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A Conversation With One Boomer

I asked what happened to them after the 1960s. This is how it went.

I infiltrated a Facebook group that titled itself after 1960s and 1970s leftists. I wanted a) to verify that those still exist (statistically, <13% of Boomers supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020) and b) understand them, and maybe by extension, the rest of their generation, better. Anyone that isn’t aware that there is not only a massive class war happening in the U.S but also an inter-generational struggle, has not been paying attention.

I posted a link to another of my articles, Debunking the Democrats’ Favorite Scam, (okay, it may have been a polemic, but a valid one) in the group to see what feedback it would get.

Most of the comments were along the typical lines of responses from the liberal class, utterly divorced from the real economic desperation of the majority of the country and espousing the decades-long, failed doctrine of gradualism and party loyalty. I got called “privileged,” a “petulant child,” and other typical epithets that have now become mantra. And of course, I got called the mandatory “Russian bot” (I didn’t bother schooling the Boomers on how bots, trolls, and sock puppets work… but to my credit, I restrained myself from saying OK Boomer).

But not from this guy. This guy was different, and he made me think. I won’t mention his name, but I did take his remarks verbatim to preserve the integrity of the conversation. Anything that is context-specific is fairly easy to work out.

A comment in the thread complimented my article (polemic), with “Yes! Thank goodness someone said it, and said it well!” (heart emoji). After that, it went like this:

ME:

BOOMER:

ME:

His comprehensive and thought-provoking reply surprised me.

BOOMER:

(2) Those of us who had formed into the core of the Movement(s) buckled down in the early 1970’s, but the numbers around us — “the masses” in idiotic Leninist slang — did not respond in ways they had when they — men, that is — had been drafted. The Black Power movements were harassed, attacked, provoked, and killed. People went off the deep end, pretending that “picking up the gun” would protect them against police forces and the FBI. That was a delusion.

(3) Why did “Boomers keep voting Blue”? Some didn’t. Lyndon Johnson had worked with the last of the New Deal coalition: AFL-CIO, cold war liberals, for instance. Younger radicals — that’s us, here — had proudly ignored anti-communism. On principle and because people wanted help from anyone who would pitch in. Further, the CPUSA had shot itself in the head by 1956 — the “Kruschev revelations” about Stalin — and there were many ex-Communists still working as radicals. Johnson had a touchy relation with the Civil Rights Movement, using a sledge-hammer to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but refusing to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Convention. Look at August, 1964, by the way: the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were found; the Civil Rights Act was passed; the USN claimed that North Vietnamese gunboats had fired on two US destroyers; Democrats convened to renominate LBJ; and both houses passed a resolution authorizing the President to use force to defend American forces in Viet Nam. Overall, though, the AFL-CIO leadership supported the war, and cold war liberals denounced the New Left. Later, I don’t know how Baby Boomers, as a whole, came to vote. (Note that many of us could not vote until 1970 and 1972).

(4) Current outrage bringing down the neoliberal machine? Neoliberalism seems to be a cluster of policies that became popular after the elections of Reagan-Reagan-Bush, after the last Democratic campaigns that tried to run on something like New Deal policies all lost. It’s just my opinion, but I think neoliberalism has lost most of its energy. I am encouraged that members of DSA are older than we were — most seem about 30 or a little older. They have settled into something. We, the New Left, kept practicing a politics that worked well enough on a college campus, but that did not translate into a practice for people who had grown up and grown older. And it is hard to change a system.

Final thought: many years ago, John Ehrenreich had a thought about movement building. We like to think of building a movement just as we might build a house or a wall. Piece by piece, steadily, it grows. Think of this, said John E: nobody predicted that a women’s march, celebrating International Women’s Day, would lead to the February Revolution. The socialist parties took no part. Lenin was in Zurich and Trotsky was in the Bronx. But it happened.

ME:

Thanks for expounding on those themes so thoroughly. I’m not as familiar with details of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements pre-1968, although I do have some context for how the Black Panthers (and also the Nation of Islam) formed. Boomer leftists, which seem to be few and far between (if you didn’t know it, <13% of Boomers supported Sanders in 2020, and around the same number in 2016), have mentioned the 1968 convention, the murders of Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale, John Lenon, MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the COINTELPRO shenanigans, the prevailing McCarthyist spirit against left-wing activism, and other factors as things that eventually just took a toll.

I can understand why it seemed so appealing.

