Reply #136: I think I might have come off as more bitter than I wanted to

[Eric Condon]

when what I was really aiming for was just understanding. I wasn't really talking about anyone in particular and certainly not the OP specifically or anything, I was just getting kind of a "I'd hunkered down and was raising a family at 25, not like today's lazy kids" vibe from some of the responses.

I have nothing but respect for the sea changes that the Boomers were able to help usher in. But I think a lot of Boomers have lost sight of how much society has changed, and they take it out on us. For instance, I feel like a lot of Boomer DUers take my generation to task for not protesting and marching in the streets and and the like, not realizing that there's a reason why that once seemed viable and why it doesn't today.

In the 60s you had leaders like JFK and LBJ and the country still at least made pretenses of belonging to the people. My generation has never had that. Sure, we get platitudes about America's resilience and possibilities and all that, but those of us angry enough to actually be protesting anything are capable of seeing through all that. A president like Johnson was certainly flawed on Vietnam, but he obviously was right on other issues and had the capacity to acknowledge complexity, so it stood to reason that maybe protesting would get a message across. But for us, it was never like "maybe if we take to the streets enough, Bush will see the error of his ways." If we protested too much, the most that would've happened is we would've been arrested. And if there was once honor in going to jail for your convictions, that honor is only as good as its ability to inspire others, and today, no one would have been telling our story. We would've just been more grist for the prison industrial complex mill.

Lots of the problems we face today are the same as the ones Boomers faced as young people in the 60s. But we don't have a JFK. We don't have a Cronkite. We don't have a Dylan. And we don't have an MLK.

I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but I think in the grand scheme of things, Boomers have gotten to be just as judgmental as their parents and twice as selfish. My generation (I'm younger, but I'm generally including myself in Generation X since my parents are Booomers) are just as selfish as the Booomers and twice as complacent. It's a vicious cycle that we all need to work together to stop.