Recently, there has been much discussion on this blog about the grievances that some (many?) of those who make up the younger generations feel towards the Boomers (that cohort which was born between 1946 and 1964).
“Boomer” itself has become something of an invective, usually along the lines of “OK, Boomer,” which is said in a dismissive way.
Personally, I get it. The whippersnappers aren’t entirely wrong; there’s a lot that can be laid at the feet of us (now) old-timers.
The problem however is that when we get into this debate, we wind up talking passed each other. In fact, the whole Boomer vs GenX/Z/Millennial debate is whistling past the civilizational graveyard. That’s because there are inexorable environmental forces which are driving the historical train, so it’s useless to blame this, that or the other guy. Until we see that, we won’t be able to get ahold of the problem.
I realize this sounds like I’m trying to pass the buck. But I’m not. If I were one of the younger, non-Boomer generations, I’d be p!ssed as well. The problem however is two-fold: not only were we Boomers the largest generational cohort in American history (the so-called pig-in-the-python demographic), but we were the seventh generation to come along since the founding of the Republic.
This is key. Mainly because it sets the stage for the second reason: political scientists going all the way back to Aristotle noticed centuries ago that once a country gets to the fourth generation, it reaches its apogee. A few centuries ago, the Rev Alexander Tytler noticed the same thing. Anyway, it’s then when certain elements start realizing that they can kick back, relax and start voting themselves benefits from the public fisc. By the time the fifth generation rolls around, this sense of entitlement becomes settled and only accelerates with each successive generation. We are now in the eighth generation since the founding of the Republic and we’ve gone hog-wild with Federal spending with every succeeding generation, with no end in sight. You can blame Sleepy Joe for accelerating this process –and at eighty years old, he ain’t no Boomer. (I dare say that the majority of Boomers didn’t vote for him either.)
This phenomenon is more true of republics than of monarchies. The reason is the people in monarchies are “subjects” whereas those who reside in republics are “citizens.” As a rule, citizens have more power and can importune on the leadership for increased benefits. Power flows from them; with subjects on the other hand, power flows from the monarch, who rules at God’s pleasure. In other words, in the former case, it’s from the bottom-up whereas in the latter it’s top-down. If the monarchy in question is hereditary, then the king feels only an obligation to answer to his far-distant descendant for his policies and not the immediate whims of the populace. (Plato tried to square that circle by idealizing a “Philosopher-king” at the top of the heap.)
If we take 1776 as the start of the American nation (and 30 years in a generation), the fifth generation hit right around 1936, smack-dab at the start of the New Deal. It’s been downhill ever since. Each succeeding generation has subsequently increased its share of government transfers. We Boomers were the sixth generation to come along, having been born to that (fifth) generation, the “Greatest Generation.” Since then, Americans of all cohorts have overturned Cicero’s admonition as reiterated by John F Kennedy at his inauguration: we now ask “what our country can do for us, not what we can do for our country.” In this sense, GenZers, Xers and Millennials are no different than the preceding generations. In fact, they’re even more vociferous about what they want.
I more or less intuited this myself when I was in my late 30s and became quite insistent when, in raising my sons, their mother and I hoped to set an example for them of hard work, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency. Vacations for our family were often waylaid; fancy cars were not bought, and our first (and second) houses were “fixer-uppers.” This was my father’s example to me as well (perhaps for different reasons, I don’t believe he saw how degenerate the America of the Eisenhower years could become the Gomorrah of today but that’s another story).
We actually tried to live within our means. The operative word is “tried.” Unfortunately, I know quite a few Boomers who weren’t as sacrificial; for them, the sky was the limit. Overall, it was obvious that my generation was way more profligate than the previous one, and despite my best efforts, this included me, as well.
Nor were we Boomers, particularly pious. Another thing we bequeathed to the younger generations was sexual liberation. But you can’t really blame us for that one either, as we actually inherited this curse from the Greatest Generation. This now includes mutilating little children’s bodies, something we never envisioned. We were force-fed endless propaganda by the government, Hollywood, Academia, you name it: we were having a “population explosion,” and therefore women had to get on birth control pills. Then when feminism fully kicked in and women were encouraged to get into the workforce, abortion became legal. If a professional woman wanted to get ahead, abortion was encouraged. To further “women’s liberation,” we created “no-fault” divorce.
