth this much bulls..t].
Has the boomer generation had a profound negative impact on life in the good old Hew Ess of AAA? Without a doubt. The attitude of ME has been passed on to at least three other genrations. Those young men and women who have answered the call [Little Papi's 9/11ers] are the exception, not the norm. They are not 'chickenhawks' nor 'neo-cons', but patriots.
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I agree with Annebelle--you have nailed it. |
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Very much enjoyed your article on the endlessly me generation vs. the generation of service: God bless those young men and women who serve. And surely this applies then as now.
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Baby boom generation, not all of course, but so many: Loquacious insipid bathos; lugubrious self immolating pathos, but most of all an astonishing self centered regard that crystallized in the self descriptive narcissistic whipsaw, “I’m okay you’re okay.” No wonder their children coined a phrase with so simple and so pejorative and so easily slung at just those parents: “gag me with a spoon.”
Whatever may be said about hippies, and much may be said, they did have at least, for the most part, have an ideal that they believed in (but what's that about good intentions?). And though they carry the banner of the period, they were in fact a small percentage of the population--it wasn’t until the mid-seventies or so that their distilled notions osmosed into the general fabric of cultural expression.
Not taking it over so much as being but another influential lens through which much of America viewed themselves and their world.
To our detriment this plied saccharine generation so obsessively naval gazing every hour of every day has given the rest of the nation the worst of colic conditions that Harry Reed is but a symptom, and we are still looking for the appropriate purgation. |
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Catalonia writes: "Much of the so-called liberal-conservative divide is really just boomers rebelling against the 1950s, which is to say they still think they’re doing righteous battle with an America that hasn’t existed for FIFTY years"
You've nailed it!! I had been trying for the right formulation but that's it. I teach AP English, and I won't bore you all with descriptions of the diatribes from aging boomers to which I am daily subjected. They're still battling 1. McCarthy 2. June Cleaver, and 3. Jim Crow. I am pleased to report,however, that most students (secretly)laugh at their bombast though the current YOUtube and Comedy Central crowd is over the top for global warming and Democrats.
I avoid espousing my own beliefs too much, preferring a Socratic approach, but when I do finally give them my two important lessons in life (3/4 of the year in usually), they are invariably shocked and beg for further clarification...
Here are my two axioms:
Capitalism is creative--(no FICA for Boomers!)
WE are the ONLY country in the history of mankind that has won major wars, rebuilt the countries of those we've defeated, and LEFT.
...the ensuing discussions are always marvelous--I think I unleash them from the chains of PC history, and the liberation enables them to take intellectual risks for the first time. |
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To a certain extent, yes. Especially at the beginning, the counterculture had some older leaders who worked from within the system to recruit young followers: Timothy Leary, e.g. Obviously every generation has many admirable individuals and many not so admirable ones. The hippies didn’t spring into being in a vacuum.
But the difference between the political advances of ~1950-65 and the cultural debaucheries of 1965-1975 is that while you have to be in political power to build something up through legitimate channels, you don’t have to be old enough to run for president or even to vote for it in order to tear things down through illegitimate ones. Wanton violence and hedonistic indulgence can certainly be perpetrated on society and each other by those in their teens and twenties – unlike orderly political reform.
As for the Great Society, I agree with you. The GG was far from perfect, just as we all are, and not content with solving real problems in the 40s and 50s, they went on to badly trying to solve other ones in the 60s and 70s. |
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I also agree with SonnyJim. I was born in 1952 and there is nothing more stomach-turning than a 55 year old ex-hippie with a long grey pony tail. |
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was my Commander at Marine Barracks Washington D.C. His type of leader counseled us for years to ignore the mass of our generation and to cling to timeless American values.
All my Marine Corps heroes were baby boomers by birth. None of them were baby boomers by inclination; they were all outsiders, as was I.
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Re:
"In fact, it was the WW2 generation that won the war, came back home and began families and careers, and then began to change the world in the last 50s and the 60s. A generation doesn’t have much political power in its twenties or early thirties, and it has none in its teens. The great civil rights advances in the post-WW2 era, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were accomplished around 1946-64 by the Greatest Generation; i.e., the exact time frame when the Boomers were being born."
