It was a time.

While listing to shitty jam bands.

Sorry, but we're tired of hearing about all of it.

But here's what I'm noticing. The Xers and Millennials have the same virtues and the same faults as the boomers. No better, no worse. Just like my generation (young boomer) was no better or worse that the older boomers, the silents, and the WWII gen. My parents were WWII gen.

Truth is, the events that happen after you are aware, say from age 15 to maybe 25 or 30 define how you look at the world, and what actually drives your show. For us, civil rights, the war in Vietnam, women's lib, Television, drive ins, and the desire to have some meaning in our lives.

For the Millennials, the forever wars. Other things.

And the music we listened to. How school was taught.

The most profound line in this vid was, "After 30 it seems like it's all a downhill slide." Because after thirty, you have to leave whatever party lifestyle you had, grow up, get a real job, and begin that 'welcome to the machine' process in earnest.

I have noticed that our general condition, no matter what generation, is that we are born and if lucky raised around people who care for us and love us. If we are really lucky we are able to finish high school and even go to college and grad school.

Then..................we work for fifty or fifty-five years. Maybe longer.

In the end, we catch some twisting, horrible disease that shrivels our bodies until we seem barely human. With our monetized healthcare system, that system sucks away all assets during that final illness, until we die. And we leave this earth naked and alone the same way we were when we came in.

So, what is it that keeps a rational person from seeing the parade of life in this capitalist utopia as a sort of prison sentence, and escaping it in any way possible? Drugs? Gaming? Gambling? Drinking? Smoking? Overeating? TV couch potato-ism? Holy-roller-ism? Political wonkiness? Posting on blogs? Social media? All addictions in their own way. Suicide? Sure.

Those of us who have survived into our sixties and beyond have generally found something that has meaning for us - that creates meaning in our otherwise pointless lives. Family. Friends. A cause greater than ourselves. Kittens.

You are no better or worse, my friend. I wish you luck as you tread this path of life with all its snares and disillusion. I wish for you that you always have enough. Enough of all a human needs, at whatever stage in life they are.

I'm also a late boomer. 1963.

I'm continually bemused by how we as a nation believe what we are.

History was made.

A little thing called the civil rights movement.

The kids were protesting not playing on cellphones.

I became a young adult in the 70's so I was not involved in this period of time.

Because of this time period I had opportunities as a young woman my older sister didn't have.

Even then it was rough time being the first non white males in jobs in 70's.

Many of y'all are to young to remember that time.

Never take rights for granted because they didn't always exist.


American citizens worked hard for those rights.

Nothing was given easy.

Learn a little history.

Abortion rights are disappearing right now.

My generation fought for them, what is your generation doing about it.

Your generation spent hours on the phone. Usually a wall-phone in the kitchen, with a 30ft cord that the fam had to play hopscotch with if they wanted something from the fridge.

No difference.

You missed the whole point of the post.

Y'all thing life was so easy back then and it wasn't.

The 60's change everything.

Still asking what are going about abortion rights.

Looks like the bad old days are coming back.

Says the generation with blinking VCRs.

Us old folks know how to use computers and smartphones.

We really could remember phone numbers.

All our friends phone numbers.

We didn't need a calculator to do our math.

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I was active in the war protest in the 60’s and 70’s. Raised a family in the 70’s and 80's and was doing direct actions in the War of the Woods in the Pacific NW in the 80’s and 90’s, and active against police brutality since 2000, and another war too. In the summer of 2020, I went to the George Floyd demonstrations in Seattle once, but at 75 years old, could not deal with the pepper spray and tear gas like I used to. However, my son and three of my grandchildren and their friends were there day after day after day. I say again stuff your sorry in a sack.

how all the main stream media of that era covered war protests and cultural events.
They got it wrong.
Which is mostly the point of the OP.

I was at that muddy music fest. The bands were actually fantastic. TIME was wrong.
I was at those anti-war protests in Washington. Got our heads cracked and gassed. Press got 'em wrong.
I was at those anti-racism protests in D.C. and Westchester. The Press got 'em wrong.
I was at these BLM protests. The Press? Some got it right. Some wrong. More heads cracked and gassed.

no one was defined by that mess. people shrugged and moved along as if it was just another day.

I wasn't at Woodstock. Not all that many people were. I never had sex in a muddy field, either. I don't know anyone who defines themselves by that. Not a single person. So, you're wrong on all counts.

So, you're tired of hearing about all of it? Who cares? We lived it.

this troubled time, and how their generations are meeting it, over the ones we lived at all. Not their fault, but still, way to the contrary.

of those things in my youthful years, too. Soon enough, they will be the older generation and be hearing from their juniors how unfair things are and how the older generation had it easy. So it goes.

I've always found it amusing, though, that something like a concert attended by a tiny percentage of people is somehow emblematic of a generation. Woodstock was interesting, I suppose, but I don't know a soul who was there. I could have been there at the time, but that was not the sort of thing I would have enjoyed, frankly.

