As a native Floridian I can tell you that I have personally seen what often comes of that Boomer dream when actualized. In the worst cases the beaches consume them; the self-indulgence and love of ease becomes an addiction in itself, demanding greater amounts of intoxicants to stave off boredom, until they are homeless and sleeping in the dunes. For most, in my experience, they simply drift around aimlessly in golf carts, playing bingo and such, doing nothing, talking about nothing, utterly idle and obsessed with trifles. They will tell you that life is about being happy, but their idea of happiness is perfect freedom to do what they want, untethered to any sort of responsibility, and what they want when achieving that freedom is childish amusement. Their problem isn't that they are old, it's that they never grew up.
Very astutely put. I've said before, the boomers seem to have defined themselves by the "Summer of Love" that never ended. When they became 50, 50 was the new 30. When they became 60, 60 was the new 20. So om and so forth. There's an almost neurotic, crippling fear death and aging that I don't know has ever been seen in such a wide demographic of humans before, and its stunted society accordingly.
Oh yes, they have been like that from the beginning. Life was never going to end for them, but that is a childish point of view. Father Time is slowly but surely curing them of it, as he does for all human beings.
Nothing human survives over time, save the undead. And we are no longer human.
As to Churchill. Did he oversee the destruction of the British Empire? Did he participate in handing half of Europe to the USSR and was he responsible for various military disasters that resulted in huge loss of life?
De Gaulle was not popular with the French in Algeria
It's a weird dichotomy, isn't it? So much of their culture seems to be built on abandoning those things (and in many cases, they did and do), yet they are workaholics by nature. Of course, all that responsibility and obligation that they do acknowledge usually comes back to making money for themselves, but still. I touched on it in an additional paragraph I added - Buffett toured up to the very end. The hustle never stopped. For his carefree, lackadaisical persona, he was on the grind 'til the very end... and it looks like .any boomer politicians will do the same
Working made sense to them; they were the most rewarded-for-hard-work generation in American history. The boomer working class owned homes and boats and put their kids through college on factory salaries. They were also raised by the last generation to maintain a devotion to mainline Protestantism and its work ethic. Then they sold the system they inherited to China and retired, but with no idea how to actually be free, they just kept spinning their wheels.
They sold everything out from under us and now call us whiners if we bring it up. They turned our culture into a garbage dump. Left every moral and value cherished by our forebears in tatters on the ground all while incessantly telling us how great they were for "standing up to the man" (not wanting to fight) and constantly reliving these sickly sweet hagiographies of their great childhoods and younger years. And then... when my generation's "woodstock" arrived -- manufactured by boomers to make mint -- it turned into a torture prison where young people had to pay $10 for a bottle of water in the scorching heat, there were fences everywhere and a riot broke out. And of course they blamed the kids for this. They hate their children, hate their parents, only loving themselves.
This is where spoiling and generational narcissism leads. I don't think their parents meant to spoil them. There was just so much plenty it seems to have happened by accident. I don't know, that doesn't quite explain it. They actively rejected their parents -- the mantra being "don't trust anyone over 30". Who the fuck says that?
An economist recently said the Boomers were the first generation to never vote to raise taxes on themselves. Irresponsible to the end I almost can't imagine them not taking us all down with them as they go. I swear the only thing that will stop them is the younger folks with families who say hell no, I'm not pushing that damned button, fuck you.
Don't forget the 1965 immigration act. The boomers didn't pass it, they were too young, but they could have easily repealed it and protected the demographic integrity of the GAE.
Retirement, with no productive purpose, is a kind of living death. They exist on a day to day basis, with nothing to focus their energy and time on. Slowly the years roll by until old age begins to really hit them.
This is what the zeitgeist unleashed by the Enlightenment was bound to become in its old age and senescence. But that's the cycle of Life. The next zeitgeist will be born, full of possibility and promise, in the near future, and after it runs its course, it will die as absurd a death as this one has.
You're right, and, at the rate we're going, I can only hope we get to the next zeitgeist as peacefully and easily as possible. Gramsci was a questionable character, but he did give us this line that resonates with me now - "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."
Gramsci walks among us today as teachers from kindergarten to post secondary school, to Sore Os DAs. His long march through institutions worked, he was an evil genius and a motherfucker. I am glad the fascists put him in prison, prison is where he belonged.
I wrote about it at some length a few weeks ago, but in short, it’s not quite like that. Even in the same state or the same system the culture of a school can vary widely. In the private realm, where I work, it is just as varied.
Not all boomers are that way. I guess it depends upon where you live. My parents are boomers and they are still active in the community. My mom works at the church and my dad has just now retired from work, but still goes out and helps where he can.
My grandparents worked until they were 85,87,90,and 95.
I’m Gen X, so I’m not going to retire unless I can find something to do outside that will keep me active.
But then, the boomers that don’t work are leaving so much debt that I might not be able to retire even if I want to.
This is true in a sense. I would not expect someone at 65 to have the demands of a full career; in fact, boomers refusing to leave their careers is a problem in itself. But I think there is something wrong with just kind of checking out of other responsibilities. Just because you are not employed full time does not absolve one of duties to children and grandchildren, to be close, to help, to serve as a model for what a man should be. Putting all the old people in the country in a single state denudes communities of what should be their wisest and most invested members. I think idling away at the end of life is a poor prize for years of hard work in any case. A man has freedom after all these years, and the best he can do with it is Wheel of Fortune and noontime beers? To me it's more sad than anything, that given the opportunity to do something worthwhile one simply runs out the clock.
In a just and righteous world, Mc Connel’s handler would have been charged with elder abuse for not seeking emergency medical care for what appeared to be a stroke.
Absolutely. Obviously I am no fan of Biden, but Jill and Hunter and probably his brother, too, should both be charged for elder abuse for enabling his situation. It's unconscionable for them to manipulate a man they ostensibly care about the way they are.
Really good piece. I wonder what it must be like to identify with one’s job so much they never want to leave it. It’s understandable that a rockstar or musician would feel that way, but a lawyer or an accountant? It’s wild to think people identify with such professions and don’t just treat them as a means to an end. It’s admirable in a way, but I suppose it’s also the result of coming of age in a time when those professions GUARANTEED a really good living. That’s hard to give up.