These are some of the “inexorable forces” I mentioned earlier. There are many others: the destruction of the African-American family which was enabled by Welfare; white flight from the cities, untrammeled illegal immigration which eviscerated the purchasing power of the native working classes, and so on. What I’m about to say is harsh: unless the younger, post-Boomer generations come to grips with these issues, blaming Boomers for all their ills will not accomplish anything.
Do you begin to see the problem? It’s cultural. The late Andrew Breitbart said “politics is downstream from culture.” True that. But “progressive” public policies greased the skids that made the cultural degradation described above possible.
How many Xers/Zers/etc. want to confront their gay friends and tell them how they honestly feel about their “in your face” screaming fits? Or that there is no such thing as “gay marriage”? That once homosexuality becomes preponderant in society, the culture which celebrates it becomes extinct? How many are willing to tell their wives that as husbands, they are “the head of the wife,” and that birth control pills are feminizing future generations (and decimating our testosterone levels right now)? How many are willing to risk losing their jobs by willing to say “that there are only two genders”? Try it, you’ll probably lose your job. Kiss your mortgage –and your marriage–goodbye.
How many of our churches are willing to teach that “patriarchy” is normal and ordained by both God and nature? Judging by what I see, I’d say that all of Protestantism and most of Catholicism have lost that battle as well. If the Fordhamites have their way, Orthodoxy will accept their vision as well and likewise go down the cultural crapper.
A tall order indeed.
It was the Greatest Generation (i.e. Hugh Hefner, Helen Gurley Brown, Germaine Greer, the guy who invented the BCP) that made sexual liberation possible. And it was the Protestant justices on the Supreme Court which made that horrible Roe v Wade ruling in 1972 in the first place. (Nor were they Boomers by the way but the Greatest Generation.) It passed seven to two.
More to the point, it was the American liberationist impulse which created emancipatory politics; a Luciferian concept hatched from the bowels of hell and from the inception of our Republic. The insane belief that America’s destiny is to spread democracy to the rest of the planet is an unbalanced, chaotic force which has not only hollowed out Western civilization but has brought us close to a nuclear holocaust. That horrible conceit can be laid at the feet of Woodrow Wilson, who sent thousands of Americans to die in the trenches of Europe; this not only destroyed the stable Christian empires of Europe but made a second –and far more horrible–world war inevitable.
Yup. I’d say that we got a lot of problems on our plate. You can say a lot of things about Woodrow Wilson but accusing him of being a Boomer isn’t one of them. Nor were Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Betty Friedan for that matter. So-called Critical Theory (which has now metastasized into blatant anti-white racism) was introduced to these shores by the Frankfurt School. It was John Maynard Keynes (the father of deficit spending) who made the financing of progressivism possible.
That doesn’t mean that our civilization can’t revive. The recent SCOTUS ruling which overturned Roe was a HUGE step in the right direction. You can thank Donald J Trump, that notorious narcissist/playboy for putting three justices on the Supreme Court for that one. (And two Deep-staters like George H W Bush and George W Bush for putting two staunch Catholics on the Court as well). For what it’s worth, the Dobbs decision was nothing less than the desecration of modernism’s most sacred idol.
Spending has to be cut: in all areas. That means no more $$$ for St Zelensky. That also means that we’re going to have to close hundreds of overseas military and naval bases. Yes, you’ll have to take down your Ukrainian flag from your Twitter and Facebook accounts. No more foreign wars of choice; it doesn’t matter how much those delightful little foreigners scream “Democracy!” or how unemancipated you believe their women are or how supposedly beastly they are to their minorities. That means securing the border and not listening to the sob stories of “kids in cages” that are blaring 24/7 on the cable news networks. No more GSLs for worthless college degrees. Yes, this probably means closing many colleges.
Instead of “learning to code,” learn a trade.
This also means nothing less than the eradication of cultural Marxist ideology which is presently being taught in government schools. Horrors! could we survive the return of the “Three Rs”? Or is that somehow “racist”?
You may have to take up home-schooling.
That’s just a start. The question that the post-Boomers have to ask themselves is this: are we up for this? Because I guarantee you that the various grievance groups that make up America will fight you tooth and nail for their benefits. There’s a whole lotta people riding in the cart and too few pushing it.
I wish it wasn’t like this for you. I have two sons I love more than life itself. Gail likewise has a precious daughter whom we both love dearly. We worry immensely about their future. That said, I view it as a collective moral failing that this is the world we’re leaving you. I really do. But while the world our parents left us was a better one, it contained the seeds of cultural destruction that I described earlier. Noxious seeds that were planted in their generation –and generations before them. Indeed, seeds that were planted at the founding of our Republic.