Precisely ... those who blame the boomer generation for what happened in America, in terms of social change and institutional upheaval, are blaming the people who were in their 20s .. and the 20-somethings never run America .. never have. Indeed, by the time the boomers came to exert real power, it was the 80s and 90s ... you know, the period when America won the Cold War, and undid much of Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's "Great Society" (which, by the way, was the proximate cause of most of the negative institutional upheaval of the 60s and 70s ... and all of that was brought about by Greatest Generation types who ran the show in those days).
As one of the posters above put it, in the 60s and 70s, we boomers were just teenagers and 20 somethings who were along for the ride, doing what we thought was expected of us (except for the SDS and hippie types who accounted for maybe one onehundredth of a percent of our generation, but who garnered all the media and pop culture attention).
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but seriously, you (like Barnett and apparently quite a few others who followed the boomer generation) say that the boomers ruined the Marine Corps (and other American institutions), and that only through a diligent effort over many years were you able to rescue the Corps from the universally negative influence of the boomer mid-ranks in the late 70s-early 80s. Hmmm. I didn't serve in the Marines, or during that period (I finished up my Naval service in '78), so unlike Dean, I won't pretend to know what I am in no position to know.
But surely, if the boomer officers and non-coms were so atrocious, how do you explain guys like Generals Peter Pace or Tommy Franks, both vets of that period who served as junior officers in Nam? I dunno about you, but I have a ton of respect for both guys. The entire leadership of the American military forces in the 80s, 90s, and finishing up their careers here in the 00s consists exactly of members of the generation you are dumping on. How could it be that such a f*cked-up leadership cadre could have been there at the final defeat of the evil Soviet Empire in '89, and led the offensives that pushed Saddam out of Kuwait in '91, and then took him out completely in '03?
With the greatest respect for the 20 something soldiers, sailors, and airman serving today, and who are performing magnificently, how can they do so with such pathetic leadership? I mean, think about it for even a moment, and it's obvious that military preparedness and field performance don't just happen because you have some motivated guys who just happened to show up at the battlefield with a certain birth year. Warriors must be selected, trained, motivated, supplied, and led on the battlefield and in the strategic theaters of war in ways that require an unbroken line of institutional memory and competence.
Maybe some of this mis-perception of the baby boomers of the 60s and 70s comes from disgust at America's "defeat" in Viet Nam. But surely, if you spent any time studying what actually happened in Viet Nam, you will realize that American forces won virtually every single significant battle in that war, right up through and well beyond the Tet Offensive. That the American government (led by Greatest Generation types) tired of the war, and decided to throw in the towel, was never because our supposed crappy Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines were defeated in the field by the NVA and VC! That was a myth that still lives on - that our GIs were beaten. It was anything but.
Again, I don't know why so many people feel compelled to dis the boomer generation, except as some means of pumping up their own egos. I respect all the generations that kept America free for 231 years, and will continue to do so for many hundreds more, I hope. Every generation had its lightweights, its idiots, its slackers and scumbags, and its predominant ordinary good people just trying to make a living and raise their families and, when called to do so, defend their country. The Greatest Generation gave us Patton's dogfaces, and Nimitz's fleet sailors ... but they also gave us Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. Ditto with every generation before and since; even the Founders who struggled not just against the redcoats but with a large proportion of royalists and appeasers who opposed everything they stood for.
One of the things I was taught when young was that the only way to respect yourself was to respect others, and to respect their rights and property and lives. The corollary to that truism is that the person who seems most earnest in disrespecting others is one who probably has little respect for himself.
My original and ongoing criticism of Barnett's original article - "The 9/11 Generation - Better than the Boomers" - was that he did not need to attack his predecessor generation in order to express respect for today's warriors ... who, by the way, make up a far smaller proportion of the current population of the USA today than did the boomers of their America (about 4% today vs. about 8.5% in 1968). In saying that, do I mean to criticize the current generation for not, as Barnett put it "answering the call"? Certainly not. The world is a different place in many respects than it was in the late 60s and early 70s. And of course, the percentage in uniform in WWII was nearly three times as high then as it was in the late 60s. Because that was a different war and circumstance.
That's enough of fairmindedness, however. You go pickin' on me and my brothers, and you're going to get an earful of righteous indignation. Count on it! |
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"The shelf life has expired on the Righteous Battle w/the Fifties, America is Reactionary and Racist"
Actually one of the big Boomer objections – as told by some - about the Greatest Generation is that it perpetuated Jim Crow laws, anti-commie “witch-hunts,” etc. – and that it was left to the enlightened hippies to rescue the world in the 60s. But that’s a narrative that can only be told now (well, since the 80s or so). It couldn’t fly back then, because it didn’t fit the actual time line.
