We were basically self absorbed consumers with poor values.
In our times, we consumed all of the world's best resources, converting them into intractable waste.
There was something very Trumpian in our generation overall, and it is reflected by the fact that Trump's strongest base of support consists of people over the age of 65.
I recall the exact moment when I realized where we were going. I'd come back to the place I grew up - Long Island - for a visit, and some friends announced they had a surprise for me: Tickets to see "Jefferson Starship" at the Nassau Coliseum. I didn't feel comfortable declining so I went. It was the day of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous Harvard commencement speech, 1978.
We may criticize that speech as being reactionary, but as a dissident, he challenged us as dissident's do, to examine the materialism of our culture. It got me to thinking and frankly, feeling...
As I was working it over in my head, I was confronted with a bored Grace Slick singing "White Rabbit" for the ten thousandth time, people strewing garbage in the hallways, clouds of marijuana smoke permeating the air, drunk people throwing up in the bathrooms, others passed out in the hallway covered in slime dripping out their mouths and suddenly it dawned on me that the only thing about which we really cared, was to be totally absorbed in stupefaction of one kind or another.
I have never forgotten that night, and I never will. Of course there were some periods in our times and persons in our generation who reflected some nobility, but over all, when our generation looks in the mirror, we might find ourselves staring at Trump.
In the end the ultimate stupefacient proved to be money, cars, McMansions, and voting out of concern for taxes as opposed to voting for humanity and for the futures of our children, but it was the same, White Rabbit after White Rabbit.
We screwed the world up, big time.
I get into this all the time with my contemporaries who like to pretend that we were responsible for Civil Rights and Environmental regulations, etc, which is kind of Trumpian inasmuch as it takes credit for what other people did, but no, I don't buy any of it.
My standard statement about our generation is consistently this: History will not forgive us, nor should it.
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