Future Boomers, We Who Are About To Die Salute You
By: Pk Read
Tags: Resistance, Generation, Joy, Baby Boomers, Vote

Never give up, never surrender, for you will become us — whether you like it or not.

There have been a couple of times in my life when I’ve witnessed mass euphoria. I mean, the giddy, silly, unstoppable kind that has strangers grinning at one another in the street and people paying for someone else’s lunch just because.

The first time was in 1989, when the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union all crumbled from being an immutable condition of existence into a rapidly diminishing part of history. I grew up in a World Divided in Two, practicing duck-and-cover drills in case of nuclear attack, with Sting singing that he hoped that Russians loved their children, too, as if communism might somehow make parents love their children less than parents raising kids under capitalism or democracy. Incredibly, it didn’t even seem all that far-fetched. Yep, we were scared witless.

But the Berlin Wall fell, just like that. Suddenly it was: One World. And it was wide open, baby! It was like we’d all been blinkered by filthy Ray Ban Wayfarers since we could remember, and suddenly, they were clean and everything was bright and shiny! You could go anywhere, talk to anyone, and not worry about finding a desk to hide under when the bombs started dropping. If the harsh Cold War reality that we’d assumed would be forever could dissolve, well then, what other wonders might we be able to achieve?

The second time was when Barack Obama was elected President. Yeah, sure, there were some people who were not happy, but most people were in giddy disbelief. If a black man could be elected President of the United States of America, my god, what other miracles lay just around the corner?

What made those moments so sparkly and heart-bursting was the fact that so much time before had been spent in not believing they could ever happen in our lifetimes. Alongside that lack of faith (although not lack of hope) were many other far-off, far-fetched goals that had their roots stuck deep long before I was a child, before my grandmother was a child. Goals like achieving gender equality, ending racism, curbing habitat destruction, outlawing persecution, balancing wealth inequality. You know, the same old, same old of a better world for all blahblahblah.

The first flag I hung on the wall of my bedroom was a green ecology flag in the early 1970s. My mom took me along to canvass for George McGovern (who lost to Nixon). She cried when abortion was legalized — she’d had friends who had almost died in back-alley abortions. I canvassed for Greenpeace and Planned Parenthood in the late 70s and early 80s. Heck, I got spit on by women in front of their little girls because I supported reproductive rights for women. I had men my father’s age pull out their checkbooks to Save The Whales, who told me never to lose my fire — that someday, we would Save The Planet! And with events like the Fall of the Wall, or the election of President Obama, damned if it didn’t give this cynic some genuine Hope.

I thought — no, I always knew — that my generation, the endlings of the Boomers, the saplings of the Gen-Xers, were a cynical bunch. Raised on Watergate and the Cold War, trained to mistrust the skies above, we listened to darkly ironic New Wave disguised as pop music. Sure, there were new regulations to protect air and water quality, but we were fighting proxy wars all over the place, and everything really seemed to come down to money. We’d inherited and grown up in a divided world, brought to us by WWII elders who would.not.stop.talking.in.war.metaphors.

Still. Men my age, in their 20s, seemed to reject the sexism of our parents and grandparents. We read Orwell’s 1984 and it sounded like a news report, but we danced to Free Nelson Mandela anyway. The avarice of the 80s was mocked in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Spike Lee’s films were popular and educational and moved us forward, we were edging into a post-colonial world that looked a bit less oppressive, women put on suits and went to work as lawyers just a decade or so after I’d been taught that being a secretary was the most professional office job a woman could aspire to, and we were pretty sure someday we’d be able to communicate with whales and dolphins. We had the ozone hole, and then countries agreed to fix it, and then they did! Kind of, anyway! If we could make it through the Cold War without blowing up the planet, well, we might just be okay. Also, personal computers!

What I’m saying is, we thought we could, and would, do better than the generations of industrialist robber baron colonialists that came right before us.

So, now here we are, in late middle age or early late age or whatever, and a lot of us wondering what the fuck happened. Seriously, how in hell did we end up here, oceans emptying, countries on fire, SUVs and factories spewing more crap into the air than we could have imagined, corporations wielding the power of nations, reproductive rights on the rollback, open racism being tolerated in a way that would have been extreme even in my youth.

It was hearing the dismissive ‘Ok, Boomer’ somewhere that really hit me like a teeny-tiny nuke. Now, the generation that thought they could have and do it all are being blamed for anything and everything.

‘Ok, Boomer’ has made me realize three things.