In fact, it was the WW2 generation that won the war, came back home and began families and careers, and then began to change the world in the last 50s and the 60s. A generation doesn’t have much political power in its twenties or early thirties, and it has none in its teens. The great civil rights advances in the post-WW2 era, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were accomplished around 1946-64 by the Greatest Generation; i.e., the exact time frame when the Boomers were being born.
Now some Boomers (not all; don’t bridle if you don’t do it) have tried rewriting this narrative to one of the Greatest Generation ignoring domestic injustice until the counterculture came along and brought about civil rights advances. But simple subtraction disproves this idea. The great gains took place before the mid 60s. The oldest Boomers weren’t even born until 1946, so obviously all the gains of the 50s and 60s weren’t accomplished because of anything millions of non-voting teens and pre-teens were thinking futilely, whether they were even thinking it or not.
You’re right about the never-ending battle waged against the long-dead 1950s, though it’s not only the Boomers who keep waging it. X and Y have mostly dutifully recited the same litany of sins against that most wicked of decades (save perhaps the 1980s). |
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As it turns out, Walker was a boomer but not a Baby Boomer.
Scratch that, and apologies for one. |
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John Anthony Walker.
Thanks. |
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When I said 'boomer crewman' I didn't mean Baby Boomer (although they were), I meant SSBN. |
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(or I shoud say SOME boomers) raised their children in "freedom." They rambled on about "letting them find their own way...."
This is a the height of laziness and a complete abdication of parental responsibility.
Translated, they are really saying "I'd rather smoke pot than spend time worrying about making sure my kids have morals or ethics or any of those "square" things my parents tried to give me...."
The result is Kimber and her ilk, who are full of hate but have no idea why.... It's because they are empty on the inside..... |
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Mm.
I think maybe a little comparison is in order. I think boomers sometimes forget that the late 1960s and early 1970s were 35-40 years ago. That is 2+ generations in the past. Right now, to your average kid graduating high school or beginning college, the typical boomer looks about as hip to them as the doddering oldsters from the late 1920s and early 1930s looked to the boomers of that era.
The difference?
Boomers really don’t seem to understand that the era that defined their identity, the late 1960s and early 1970s, was a long, long, long, long, long time ago -- 40 years is an eternity in modern society. Some boomers really don’t understand just how behind-the-times they are. At least the denizens of the Hoover era understood that by 1970 time had passed them by. The shelf life has expired on the Righteous Battle w/the Fifties, America is Reactionary and Racist, Every Conflict is Vietnam narrative, but the boomers just CANNOT let it go, and it shows up everywhere, in every institution, especially in the media and academia. It becomes a bit of a parody at times, and in my opinion is the main catalyst of the poisonous partisanship of our political class. Remove the boomers from the political class and we wouldn’t even be discussing pre-emptive surrender, which is to say there would be zero percent chance of losing a conflict with militant Islam.
And don’t forget, to Dean Barnett and early GenXers such as myself, we’ve been hearing Boomer BS for going on four decades. FOUR DECADES. How many more years do we have to put up with the political flatulence of these geriatrics (with all due respect to boomers who have avoided political irritable bowel syndrom)? Vietnam ended 30 years ago, for God’s sake.
I forgive Dean for getting a little irritated with perpetually having to address dead issue mentalities, e.g. anti-military attitudes, because I’ve also been irritated with it for about, I don’t know, 30 years at least, and it looks like I’ll have to keep dealing with it for another 20 years until the boomers are finally mostly evacuated from our institutions (excepting nursing homes, of course).
Much of the so-called liberal-conservative divide is really just boomers rebelling against the 1950s, which is to say they still think they’re doing righteous battle with an America that hasn’t existed for FIFTY years. |
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to hurt the military?
Drugs.
Sloth.
Lack of discipline (self or otherwise).
I remember our battalion commander promising a 96 hour pass to the battery that could manage to go just 30 straight days without anyone going UA. I remember how difficult that goal was to attain. I remember senior guys trying to teach us to grow our hair as long as possible and don't act so Ooorah on liberty so the college girls won't know we're Marines.
Bullsh*t.
And don't tell me the submariners were any better - My section leaders brother was a boomer crewman and his crew came to visit a couple times, I saw how they were too.
