Boomers, X-ers - what happened to us?

[absyntheNsugar]

Boomers and X-ers may not have a whole lot in common. Our experiences were different, the numbers were way different and even our definitions of Liberalism are different (X-ers practice a much more anarchist Liberalism, whereas the Boomers practice more of the New Deal Classic Liberalism in my opinion.)

But one area we both share is the fact that both groups stand back and ask - What happened?

The boomers were poised to make great changes. As the Doors line went "They got the guns but we got the numbers" spelled it all out - the Boomers had the numbers to sway elections, put together candidates, and even stop a war. Come the early 70's, all of that had fizzled out and many were standing back wondering, in the wake of Altamont and the dark spot of Vietnam - where did it all go?

We X-ers share the same dissolution of our hopes and dreams. The 90's started off with real positive change. We were the swing vote that put a Democrat back in the White House, college campuses in the early 90's were centers of major debate and revolt and the early internet was empowering us in ways unseen in history. The tech "Boom" and bust came in and wiped all that out, taking our most talented and selling their souls for a bunch of worthless stock options in a Dot Com that doesn't exist anymore.

Any thoughts?

[mlawson]

1. Well, there is Big Dog, and Al Gore, and Hillary, and Dr Dean,

and John Edwards, and Gen Clark, and a lot of other Boomers who are trying their best to change things. I guess we all can't be famous.

Also, time passes a HELL of a lot faster than we thought it would, when we were 18. That idea never made sense to me, until I was about 30.

[absyntheNsugar]

4. True, but I'm thinking more the movement

rather than individuals accomplishments. That's a given - every generaton will have its top dogs who change the world - and being that the Boomers had more people meant more individual contributors.

But the movement fizzled out by the end of the 60's/early 70's - Just like our 'movement' fizzled out by 95 it seemed (less people, smaller movement.)

[mlawson]

6. Hmm. I never thought of us as a movement.

We were just 'us'. There was our WWII parents' generation, our WWI grandparents, and us. There were so many of us, as well, so I never thought of us in a structured way.

I suppose that life experiences made us different from each other, as with every other generation. Our parents had WWII and the depression as a uniting force/memory, but apparently Vietnam, Woodstock and the assassinations were not sufficient to overcome the financial outlook differences we experienced during the 80s. I have always thought that the 'common bond' among us, if there was one, melted away during the GoGo 80s.

[Zorra]

2. Um......

"Do you know we are ruled by T.V."
-- from the poem An American Prayer by Jim Morrison

"By the start of the year 1993, 98% of U.S. households own at least one TV set, 64% have two or more sets."
-- Advertising Age

[Philostopher]

7. As a 'tweener'

Born in '64, I agree wholeheartedly! TV falls somewhere between the 'opiate of the masses' and 'bread and circuses.' Turning everything -- including journalism -- into a commodity under the heading of entertainment has robbed those of Generation X of an energizing force (not to mention any reliable way to get information about what's going on in the world). The primary mode through which this was accomplished was the Glass Teat.

I don't blame people ten to fifteen years younger than me for this happening, though. In general, many of them were plopped in front of the television as a babysitter before they were old enough to have 'bullshit detectors' to tell them what was shit and what was Shinola. Some of them clearly have figured out how to make that distinction now, or they wouldn't be here at DU -- but it's an awful lot to overcome. In some ways, it's like if your parents had started shooting you full of heroin when you were a toddler.

It's kind of bizarre, but the thing that made me finally stop watching television much was when I realized that there were times when I felt bad -- depressed or bored -- that turning on the TV actually made me feel better. Now, I knew at the time that most of what was on TV was empty and had no value for me (I didn't even have cable, just what little local network TV would come in), but it made me feel better just to turn it on. That told me that at the very least I had a pretty warped relationship with the tube.

It's Boomers and those of us now pushing forty who allowed this to happen, not those younger. We thought 'Inside Edition' was harmless, until all of a sudden the evening newscast was no more credible or hard-hitting. The reason it got that way was that people watched it and bought from advertisers who advertised on it. If sufficient numbers of us had said, 'this is shit! Give us real news or we'll stop watching!' it wouldn't be as bad as it is.

I dropped out of Little Journalists' School in 1984 because I saw this happening. It's so bad now, I can barely read what qualifies as a decent local newspaper because it's so full of spin, outright lies, and features offered as news stories. It sucks, and it blows, and dammit, we let it happen while we paid into our 401k and ate our microwave dinners.

</rant>

And no, I'm sorry -- other than turning off the television and reading a book, I have no solutions.

[absyntheNsugar]

8. As a Prodigal Journalist I hear ya!

I hold a Masters in Journalism and I didn't go into the trade simply for the same reasons! It was 92 and media was consolidating, real investigative journalism was being cut everywhere and newspapers' unions were being broken down one by one (Detroit was striking at the time, but I knew people who worked for the Oakland Tribune when the ANG bought them out and told them all they could either leave or re-apply for their old jobs at 1/3 of the pay.)

[NashVegas]

9. Culture was Allowed to Become a Commodity

Remember all those Boomers who howled when "Revolution" was heard in a Nike commercial?

They were right.

[SheilaT]

3. And it's not yet the end of the line

for either the Boomers or the Xers. Have you read "Generations" or, better yet, "The Fourth Turning" by Neil Strauss and William Howe? If their theory is right, we're at the very beginning of a twenty year long phase, the end of which will see a tranformed country. Aging Boomers will be the country's leaders, Xers the workhorses, and the Millenials, young people just now coming into focus as a separate generation (ages about 3-21 right now)will emerge as the generation that will come into full bloom at the end of this crisis.