I don't really get it, either. I see strains of it in my father - he's getting to the age where a comfortable retirement is either possible or in the near future, but he has no intentions of stopping. Part of it seems to be a kind of "What else would I do?" which is perfectly understandable - idle hands, and what not, and also, if he's gonna be working, better to work raking in cash than part-timing at Home Depot - but part of it is also that kind of that work ethic you're speaking about. I remember once he told me, when I was bitching about the protestant work ethic and I said something to the effect of, "Work in this country is valued as some sort of intrinsic good unto itself, like there's virtue in working just to work, like it's something you're just supposed to do." To which he said - "It is."
It's the stark divide in ideology between a generation that grew up in the most prosperous era in history (as you pointed out, hard work paid off more then than it does now), and those of us who didn't. I think that's why you see younger generations taking a more "European mindset", as my dad once called it. Unlike him, we don't work because we feel like we should, it's just a means to an end, and we value our leisure time and do what we can to maximize it. Not to say that Boomers don't relax or have leisure time, either, but there's this distinctly American mindset about always working, always being on the clock, never resting, go go go go all the time just to wait, that I've heard Europeans comment on that I think puts my way of thinking closer to there's than my dad's. Not to hammer home the point, but I knew an Italian in college who got very angry one night because we wouldn't sit and have drinks after dinner. "In Italy, we don't just get up and go, we know how to sit and enjoy ourselves! We spend two hours getting ready to go eat and drink fine wine! You people spend ten minutes to put on t-shirts and then eat cheap food so you can run home and watch TV!" The older I get, the more I realize what he was trying to say.
But, alas, I wish I did understand what it must be like to feel so strongly about your chosen career. It's enviable, in a way, but at the same time, one of the reasons I hesitate to monetize my hobbies is that, someone once told me, "Once you start making money off your hobbies, it isn't really a hobby anymore".
Well said. Being closer to the old country than many of my peers, I concur and appreciate the European mindset. I also appreciate the growing (though still small) disgust at the American impulse to commodify and monetize everything under the sun.
Again, I’m not a Protestant and I’m not an Anglo and I’m not even “Western” I’m a swarthoid Orthodox Mediterranean so I’m like a world away from heritage Americans and I get I’m a guest and a minority here, at least in terms of mindset. But I do think a lot of our problems result from the “work is always intrinsically good no matter what you’re doing, so work until you die” and “if it makes money, it’s moral, and if it doesn’t, you’re a loser.” It turns humans into machines which is something I am unashamed to wholeheartedly reject.
I relate to your experience despite being a 5th generation American since my dad’s Irish Catholic family has good enough records (compiled by one of his cousins) that he and I were able to visit our ancestors’ farm in Ireland in 2016, and that part of our heritage has always been important to our family in traditions like making St. Patrick’s Day a big event and playing music together.
And yet, for all that, my boomer dad grew up in the Midwest surrounded by Lutherans (and I suppose a fair number of other Catholics, though I think of the Midwest as a very Protestantized culture), and he, too, exhibits this workaholic mentality I’ve never been able to understand.
I do appreciate that he imbued my brother and me with more old school values and enough of a work ethic that we didn’t turn out to be the stereotypical, irreligious, soyboy millennials stuck in a dead-end job at Starbucks fraternizing with other commie larpers.
But I was fortunate enough to be one of the young men Ernest Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast who got to experience living in Paris twice as a young man, and as much as the American in me criticizes the French for their inefficient and envious approach to economics, the French in me (the other major familial ethnicity I’m most strongly connected to) balks at the American workaday mentality you’ve described here and my own personal Margaritaville is probably swanning around the South of France visiting vineyards and abbeys on a monthlong summer holiday that’s currently impossible with two young children on one income.
It is a fine line to tread. My father also instilled in me an inability to half-ass things, and whatever task I'm given, I always have to do to the best of my abilities. As much as this is probably helped more than hindered, it also leaves me almost unable to relax, in a way. Like, I always feel like I have to be doing something, because productivity is king, and just sitting down and relaxing is anathema to that. Again - not bad, but it comes with downsides. One big thing I see with workaholics is that, when your body and mind need to take a break, it will MAKE you take a break, whether you like it or not. And usually those breaks are both long and costly, more so than if you just slowed your roll and dialed things back. Leisure, relaxation, that "French" approach to things - there's merits to that. It's funny you mention the locale of the Midwest, too. My dad's family is from Pennsylvania, of mennonite stock, and if you want to find anyone who embodies the protestant work ethic better than them, I think the Amish might be the only ones. Definitely plays a part in his psychology, I think.
That work ethic is something all of us with American boomer parents have (mine were born here), and it’s a good thing on the whole. I’m not a millennial but I’m not an X either—I’m what some call Gen Y, that in-between generation—so I’ve never cried when things go south at a job, and I can handle, and indeed invite, criticism. But as our simian friend says in his comments below, it makes you unable to relax because you feel like you’re not doing anything productive.
My dad treads the line. He works part-time now and for the past decade (he’s almost 70) has been taking it much easier than he used to, and I think it’s been good for him. He’s good at what he does, he’s enjoying it more now than he used to, and he can’t complain about the steady income. And I get that—I think living on fixed income sounds awful.
But then again, I also like the prospect of having nowhere I HAVE to go and nothing I HAVE to do…
Strictly speaking, there is no difference between Gen Y and Millennials, it's just that the latter has become the standard term and is easier to remember. It goes Boomers (1945-196?), Gen X/"The Forgotten Generation" (1970-1985ish), Gen Y/"Millennials (1986-1997ish), Gen Z/"Zoomers" (basically anyone who doesn't have a personal memory of Sep. 11).
It's funny because Boomers are so named because they were *born* during the "Baby Boom" immediately following WWII, but Millennials are so named because we *came of age* at the turn of the millennium.
If you straddle the line between the people who were kids in the 80s and those of us who were kids in the 90s, you could say you're a "Xennial."
I enjoy a good boomer screed as much as the next x-ennial, but sometimes they make no sense.
I'm always surprised to remember that so many of the senile politicians we point to as problem boomers are not, in fact, boomers. We can call them spiritual boomers all we want, but it's the same as blaming the problems of the 60s and the sexual revolution on boomers: it's genuinely not them causing those particular problems.