Baby boomers don't make a pimple on today's military's *ss. |
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If it doesn’t apply to you, then it isn’t meant to apply to you. Dean’s original article said as much – a point that sailed right past the more sensitive but less literate of the Boomers. Most of the commentary here, including mine, has done as much. Yes, the Hillary Clinton crowd is poisonous. Obviously that isn’t a claim that everybody born in 1947 is, so people who have nothing in common with her but an approximate time of birth needn’t rush to their own defense.
Scott, you’re exactly right re the schools and society. There was a widely-circulated article a few months back – I’m sure many here read it and/or linked to it – that focused on the growing problem of what can only be called animalistic behavior among the rootless San Francisco youth. An appalled Boomer attempted to distinguish his generation’s principled protest and bohemianism from the violent young who literally were using his front yard as a toilet, like stray dogs.
It burns me up, because it shows that the true damage the Boomers did wasn’t to themselves and to each other, but to their successors. The Boomers themselves were taught standards, they were educated. They deliberately chose a (very) protracted adolescence over adulthood – but in their 30s or so, a great many of them belatedly grew up. Thus the great hatred for yuppies among the left-behind hippies, who hate what they see as the selling-out “yuppie scum” far more than those outside that generation do.
But the Boomers didn’t allow their children the same foundation that they themselves had been afforded. It’s difficult to imagine the vast numbers of Gen Y victims who have grown up without behavioral standards or education ever pulling themselves together and recollecting their early training – because they haven’t been allowed such training as their parents received in the 50s and 60s. |
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...it's fascinating to see kimberlick is so obsessed with me and my kind. I mean, I'm cute and all, but all this attention you're giving us chickenhawks is way tooo flattering. |
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I will not put words in Scott's mouth----but, I read his first sentence to mean that boomer's besmirched the name and spirit of teh military you and my family has served in.
athingortwo---help me out here, did the previous generation speak out, with as much volume and hate, (and attention) against the military such as those in the late 60's and since?
athingortwo, what about the ROTC programs thrown out of universities since the 1970's? Harvard was among the first of many to do so. What message, to the military, did this send by boomers?
There are other examples, of course, as to the dirt thrown in the face of the military by my generation. Scary John Kerry came back from Nam and told out and out lies with regards to what was going on over there---you do not think this contributed to an environment of regrets, self flaggelation from our folks back home?
I do not want to put words in Scott's mouth. That is how I read his comments.
Be well. |
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commenting here, we boomers did not create the world we entered into at adulthood. We were just doing what every generation does, following the crowd. We were the first generation that became preoccuppied with politics and world affairs but were drawn into it by the pervasive left. Our crime has nothing to do with whether we served in the military (Vietnam or not) but how we evolved as we "grew up". We didn't. We are perpetually stuck in the 1960's-70's. Not as individuals but as a generation. So be careful telling others to "pound sand". Nothing justifies that kind of ignorance. |
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should be 1953.. not 19503.. |
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To me the babyboomers represented from 1940-19503. Being born 1955 watched these people quite closely.
Yes, the liberal mindset focused on this whiner portion of the generation and has made it out to be the open truthful generation. My experience with these people is that they are all liars.....liberal liars. Married one of those whiners who enlisted so he wouldn't be drafted and have to go to Vietnam. He wound up serving at the Pentagon.. pissed and moaned the whole time how the military ruined his life. Go figure..
I was born in that time frame but do not have those liberal characteristics. Hated my older peers...geesh. I do know some who went and served and served valiantly, too, I might add. Bravo to those Brave Men/Women of the Vietnam Era. |
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Well said Sonny Jim. Todays military is a great thing to behold. Envy blinds dirt balls like Michael Moore to the nobility of our military. |
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and those, like my family, and all the others who did serve in Vietnam, to you, I say thank you. Thank you, very much for the sacrifices you made for our country.
Indeed you did your service and that should be acnowledged---as many times, and moreso, than all of the crap dished in your direction for decades.
The fact is, the whiners always seem to get the attention, don't you think? Consider the notion that the sqeaky wheel gets the grease. Those who complain, and certainly our "boomer" generation had more than its share of these wanted to be heard----and they were obliged to by the media and universities. That is how we are defined---it is who writes the history books, ala Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Beard and many others.
Bucko, yours is a voice to be heard, do not silence it.
athingortwo, continue to speak up or be drowned out.
I appreciate reading your comments-----very much.