[GOPFighter]

5. Money

The corporations bought the politicians, lock stock and barrel.

[WilliamPitt]

10. Boomers got older, Xers got paid

Boomers rallied and marched and then had kids and bought houses and had to worry about health care and braces and college tuitions and mortgages. That'll change a person.

Xers got jobs in computers, lawfirms and accounting firms, got paid, and became in their 20s what the Boomers became in their 40s. One might call this progress. It would have been, except for the SCOTUS 5.

[absyntheNsugar]

11. yes...the more you have to lose

the less willing you are to risk it all.

Those with nothing to lose are the most dangerous.

[girl gone mad]

12. I can think of at least 3 things.

I'm an X-er (always hated the label).

1. Materialism. I don't buy a lot of stuff, but I know people of both genders, even subculture people, that are way too interested in buying toys and clothes and crap. The rise of easy credit plays into that.

2. Oversexed society. It's like a drug or a religion to a lot of people, instead of just an enjoyable activity. I think people were able to get more done back in the Victorian era because sex didn't take up so much of their time. I had a friend argue that our society is too puritanical, not enough sex. I said are you crazy? I feel like I can't get away from it.

3. Right wing media. It keeps growing, and there's that sense of inevitability. Also, the machismo of the RW. Nazis used the same tactics to destroy their opposition.

[absyntheNsugar]

13. Agree....but not fully with #2

I agree with most of what you say, but on the idea of an oversexed society - I counter that you are only partially right.

We are a society obsessed with sex, but with very little gratification. Basically all build up with no release. Easy to see why we don't think quite right as a result.

A friend of mine was from the Ex-Soviet Union. Back in the Soviet days, sex was the national passtime, simply because there wasn't much else to do, and they had eliminated most of their purtitanical religions. So you met a girl, had sex, went on with life. Then after the fall of the wall, sex became a commodity - and people had much less of it. Basically the rules of capitalism - create a scarcity, drive up demand and drive up the price.

'

[starroute]

14. Boomers got their hearts cut out by the events of 1968-71

We came along expecting to change the world, and then the world fell apart and nothing made sense any more and the sense of possibility dried up and vanished.

The people who made 60's culture were typically older than the Boomers -- the musicians and other creative people of the period were mainly born about 1939-43. In the 60's, the Boomers were eager kids, involved in everything though still too young to be the leaders. By the time we got into our middle 20's and felt ready to start leading, there was nothing left to lead. It had all shattered into fragments, or sold out, or been demonized by the society at large.

That is why so many Boomers despise disco. It's a symbol of what we had snatched away from us just as we should have been coming into our own.

[absyntheNsugar]

15. Interesting

Could you elaborate on the disco part? I've never heard it expressed in that way (and it makes sense).

As an X-er I always liked Disco, but in different terms. Part of being a good X-er is to 'embrace the ugly and the bad' hence our fixation on kitch.

[RobinA]

17. Snatched Away...

I don't buy it. Who was this snatcher? If anything, we gave it away. Or sold it.

[RobinA]

16. Boomers and Their Presidents

All is not lost, although I know what you mean. But we've only had two boomer Presidents and aren't anywhere near our first Xer President.

One boomer pres. did ok, I rarely considered him an embarrassment to his generation and have to say that in the end I think he acquitted himself as well as a boomer as can be expected for a politician. He had his bad moments ideologically, and in the end he was really STUPID with his personal life, all in all I think we can keep him.

The second boomer pres, I think of as a boomer chronologically only, and consider him an embarrassment to Americans from the cradle to the grave.

Xers....I don't know. They never seemed to get off the ground.

I agree about the TV. Get rid of it or at least turn it off. It's not just what's on it that's rancid, it's what you COULD be doing instead of watching the damn thing. The TV is a giant energy suck, a swirling black vortex that inhales the human energy of everyone who comes near it. Do not look it in the eye or you will be under its spell. Exercise your ultimate power over it - the power it doesn't want you to know you have, the power it tries to make you forget you have - pull the plug.

[FloridaJudy]

18. We got old

We're shreading our AARP membership, instead of our draft cards.

I still intend to whack the conservatives with my cane, even if I have to do it from safety of my wheel-chair!

[absyntheNsugar]

19. Well one positive legacy of the Boomers

...is Generation X. You raised us, taught us, provided us our moral compasses. I know it was that way for me. My parents weren't Boomers, but my teachers were.

We were the only generation boomers could teach without the looming specter of standardized testing dominating the cirriculum. You taught us to read between the lines of the history books, you taught us critical thinking (which has been eliminated from High School and undergraduate cirriculum.) And most important, you taught us that one person can make a difference.

[tigereye]

20. Millenials eh

That is interesting. I am a boomer and my son is a millenial. I am curious to see what he will make of things, given my and my so's politics. On the television thing, I agree that it is often an energy vortex, but as someone who watched a fair amount of tv as a kid in the 60s, I didn't feel that I turned out too badly. Parental values and other experiences play a part. We also left the house and played outside! I have to turf my son off the computer at times, not an issue for me when I was a kid.

Read to the kids, make them think and ask questions, have them get fresh air. This is the antidote to right wing media and the crassness of some aspects of our culture. Plus I would really miss PBS. Also xer friends of mine are pretty savvy politically.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Contrary to what the media would have you believe

the baby boomer rebels were a minority of their generation--a large minority, to be sure, but a minority nevertheless. Yes, the campus rioters were baby boomers, but my generation also included soldiers in Vietnam, fundamentalists, complacent preppies like a certain pResident, and people who never really left the 1950s behind.

It's no more true that all baby boomers were hippies and radicals than it is that all Generation Xers were New Wave rockers or Goths.