I also don't understand what's wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work to the point they keep going until death itself stops them. Buffet might sell overpriced cheeseburgers, but he's not exploiting anyone by it. I assume the price includes the ambiance and immersion into the fantasy and that for his target market, the cost is worth it. Nor is there anything wrong with wealthy boomer Minnesotans enjoying the Margaritaville fantasy.
I suppose full disclosure, my mother and siblings are all boomers who really like Jimmy Buffet so his albums were the soundtrack to my childhood. But they were rust belt tradesmen, retail workers, and stay at home moms. They traveled to the nearby Margaritaville once after saving up for the experience and they came home gleeful.
Your article reflects this general confusion we all seem to refuse to accept we have regarding what the boomers are to be blamed for and why. You mention several times you're not criticizing Buffet or his fans, but there's still that undertone of condescension and heaving sigh that we all get when we talk about boomers. Quite interesting. I like it.
Well, boomer screeds are one of those prickly topics that's so nuanced and complicated that, when you start breaking them down, it's always kind of difficult to not come off with some level of contradictions and, as you said, confusion. I try - and at times fail - to not to speak in overwhelming absolutes about the boomers, because, obviously, there are many of the boomer generation who are important to me and, despite their own personal failings, which are really no more severe than anything anyone else might suffer from, are good, honest, hard-working people. I often have to remind myself, as well, that many cohorts of the boomer demographic also suffer from the deleterious ramifications of the policies and actions of the elected officials their generation put into power, and it isn't as if every single boomer is living a life of exorbitant wealth and luxury at the expense of ever single individual in the following generations living in grinding poverty. I think there's a certain degree of separating the individuals from the whole that should be minded, but, as I said - at times, it's easy to do otherwise. It's that kind of conflicted emotions that really color the tone of the article, which is where the condescending undertones you pick up on stem from. Now, when I say I don't resent Buffett and the parrotheads, I really don't. I truly don't harbor malice towards them. I see it the same way that I see people who are, say, really into e-sports, or people who are really, REALLY into Star Wars (post-Disney acquisition); I know it's dumb, harmless fun for everyone involved, and if they wanna go out dressed as the Mandalorian and take some photos, hey - it's fine. It's a little silly and a little ridiculous, but it's fine. I don't get it, but, again - I don't gotta participate in it. And, I have that mindset because, as someone who enjoys anime, conventions, and cosplay, I know damn well I've been that silly and ridiculous guy running around in some dorky outfit with his friends having fun, and I've heard that tone of condescension in my own parent's voices when they say, "Oh, there goes Ape and his buddies again in their costumes". So, it's like, I truly do not mean to cast aspersions, as it would be tantamount to hurling boulders around a glass house. Even when I make a dig at dignity, it comes from a place of full self-awareness.
But, it sounds like you understand that this is kind of part in parcel when it comes to discussing boomers. Like I pointed out with the Whitman quote - we contain multitudes and we contradict ourselves. Someone just the other day said, "It's possible for a man to experience two emotions that are completely contradictory to each other", and I think that's kind of a microcosm of this whole boomer Gordian Knot. So many of us do harbor resentment for the stage the boomers set for us to inherit... but we love and cherish many boomers in our own lives. And how do we reconcile those conflicting emotions? Well... partially like this.
Also, I do want to clarify that I really don't sleight ambitious being being successful and working up until they physically can't - especially in entertainment. When I speak of how AC/DC or the Who are still touring, I don't mean that to disparage them, and I don't mean it to be that way towards Buffett, either. Like I said in the article, performers perform - it's what they do, and telling them not to, even in spite of age, is a fool's errand. You'd be robbing them of their purpose. My personal feelings that conflict with this is the idea that fulfillment should be multi-faceted and not solely reliant on one aspect of your life. Now, I don't think Buffett, being an enthusiast of many different things, or, say, Brian Johnson of AC/DC, who's an avid car enthusiast, solely define/d themselves by their music careers, but I know many boomers who live to work. Again - this industriousness is a virtue. But a virtue can be a vice, if taken too far, and I know plenty of boomers who worked themselves to death at the expense of their families and basically everything else in their lives, so, deriving purpose from one, singular thing, I think, can be deleterious to a person and everyone around them. Where I really think this is a problem is in the political sphere. There was nothing wrong with Buffett touring up until his final days, especially when he was probably making a lot of people's lives better for it. Where it DOES become a problem is when someone like Diane Feinstein is still clinging to power, actively making people's lives worse, and will only leave office in a pine box. I also understand that she's so senile that she doesn't even know what planet she's on and basically is at the mercy of bad actors around her, but you could say Mitch McConnell, Biden, and others with more wherewithal should absolutely step down rather than ride it out to the bitter end. John McCain is the worst example of this. Even Harry Reid had the good sense to retire in 2017, and died in 2021. So, hopefully that clears that up a bit. I probably should have been a little more clear on that in the article, but, again - that's the trouble with timely content. I might be revising this one for another month, still.
Also, you'd be right - it definitely is the ambiance you're paying for at his place. The video I linked of the guy going to all the different Margaritaville's honestly does a good job at articulating how it becomes effective after a while. Might be worth a watch, especially if your family was big on Margaritaville.
Why are you making excuses for the generation that literally wrecked America? As a 57 year old, I am Gex X, we hated the boomers as soon as we were old enough to read a zine, or go to a punk show, in short before it was cool.
"I also don't understand what's wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work to the point they keep going until death itself stops them. Buffet might sell overpriced cheeseburgers, but he's not exploiting anyone by it. I assume the price includes the ambiance and immersion into the fantasy and that for his target market, the cost is worth it. Nor is there anything wrong with wealthy boomer Minnesotans enjoying the Margaritaville fantasy."
Do you seriously lack that much self awareness? This Mises camp Libertarian justifying libertine greed uber alles dog doesn't hunt anymore, and no not from the left, from the right.
What are the first four words in that quote? Do you understand whats wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work? Why do you take my ignorance on the topic personally? And what does my self awareness have to do with the concept of success in business generally and the success of a man ~40 years older than me?
The boomer ethos is, indeed, corrosive and negligent and typified by Jimmy Buffet. But that doesn't make the Juggalos any better. Honesty isn't a point in a person's favor when what they're being honest about is embracing their own evil.