TO SCOTT:
Your words also ring true. When I hear th eincredible nonsense by so many in these threads, there is no better testament to your words, Scott, than the indoctrinated spew of the Kimberlicks, Illiterate Patriots, SlowMoJoes', ocliberals, and too many more to mention.
Thanks for your input, Scott. |
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This is like playing "whack a mole" ... one dumb comment gets slammed and then two more even dumber comments pop up.
Pray tell, Scott: what damage did the Baby Boomers do the the military in the 60s and 70s (uhhh, you know, other than to serve in it, and die in it in far larger numbers than today's generation are doing)?
Let me see, having served in the US Navy for six years in the 1970s as one of those poisonous boomers that Thaale laments, I seem to recall that me and my shipmates didn't actually run the submarine I served on, or the Navy of which it was part, or the Federal Government and its Commander in Chief who called the shots .. I know this probably sounds kinda shocking to you .. but those old guys who were part of the sainted Greatest Generation ran the military back then. I'm supposing that, given the tone and content of your disrespectful commentary, I am fairly certain that you never put on the uniform (unless it was a marching band uniform in high school, or a MacDonalds shirt or something), otherwise you would not have impugned your fellow comrades in arms who preceded you in service to the nation.
But in any case, I digress. We served, we fought, some of us died, some of us lost body parts, and all of us ten plus million boomers donated large chunks of our young adulthood to defend the constitution and our families. And gosh, some of us didn't even volunteer, but did it anyway. Since your generation has never faced the draft, of course, it's so easy and convenient for you to criticize your forebears.
I dunno ... this all sounds like a whole lotta projection and envy going on amongst some of the commenters here on hughhewitt.com. It sure doesn't sound like the kinds of things my daughter's boyfriend - an Army captain, Blackhawk driver and West Point grad who recently returned from duty in Afghanistan - talks about when we shoot the sh*t, comparing military stories across the generations. He's a helluva lot more respectful of that long line that went before him and his comrades than are most of these boomer-envy types.
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envy of a bunch of pen*ses. I don't think so.
Did a lot of baby boomers serve in the military? Yes. Did the majority of them go to Vietnam? No. Were the majority of boomers in the military losers in uniform? Yes.
When I joined the Marine Corps in 1978 the Corps and the military in general was full of loser boomer whiners who pretended to be Vietnam PTSD types who never went to Vietnam. MacNamara's 100,000 and an average IQ of 70 among the non-technical MOS's. There were a great, great many losers in the mid to senior ranks in those days who needed to be weeded out. It took us most of a decade to get rid of a lot of deadwood and build the all-volunteer military that trained the generation at war today. Thank God for the generation today - Thank God. |
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my hope since 1980 has been that this country would survive my generation. My hope was rooted in the possibility that we would follow the normal maturity pattern of "growing up" as we aged thus becoming more thoughtful and responsible. Never happened. We boomers are the whiniest and most irresponsible generation ever and don't deserve the country we inherited. There are billions of people who would have done a better job had THEY won the genetic lottery of being born here. |
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"I agree with SonnyJim’s distinction of the early 60s “Boomers” from the poisonous late 40s/early 50s generation."
So, it's not enough that we have to endure the expert, "I was there ... in diapers" opinions of Barnett on the venal nature of the boomer generation, but you apparently feel compelled to pile on by asserting that those of us born between 1946 and 1960 are "poisonous."
That's really incredible! Where do you people come from?
I guess the uplifting spirit of bigotry lives on at hughhewitt.com.
Pardon me while me and my brothers do our penance for refusing to answer the call and letting the Evil Empire roll right over you and your generation of pure souls.
Oops, sorry, it didn't happen that way did it? Oh never mind, I take back my apology.
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military, their impact on the rest of our institutions was as bad, and may have longer lasting effects.
Start with education. Once our schools were supposed to teach the 3 R's (abbreviations for literary and arithmetic competence). That is no longer the goal. Now liberal indoctrination leads the cause. Tolerence for the abnormal. Rejection of the family and law. Little things like that.
During the 60's my parents knew that the teachers had the same moral and educational values as they did. That changed in the late 60s/early 70's when the hippies graduated. Destruction of the military was part of that anti-authority movement. We are not reclaiming lost ground in education. We are seeing increased demands for more funding to increase the indocrination.
The growth of the aggrieved society, every group that experienced discrimination now demanded repayment for those actions. If not actual money, then the chance to move to the head of the list without earning it.
