Save the Boomers, Save the World: Redeeming Culture

patheos.com ^ | July 19, 2010 | Barbara R. Nicolosi

[Publius804]

The entertainment industry is in the full throes of the changing of the generations; films and television are beginning to reflect the visions of Generation Xers like Jason Reitman, (Up in the Air), Judd Apatow, (Knocked Up), Brad Byrd (Up, The Incredibles), and other young artists who dare to buck the tired irony-cool cynicism that has shaped and stifled too much of the culture. Suddenly, after decades of being shut out, minimized, or mocked, film characters have room in their lives for optimism, and even something almost like faith. The Church, if it seeks to be relevant in the future, needs to welcome this development and encourage -- even patronize -- such talents.

Pope Benedict XVI, who has an artist's heart, seems to realize this; he recently met with artists to discuss the role of beauty in the health of the world. That is a start, but more is needed. The Boomers' exit from cultural influence creates a two-sided pastoral challenge for the 21st-century Church.

First is the effect on the gargantuan Boomer generation of a lifetime of listening almost exclusively to their own voices. The movies being created by and for the Boomers today are a very unentertaining mix of "Never regret! Life starts at 70!" and "Life is a cruel joke, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" Movies like It's Complicated showcase a bunch of grey hairs still acting badly, swallowing their shame, and ignoring their appropriate role as the wise mentors of the younger generations. The Dorian Greyish dark echo of this kind of story, are movies like There Will Be Blood and the chillingly titled No Country for Old Men, in which the characters' lives of narcissism and greed devolve into cynicism and brutality.

[ansel12]

That isn’t why.

The very first boomers (ages 21 and 22) voted in 1968, that year the under 30 vote gave democrats 47%, by 1972 boomers filled most of the 18-29 pool and democrats got 46% of that vote, in 1976 democrats got 51% (all boomers), and in 1980 they got 44% (all boomers), and in 1984 democrats won 40% of the (almost all boomer) 18-29 year old vote, in 1988 it was 47% for democrats (almost half boomers), by 1992 the boomers had left the 18-29 year old demographic except for the single years worth of 29 year olds, that signalled the end of the young being conservative.

In 1992, without the boomers (except for the 29 year olds)the 18-29 year old vote went 34% Republican, in 1996 with zero boomers, they went 34% Republican, 2000 46% Republican, 2004 47% Republican, and in 2008, their worst year ever, 32% Republican.

[a fool in paradise]

We are literally being colonized and replaced because of their change in our immigration laws and institutions.

Right. It isn't just about getting "enough votes to stay in power". It is about diluting the voting base of the US so that those who have no love or tradition or educational understanding of our Constitution and cultural legacy can willingly surrender said traditions.

Candidate Obama said that we could not go on driving our SUVs, setting our air conditioning at whatever we'd like no matter where we live without condemnation from the rest of the world. His activist wife said that our history and traditions would have to change.

They came to bury the American way of life and liberty.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Yeah, it’s true their were tons of “artist” communists. But what I remember was what children were suppose to do if there was a nuclear attack by the commies. The run and duck under your school desk or build your own bomb shelter movies that was circulated back then. Red Diaper Doper Baby for me means most of the kids who grew up and became hippies of the 60s and not necessarily the kids of Hollywood communists. And most to this day, like Jane Fonda, have not changed and are (stretching) unremorsefully unremorseful.

[a fool in paradise]

Red diaper doper babies were the kids of American socialists, sometimes the offspring of loyal Communists.

Saw nothing wrong with Communism. They will own up to it if asked and they believe themselves to be among fellow travellers.

By the 1960s they were worshipping Che and quoting from Mao's Little Red Book.

Obama was indoctrinated in such a radical notion of this country by Frank Marshall Davis and others.

Today there are yutes who mourned the death of Howard Zinn and worship his revisionist take on American history.

Compare life in America to his Communist paradises and there IS no comparison. Lies by omission are lies all the same.

[Mamzelle]

Gawsh! All of that so hit home.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Those voting numbers suggest that we can refer to Generation X as “Generation Clinton”.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Great statistics. I don’t know the voting issues behind the numbers but I’ll speculate: boomers get excited by Carter and then tire of Carter in 80s. Decide to become Yuppies in 80s (more conservative). They get older and hearken back to their glory days (especially after listening to Bruce Springsteen) in 90s to present. Society become more liberal (except for the beginning of Iraq war) and then continues along that wayward path toward socialism till the present. We’ll see what Nov tallies!

[Blind Eye Jones]

I saw Zinn get his butt owned by Dennis Prager. It is remarkably civil and great eye opener! If you haven’t see it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM-HTWAoJZo

[ansel12]

One could just say that boomers have always been a pretty conservative lot, that produced 9.4 million veterans, and they didn’t get old enough to start making real impacts on America until they started getting old enough to slow down the damage that was done from 1935 to 1975.

In 1980, the “Reagan Generation” which are the boomers, ranged in age from 16-34, they were not the adults running the nation into the ground in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and the 1970s.

[a fool in paradise]

Howard Zinn was an educator at Boston University’s journalism school in the 1980s where he routinely protested Ronald Reagan’s policies.

Red Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) even met with KGB agents to commit naked treason to thwart the Reagan administration.

