The BBQ: Exploring the Baby Boomer Question

There is a lot of Baby Boomer hate on social media. Their anger stems from a variety of reasons. Some dislike Boomers because of historic grievances that they deem to be anti-White and anti-Christian. They see the generation as an elderly collection of Woodstock participants. Many dislike the variety of spokespersons for the Baby Boomer Generation, which appears to have yielded the first large scale anti-White, anti-Christian radicals, whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats. Some dislike Boomers because of their antiquated takes on American reality. With so much hate, there needs to be context. This article tries to explore the Baby Boomer Question – the BBQ.

Most Boomers have now entered some phase of retirement – whether fully or as recipients of federal subsidies despite continuing to work. Having matured in a very different America that they led for the past forty years, Boomers have a hard time grasping the struggles of younger generations who face fewer job prospects (due to outsourcing), depressed wages (due to immigration), or systemic exclusion (due to affirmative action and diversity quotas). That is all understandable. However, personally, as a member of Gen-X, the group hardest on Boomers, I think many younger people – Millennials and Generation Z – mischaracterize the Baby Boomer Generation to the detriment of our own political and cultural purposes. It is time to understand our older brothers and sisters, many of whom are late to the fight, but support us, nonetheless.

To begin, Baby Boomers were born at an incredibly unique period of history. They were the first generation born in both the television era and the post-World War II American hegemonic era. As such, Boomers were raised with a saturated sense of American idealism as both sacrosanct and yet, somewhat ill-defined. No previous generation had the power to mold what made American power so great. That ideological conflict began in earnest, not by Boomers, but by the so-called “Greatest Generation” – the Boomer’s parents. That prior dominant generation sought to explain their victory in World War II by means of ideological warfare levied upon their children.

On the one hand, they – “the Greatest Gen” – promoted the notion that “freedom would always defeat tyranny.” This simplistic narrative validated the defeat of Adolf Hitler. On the other hand, they promoted the idea of American Exceptionalism at a time when the major consequence of their anti-nationalist war resulted in the ascendancy of communism. It is important to remember that – while Boomers were in diapers – the Greatest were forming global and domestic policy.

The combination of those policy positions led to a bipolar American identity. Nationalism was both bad and good. It was “bad” because it led to World War II, and we – the supposed good guys – defeated nationalism in the name of global peace. On the other hand, America was good, and we – Americans – had a unique responsibility to spread democratic peace values by any means necessary, regardless of the consequences in the short term. After all, if we could remake the entire world in America’s image, we could defeat nationalism and elevate an ideal above all else.

In essence, American Nationalism in the 1940s and thereafter, took the form of an ideology versus a country with a specific identity. It transformed from one in which physical borders were no longer the defining cultural imprint of a people and became a religion worth evangelizing. When necessary, conquering other countries in the name of American democratic values became a goal unto itself. The United States did not seek territorial acquisitions as previous empires had sought. Rather, it sought ideological adherents. “In the hearts of every Vietnamese is an American wanting to get out.” As Western democracies ascended and the only counter were communist “democracies,” the notion of neoliberal supremacy supplanted American identity, and that gave birth to a new faith. Boomers were the first generation baptized in that secular religion. By baptism, I mean full immersion – Baptist not Episcopalian baptism.

Consequently, Boomers, who had no power over decisions such as the 1948 integration of the military or the 1964 Civil Rights Act (they were babies or children at the time), were constantly fed a diet by which those decisions were blanketed by the American flag. This coincided with the emergence of television. The medium that would ultimately dominate Americana, reinforcing government approved narratives, and was thrust upon malleable young minds.

It is hard for Zoomers and Millennials to understand that Boomers were raised in an era by which a maximum of only five television stations existed: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and usually a local channel of some kind. If they lived in a smaller market, they might only get a couple of such channels. To put this in perspective, NBC and CBS still share news coverage on a singular platform in Jacksonville, Florida, and it is 2022. Correspondingly, Baby Boomers were raised on television programming whereby the only difference between the television stations was not distinction in the story arc, but the personalities of the story tellers. Their parents watched shows that promoted American family life. They watched news that promoted American idealism, even when it was negative coverage. For instance, the anti-Vietnam War rhetoric viewed by Boomers in their teenage years was not anti-American, per se. Rather, it coached its concerns in one by which our American values were brought to trial: are we willing to get more young boys killed to advance a foreign ideology – neoliberal democracy – on a foreign people? Aren’t we – Americans – better than that?

Generation X is the last generation to remember the age of “rabbit ear” television and the first generation to experience alternative news and entertainment options by virtue of cable competition and the internet. This coincided with a unique “latch key kid” upbringing that formulated a harder, more cynical edge. Boomers, by contrast, were raised with very few alternative resources, other than a steady drumbeat of the official American government narrative, prefaced as freedom. From the time they were watching the Mickey Mouse Club with Annette Funicello, Boomers were being groomed to become good citizens who equated material acquisitions to success, devalued family lineage over broader societal dynamics, and redefined American Exceptionalism from one that was once seen as a genetic outgrowth of European expansion to one that was entirely idealistic. They were the first generation raised to believe anyone could become an American if they just wanted it hard enough. Realistically, however, they were raised in a White Christian America that had placed significant immigration restrictions from 1927 – 1965. They never knew that others may view the gift of American identity as something different from their own valuation of that gift.