The tolerence of every aspect of non-traditional sexual activity and the consequences thereof. Pregnant? Unrestricted abortion? Diseased? The government OWES you free or cheap drugs to prolong your life. High illegitimacy? The government owes your children a living.
IMHO, the impact on the military may be the easiest of the plagues to overcome. Other than that, you are absolutely correct. |
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I'll match my DD-214 against yours any day! |
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I SAID that the Boomers' story was told by others (approving oldsters) as well as by their own draft-dodgers. |
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Good article Dean. I taught during these years where the young radicals, sired by the old radicals(at least in Ca.) were coming through public schools. Good grief the self-centeredness of these people! The media in the '60's kept telling us how great these 'kids' were. How much opening to truth they showed. It was all BS. The decade of the '60's brought more grief to America, the family , the respect to our military than any other decade in the 20th Century.Universities were taken over by profs who loved Zinn, Beard, and every other leftist whackoe they could swallow.Kids were actually brainwashed and it has not stopped. It is amazing that our military could grow into mature, patriotic people with all the malarky they have been exposed to in their lifetimes. The '30's produced lefties who were isolationist pacifist socialists. We have the same types now in power in DC in the Dem Party leadership. And Yes, I do question their patriotism, their intellectual and moral character as to leading this nation. |
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As a "boomer" who was drafted and did my duty, I met many more good citizens than I ever did hippies and draft dodgers. Even when I attended college in the service and after, the war resistance and the "Me Generation" people were a tiny minority. I think the author suffers from too much media saturation of, or about, those times. After all, CBS/NBC/ABC did not broadcast soldiers coming home (one by one, not as units) from the Vietnam war, we just wanted to go home and get on with our lives. The only images that were shown on TV in the 60's and 70's were draft demonstrations. Of what percentage to the amount of Americans in uniform at the time do those demonstrators represent? .001% or less?
The article makes it evident to me me that Dean was sequestered somewhere else than the USA during the 60's. He should read Hunter Thompson's Rolling Stone article about the Hell's Angels to see how politicians and the press can make a non-event into Pearl Harbor. |
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LOL... born in 1950, served in Nam, had long hair for a few years, never got into the drug thing.
I guess I just don't fit in. (-: |
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If the "norm" as Barnett puts it (as a veteran of the diaper brigade back in the 1960s) was to tune in, drop out, and flee to Canada, then how do you explain the following facts:
- the uniformed population of America (as a percentage of total population) in the late 1960s was double what it is today
- 58,000+ names on the long black wall in Washington, DC.
- Boomers' service in, eventual leadership of, and ultimate victory in, the Cold War, not to mention their leadership of the Gulf War and the toppling of Saddam Hussein
Why is it that people persist in characterizing the Baby Boomers via Jane Fonda and the SDS, and a handful of hippies and campus demonstrators, and not more than ten million of that generation who wore the uniform, and millions more who sweated their return home?
And SonnyJim ... sounds like you have a major league pen*s-envy problem there, boy! You should see a doctor about that!
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This generational cycle description of Strauss & Howe on the (occasionally-reliable) wikipedia may be the theory TJ referred to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations
I agree with SonnyJim’s distinction of the early 60s “Boomers” from the poisonous late 40s/early 50s generation. Not the same at all, regardless of what the textbooks tell us. Born anywhere in the 60s (or early 70s) usually equates to sane; in fact it’s somewhat ironic though understandable that the more societally turbulent the time of birth was, the more sensible a mini-generation tends to be, and vice versa. Far better to have born at the height of WWII turmoil than in the security of 1954. Better to have been born during WWI or at the height of the Depression than in the prosperity in between. |
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As a "babykiller," I watched with a mix of jealosy and utter joy when the troops came home to national adulation after Desert Storm. I still can't believe the yellow ribbons...they were eveywhere.....!
Now we're just a short hop away from calling them baby-killers again.
It is most disheartening. |
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Good points, all. But it’s also true that the Boomers didn’t entirely write their own biography, far from it. If those who turned on tuned in, and dropped out (and fled to Canada) became the defining voice of their generation, it wasn’t only because they were loudly anointing themselves as such while their braver contemporaries were fighting in Vietnam, etc. The Cronkites of the world played a powerful role in defining what the generation was, what it truly stood for, and who was the obstructionist minority within it.
So it is and will be for Gen Y. |
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I'm not sure which is more irritating: the people who presume to tell others who the "viable presidential candidates" are, or all the voters who meekly listen and obey and ignore anyone not pronounced "viable".
