Hostages of the Boomer Brain Trust

Why is it that our modern society is being held hostage by the peccadillos of a single generation? I’m not just talking about a few things here and there. I’m talking about wholesale failures that affect our culture and country, things that have been occurring over the course of this generation’s adult lives.

I alluded to the fact that the Baby Boom generation (see Boomers) was at fault for a lot of what we’ve been subjected to over the course of the past 45 years.  I’m now going to make the claim that they, not unlike big government types (they’re nearly synonymous, since they’re now in charge, for the most part), have been trying to undo everything that they may have caused, only to create even worse problems in the process.

Let’s look at the individual versus the collective good, for starters. The phrase “it’s your thing, do what you wanna do” was emblematic of how Boomers came to think in the mid to late sixties and onwards. Prior to that, society reigned in the sort of self-centered, hedonistic, deviant behavior that this generation became known for. Societal mores/values and norms, the very things that helped police a society and keep it from decay, were being challenged on a continual basis. Now we hear that the individual needs to become subservient to the demands of the group.  Initiative, self-sufficiency, boot-strapping, and acting in one’s own self-interests have become virtually taboo concepts because they supposedly promote the same kind of behavior that boomers were synonymous with, and we can’t have that, can we?

What if I said that sexual promiscuity, out of wedlock births, and the crime rate are all interrelated? Sexual promiscuity is, by its very nature, a risky behavior, and there are consequences for any behavior (good, bad, or indifferent). In this case, one of those would be an unwanted/unexpected pregnancy. When it happens to individuals in at-risk groups, such as poor, uneducated teens who are unable or unwilling to care for those children, then it becomes problematic. Those children run the risk of a troubled childhood, one that may eventually lead to a life of crime. Rather than address the root cause (sexual promiscuity), the Boomer brain trust went after the unwanted pregnancy aspect of things, which is why contraception, abortion, and a woman’s right to choose have become political third rails.

The number of high profile mass shootings by deranged individuals over the past 18 months (especially the shootings of elementary school children and their teachers in Connecticut) has renewed the debate over gun control. I’m going to go out on a limb and hypothesize that the two high profile deaths in the NY subways were also the handiwork of the same type of individual, but you won’t hear much about those cases because they don’t add to the gun control narrative. Those who advocate more stringent gun control measures at the state and federal level continually overlook the fact that this sort of event is infinitesimally small when compared to the deaths that occur on the streets of our major cities on a daily basis. Anyhow, back to the mass shootings. In just about every case, the assailant has been someone who was known to have some sort of psychological issue/defect that would have in days past, kept them isolated from the general public. Nowadays, the mentally ill roam our streets with nowhere to go. You see them in parks, on street corners, and in my case, riding the local transit system here in Chicago. Again, rather than looking at the pathology driving these individuals and what can be done to help them, the Boomer brain trust focused on the weapons used as the root cause of the problem. Sort of like the carpenter blaming his tools for shoddy workmanship.

We now shift to education, the third of the four horsemen of the Boomer apocalypse. It wasn’t that long ago that we turned out some of the best minds anywhere. From kindergarten through grad school, our educational system was the envy of the world. But something happened at the elementary and secondary school levels to change all of that. More folks from the Boomer brain trust got the idea that they could change how kids learned and that certain curricula they were studying were superfluous to where they were trying to take things. Physical Education (gym class), music, and art became relics of a bygone era. New math, whole word reading systems, and the wholesale abandonment of the skill of cursive writing supplanted the traditional mainstays of readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic. Recently, sedentary lifestyles, ever expanding waistlines, and plummeting test scores have forced quite a few of the so-called experts to jump on the “getting back to basics” bandwagon and bring back some or all of the programs that had been previously cut. But all of that seems to have come with a hefty price tag. There will be a need to increase the funding of already bloated budgets to make it happen, despite the fact that before everything went away, it was all done without anywhere near the monetary outlays we see that are either planned or taking place today. Worst of all is the fact that given our current economic malaise, there are going to be very few of these programs that see the light of day.

The generation gap was something that played out across the cultural landscape of this country back in the late sixties and early seventies. The mistrust that existed between the Boomers and previous generations (i.e. the establishment), was the result of a lack of clear communications channels (misunderstandings), as well as the influence of certain sources within and outside of this country’s borders. Today it’s the boomers, who instead of trying to make genuine, constructive connections with the younger generations, have sold them a bill of goods since they became the establishment. Late stage Gen-Xers and Millenials have expressed the feeling in poll after poll that the American dream seems to be slipping through their grasp, why? They’ve been bombarded by academia, the media, and politicians with the message that things are the worst they have been since the Great Depression. The situation is hopeless, the system is broken, and no amount of effort or initiatives on the part of anyone will change that. Just like the depression era proposals put forth to pull America out of its malaise, government is being touted as the only solution that’s going to work. Yet this is the very same government/establishment that the boomers railed against.

The Boomer brain trust has an Achilles heel, hubris. They decided that previous generations, when they held the reins of power, had no clue as to what they were doing. Now that they’re in power, things are going to be different. They know what needs to happen and will brook no dissent when it comes to accomplishing their agenda. The previous mistakes that they made were part of the learning curve and are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Remember the no consequences part because that plays a big part in their philosophy (or rather pathology). Someone or something else is at fault for why you are in your current predicament, but have no fear, they can extricate you from your situation if you will only entrust them with the keys to the kingdom.

So, if arrogance is stupidity taken to new heights and hubris is arrogance run wild, just what does this tell us about the Boomer brain trust and their ability to muck things up for the rest of us? You can draw your own conclusions.