But if you’re ready to identify the problem, then you’ll have a fighting chance. Look at it this way: when you go to a doctor for a complaint, you have to be honest and tell him what the symptoms are. If you don’t, then you won’t get any better. In fact, you’ll probably be worse off than before.
I get it, nobody wants to be completely honest about the state of our nation. It will ruffle too many feathers; you may experience retribution. There’s an old Arab saying: “he who tells the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.” Bearing that in mind, it’s gonna hurt. But confront them you must, otherwise –well, I’d rather not think otherwise.
But with God’s help, you can fight and even effect a return to Christian normalcy. If you gird your loins and look reality squarely in the face, this thing can be turned around. Dum spiro, spero as the Romans said.
Godspeed the day.
Excellent, George. A diagnostic tour de force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
“We didn’t start the fire…”
True. But do we feed it?
No we didn’t lite it but we tried to fight it.
Great video!
Way back in 1968 I had a professor who kept asking us “Do you know how old this country is?” And we would start calculating. ” No great nation has lasted more than 200 years. ” he said. And we realized that we were beginning the great slide that other countries had suffered before us. His words keep coming back to haunt me as I read the events occurring
now.
First they came for the Christians.
Then they came for the straight white males.
Then they came for the Boomers.
What is Cultural Marxism?
Divide and conquer.
Thanks, George, for your insightful perspective on this topic.
What is the Orthodox Christian perspective on honoring parents and elders (aka “boomers”)?
How is dividing, demeaning, and deriding the older generation any better than denigrating Jews, Blacks, Russians, straight white males, or any other demographic?
It is unfortunate to see so many people, especially in the Orthobro sphere, using stereotypes to encourage blame and judgment toward an entire demographic. Is it vanity, pride, anger, or something else that motivates such hate and derision toward one group of fellow humans?
Every group has its faults and virtues as does every individual. We all fall short in this fallen world.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
The “Christian empires of Europe” destroyed themselves, sending millions of their subjects to kill each other. The US had nothing to do with that. You, and many in the comments, have the tendency to place the US at the center of everything but y’all are not that important. The same way that today Western countries allows the killing of unborn babies or the abuse of small children, the Christian nations of the no so distant past had no issue in murdering millions of fellow citizens through war and genocide, at the hands of both far right and far left regimes, it allowed and encouraged the persecution and hate of our neighbors for reasons related to ethnicity and religion, etc. Is it more inmoral the woman who supports abortions, many times deceived, believing the fetus is just a collection of cells, than fascist or the communist that murders the Jew, the Christian, the minority or the inferior? If you complain about the inmorality of today, you could also cheer the actual progress made, millions of Europeans in the 1940s would have prefered this Gomorrah to that Christian society.
‘ The “Christian empires of Europe” destroyed themselves,
sending millions of their subjects to kill each other. ‘
Christ, of course, ordained none of this.
Actually, Mike, it’s rather more complicated than that.
Most of the kings of Europe wanted nothing to do with the war, or once into it, were willing to pull back and declare an armistice by 1916. Some kings, like Greece’s Constantine I were resolutely against entering the war and remaining neutral. The Allies forced Greece into starvation and forced the Parliament to exile him. Kaiser Wilhelm II felt the need to punish Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (which was carried out by a rogue terrorist/secret society called The Black Hand). Tsar Nicholas II was bound by treaty to come to Serbia’s aid.
It snowballed from there, spiraling out of control. It is well-known that international banking cartels were actually driving the war-making train. Still, the monarchs of England, Russia and Germany, through back-channels were trying desperately to end the war in 1916, which was viewed as unwinnable.
Then the Lusitania was sunk by the Germans (even though the Germans warned the Americans that they would not honor the neutrality of any ships carrying armaments to England) and the “pacifist” Woodrow Wilson had the Congress declare war against the Axis. By then, it was too late to effect an honorable armistice with the Axis. The Kaiser, in desperation, allowed Lenin to board a sealed train and delivered him to Finland Station in Petrograd, which ultimately destabilized the Russian monarchy.