Despite the fact that most Boomers were raised in Greatest households, most of those Greatest Gen members had very little power as their colleagues transformed American society in their philosophical image. Greatest Gen fathers worked. Greatest Gen mothers kept the home. Both were too busy to get into the weeds of political and ideological nuance. Some did, but most could barely catch their breath in the new, materialistic America. Worse, due to the fact that the Greatest Gen emerged from the Depression, a twisted guilt was placed upon them – especially the fathers – to ensure their children never endured that which they endured. To place one’s children into poverty, as they had experienced, was now redefined as personal failure, not as a consequence of fate. This built a Baby Boomer Generation that knew hard working moms and dads as a norm in a newly defined rat race. The only way to “improve” upon their station, and in effect, honor their parents, was to enter that rat race together, and be more successful. A bigger suburban home… more toys… children who attended college… these became the new markers of success set for Boomers as they became early entrants of the workforce.

All of this happened during a cultural revolution. Again, it is important to remember, Boomers were raised at a time when the Greatest Generation decided to embrace an idealistic definition of American Exceptionalism, replacing the preceding genetic interpretation of that exceptionalism. They were also the first to emerge during a hedonistic cultural revolution. Crucial Greatest Generation personal icons of the era had a profound impact on Boomer identity. John F. Kennedy (politics), Hugh Heffner (pornography), Timothy Leary (drugs), J.D. Salinger (author), and Gregory Peck (actor) were all Greatest Generation members who had a massive influence on the Boomer zeitgeist.

To be fair to the 1960s, not everyone was a hippy who sought interracial sex. Most were, in fact, hardworking members of a transforming America, of which those new values trickled into the majority of White Christian towns. The urban areas dominated by leftist Greatest Generation members were slowly inculcating a broader American population struggling to understand the rapidity of change. When young Boomers went to war in Vietnam, Greatest Generation news anchors were telling their fellow Boomers that the war was wrong. Moral equations emerged with Boomers, who made a choice: if my friend is engaged in something that is wrong, is he a bad person? This quandary led to a deeply divided political notion of values, acts, and consequences, that endures today. If you want to understand cancel culture, you can see its American birthplace at the time in which lifelong friends broke apart over the Vietnam War. Of course, cancel culture has its origins in Marxism – denying essential life sustaining functions from those accused of wrong think – but Marxist rhetoric was endemic in the 1960s, and half of the Boomers bought into the ideas. It is hard to explain the long-term psychological impact of Vietnam on the Baby Boomer Generation.

When Vietnam veterans returned home, they were told to get jobs and suck it up. VFW Halls were still filled with successful WWI, WWII, and Korea veterans, many of whom looked upon Boomers as if their modern upbringing brought shame to the country in its first loss. Worse, it was a loss to an inferior Asian people. It was impossible for those preceding veterans to understand that most Boomers viewed the Vietnam War through the lens of American idealism (preserving neoliberal democracy) while they (Greatest Generation WWII veterans) still viewed war as a natural outgrowth of race and nationalism. When I was a boy in the late 1970s attending VFW functions with my grandma, it was impossible to find a Vietnam War veteran largely because of this yet to be understood dynamic.

Of course, the Boomers, having been raised on a steady diet of patriotic zeal and idealistic hedonism, were now confronted with the real consequences of policies that they never had a chance to even consider. Blacks were now fully integrated and the young children of older Boomers – Generation X – became the first to experience the joys of imposed diversity thanks to school bussing. Women’s rights led to a sexual revolution that was riddled with both genetic fallacies and genuine consequences. Again, Generation X was the first to enjoy the large-scale single mother epidemic. At the same time, AIDS made its way into the national lexicon – an outgrowth of sexual immorality embraced as part of a generational identity that many Boomers never really shared but seemed to inherit as a condition of a new definition of “freedom.” Despite the fact that statistics bear out the reality that Boomer females were actually quite chaste relative to more recent generations, it appears expectations through the introduction of pornography had changed sexual expectations at a time when women were being told amorphous “freedom” was a goal unto itself. “You’ve come a long way, Baby,” was not merely a Virginia Slims marketing slogan to young women; it became a moniker of empowerment that led to devastating societal consequences.

In sum, I do not view Boomers as the bad guys. Rather, I view them as the first widescale victims of a social programming that began by the preceding dominant generation. As the Baby Boomer Generation has now advanced in age, many are struggling to both understand what went wrong while simultaneously deprogram from decades of propaganda and cultural conditioning. Generation X, often left to clean up the messes left behind by Baby Boomers, should be better at empathizing with the reality of their parental forebearers. No one who was 19 in 1968 could truly understand the downstream consequences of racial integration, sexual freedom, or American liberal (small ‘L’) democracy. They were kids.

Correspondingly, Millennials – the product of younger Boomers – and Gen Z (Gen X offspring) – should recognize that hindsight is 20/20. Not only did Boomers have very little to do with the imposition of modern policies regarding a non-racial, anti-Christian, hedonistic America, they were raised in such a way that the consequences were hidden from their upbringing. They did not have Gab or even early Facebook to warn them of that which would come. There was no Telegram telling them what radical communist and black rapist, Martin Luther King Jr, was really doing. Instead, they were spoon fed selected images and information that molded their early understanding of right and wrong by genuine Marxist radicals who sought to reinterpret and redesign America.

The only issue upon which all of the other generations can agree is the frustration with Baby Boomers who doggedly refuse to admit the America they thought they knew died before the Baby Boomer was even born. It is both vexing and disappointing. But again, I ask for patience. The Baby Boomer Generation was raised in a Neoliberal Cult of a redefined America and largely avoided the consequences of that new American ideal by virtue of age. They did not have to experience the broader implications of integrated schools, mass migration, outsourced manufacturing, secular immorality, or the devaluation of family. They were the first generation to implement those programs established by the preceding generation without the benefit of hindsight. Some knew that which was at stake, but not everyone in a generation can be Randy Weaver.