Boomers would be better off if none of them actually became drunken beach bums, and the Juggalos would be better off if they were posers to the same extent as your average early-2000s teen metalhead. If you must dip into degeneracy, at least be insincere.
The poser doesn’t like that they’re a boring normie, so they try to spice up their life with a story about being an outsider or a badass. The actual outsiders, like white trash or the rainbow brigade, have to ennoble their outcast status with a story about being more “real” and having a “found family”
Both are just stories people tell themselves because they can’t stand what they ARE. They’re affectations and self-delusions.
I don’t know if other races have this problem, but white people (at least in America) are so desperate for an identity that they’re almost constantly LARPing. Whether it’s Juggqlos, Parrotheads, skater boys, cowboys, Crossfitters, hipsters, the rainbow squad, nerd fandoms, or based and tradpilled dissidents, what all of these identities have in common is a sense of self conscious affectation.
Almost nobody just IS any of these things, they are all consciously adopted identities, complete with uniforms and insider lingos as tribal markers.
Each is defined by the stories they tell themselves about the type of people they are. Sometimes it’s the only role they CAN occupy, so they try to ennoble it: “I’m not JUST a white trash meth addicted petty criminal, I’m like an outcast of society man, so we JUGGALOS are all FAMILY” (a similar narrative applies to the rainbows). Others want to be something they’re not: “I’m not a well off middle class suburbanite, I’m a laid back beach bum Parrothead/I’m a rebellious punk skater”, or “I’m a rich townie who sneers at actual rednecks and I’ve never worked a day in my life, but I’m gonna wear boots and jeans and blast bro country from my truck daddy bought cuz I’m COUNTRY”
The common thing these all share is the lack of authentically just BEING something, and the self-conscious CHOOSING to be something; or at least, the wanting to be SEEN as being something. It all feels fake and artificial and try-hard.
And as someone who has tried on multiple identities/narratives, maybe I’m just projecting (and now I’m just posing as the world weary cynic!)
No, I think you're onto something. At least to some aspect of the phenomenon. I'm not sure that every member of these communities is "posing", per say - you always will have the true believers - but a lot of the time, there are always going to be those that care more than others. I've written a lot anime, gaming, general pop culture nerd, and brony culture, and you see in those communities the true believers versus the more go-along to get along crowd, and the varying subsects they divide themselves into even further. Out of all those groups, I'd say that the Parrothead crowd strikes me as most similar to the bronies. The thing is, pretty much everyone in the anime community actually loves anime. Some more than others, of course, but they still love it. In my article on bronies, I said that I suspect every brony liked My Little Pony... but most of them didn't love it. What they loved was the community and the sense of found family among it. I feel that the Parrotheads, similarly, like Jimmy Buffett... but what they love is the LARPing as a beach bum. Really think you're right on the money, here.
There's that conspiracy theory that Biden has been replaced by a lookalike. My problem with it is, why would you replace Biden with a worse version? Was the original Biden too smart and honest, or something?
It's like replacing a dumpster fire with a dumpster fire full of medical waste.
I don't ultimately buy into it for that reason. I think it's a lot more likely that it's all botched plastic surgery, and that he's had a lot of it, or that he's simply too old for even the most talented cosmetic surgeon to do much with. Then again, I've heard people say that his body double took over when the actual Biden died a handful of years ago and he's demented so, that's why, and it's like... sure, maybe, but like I said - I think it's mostly plastic surgery.
My dad was crazy about Jimmy Buffett, but at least he didn't dress up in a goofy costume and he actually had a boat and went to the keys. All larping and lifestyle cults suck though. Gen X invented hardcore punk to get away from this, and it too became a lifestyle cult, sigh!
Depends on what you mean by rebellious? Buying some pop culture manufactured anger, yes obviously true, yet Jesus was a rebel against the world, was he not? He didn't overturn the traders tables in the temple out of grandmotherly kindness...
"Really good stuff on the absolute shallowness of Boomers and their infantile dream of a life based on nothing followed by an eternity in hell. "
Mike Cernovich and Owen Benjamin push this trope.
Never understood how millions and millions of individual Americans could be reduced to a stick man stereotype.
Easy to blame your older brother who never loved you even if he fought the bullies for you when you were too small to defend yourself.
Seems intellectually lazy to me. And boring.
I was too busy working multiple jobs to survive to know what hippies or Woodstock were.
Maybe by accident of the time of my birth I am a B, but I fought my way out of a working class and violent ghetto, secured a remarkable education, spent time overseas, served in the USAF, got jumped by 15 predators with baseball bats in Georgetown in Washington, DC and took 14 of them down and was grateful the 56 stitches sewed my skull back together....whatever.
Worked hard because work defines a man.
Life is tough.
Cowards blame others.
Men take responsibility for their failures and triumphs and move on.
My sons are men. My grandsons are strong, resilient, bright.
When I leave this world, I did my best for my family.
And family is what matters in the end.
I was and am loyal to my wife and family.
I am comfortable with my God, my faith, my sacrifice for my family, and my life.
As my Dad said, "When they throw dirt on your coffin, look up. Those around your corpse are the people you need to care about. The rest aren't worth the space they take up."
But what do I know.
I'm just a useless sack of flesh known as a "B."
I actually believe in hell, but I have worked hard to get to Heaven.
Christianity is real, Christ is supreme, and the Crusades were for a reason.
As a native Floridian I can tell you that I have personally seen what often comes of that Boomer dream when actualized. In the worst cases the beaches consume them; the self-indulgence and love of ease becomes an addiction in itself, demanding greater amounts of intoxicants to stave off boredom, until they are homeless and sleeping in the dunes. For most, in my experience, they simply drift around aimlessly in golf carts, playing bingo and such, doing nothing, talking about nothing, utterly idle and obsessed with trifles. They will tell you that life is about being happy, but their idea of happiness is perfect freedom to do what they want, untethered to any sort of responsibility, and what they want when achieving that freedom is childish amusement. Their problem isn't that they are old, it's that they never grew up.