Almost none of the activists, philosophers and artists of the 1960s were baby boomers. At the most the boomers consumed a revolution. I was born in 1990, so it’s like blaming me for Nirvana or Lady Diana. And it wasn’t really much of a baby boom. The boomers have problems, and they’re all divorced and disgustingly consumerist, but they get blamed for a lot of things that aren’t their fault.
Still, nothing like Christmas season makes me hate them.
The generation I am the most repulsed by is Gen X. They were the generation that propped up Kurt Cobain and Kevin Smith, which my generation does not have. They are the fornicating-behind-a-Pizza-Hut-dumpster generation.
The gen x is pushing 50 and still playing with their toys. Kevin Smith recently made a He-Man movie. They get weepy talking about U2 and Prince. It’s pathetic.
My generation still lives vicariously through Harry Potter, and I’m pretty sure everyone under 20 is some form of gay. So there’s a lot of hate to go around.
Austin.
I agree wholeheartedly! I’m almost 51 and without a doubt we have been the most spoiled generation which of course leads to the idea of “idle hands are the devil’s playground”!
What’s the problem with Kurt Cobain?
All this you say is true, and if any of us had the wool over our eyes – the last decade snatched it away. This degradation was a long time coming, not because it was inevitable, but because we knew not what we were doing. Many of us, including myself in more youthful ignorance, saw it as progress and enlightenment. (I’m Gen X.) Now it is clear that it was a hallucination and not progress but destruction. None of this nonsense is inevitable. But George is right, to stop it, we have to see how all our actions contribute to our own demise and take the requisite actions to turn the ship.
‘ Charles I … was the monarch over the three kingdoms of
England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until his execution in 1649.
During his final imprisonment, he wrote “Dum spiro Spero” on a copy of
The Faerie Queene which was one of the books [he] read before he died. ‘
https://kajomag.com/the-meanings-behind-dum-spiro-spero-and-pergo-et-perago/
Oh well, there are no guarantees;
but still we must strive…
I think that maybe all of this is happening because it’s supposed to happen. I think also that there is only one generation and that is the generation inhabiting the Church, where we are preparing ourselves for Christ’s glorious second coming. It saddens me to see the hardness of people’s hearts and their refusal to repent and turn to God, but I believe it is a sign of the times. It’s just not our society that is going to “Hell in a hand basket”, I see a whole world spiraling out of control. The Lord Jesus Christ tells me not to let my heart be troubled because all these things must come to pass. I do not despair…these events give me hope! He’s coming back and we must keep the faith.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the book
Bob Marley
Redemption Song
This essay struck a deep chord within me. I was born in 1949. It has taken me my entire life to figure out who was pulling the strings that shaped America. Everything you stated is true. I remember the deep depression I experienced when I read all those feminist books and magazines telling women to get divorced, go to work and dump your baby at daycare. Married at 19 with a baby, I was a very happy and joyful young mother until government created the feminist movement. I struggled through my entire youth and midlife with feminist propaganda. My heart was soft. I liked nurturing my family but felt diminished by women with latchkey children. Mommy was not home to greet them when they returned from school. Millions of mommy’s were propagandized to fracture our nation.
I could write twenty books about how I experienced the last 73 years. I would like to add here that the family dynasties that rule the economies of this world shape shifted the USA and used and uses its military to control nations. My heart is deeply scarred knowing millions died because of the dynasty families pulling the strings.
I would like to introduce an article written by Larry Romanoff. He writes countless articles about whose pulling the strings that controls our nation. We must face this truth also.
https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/the-richest-man-in-the-world/
It’s essays like this that bring me to your website over and over again. Thank you, George, for stating things so concisely and starkly. This is an excellent essay, and I intend to share it with many people.
It all started downhill on the morning of May 29, 1453. That is truly the day the Earth stood stil and when God wept. And I’m certain the baby boomers weren’t there to cause that. To be certain, my dad, who is a boomer, and I (Gen Xer) often chat about going back in time with a few small arms and lots of 7.62 ammunition to prevent the fall of antiquity, to stop the loss of The City. To swear our fealty and lives to serve God’s anointed basileios kai autokrator in defense of our patrimony and in homage to our Anglo-Saxon Varangian kinsmen.
To lay this world and it’s ills at the feet of a small population of people, globally and historically small, isn’t right. This world has been the playground of evil forces for far longer than 25-30 years. You’re correct to go farther back, even beyond the usual suspect of WWII. That war was just the final nail in hammered into the older and I’ll be blunt, more Christian world.
