Posted on 08/22/2010 1:07:34 PM PDT by Publius804
The baby boomers. Born between 1945 and 1955, they are busy ignoring the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and 10. Having enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, they are bequeathing their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. A 60-year-old in 2010 is a very privileged and lucky human being an object of resentment as much as admiration.
I'm at the heart of all of it guilty as charged. Born 21 May 1950, I'm the quintessential baby boomer. And for the last three months, while most of the rest of the world has been getting on with their lives, I've been wrestling with the implications of my new seniority. Sixty may or may not be the new 50, but it is a significant milestone; I've been on the planet for an awfully long time. What sense can I make of the decades I have lived through? To what extent am I and my generation unfairly lucky? What is the best way to live my life from now on?
To a degree I have some sympathy with the resentment, marshalled in a cluster of recent anti-boomer books. Individually, we may not have been the authors of today's flux, uncertainty and lack of social and cultural anchors, but we were at the scene of the crime. The cultural, economic and institutional cornerstones of British life have been shattered and the way our love of fun was channelled is undoubtedly part of the story. The upside is that some of the old stifling prohibitions and prejudices have gone, hopefully for ever.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Breaking up any generation into marketing niches and such does not change the category, it is a little late for the pop culture and marketing people to change the definition of a generation that ended 46 years ago.
Your point is valid for many things, sales and marketing like that kind of niche work, but it does not change the official generational definition which the “baby boomers” that was the period from 1946 to 1964.
The first and last of no generation, has the exact same cultural experiences or memories, no two people of the same exact age have the same experiences, if you want separation then look at a variety of people of the same age, but in totally different lives.
You cannot start a discussion about the boomer generation and then after a while change the definition. The formal definition is still 1946-1964. What do we call the “silent generation” now, the ones born 1925-1945, after discussing and measuring them for many decades, do we suddenly decide that we meant a 8 year piece of them? The boomer generation has always been defined by dates, not who the current pop stars were, or what movies were showing.
“I get really tired of people trying to lump everyone of a particular age group together under a bogus generational label. “
It makes them feel as if they’re ‘victims’ of some nefarious scheme and consequently, nothing is their fault. It’s kind of like the whole ‘white man keeping the black man down’ crap I’ve been hearing for 40 years.
So far the only thing I’ve gotten from the government is a yearly tax bill. Oh wait, I got the GI bill too.
Might be different dates in England. Just a guess.
If anything, the baby boom there was probably longer, the writer is just an idiot. You see this a lot when boomers are used by authors, even a writer that I liked did a piece on the Chicago Seven as disgusting boomers, as proof of this and that, etc, I had to point out to him that not a one of them was even close to being a boomer.
Im in a similar situation and catch heat for my decisions made at 23 yo.
Enjoy your retirement.
Heat? Lemme tell you about heat.
I'm retired U.A.W.
I fall into that age range, and never felt like a Boomer or a Gen Xer. This is the first I’ve seen of Gen Jones, I’ll be reading those links shortly. Thanks.
The reality is that no one feels like a boomer, what do you think a member of the silent generation feels like, or a generation Y, or generation X, or the lost generation?
Even boomers that voted for Republican in 1972 are usually surprised to find out that most of them did, by a solid margin 52% to 46% for Democrat, or that boomers are the last great warrior generation, enlisting by the many millions.
I call the boomers the spoiled brat generation.They are not deep thinkers as a group. They are self centered, ideology driven, have a shallow sense of fairness, all encased in a bag of bones and shit called "its all about me." Its defining event, Woodstock , NY. A pig stye elevated to the heights of a phony cultural accomplishment of no lasting value to anyone.Its chronic symptom was the manifestation of Charles Manson. In large part boomers are responsible for that pile of political compost now fermenting away in the white house. And he will be their economic doom, a fitting result. And yes, I am a boomer.
Your post nails why it’s such a stupid designation for me, and people of my age in general.
In 1972 I was 8 years away from being able to vote in a Presidential election.
When I turned 18, there was no draft registration, and the military was sharply downsizing.
I would maintain that if shared experience is what defines a generation, then the whole concept got blown out of the water due to the rapid pace of events in the latter half of the 20th Century. And much of this was technology-driven, so we were seeing changes faster than previous eras.
Charles Manson was born in 1934, and therefore wasn’t a Boomer.
You might read the thread and think a little, you might learn a few things.
Yes I know when Manson was born, but the conditions of culture which created his gang of little boomer followers came from wearing flowers in their hair, going to San Francisco, and seeking an easy way out of a life of responsibility, looking for the great Mother, and finding only death.