One: Younger generations really think this was all intentional, that the Boomer generation born sometime between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s set out to literally set the world on fire and rob everything on it of a future. That we were selfish, myopic, greedy, and single-mindedly oblivious to the problems that needed attention. And, okay, while some of that might be fair, a lot of how we got here is down to simple inertia.

Changing the course of history is like trying to pull a sharp left turn on an ocean liner while it’s at full speed. That shit has momentum and mass. Some of us thought we were pulling hard on the wheel. Clearly, it wasn’t hard enough.

Two: A lot of people in my generation, contrary to all my expectations and our shared history, really grew up to be the same old assholes we thought our own parents and grandparents were. Where did all those feminist, eco-aware, progressive men and women of my youth go? Had I imagined them? Were the men just pretending to be cool in order to get laid (there were definitely some, but surely not all)? Or, which is the most likely answer, did they get older, and acknowledge that economic challenges and what seemed like inevitable truths require moral sacrifice. They would rather set aside the progressive follies of youth, like supporting their girlfriends’ and wives’ careers over their own (after all, men get paid more and that’s better for the family!). They’d drive an SUV instead of an efficient smaller car, because the roads are dangerous and it’s safer to sit up higher, and anyway, hadn’t we already fixed the ozone hole? They’d edge out the more qualified person, even if it was deserving woman/person of color/immigrant because, fuck me, earning a living is hard and you need to take care of yourself and any kind of privilege is so painful to acknowledge, much less relinquish. Also, having kids leaves you too tired to fight all the other battles. They would, in short, compromise and take the road already traveled.

It’s been said that each sibling grows up in a different family. Even though they all technically share the same environment, each experiences it differently and takes away different lessons. Well, fellow Boomers, I thought we shared the same history and environment, but damn! Some of us came away with different lessons. Take note, younger Gens.

Three: ‘Ok, Boomer’ made me realize that younger generations, even ones just twenty years behind this Boomer endling, think they will be immune to the same awful rotation. ‘Ok, Boomer’ was the signpost signalling that blame lay ahead, and where there is blame, there is also abdication of responsibility. If you can point the finger at someone else, then you can absolve yourself of harsh self-examination.

Let me be very clear: I’m not saying young people shouldn’t be angry at the condition of the world they’ve been given. They should be made as hell. A lot of Boomers were made as hell. Hell, my grandmother, born in 1910 and one of the Greatest Generation, was mad as hell at the world she’d been given — the one that was still fighting the teaching of evolution in schools, wouldn’t let her work in the profession of her choice, or open her own bank account.

What I’ve learned in watching my generation grow old, watching some (but not all) vote in favor of the very societal issues we thought we could overcome in our youth, watching men my age rise to the highest positions and finding out they were just as sexist, just as racist, just as yesteryear as their own parents, is that it’s a process we need to be railing against, a system and the people who support it — not this or that generation. Because that kind of blame is too easy. It divides us and ends up supporting the system.

Blaming this or that generation is a youthful fallback when you still think you’re figuring stuff out for the first time and no one else really ever ‘got it’ like you do. Generational divides are the simplistic norm, the routine, the Iron Curtain that looks forever but isn’t really there.

Shake your fists at us all you want, you will become us. You don’t believe those brave young warriors on either side of you are the stupid, complacent Boomers of tomorrow, but Friend — neither did I and here I am, listening to old friends parrot shitty clichés that would make their younger selves cringe.

That’s the greatest joke of ageism: By the time you get to the punchline, you are the punchline.

So, future Boomers, distant siblings of the same world in which I was raised, I say this: Find your allies across the generations. Reject personality cults because no one person will save you or us. Release the blame of ages and place the blame where it belongs. Wait, no: Release the temptation of blame and instead, work for accountability and change across all generations. Recognize the seeds of future asshattery in yourself and friends and pinch them out before they take root.

Find the ones among us who will listen, leverage us. We know important shit that can really save you a lot of effort and wasted energy. We know how little time we have.

Listen, at least sometimes. Risk moving vertically as well as horizontally to join hands. We need you, and you need us. There are way, way more of you than there are of us. Don’t give up.

What does this ever-ageing endling really want? I want us to feel the euphoria of achieving the seemingly impossible again. To watch a terrifying societal fortress of fear that looks impenetrable suddenly collapse like a house of cards. To sense the elation of overcoming what had seemed insurmountable. I want you to feel that, too.

And then I want us all to get back to work, together, on the next miracle.