Very astutely put. I've said before, the boomers seem to have defined themselves by the "Summer of Love" that never ended. When they became 50, 50 was the new 30. When they became 60, 60 was the new 20. So om and so forth. There's an almost neurotic, crippling fear death and aging that I don't know has ever been seen in such a wide demographic of humans before, and its stunted society accordingly.
Oh yes, they have been like that from the beginning. Life was never going to end for them, but that is a childish point of view. Father Time is slowly but surely curing them of it, as he does for all human beings.
Nothing human survives over time, save the undead. And we are no longer human.
As to Churchill. Did he oversee the destruction of the British Empire? Did he participate in handing half of Europe to the USSR and was he responsible for various military disasters that resulted in huge loss of life?
De Gaulle was not popular with the French in Algeria
Yeah, it seems many Boomers never got the fact that the thing that actually gives live meaning IS responsibility and obligation.
It's a weird dichotomy, isn't it? So much of their culture seems to be built on abandoning those things (and in many cases, they did and do), yet they are workaholics by nature. Of course, all that responsibility and obligation that they do acknowledge usually comes back to making money for themselves, but still. I touched on it in an additional paragraph I added - Buffett toured up to the very end. The hustle never stopped. For his carefree, lackadaisical persona, he was on the grind 'til the very end... and it looks like .any boomer politicians will do the same
Working made sense to them; they were the most rewarded-for-hard-work generation in American history. The boomer working class owned homes and boats and put their kids through college on factory salaries. They were also raised by the last generation to maintain a devotion to mainline Protestantism and its work ethic. Then they sold the system they inherited to China and retired, but with no idea how to actually be free, they just kept spinning their wheels.
They sold everything out from under us and now call us whiners if we bring it up. They turned our culture into a garbage dump. Left every moral and value cherished by our forebears in tatters on the ground all while incessantly telling us how great they were for "standing up to the man" (not wanting to fight) and constantly reliving these sickly sweet hagiographies of their great childhoods and younger years. And then... when my generation's "woodstock" arrived -- manufactured by boomers to make mint -- it turned into a torture prison where young people had to pay $10 for a bottle of water in the scorching heat, there were fences everywhere and a riot broke out. And of course they blamed the kids for this. They hate their children, hate their parents, only loving themselves.
This is where spoiling and generational narcissism leads. I don't think their parents meant to spoil them. There was just so much plenty it seems to have happened by accident. I don't know, that doesn't quite explain it. They actively rejected their parents -- the mantra being "don't trust anyone over 30". Who the fuck says that?
An economist recently said the Boomers were the first generation to never vote to raise taxes on themselves. Irresponsible to the end I almost can't imagine them not taking us all down with them as they go. I swear the only thing that will stop them is the younger folks with families who say hell no, I'm not pushing that damned button, fuck you.
Yes we can walk away, or what they have built WILL kill us, is killing us.
Don't forget the 1965 immigration act. The boomers didn't pass it, they were too young, but they could have easily repealed it and protected the demographic integrity of the GAE.
Retirement, with no productive purpose, is a kind of living death. They exist on a day to day basis, with nothing to focus their energy and time on. Slowly the years roll by until old age begins to really hit them.
This is what the zeitgeist unleashed by the Enlightenment was bound to become in its old age and senescence. But that's the cycle of Life. The next zeitgeist will be born, full of possibility and promise, in the near future, and after it runs its course, it will die as absurd a death as this one has.
You're right, and, at the rate we're going, I can only hope we get to the next zeitgeist as peacefully and easily as possible. Gramsci was a questionable character, but he did give us this line that resonates with me now - "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."
Gramsci walks among us today as teachers from kindergarten to post secondary school, to Sore Os DAs. His long march through institutions worked, he was an evil genius and a motherfucker. I am glad the fascists put him in prison, prison is where he belonged.
This is why I teach. I want to be where it begins.
It must be hard as, as I said above your profession is one of the most culturally Marxified, which doesn't even rise to the level of actual Marxism...
I wrote about it at some length a few weeks ago, but in short, it’s not quite like that. Even in the same state or the same system the culture of a school can vary widely. In the private realm, where I work, it is just as varied.
I went to a lefty liberal hippyish private high school. The high school part is shut down, but I imagine the earlier grades are woke now.
Not all boomers are that way. I guess it depends upon where you live. My parents are boomers and they are still active in the community. My mom works at the church and my dad has just now retired from work, but still goes out and helps where he can.
My grandparents worked until they were 85,87,90,and 95.
I’m Gen X, so I’m not going to retire unless I can find something to do outside that will keep me active.
But then, the boomers that don’t work are leaving so much debt that I might not be able to retire even if I want to.
This is true in a sense. I would not expect someone at 65 to have the demands of a full career; in fact, boomers refusing to leave their careers is a problem in itself. But I think there is something wrong with just kind of checking out of other responsibilities. Just because you are not employed full time does not absolve one of duties to children and grandchildren, to be close, to help, to serve as a model for what a man should be. Putting all the old people in the country in a single state denudes communities of what should be their wisest and most invested members. I think idling away at the end of life is a poor prize for years of hard work in any case. A man has freedom after all these years, and the best he can do with it is Wheel of Fortune and noontime beers? To me it's more sad than anything, that given the opportunity to do something worthwhile one simply runs out the clock.
In a just and righteous world, Mc Connel’s handler would have been charged with elder abuse for not seeking emergency medical care for what appeared to be a stroke.
Absolutely. Obviously I am no fan of Biden, but Jill and Hunter and probably his brother, too, should both be charged for elder abuse for enabling his situation. It's unconscionable for them to manipulate a man they ostensibly care about the way they are.
Really good piece. I wonder what it must be like to identify with one’s job so much they never want to leave it. It’s understandable that a rockstar or musician would feel that way, but a lawyer or an accountant? It’s wild to think people identify with such professions and don’t just treat them as a means to an end. It’s admirable in a way, but I suppose it’s also the result of coming of age in a time when those professions GUARANTEED a really good living. That’s hard to give up.
I don't really get it, either. I see strains of it in my father - he's getting to the age where a comfortable retirement is either possible or in the near future, but he has no intentions of stopping. Part of it seems to be a kind of "What else would I do?" which is perfectly understandable - idle hands, and what not, and also, if he's gonna be working, better to work raking in cash than part-timing at Home Depot - but part of it is also that kind of that work ethic you're speaking about. I remember once he told me, when I was bitching about the protestant work ethic and I said something to the effect of, "Work in this country is valued as some sort of intrinsic good unto itself, like there's virtue in working just to work, like it's something you're just supposed to do." To which he said - "It is."