Its the same with Obama, boomers run to Obama as the latest fad cultist with bright shiny words for boomers to play with, mere baubles designed to entrap them. It worked.Boomers elected Obama because he promised them the safe harbor of a vast, complete, fair hope and change Utopia. How long did that last?
The Boomer generation and their whining , self serving , unthinking consumerism and lack of the understanding of history have put us where we are today.No question about it.
A minority of boomers are conservatives who have never bought a single skank of their crap. They fought in vietnam and stayed proud of it, while boomers like John Kerry decided to stab the nation in the back every chance he got.Most boomers are of the John Kerry variety, and spat on their brothers in airports across the nation when our lads returned from Saigon.No, they are beyond forgiveness as a generation, they either wake up now, or go down to the ultimate perdition they have just created in this last election.
Agreed.And if you are towards the end of the boomers, you couldn’t buy as cheaply nor get promoted as quickly. My siblings in law have had it better as have nephews/nieces who are about 8-10 yrs younger. They rode the wave of opportunity as first wave boomers retired.
Stuck in the middle again, dam^it.
It doesn’t nail it at all, there are different types of conversations, if two or 4 boomers want to discuss differences within their generation that is one thing, but they can’t just erase the generation.
Do you think that all generations of roughly 18-20 years are supposed to be the same exact culture during that period?
The silent generation was 1925 to 1945, the roaring twenties to Frank Sinatra and the end of a World War, do you think much changed culturally in that 20 year period?
You can’t discuss boomers for many decades and then after a while decide that they are only the people born 1946 to 1951. If you want to do that then they barely exist and had very little effect and their social security needs are insignificant, all the data and information on the “generation” is meaningless, in other words, what is there to talk about? Do you know anything about the people born during that five year period of significance for general discussions or for the government to track? I don’t.
Why not just tell tell everyone that from now on we are going to lump them in with the silent generation, and restrict the boomer definition to 1951 to 1964?
LOL, boomers did not elect Obama, but he did win the 18-29 year old vote by 68%.
Boomers came out of the chute conservative, volunteering for war, voting Republican in the first "boomer" election in 1972.
I don't know who told you that, it sounds like something that Brokaw would say.
Withlout leftist boomers Obama would not be in office today.
They form the single most solid cadre of leftist supporters, and were the SDS type fags we all saw at colleges in the 60’s and 70s.
Where do you think the left comes from? Boomers.
Boomers did not elect Obama, the two generations under the boomers and the silent generation did.
2008 election, red is Republican
So what, the left and its leadership are essentially boomers.
You seek to restrict this issue to who elected Obama. Where do you think the organization for the leftist movement came from? Boomers.And they have been working away for about 30 years to get a man like Obama in office.
Who do you think organized a national movement designed to get the vote for the movement? Boomers.A whole generation of radicals who started out by protesting and ending the Vietnam war. And they are still at it.And boomers are indeed resonsible for what we have in the white house today.A whole generation of leftist radicals.
The people who eleted Obama were younger, but the transmission of the radical view, its continuity came from a whole boomerngeneration of leftist radicals who should have been destroyed years ago, and who put up with them?Moderate boomers.
The process is described here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
Yep, you are one of those guys, your were incredibly wrong, but in instead of taking a breath and giving it some thought, you jump to the next attack.
THE RIGHT AND IT'S LEADERSHIP ARE ESSENTIALLY BOOMERS.
Who do you think steered the country to the right after all the leftism from 1930 to 1980? Sure there is a lot of liberalism but they are weaker today than they were in 1965, or 1935, or 1975.
Since the boomers came of age, Republicans actually challenge and defeat Democrats for the Congress, the Senate, the Governorships, the state legislatures, even big city Mayors offices, that is a development of only the last 20 years, even our Presidents like Clinton and George W Bush and Reagan are to the right of their party counter parts before the boomers, even Obama is no Lyndon Johnson or Roosevelt, he sucks, but his damage will be limited unlike the Democrats that proceeded him in earlier eras.
Boomers still are respoonsible for putting Obama in the white house, a whole generation of radicals. Yes some grew conserative sine 1965, and yes they elected Reagan.
But the dedicated ovenent of the left comes fro a boomer generation itself, and the work to livberalize our institition of higher education resulting in the subsequent generations being undeductaed our nations history and the
constitution, all of that is rooted i the the babay boomers who remained leftists, dedicated to their causeof inoking Cloward Piven in resent day America.
All led by boomers, prosecuted by them, and implimented by them.
Boomers, the me first generation of leftists , who now lead the destruction of America, while vast numbers of their hard wroking confreres who voted conservative will be left in poverty in their retirement. Looks like the leftist boomers are having the last laugh.And most smug boomers of your ilk don’t get it, ....yet.
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