Why Baby Boomers Suck, Part 1

I'm starting to think that the trick of this blogging thing is doing it whenever you feel like it - even if it's 2:18 am and you don't have a TON to say.

This isn't about gluten, or vegetarian food, or how my friends are funnier than me. Instead, I want to take a moment to start to sketch out why I think the baby boomers (as a group) suck, and exactly HOW much I think they suck.

First, let me say, my parent are boomers. And I love them. And sometimes, I want to throttle them. So I'm probably biased. But, as a qualitative researcher, I believe everything is always already subjective (and "biased"), so, hey. That's par for the course, I guess. As I tell my students, the task now is to be reflexive about exactly what my own perspective is and why.

Let me say again: I love my parents. I grew up on stories, movies and musics about the 60s - situated in the context of the 50s, of course, as you can't understand the later decade without getting a sense of the earlier. Everything was so shiny, so hopeful, so sincere and earnest and honest. The Beatles were that way, even, in their music - even when they tried to be silly or avant garde...they were still shiny and sincere and earnest.

And yet the Boomers grew up; they stopped being shiny and sincere and earnest and started living the rat race - all the while pretending they were better than that. That's my problem with the Boomers - pretending you're better than your parents generation when, in fact, many of the choices you made ended up being just as disastrous; especially when you forgot why you were making those choices in the first place, and started making them solely on the basis of what felt good.

So where did we end up? A divorce rate that peaks later than ever before but hasn't dropped significantly (so couples that have been together for 30 years are calling it quits as casually as those who've been together for 30 months). A financial crisis based in part on saying you're good for something you can't really cover. And an ethos (pathos?) of a generation of shiny, earnest sincerity, which individuals can't live up to, but can't admit they can't live up to.

This is my problem with the Boomers. They want a better life for their children, yet now they're competing with their children for jobs, and feeling like we should wait and let them have their turn a little longer; the same way Obama should have stepped aside and let HRC have her turn.

Enough.

We love you.
We respect what you stood for.
We respect who you are today.
We see that these are not the same, in most cases.

Back off.
Give us a chance.
Stop running for city council when you've already fracked it up in the past.
Stop trying to recapture your youth.
Be who you are and where you are - you can even be who and where you are in a way that is as shiny, honest and earnest as you have ever been before, even as you continue to make mistakes that don't quite fit with that. Just be honest about it.

...Maybe THEN we'll see you as allies and not as roadblocks.