It's the stark divide in ideology between a generation that grew up in the most prosperous era in history (as you pointed out, hard work paid off more then than it does now), and those of us who didn't. I think that's why you see younger generations taking a more "European mindset", as my dad once called it. Unlike him, we don't work because we feel like we should, it's just a means to an end, and we value our leisure time and do what we can to maximize it. Not to say that Boomers don't relax or have leisure time, either, but there's this distinctly American mindset about always working, always being on the clock, never resting, go go go go all the time just to wait, that I've heard Europeans comment on that I think puts my way of thinking closer to there's than my dad's. Not to hammer home the point, but I knew an Italian in college who got very angry one night because we wouldn't sit and have drinks after dinner. "In Italy, we don't just get up and go, we know how to sit and enjoy ourselves! We spend two hours getting ready to go eat and drink fine wine! You people spend ten minutes to put on t-shirts and then eat cheap food so you can run home and watch TV!" The older I get, the more I realize what he was trying to say.
But, alas, I wish I did understand what it must be like to feel so strongly about your chosen career. It's enviable, in a way, but at the same time, one of the reasons I hesitate to monetize my hobbies is that, someone once told me, "Once you start making money off your hobbies, it isn't really a hobby anymore".
Well said. Being closer to the old country than many of my peers, I concur and appreciate the European mindset. I also appreciate the growing (though still small) disgust at the American impulse to commodify and monetize everything under the sun.
Again, I’m not a Protestant and I’m not an Anglo and I’m not even “Western” I’m a swarthoid Orthodox Mediterranean so I’m like a world away from heritage Americans and I get I’m a guest and a minority here, at least in terms of mindset. But I do think a lot of our problems result from the “work is always intrinsically good no matter what you’re doing, so work until you die” and “if it makes money, it’s moral, and if it doesn’t, you’re a loser.” It turns humans into machines which is something I am unashamed to wholeheartedly reject.
I relate to your experience despite being a 5th generation American since my dad’s Irish Catholic family has good enough records (compiled by one of his cousins) that he and I were able to visit our ancestors’ farm in Ireland in 2016, and that part of our heritage has always been important to our family in traditions like making St. Patrick’s Day a big event and playing music together.
And yet, for all that, my boomer dad grew up in the Midwest surrounded by Lutherans (and I suppose a fair number of other Catholics, though I think of the Midwest as a very Protestantized culture), and he, too, exhibits this workaholic mentality I’ve never been able to understand.
I do appreciate that he imbued my brother and me with more old school values and enough of a work ethic that we didn’t turn out to be the stereotypical, irreligious, soyboy millennials stuck in a dead-end job at Starbucks fraternizing with other commie larpers.
But I was fortunate enough to be one of the young men Ernest Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast who got to experience living in Paris twice as a young man, and as much as the American in me criticizes the French for their inefficient and envious approach to economics, the French in me (the other major familial ethnicity I’m most strongly connected to) balks at the American workaday mentality you’ve described here and my own personal Margaritaville is probably swanning around the South of France visiting vineyards and abbeys on a monthlong summer holiday that’s currently impossible with two young children on one income.
It is a fine line to tread. My father also instilled in me an inability to half-ass things, and whatever task I'm given, I always have to do to the best of my abilities. As much as this is probably helped more than hindered, it also leaves me almost unable to relax, in a way. Like, I always feel like I have to be doing something, because productivity is king, and just sitting down and relaxing is anathema to that. Again - not bad, but it comes with downsides. One big thing I see with workaholics is that, when your body and mind need to take a break, it will MAKE you take a break, whether you like it or not. And usually those breaks are both long and costly, more so than if you just slowed your roll and dialed things back. Leisure, relaxation, that "French" approach to things - there's merits to that. It's funny you mention the locale of the Midwest, too. My dad's family is from Pennsylvania, of mennonite stock, and if you want to find anyone who embodies the protestant work ethic better than them, I think the Amish might be the only ones. Definitely plays a part in his psychology, I think.
That work ethic is something all of us with American boomer parents have (mine were born here), and it’s a good thing on the whole. I’m not a millennial but I’m not an X either—I’m what some call Gen Y, that in-between generation—so I’ve never cried when things go south at a job, and I can handle, and indeed invite, criticism. But as our simian friend says in his comments below, it makes you unable to relax because you feel like you’re not doing anything productive.
My dad treads the line. He works part-time now and for the past decade (he’s almost 70) has been taking it much easier than he used to, and I think it’s been good for him. He’s good at what he does, he’s enjoying it more now than he used to, and he can’t complain about the steady income. And I get that—I think living on fixed income sounds awful.
But then again, I also like the prospect of having nowhere I HAVE to go and nothing I HAVE to do…
Strictly speaking, there is no difference between Gen Y and Millennials, it's just that the latter has become the standard term and is easier to remember. It goes Boomers (1945-196?), Gen X/"The Forgotten Generation" (1970-1985ish), Gen Y/"Millennials (1986-1997ish), Gen Z/"Zoomers" (basically anyone who doesn't have a personal memory of Sep. 11).
It's funny because Boomers are so named because they were *born* during the "Baby Boom" immediately following WWII, but Millennials are so named because we *came of age* at the turn of the millennium.
If you straddle the line between the people who were kids in the 80s and those of us who were kids in the 90s, you could say you're a "Xennial."
Meh no, I was born in 1966 and I am not a boomer, I think boomer starts in 1964 if I remember right.
I was born in 1981 so I guess I’m in that gray area.
For some people work is a vocation rather than just a job
The Gen X slacker thing was wholly (and holy) healthy IMO. Fuck being a slave to the PMC and living in the burbs.
I enjoy a good boomer screed as much as the next x-ennial, but sometimes they make no sense.
I'm always surprised to remember that so many of the senile politicians we point to as problem boomers are not, in fact, boomers. We can call them spiritual boomers all we want, but it's the same as blaming the problems of the 60s and the sexual revolution on boomers: it's genuinely not them causing those particular problems.
