"Everyone [in the United States] born after 1945 is a boomer. The only difference is that, over time, precarity increases and technological sophistication also increases."
– Matt Christman, Hell of Presidents Ep. 10
This is it. This is the one good take on yankeedom’s generational politics. The generation we traditionally define as “boomer”, people born within the first twenty years after the end of WWII; that generation has far more in common with subsequent generations than any of us do with any generation before. In the broad view of history, we’re the same.
The early boomers were the first to attend a nationally standardized schooling system – what is, by and large, still the same system we have today. The early boomers were the first generation to grow up with television – with audio/visual mass media dominating not just the public consciousness, but also the early developmental phases of children. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they were probably also the first generation of US citizens where the majority reach adulthood without knowing chronic hunger. Hell, the first generation in which the majority have not seen the unadulterated night sky.
We have all these things in common with them. Getting mad at them for being how they are is an understandable response. But, I also think it’s kind of silly. Those first boomers had to navigate all that without the benefit of older adults who had grown up in similar conditions.
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Boomers grew up with a share of national wealth that we will never have. At every point in their lives, they owned more than the generations that came after them. They are still hording this wealth. This is their defining characteristic. This relationship to the economy has constructed their worldview and has made them a distinct demographic of people which they have continually tried (and failed) to reproduce.
No, we are absolutely not the same as boomers on the grounds that we went to school, watched tv, and listened to music.
Its not boomers hoarding wealth its capitalists. Why engage in their generational conflict game?
We don’t need to wage class warfare against boomers or moralize them, which I haven’t suggested.
What I’m saying is that they are a product of a particular time and location (like every generation). However, their time (post world war II) and location (USA), directly connect to a major global event that solidified America as a superpower and hegemon. This extraordinary time and place gave them a particular relationship to the spoils of empire including share of national wealth and power in government. Generations after this have only dealt with decline.
This makes them a distinct demographic of people worthy of discussion on these grounds. How they are discussed and how useful you find it is up to you.
Personally I find the accident of someone’s birth year about as useful as their zodiac but you do you.
“Plenty of poor boomers out there” -Matt Christman.
Cool. Plenty of poor white people, too.
But taken as a group, I think we can identify a pattern.
Should we ignore their share of collective wealth, too?
structure, decay, and transients: we share the same societal structure as boomers basically, although it has decayed/changed to a substantial degree. But it is still the same basic nature as boomers, and will be until the next great transient (perhaps COVID was that transient and we’re already in the aftermath of the great reorganizing)
“Getting mad at them for being how they are is an understandable response. But, I also think it’s kind of silly. Those first boomers had to navigate all that without the benefit of older adults who had grown up in similar conditions.”
Honestly?
There are a lot of “boomers” out there that aren’t right-wing assholes or silly liberals simply vooting as a response to every crisis. Hell, a lot of out alternative media (for better or for worse) is run by “boomers” or was originally started by them (Black Agenda Report comes to mind).
Don’t be too entranced by the stereotype, is all I’m saying; that stereotype is kinda a myth and not necessarily the rule.
IMHO.
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“I have no common cause with wealthy millennials, and I have a lot of common cause with boomers living in poverty.”
Yeah, I’m the same with Latinos in my community (I’m Latino myself).
I agree!
I didn’t mean to imply all boomers are “one specific way”, that was clumsy phrasing on my part. I’m frustrated with the stereotype. I’ve seen too many people my age dismiss older adults simply because they are older adults. It’s important to remember that we’re not really that different, that we’re all shaped by similar conditions.
Yes, I concur.
The whole categorization of people by age is just another way the oligarchs use ANY perceived difference as a way to divide and conquer the working class.
The phrase “boomers pulled up the ladder” is designed to hide the fact that the oligarchs have stolen all the ladders they could steal, and burned the ones they couldn’t steal.
We have to get people to focus on the REAL enemy if we are going to have any chance of survival.
I don’t think too many people are seriously mad at boomers, they OLD they got white HAIR they armpit smell like prunes and liver
We are all boomers because we make boom boom in tha bathroom
Well shit. There goes the planet.
I’m a mog, half man, half dog, I’m my own best friend.
i boomed in the toilet a few hours ago
Ok, boomer. (j/k, the meme was just too fitting)
Damn, why didn’t I think of that one?!
Speak for yourself boomerSo, there’s Baby Boomer as a weird arbitrary pop culture delineation of a generational group thing and then there’s “boomer”, the meme.
Remember which one you’re talking about.
This is it. This is the one good take on yankeedom’s generational politics. The generation we traditionally define as “boomer”, people born within the first twenty years after the end of WWII; that generation has far more in common with subsequent generations than any of us do with any generation before. In the broad view of history, we’re the same.
I developed this same take from watching old USA television from the 1950s.
You look at places like NY suburbs depicted back then, they look exactly like suburbs now, just different cars and people wear suits and it’s all crackers
people born within the first twenty years after the end of WWII; that generation has far more in common with subsequent generations than any of us do with any generation before. In the broad view of history, we’re the same.
I wouldn’t say the take is completely correct, it’s more like Boomers are a transitional group with one foot in each world, and then the rest of us are all solely from the second world. Kinda like how Millennials are half IRL people and half internet people, and Zoomers and later on have only known the internet. Boomers still have a lot in common with gens before them, and Millennials still have a lot in common with gens before them
Yeah, I overstated the generational delineation a bit. When an era is defined by technological progress, access to that technology changes your relationship to the era. For example, plenty of people grew up concurrent with television but without access to it.
What about all the immigrant boomers who did not experience all the developmental things you mentioned (standardized education, unalderated night sky, coomer childhood) who still end up more or less identical to their native born counterparts? I unironically believe that all thwme traits we associate with boomerdom comes from lead poisoning. I saw some study saying their rate of cognitive decline is much higher than previous generations at the same age. I can only hope that lead concentrations had gone down sufficiently during our childhoods such that we won’t suffer the same fate.
They would have been exposed to the same cultural pressures as people born into it, on top of the self selection of choosing (or having your parents choose) to emigrate to the United States.
I’m… hesitant to lay it all to blame on lead poisoning. It seems like too convenient an explanation, for one thing. Our culture selects for a certain way of viewing the world and our relationship to it. Lead poisoning seems to exacerbate the very worst traits this culture creates. Remove the lead and you remove the stressor, but the other conditions - both material and cultural - will still continue to shape people.
Fool I was to think I’d live to see a day when George Bush Jr. and Dick Cheney were buried and forgotten, for I was born into decades of political baggage I have no hope of escaping.