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I am technically a Baby-boomer which may be the one and only thing about my persona that I detest. I consider myself to have grown up behind the baby boom, hating nearly everything about them as I did.
Hippies suck. The only thing worse than the young hippies are the aged hippies. |
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think there's a small group of drafted servicemen who really found their patriotism after they fought. They didn't originally volunteer, but they weren't in the group of draft-dodgers. Your article sort of lumps them in with the woodstock types. |
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deep hole, it is said that the first thing you ought to do stop digging.
In referring to the slandered Baby Boomers from your "9/11 Generation - Better than the Boomers" article, you keep attacking the generation, even after getting hit back by the subjects of your slander. In mentioning those who did "answer the call" you also state:
"But they weren’t the norm, and everyone knows they weren’t the norm".
Dean - that's just plain Bullsh*t .. you are certifiably ignorant of what you speak, however, since you weren't even born until 1967, but at least now you ought to admit that you really screwed the pooch by taking on an earlier generation of warriors.
For one thing, many many millions of Baby Boomers did in fact "answer the call". In fact, many more young people served in uniform during the Viet Nam War than serve today. Look it up!
Your response to that, I suppose, will consist of:
"Oh, well, they were all drafted, you know, so that doesn't count".
Well, sure lots of young people were drafted, but they didn't have to report. Some didn't, fleeing to Canada, and others sought deferments or conscientious objector status, or drugged themselves silly so as to be unusable in military service. So, with all those outs, many millions more still answered the call. And millions more volunteered (as did I and my brother).
To say that millions of us vets were not the norm, and that Jane Fonda and the Weather Underground were the norm is just ridiculous, on numbers alone. We vets, and those civilians back home who worried over our safe return home, were in fact the norm. We just didn't end up on Walter Cronkite's newscast because, well, the media simply didn't concern itself with "normal" then, any more than they do now.
You are so thoroughly brainwashed with pop sociology, you can't even admit that you screwed up by attacking the generation that fought the wars (both cold and hot) that saved your skinny a**, and who either ended up on that long black wall in D.C., or came home in pieces, or if lucky, came home whole.
We answered the call, buddy boy, it was the Greatest Generation that pulled the plug on our warriors.
And then you throw out a stupid defense that it's only lib ex hippies who are complaining about your post ... that's a total crock! If anything, why would the lib ex hippie types complain ... what you say about my generation is what they lived for. Logically, the only people you are going to p*ss off by slandering a generation for not answering the call, my bucko, are the guys who DID answer the call.
We got slandered plenty in the 70s by Hollywood, and by the purveyors of pop culture who apparently brainwashed young tykes like you. We don't need to be slandered yet again by someone who wasn't out of diapers yet when we were answering the call.
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Baby Boomers sometimes remind me of that tiresome woman at a cocktail party who keeps talking about herself and then finally comes up for air and says, “But enough about me. What about you? What do you think about me?”
So true...Describes what I hate the most about Baby Boomers.
There is a generational study that describes the characteristics of the various generational traits. And, even though some may be born during that generational time, there are those in that generation that take on the characteristic of the 'following generation' or the previous generation. I was born a babyboomer, but have the Generation X characteristics, etc. Or I was a babyboomer and have the prior WWII generation characteristics. Human Resources use these in determining how best to manage the workforce.
So, in my retrospective view of the baby boomers, I must agree, that dean's assessment is pretty spot on, with a caveat, the reason it appears that this is the mantra of that generation is because it fit with the liberal media's agenda and was the media's main focus. The media's pressure was evident throughout the Vietnam War. The reason may be that whole Narcisstic thing that does represent the babyboomer mentality and I might add the liberal mentality.
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Once again, very, very nice article---apparently you did not receive enough accolades for it--so it appears you now resort to "fishing" for more.
Great job on the article.
You missed one point which further supports your commentary on my narcissistic, me-focused generation. It was during the growth of these "boomers" that universities began eliminating ROTC on-campus programs. It is not only a testament to the arrogance and conceit of my generation, it is highly symbolic of the attitudes against contributing to an educated military. Additionally, it is remarkable that the military today has among its officers those who are self-identified as conservative---to the tune of 63%
Yep, 63% of officers today idnetify themselves as conservative, despite----or rather as a result of the ROTC programs being eviscerated on college campuses----quite a testament.
Oh, by the way, Dean, great article.
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