The Epic Failure Of The Boomers

And The Continued Poisoning Of The Subsequent Generations

My grandfather was part of “The Greatest Generation”. I sat at his knee hearing his stories of being in the South Pacific theater, storming beaches and having bullets take out the men on either side of him. Of watching enemy planes bear down on the landing strip that he was moving equipment on. Of hacking through jungles and dodging mines and feeling the heat of flamethrowers.

Likewise, my grandfather-in-law, a Navy vet, would tell the story of being on his ship and seeing torpedoes passing within feet of the hull.

These men fought actual Nazis and fascists.

Their wives went days, weeks, and months, pregnant and alone, wondering if they would ever hear from their husbands again. They worked in factories and held down the fort here while the boys were over there.

Then we won, they came home, and so began a new normal. Enter the Boomers.

The greatest population explosion in the history of the United States happened shortly thereafter. It was the golden years, and dancing days were here again. All of that pent-up stress, all of that anxiety and fear and heartache and loss and separation caused adults to make like bunny rabbits and get it on, big time.

And so they did, and a new generation dubbed “The Baby Boomers” was born, a generation that, like their parents, would set out to completely change the face of humanity. Unlike their parents, they would do it in a completely different way.

I’m a child of the 80’s and 90’s. I was born in 1977, so my formative years were influenced greatly by Reagan addresses to the nation, the Iran-Contra hearings, the decline of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Clinton years, grunge, the X-Files, and the rise of the Internet. I had Star Wars and MTV and Back To The Future and Pepsi. As I reflect on that time period now, I am stunned and grateful that I was able to grow up and form my worldview during that time. All things considered, it was a time of peace, prosperity, freedom, security, and hope that our world will never know again.

Granted, there was corruption and war and all of the things that have always been happening, but for the most part, as a kid and young adult, that stuff didn’t press in on me. Politics were there, but they weren’t infused in EVERY. SINGLE. CONVERSATION. While I couldn’t necessarily see what the future held for me, I was generally optimistic that I could do whatever and go wherever I wanted without a hint that I would ever feel the boot of oppression on me. I didn’t trust the government and was always interested in the “unofficial” story, but I believed that overall, we had enough good people in high places to lead us according to traditional American principles. We were still the “good guys”.

All of that changed on 9/11. The world completely changed that day, and that’s the day that the America I knew ceased to exist. Oh, the following days and weeks were filled with patriotism. I remember weeping as I watched all of Congress sing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, with nary a hint of division or political posturing.

I believe that was the last genuine, authentic, united moment that the United States has witnessed.

Since then, our government has become a bloated, festering cesspool of new agencies, new regulations, new controls, and new puppet masters. Our conversations have become more divided, more polarized, and more unhinged from any sense of reality than at any other point in human history, on a more widespread scale than ever before possible. Our citizens are sicker in every way than ever before, despite the massive “health and wellness” industries.

Obviously, the Trump years, and now Covid, have turned all of that up to 11. No, 111.

When I look back at that picture of the New York victory parade in 1946, I gasp in amazement, thinking of that world. Humanity had just beaten back the darkest evil we had ever faced. More blood, treasure, and sacrifice had been needed to get to that parade moment than ever before in human history. The sense of hope must have been incredible. The joy and promise for the future, staggering. The knowledge that the darkness was over and a new day was dawning…wow, I want to go back and breathe that air, because it must have been absolutely intoxicating.

As the warriors and wives settled into that “new normal”, that sense of security became, over time, the substitute for the pursuit of freedom. And freedom costs something. That greatest generation paid that cost, and paid it forward for their kids in spades.

So what did those kids do? What did that security and freedom and abundance do to them?

They shit the bed.

They squandered that fertile soil. They grew up bored. Discontent. Entitled. Without purpose. Increasingly jealous of other systems and governments, and ever more political.

Within one generation, those very same Boomers who had been handed the keys to a Lamborghini, took those keys and began to run it straight into the ground.

They began to clamor for the same exact systems and latch onto the same exact philosophies that their parents had just fought to the death to defeat. They began to infect the institutions with their belief that not only were those systems not evil, but that they were superior, and that they, that newly enlightened generation, could take those systems - systems that SHOULD have forever been banished to the dust heap of history - and do them better. The age of Aquarius, how beautiful it was going to become.

In their reckless, idiotic, selfish, and shortsighted cultural revolutions, they became the very poison that the world had just spit out.

In short, this was the generation that poisoned the well of liberty, and they are the #1 reason we find ourselves where we are today.

Boomers, in your quest to rage against the machine, to pursue safety above liberty, to nerf my generation, to burn baby burn, you have altered the course of history. I don’t mean to imply that my generation, and the subsequent generations, don’t bear much responsibility for this mess. We certainly do.

However, just like that old PSA, we learned it from watching YOU, alright?

Congratulations, you gutless, reckless, short-sighted, selfish, wicked generation. Aren’t you proud of us? Aren’t you proud of what you’ve done?

Now, as a father of two, you have left me with a mess that I will fight for the rest of my life to clean up. You have left me with the responsibility to undo the infestation and misplaced fear and entitlement and insanity and illness that you’ve so callously thrown into the well of Liberty.

Your parents fought ACTUAL NAZIS, and yet you cower in fear of a disease that’s 99.9% survivable. You mask my kids because of YOUR cowardice, your fragility.

YOU HAVE BECOME THE VERY SYSTEM YOU WANTED TO OVERTHROW. Just like any other debased, atheistic, humanistic movement, philosophy, and idea in history, you have become the very thing you hated. It’s inevitable.

All of my grade school years, all I heard was “Just Say No” and “if your friends jumped off a bridge too, would you?”, but here you are, shoving drugs at me, at your grandkids, telling us to “just go along, JUST DO IT, everyone else is doing it!”

It’s fucking perverted and evil. But you’ll be leaving soon, and you won’t have to pay the piper. At least not in this life, anyway.

Now, with that being said, I know many of my parent’s generation are good, kind, thoughtful, determined, generous, and loving people, and to you I say this:

Please help me. Help us pick up the pieces. You’re still in powerful positions of leadership. You are in the universities and financial sectors and regulatory boards and school boards. Your voice carries much weight. We’re all looking for the adults to step up and be adults, and you can still do that.

But time is VERY short, and we need all hands on deck. I can’t imagine growing up in the hellscape that my kids are growing up in. I try to provide them with as normal and real of an upbringing as I can, because they deserve that. I want them to look back on all of this madness and remember it as a blip on their radar.

Please be the adults, and help your kids and grandkids have some kind of similar landscape as the ones that you were born into and then squandered. This is your chance to redeem yourselves, but you need to act fast, decisively, and with boldness on the convictions that your parents fought for and with.

You can still redeem your Boomer legacy.