Yes, there was a good deal of sexual freedom in those days before HIV, but most people had few sexual encounters and even fewer casual ones, really. I know that was true for me, generally. Only a very small percentage of people were promiscuous, even then. More power to them, I suppose, but for most people, sex was something, still, that required relationships.

Yes, some of us went to college that was subsidized by the state. Some of us, but far from most of us. The percentage of high school graduates who continued their educations or expected to do so was smaller than it is now. The young men at the time were subject to being drafted, and a goodly number were drafted. Some died in Vietnam. Others enlisted in the military to avoid being drafted, and served longer terms, often far from the war. All were eligible for the GI Bill, which was how I finished my college education. A trade-off.

Meanwhile, that generation invented most of the technology everyone takes for granted now. When I was born, airplanes had propellers, TV was rare and in black and white until I graduated from high school. Computers were room-filling machines, even when I was in college. Phones had cords and rotary dials when I was a kid.

Our generation, so much maligned, also was instrumental in the civil rights movement, feminism, reproductive choice, and much, much more. We elected JFK, and suffered through Nixon and Reagan. We saw humans go into space for the first time, for whatever benefit that brought. Many of us championed progressive ideas and went into the streets to make our points.

Did we have it easy? Sure, in some ways. The economy was expanding, so there was work. But, my first job paid $1.25 per hour and did not go up a lot for a couple of decades after that. I drove crappy old cars until very recently. Still, I got married. I bought a house for $20,000 in 1974, which seemed like a lot of money at the time. It was worth a lot more when I sold it, 30 years later to move to Minnesota to help care for my wife's parents. Today, there are people in their late 20s and early 30s who are buying houses, too, just as I did. The numbers are different, but not the possibility.

What is the legacy of that moment? Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, a slew of revanchist political movements. I’m stuck between those two cohorts and usually lumped in with the “boomers” despite having been at best an observer as a child.

My children are stunned when I say that tuition was $206/quarter my first year in college. They’re amazed at the affordability. I point out that by the end of my senior year tuition was $654/quarter. That is the legacy of the summer of love, empowered revanchist movements bent on destroying not only the gains of the early and middle ‘60s but the gains of the new deal as well.

I’m not prepared to throw that era under the bus, but I don’t feel any nostalgia for that period. It taught the conservatives how to motivate the “working class” through fear, but I don’t think liberals really learned anything.

community college.

on a part time salary!

and paid $50 (CA resident) tuition for a full semester load at our community college. State university tuition later on required some budgeting for, like for Christmas or vacation.

People who voted Democratic created that, with help from some moderate Republicans (back then it was normal for some conservatives to consider themselves, and vote, progressive).

After that, it was people who did NOT vote Democrat who destroyed it.

I don't think you can blame these younger generations for blaming Baby Boomers given that the transition from a system that tended to support a broad spectrum of society to our current "F*ck you I got mine" society took place when the cohort born from '46 to '56 was between 25 and 35, when all the advertising was directed at them. The Zoomers and Millenials seem to want to lump everyone born between '46 and '70 into the same grouping. There are some profound differences, and the definitions have changed now that it's convenient to blame that broader group. Earlier in the thread there was a pretty clear allusion to Woodstock, as somehow defining "Baby Boomer," but how many people in the new demonized definition were under 13 and in some cases not even born.

My complaint against that Zoomers and Millenials would be that they're succumbing to the same divide and concur propaganda that brought about this decline in US civilization. There are people who will pit the young against the older, and most people, young and old will lose in that exchange. Contemporary conservatives are experts at arguing both sides, provided they benefit.

All politicians, left and right, who seek power by stoking divisions are part of the same problem.

Negativism never brought peace, fed a child, or advanced equality. It is the force and tool of the darkness.

I did it anyhow. Was threatened by teachers, clergy, recruiters, parents, others.
I kept doing it. Got yelled at a lot. Still kept doing it. No regrets, just a smile.

Born in early 1950s, and can testify that this 24 minutes catches much of what happened as we came of age. Special shoutout to Phil Ochs!
Thanks for posting.

Wed Feb 26, 2020, 07:18 AM




Sat Mar 5, 2022, 08:50 AM





We (I am dead in the middle, a very, very late summer 1996-born Zillennial, ie a person born 1992 to 1998) hate Trump (and Rethugs in general) on average to an overwhelming degree.

Boomers and up (the majority of them, not all, as obviously millions are solid Blue voters all their lives) put him in the White House in 2016, and almost again (just 21,461 votes flipping from Biden to Trump spread over just 3 states, WI, AZ, GA, and he would have won) in 2020.

Look at the 2018 midterms. My cohort (18-29) voted almost 50 points more for Dems (72%) than Rethugs (23%).

Yet Boomers (split even) and older (16 points +R, a 65 point flip from us!) voted massively the other way.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/