The katekhon has been removed, the last to hold that distinction was martyred in the early summer of 1918 and is no longer standing in the gap holding back the forces pouring into the city. I cannot blame my parents’ generation for that catastrophe. That falls squarely and at the feet of the evil one and his minions.
On a lighter note, I’m glad George mentioned Generation X. We tend to be forgotten in popular culture nowadays.
I think the word entropy applies to the situation here and to all organzations. Or maybe the tower of Babel story. God is never going to allow any organization to grow bigger than He is.
They shifted the definition years. The boom ended with the 1960 FDA approval of oral contraceptives, which is why the left was diminished enough in 1980 to allow for Reagans election Millennials are red diaper grandchildren, children of hippies. Together, JFK boomers and Obama millennials now outnumber those who first voted for Ike and Reagan. Born in 1961, I always detested the hippies because they politicised and watered down our education, destroyed the economy as greedy 1980s traders then blamed younguns like us for the greed. Pharmacists should know the Pill elected Reagan, LSD JFK, Prozac Clinton and Viagra Trump. Ratpack boomers like Trump are no less spoiled than Hippie Boomers. The Greatest Generation, even the great civil rights leaders, were born under Prohibition. Fourthturning.com explains how USA history repeats itself every four generations. Check out https://sites.google.com/site/rtdlies/ to see how the millennials want to cap voting at seventy but lower it to fourteen; while Deplorables (https://sites.google.com/site/deplorablepolicyguide/) want to raise the voting age to twenty five.
Switzerland, Facing an Unprecedented Power Shortage,
Contemplates a Partial Ban on the Use of Electric Vehicles
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/switzerland-facing-an-unprecedented?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=268621&post_id=88017513&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
It turns out that you can have battery-powered cars,
or you can have renewable energy, but you can’t have both.
‘ The Swiss Confederation usually imports electricity from France and Germany to keep the lights on over the winter, but this year neither country has any power to spare. Many French nuclear power plants are down after years of postponed maintenance, while in Germany we suffer from a superfluity of idle wind turbines and a (self-imposed) shortage of natural gas.
The Federal Council of Switzerland has therefore published draft legislation, which outlines four tiers of escalating measures to conserve electricity and avert potential blackouts. The first prescribes a lot of temperature restrictions for things like refrigerators and washing machines. The second includes more unusual rules, such as the demand that heating in clubs and discotheques “be set to the lowest level or switched off completely,” and that “streaming services … limit resolution of their content to standard definition.” The third foresees cutting business hours, banning the use of Blue Ray players and gaming computers, and also limiting the use of electric cars, which should be driven only when absolutely necessary. A fourth and final tier mandates closure of ski facilities, casinos, cinemas, theatre and the opera.
A lot of these rules look unenforceable, but they said the same thing about contact restrictions during the pandemic. It turns out that the state really can prevent you from socialising with people in your own home if it wants to, especially when there’s no shortage of prying neighbours eager to snitch.
Feasibility isn’t the point, though. It’s the optics here that are most astounding. Electric vehicles, which politicians have heavily subsidised as one of their primary policy responses to climate change, are just now crashing against that other great arm of the green agenda, namely renewable energy. You can’t drive everyone into ever greater dependence upon the electrical grid, while also orchestrating an energy transition to wind (which hardly blows in Germany, except in the north) and solar (which generates no meaningful power in the depths of the Central European winter). Gas from Russia was the magic ingredient that kept the whole renewables charade going, and we’re out of that now. There’s no way to cover up the failure; not even the green-friendly German media has any excuse or messaging angle here. ‘
Green Juice don’t go go so far now…
9 Exciting Careers For A Gender Studies Major
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35h3UCLqPJQ&t=137s
[Video – 03:25]
Build the future back betterish… No?
Ukraine to prepare law banning churches ‘affiliated’ with Russia
The Ukrainian government will draw up a law banning churches affiliated with Russia under moves described by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as necessary to prevent Moscow being able to “weaken Ukraine from within.”
In a move condemned in Moscow, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council told the government to draft the law following a series of raids on parishes that Kyiv says could be taking orders from Moscow as Russia wages war on Ukraine.
The security council, which groups top security, military and political figures, also ordered investigations into suspected “subversive activities of Russian special services in the religious environment of Ukraine” and called for sanctions against unspecified individuals.
See: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-orders-probe-into-russian-linked-church-says-zelenskiy-2022-12-01/