It’s often been easy for me to blame the Boomer generation for selling us out. It would be one thing if you as a collective woke up to the game and helped us clean up the mess. But, overwhelmingly, the messaging we persistently get circles the same victim-blaming, sanctimonious wagons: “You should respect your elders! Get a real job! Get another degree! Stop buying so much avocado toast! We did the anti-war thing! We did Woodstock! Grow up and stop whining! Why don’t you just work harder! You’re ruining the economy! ” et al. It’s infuriating. Often, it’s easy for me to be acerbic in my criticisms of the Boomer generation to overcompensate for how little we’ve been heard, or even felt cared about, by them.

Thus, while I’ve read reams of the sociological, anthropological, ecological and economic data on the impact of the Boomer generation on those of us born afterward, if I didn’t engage in conversations with actual Boomers to understand how they experienced their time through their lens I wouldn’t have any compassion at all. After all, the science on climate change has been out for decades.

Unlike those 20–30 years my senior, I am kept awake at night by the very real prospect that I won’t live to be your age because I won’t have a planet to live on. At the very least, my life will be dictated by resource wars, climate chaos, natural disaster, food and water shortages, and extreme and constant civil unrest. Yet the PMCs even among the progressive faction seem so divorced from these real impacts that they can’t understand why my and younger generations are so freaking pissed at you guys for not getting it. The “gradualism” ship has sailed. There is no “incremental” fix to global climate catastrophe.

These generational and class disputes are as much close to home as it online, as it is for everyone with Boomer parents.

My parents, as typical members of the liberal class (aka petite bourgeoisie aka Professional Managerial Class) and academia, are iconic Blue Dog Dems after having been involved in various “enlightenment” movements in the 60s and 70s. I’ll never forget, as a kid, when I asked my dad why he loved Bill Clinton so much. “He’s a RHODES SCHOLAR,” he said reverently. I feel like that encapsulates so much of the liberal class’ love affair with academic credentials and “smart people,” ie. technocrats. It was only in the last decade that I learned all about Cecil Rhodes and his white supremacist genocidal legacy, realizing that there is nothing impressive about Rachel Maddow, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, or any of the other political wonks on the scene having Rhodes scholarships at all.

But that addiction to technocratic fixes and the doctrine of incrementalism is so part of both of their psyches- and that of the PMC in general- that it seems the only way to rid ourselves of it in the country’s policy machine is to rid ourselves of the people that keep sponsoring, enabling, and voting for it- or at least their influence.

I want to address your point about neoliberalism, however. Factually speaking, not only has it NOT “lost hold of its energy,” but it has become a bipartisan hegemony that has taken hold so completely that it’s now the very water we swim in.

While I can’t claim to have the economic or historical background or lived experience to assert this as fact, I rely on sources that DO have those things, and CAN assert it. Rather than dilute the argument by summarizing, I’ll point you to my short list. Check out some of these authors/books/films and see for yourself at which conclusions you arrive:

I appreciate your thoughtful engagement. I try to leave room for that before becoming too fixed in my convictions. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that human beings are complicated AF, and human societies even moreso. ✊

BOOMER:

Well, the Boomer hasn’t been able to reply. Instead,

FACEBOOK:

Your Request Couldn’t be Processed

There was a problem with this request. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.

Welllp, guess I’m FB banned again. Most likely someone else (no doubt one of the PMC, because isn’t it always) on the thread got offended by the original post, needed to Speak To The Manager about it, and reported it as “hate speech.” Or maybe it was him. Or, maybe it’s just a tech issue. One can never be sure. I’m working on my approaching nihilism and general fatigue from living under a collapsing system, among millions who don’t seem to realize what is happening. A daily practice is leaving room for the benefit of the doubt… In any event, I’d have loved to have heard his thoughts on my reply (sigh).

If you’re interested in keeping this conversation going, tell me about your experiences as a Boomer from the 1960s til now, how your views have changed (or not), and what you think. I have received some thought-provoking takes from other Boomers and added them below for consideration. In any event, the fight continues. The existential question, no matter what your generation, is Which side are you on?

UPDATE: Interesting feedback about this conversation, subsequently, from other Boomers … (6 disparate comments from 6 people)

Boomer 1:

Boomer 2:

[continuing]

[ME: Do you have info I can check out on the petroleum industry and mega-churches?]

Boomer 3:

Boomer 4:

Boomer 5:

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