[dalereed]

Not worth saving!!!!

[AndyJackson]

Boomers are romantics with the full force of nihilism driving their boats onto the rocks. The sirens song means death is attractive — and it is necessary to think so growing up on romantic existentialism — while at the same time they crave special entitlements, special pleadings to live the live forever dream of the 60s hippie youth crowd. They are a mixed bag to live such a mixed up life, a life that is narcissistic and shallow, and luxuriously decadent at its core.

As a boomer who has fought this all my life, I think your assessment of boomers is spot on. This is a group of folks whose moral compasses gyrate wildly on their axes, influenced by greed, ambition, stupidity and the fear that if they point a finger, one will be pointed straight back. They all live insipid lives of meaninglessness.

The latest mantra, if "professionalism," which seems to be an invocation that you stop trying to do the right thing because it will cause dissention and hurt feelings.

WFB once wrote that principles have sharp edges which cut deeply. How can a generation grow up never having been scarred by having to reconcile an action with principle?

[ansel12]

How can a generation grow up never having been scarred by having to reconcile an action with principle?

What are you talking about?

[livius]

Exactly. Thank you.

I think there’s probably an intervening generation that nobody has ever identified.

A generation is normally considered to be 15 years. This means that there was another generation born about 15 yrs before the first Boomers (post WWII “baby boom” - 1946) that was the major influence, which would mean roughly starting in 1929.

We Boomers were teenagers - and young ones, at that - when the sex and drugs and rock and roll (and the US is always wrong) message started going out.

Also, I don’t know if you’re a Catholic or not, but Vatican II was also the product of an earlier generation, in fact, much earlier, since many of the evil council fathers who promoted the bad aspects of it, blindsiding the decent fathers who simply thought they’d come for a procedural nip and tuck, were actually from the “Greatest Generation” or before. IMHO, Vatican II destroyed the Church and its possible influence in stopping the chaos of the 1960s-70s, and was one of the things that left the Boomers (us) adrift.

[murdoog]

Kids of the Boomers will be the next greatest generation because they carry the scars left by the abandoned of their narcissistic parents

They're not going to be the greatest generation. I don't think they'll be much better than boomers, if any. True, the boomers got spoiled by post-war prosperity. But at least they grew up before the self-esteem movement. That's done a lot of damage to the millenial generation.

[ansel12]

I think a lot of people here that don’t know American history, don’t realize that many boomers lived without indoor plumbing, and air-conditioning or central heating, many lived most of their youth without television, and a few without refrigerators.

I knew actual hunger as a kid, as in missed meals, including suppers, I think that a lot of people here get very confused about the degrees of wealth, and technology of 1960 versus 2010, or 1980, plus when talking about boomers, people instantly go to the white, upper crust, wealthy liberal types as the “typical” boomer, that is why they are so uninterested in the reality of boomers enlisting by the millions and voting majority republican.

[AndyJackson]

Where has your head been buried for about 20 years.

[ansel12]

I don’t get that one either, what is that suppose to mean?

[RC51]

Boomers invented the self-esteem movement. The damage the Boomers have done to the nation, to the youth and to our future will be undone. It will be undone by the children of Gen X and Gen Y.

Obama did indeed get a larger share of the “Youth” vote than Kerry. That is because of 2 things:
#1. Anchor Babies (born at the beginning of the Reconquista 1990) coming of age.
#2. John Kerry was a freaking corpse with a cool factor of -1000.

18-36 year old’s don’t run industry, govt or control the levers of power. Currently baby boomers do and that is about to change - Thank GOD!

Take a real good look at the kids Gen X and Gen Y is raising:
1. Don’t buy the lie that these kids are spoon-fed brats who spend all their time playing video games. Youth Sports is a huge industry that thousands of people make a living in full time now for a reason. Clubs like USATF, AAU (http://www.aausports.org/) etc. have their largest youth memberships in their history.
2. They are more religious than their parents and grandparents - discovering god and Christ on their own.
3. Racism is a strange concept they are forced to study in the History books and they are not shackled by Afro-centric identity or White Guilt.
4. Environmentalism is a joke pushed on them by their teachers that only the most gullible of their friends buy into.
5. They have pictures in the family photo-album of themselves as a 4D sonogram in their mothers womb. Pro-Life is very hip and Abortion is abhorrent. Just look at the movies targeted at the budding sexually active. (MTV’s “16 & Pregnant”, “Juno” etc.) These generation don’t want to see depictions of knocked up teens getting rid of their “problem” as in the 1982 flick “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. 14-24 year old’s want to spend their cash & time viewing depictions of knocked up teens stepping up to the plate and becoming mothers and fathers.

Most importantly, Kids today have little to no interaction with Baby Boomers - this sadly includes their own grandparents. The narcissistic selfish virus that is the Baby Boomers has ironically self-quarantined.

However the Baby Boomers will leave a few deep wounds that could still prove fatal to our children.
#1. The Boomer price tag will come due as a 20 Trillion Dollar high interest credit card by the time the last Boomer is dead.
#2. Boomers have single-handedly created a culture of divorce however the The nation’s divorce rate peaked to record levels in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Hopefully this trend will fade out. Maybe future Gen X dominated State legislatures will do away with no-fault unilateral divorces.

[chesley]

Eggsacly!!!