"Dear boomers: We're sorry for rolling our eyes at you all these years. We apologize for scoffing at your earnestness, your lack of self-deprecation, your tendency to take yourselves a little too seriously. We can go ahead and admit now that we grew tired of hearing about the '60s and the peace movement, as if you had to live through those times to understand anything at all. It's true, we didn't completely partake of your idealism and your notions about community. Frankly, it looked gray and saggy in your hands, these many decades later. Chanting 'What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!' at that rally against the Iraq War made us feel self-conscious in spite of ourselves. We felt like cliches. We wondered why someone couldn't come up with a newer, catchier, pro-peace slogan over the course of 40 years of protests. We knew we shouldn't care that some of you were wearing socks with sandals and smelled like you'd been on the bus with Wavy Gravy for the last three decades, but we cared anyway. We couldn't help it. It's just who we are.And look, we really did stand for something, underneath all the eye-rolling. We're feminists, we care about the environment, we want to improve race relations, we volunteer. We're just low-key about it. We never wanted to do it the way you did it: So unselfconscious, so optimistic, guilelessly throwing yourself behind Team Liberal. We didn't get that. We aren't joiners. We don't like carrying signs. We tend to disagree, if only on principle.
But when we watched Barack Obama's victory speech on Tuesday night, we looked into the eyes of a real leader, and decades of cynicism about politics and grassroots movements and community melted away in a single moment. We heard the voice of a man who can inspire with his words, who's unashamed of his own intelligence, who's willing to treat the citizens of this country like smart, capable people, worthy of respect. For the first time in some of our lifetimes, we believed."
-- Heather Havrilesky, admitting Generation X has grown up to don the same blinders as their parents, on Salon.com.
This might mean that, like their parents, they'll eventually abandon their ideals and become yuppies - which will mean they'll eventually appreciate cash (if they haven't "spread the wealth around" too much) - then, when they become truly "enlightened", they can give some to:
Interesting post and blog. Relevantly, many prominent experts and publications have pointed out that Obama is part of Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and GenXers.
ReplyDeleteYou may find this page interesting: it has, among other things, excerpts from publications like Newsweek and the New York Times, and videos with over 25 top pundits, all talking specifically about Obama's identity as a GenJoneser:
http://www.generationjones.com/2008election.html
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'ma check it out because I definitely don't feel like a Boomer and Obama and I are the same age. I'd never heard of "Generation Jones" before,...
At 40 I guess I'm a gen-xer and have felt somewhat resentful about the boomers who were teaching me in college. Most of the boomers would tell us about all of the protests, sit-ins and generally blathering on about how cheap the drugs were, how free the sex was and how great they were compared to us lazy kids. Eventually I got wise and stopped listening. I took a look at what terrible parents they were and became grateful that I was raised by people who were born in the late 1930s.
ReplyDeleteGen-xers, I theorize, tend to be cynical. I have always hoped that the gen-xers would grow up to be better parents and more responsible than boomers. I'm not sure yet and only time will tell. I can only go by the people that I know and have found that the kids who grew up in messed-up homes headed by boomers want a stable life for their kids.
Another thing about boomers: have you noticed how over the last decade or so that nursing homes slowly morphed into assisted living? I suspect that once the boomers realized they were getting close to old age that they didn't want to end up in the sort of nursing homes where they placed their parents. This is a good thing...just don't want anyone to think that everything the boomers have done is bad.
Thanks, as always, for the informative posts! I was a sociology major in college and love reading about such things. Yeah, it's a pretty much useless major...unless one wants to go to grad school or become a social worker. Neither appealed to me!