I also don't understand what's wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work to the point they keep going until death itself stops them. Buffet might sell overpriced cheeseburgers, but he's not exploiting anyone by it. I assume the price includes the ambiance and immersion into the fantasy and that for his target market, the cost is worth it. Nor is there anything wrong with wealthy boomer Minnesotans enjoying the Margaritaville fantasy.
I suppose full disclosure, my mother and siblings are all boomers who really like Jimmy Buffet so his albums were the soundtrack to my childhood. But they were rust belt tradesmen, retail workers, and stay at home moms. They traveled to the nearby Margaritaville once after saving up for the experience and they came home gleeful.
Your article reflects this general confusion we all seem to refuse to accept we have regarding what the boomers are to be blamed for and why. You mention several times you're not criticizing Buffet or his fans, but there's still that undertone of condescension and heaving sigh that we all get when we talk about boomers. Quite interesting. I like it.
Well, boomer screeds are one of those prickly topics that's so nuanced and complicated that, when you start breaking them down, it's always kind of difficult to not come off with some level of contradictions and, as you said, confusion. I try - and at times fail - to not to speak in overwhelming absolutes about the boomers, because, obviously, there are many of the boomer generation who are important to me and, despite their own personal failings, which are really no more severe than anything anyone else might suffer from, are good, honest, hard-working people. I often have to remind myself, as well, that many cohorts of the boomer demographic also suffer from the deleterious ramifications of the policies and actions of the elected officials their generation put into power, and it isn't as if every single boomer is living a life of exorbitant wealth and luxury at the expense of ever single individual in the following generations living in grinding poverty. I think there's a certain degree of separating the individuals from the whole that should be minded, but, as I said - at times, it's easy to do otherwise. It's that kind of conflicted emotions that really color the tone of the article, which is where the condescending undertones you pick up on stem from. Now, when I say I don't resent Buffett and the parrotheads, I really don't. I truly don't harbor malice towards them. I see it the same way that I see people who are, say, really into e-sports, or people who are really, REALLY into Star Wars (post-Disney acquisition); I know it's dumb, harmless fun for everyone involved, and if they wanna go out dressed as the Mandalorian and take some photos, hey - it's fine. It's a little silly and a little ridiculous, but it's fine. I don't get it, but, again - I don't gotta participate in it. And, I have that mindset because, as someone who enjoys anime, conventions, and cosplay, I know damn well I've been that silly and ridiculous guy running around in some dorky outfit with his friends having fun, and I've heard that tone of condescension in my own parent's voices when they say, "Oh, there goes Ape and his buddies again in their costumes". So, it's like, I truly do not mean to cast aspersions, as it would be tantamount to hurling boulders around a glass house. Even when I make a dig at dignity, it comes from a place of full self-awareness.
But, it sounds like you understand that this is kind of part in parcel when it comes to discussing boomers. Like I pointed out with the Whitman quote - we contain multitudes and we contradict ourselves. Someone just the other day said, "It's possible for a man to experience two emotions that are completely contradictory to each other", and I think that's kind of a microcosm of this whole boomer Gordian Knot. So many of us do harbor resentment for the stage the boomers set for us to inherit... but we love and cherish many boomers in our own lives. And how do we reconcile those conflicting emotions? Well... partially like this.
Also, I do want to clarify that I really don't sleight ambitious being being successful and working up until they physically can't - especially in entertainment. When I speak of how AC/DC or the Who are still touring, I don't mean that to disparage them, and I don't mean it to be that way towards Buffett, either. Like I said in the article, performers perform - it's what they do, and telling them not to, even in spite of age, is a fool's errand. You'd be robbing them of their purpose. My personal feelings that conflict with this is the idea that fulfillment should be multi-faceted and not solely reliant on one aspect of your life. Now, I don't think Buffett, being an enthusiast of many different things, or, say, Brian Johnson of AC/DC, who's an avid car enthusiast, solely define/d themselves by their music careers, but I know many boomers who live to work. Again - this industriousness is a virtue. But a virtue can be a vice, if taken too far, and I know plenty of boomers who worked themselves to death at the expense of their families and basically everything else in their lives, so, deriving purpose from one, singular thing, I think, can be deleterious to a person and everyone around them. Where I really think this is a problem is in the political sphere. There was nothing wrong with Buffett touring up until his final days, especially when he was probably making a lot of people's lives better for it. Where it DOES become a problem is when someone like Diane Feinstein is still clinging to power, actively making people's lives worse, and will only leave office in a pine box. I also understand that she's so senile that she doesn't even know what planet she's on and basically is at the mercy of bad actors around her, but you could say Mitch McConnell, Biden, and others with more wherewithal should absolutely step down rather than ride it out to the bitter end. John McCain is the worst example of this. Even Harry Reid had the good sense to retire in 2017, and died in 2021. So, hopefully that clears that up a bit. I probably should have been a little more clear on that in the article, but, again - that's the trouble with timely content. I might be revising this one for another month, still.
Also, you'd be right - it definitely is the ambiance you're paying for at his place. The video I linked of the guy going to all the different Margaritaville's honestly does a good job at articulating how it becomes effective after a while. Might be worth a watch, especially if your family was big on Margaritaville.
Why are you making excuses for the generation that literally wrecked America? As a 57 year old, I am Gex X, we hated the boomers as soon as we were old enough to read a zine, or go to a punk show, in short before it was cool.
Can you quote the part that excuses boomers?
"I also don't understand what's wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work to the point they keep going until death itself stops them. Buffet might sell overpriced cheeseburgers, but he's not exploiting anyone by it. I assume the price includes the ambiance and immersion into the fantasy and that for his target market, the cost is worth it. Nor is there anything wrong with wealthy boomer Minnesotans enjoying the Margaritaville fantasy."
Do you seriously lack that much self awareness? This Mises camp Libertarian justifying libertine greed uber alles dog doesn't hunt anymore, and no not from the left, from the right.
What are the first four words in that quote? Do you understand whats wrong with ambitious men being successful and enjoying their work? Why do you take my ignorance on the topic personally? And what does my self awareness have to do with the concept of success in business generally and the success of a man ~40 years older than me?
Suck cess(pool) in business is how we got a professional managerial class who has made our lives a living hell. Less SUCK (EX)CESS please!
Okay, you're just not a serious person. I expected as much.
The boomer ethos is, indeed, corrosive and negligent and typified by Jimmy Buffet. But that doesn't make the Juggalos any better. Honesty isn't a point in a person's favor when what they're being honest about is embracing their own evil.
Boomers would be better off if none of them actually became drunken beach bums, and the Juggalos would be better off if they were posers to the same extent as your average early-2000s teen metalhead. If you must dip into degeneracy, at least be insincere.
The poser doesn’t like that they’re a boring normie, so they try to spice up their life with a story about being an outsider or a badass. The actual outsiders, like white trash or the rainbow brigade, have to ennoble their outcast status with a story about being more “real” and having a “found family”
Both are just stories people tell themselves because they can’t stand what they ARE. They’re affectations and self-delusions.
I don’t know if other races have this problem, but white people (at least in America) are so desperate for an identity that they’re almost constantly LARPing. Whether it’s Juggqlos, Parrotheads, skater boys, cowboys, Crossfitters, hipsters, the rainbow squad, nerd fandoms, or based and tradpilled dissidents, what all of these identities have in common is a sense of self conscious affectation.
Almost nobody just IS any of these things, they are all consciously adopted identities, complete with uniforms and insider lingos as tribal markers.
Each is defined by the stories they tell themselves about the type of people they are. Sometimes it’s the only role they CAN occupy, so they try to ennoble it: “I’m not JUST a white trash meth addicted petty criminal, I’m like an outcast of society man, so we JUGGALOS are all FAMILY” (a similar narrative applies to the rainbows). Others want to be something they’re not: “I’m not a well off middle class suburbanite, I’m a laid back beach bum Parrothead/I’m a rebellious punk skater”, or “I’m a rich townie who sneers at actual rednecks and I’ve never worked a day in my life, but I’m gonna wear boots and jeans and blast bro country from my truck daddy bought cuz I’m COUNTRY”
The common thing these all share is the lack of authentically just BEING something, and the self-conscious CHOOSING to be something; or at least, the wanting to be SEEN as being something. It all feels fake and artificial and try-hard.
And as someone who has tried on multiple identities/narratives, maybe I’m just projecting (and now I’m just posing as the world weary cynic!)
No, I think you're onto something. At least to some aspect of the phenomenon. I'm not sure that every member of these communities is "posing", per say - you always will have the true believers - but a lot of the time, there are always going to be those that care more than others. I've written a lot anime, gaming, general pop culture nerd, and brony culture, and you see in those communities the true believers versus the more go-along to get along crowd, and the varying subsects they divide themselves into even further. Out of all those groups, I'd say that the Parrothead crowd strikes me as most similar to the bronies. The thing is, pretty much everyone in the anime community actually loves anime. Some more than others, of course, but they still love it. In my article on bronies, I said that I suspect every brony liked My Little Pony... but most of them didn't love it. What they loved was the community and the sense of found family among it. I feel that the Parrotheads, similarly, like Jimmy Buffett... but what they love is the LARPing as a beach bum. Really think you're right on the money, here.
There's that conspiracy theory that Biden has been replaced by a lookalike. My problem with it is, why would you replace Biden with a worse version? Was the original Biden too smart and honest, or something?
It's like replacing a dumpster fire with a dumpster fire full of medical waste.
I don't ultimately buy into it for that reason. I think it's a lot more likely that it's all botched plastic surgery, and that he's had a lot of it, or that he's simply too old for even the most talented cosmetic surgeon to do much with. Then again, I've heard people say that his body double took over when the actual Biden died a handful of years ago and he's demented so, that's why, and it's like... sure, maybe, but like I said - I think it's mostly plastic surgery.
The only take I've ever had on Buffett is that Margaritaville is the superior drinking song to Piano Man.
My dad was crazy about Jimmy Buffett, but at least he didn't dress up in a goofy costume and he actually had a boat and went to the keys. All larping and lifestyle cults suck though. Gen X invented hardcore punk to get away from this, and it too became a lifestyle cult, sigh!
I know.. I went to a local metal concert recently out of curiosity.. fascinating demographic..
It’s a sad sight when you’re rebellious.. and 50 years old..
I'm 57 and consider myself rebellious against eating the bugs, and living in ze pods, etc, etc. Is a dissident not a rebel?
Depends on what you mean by rebellious? Buying some pop culture manufactured anger, yes obviously true, yet Jesus was a rebel against the world, was he not? He didn't overturn the traders tables in the temple out of grandmotherly kindness...
Worth considering. https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-gallag
"Really good stuff on the absolute shallowness of Boomers and their infantile dream of a life based on nothing followed by an eternity in hell. "
Mike Cernovich and Owen Benjamin push this trope.
Never understood how millions and millions of individual Americans could be reduced to a stick man stereotype.
Easy to blame your older brother who never loved you even if he fought the bullies for you when you were too small to defend yourself.
Seems intellectually lazy to me. And boring.
I was too busy working multiple jobs to survive to know what hippies or Woodstock were.
Maybe by accident of the time of my birth I am a B, but I fought my way out of a working class and violent ghetto, secured a remarkable education, spent time overseas, served in the USAF, got jumped by 15 predators with baseball bats in Georgetown in Washington, DC and took 14 of them down and was grateful the 56 stitches sewed my skull back together....whatever.
Worked hard because work defines a man.
Life is tough.
Cowards blame others.
Men take responsibility for their failures and triumphs and move on.
My sons are men. My grandsons are strong, resilient, bright.
When I leave this world, I did my best for my family.
And family is what matters in the end.
I was and am loyal to my wife and family.
I am comfortable with my God, my faith, my sacrifice for my family, and my life.
As my Dad said, "When they throw dirt on your coffin, look up. Those around your corpse are the people you need to care about. The rest aren't worth the space they take up."
But what do I know.
I'm just a useless sack of flesh known as a "B."
I actually believe in hell, but I have worked hard to get to Heaven.
Christianity is real, Christ is supreme, and the Crusades were for a reason.
Faith over fear.
Suck a dick? Like COCK U will love Jimmy BUFFET, Funny Warren Buffet ran boystown and was entrapping hiso in pedophilia before epstein ever arrived.