Preface: 

This is a critique from someone born 20 years after JFK’s assassination who thinks we should change the phrase Baby Boomers to Baby Doomers. Or, at the very least, we should revert back to the handle the Boomers’ parents had for them; the “Me Me Me” generation. See below for why. 

+++BELOW OFF THE RECORD+++

Recently Dr. Raphael Sassower published a book called The Quest for Prosperity where he argues the free market, mercantilist, and capitalist structures and philosophies so ubiquitous today, were created at a time (17th, 18th, 19th centuries) when the world was perceived as rife with an abundance of resources. Ripe for the colonialists’ picking (so to speak). 

As this is NOT the case these days, Sassower goes on to imply that a new philosophy is required to account for the changes in resources, climate, space, and economics. I write this because perhaps it’s time for a generational critique. I begin with the position that Sassower is correct and his argument for ‘reframing the political economy’ connects quite well with Lyman Stone’s recent analysis of the Baby Boomers (see link for his article in The Atlantic) but I think more synthesis of these important ideas is needed by us “youthful subalterns” if we’re to strike a new path.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

- As a person acculturated into my parents pseudo-celebrationist, psuedo-counter-culturist philosophies, I think its time to be critical of this prior generation for what I now perceive is a gross neglect of their civic duties. As custodians of the successes of future generations, the baby boomers have officially failed. 

- My criticism is straight forward: the Baby Boomers should be called the Baby Doomers:

1- Doomer accomplishments in stewardship of the republic, the economy, and the environment are laughable at worst and half-hearted at best. One of the reasons driving the Prius ain’t gonna get it done as is commonly said today, is that the Baby Doomers are driving the train and it was built in the late 19th century so the wheels are coming off due to a lack of maintenance.  

2- They did achieve a reduction in the ozone hole which they had a hand in creating, but advanced a free market system to its breaking point while driving wages down world-wide and polluting more than the prior generations pollutant outputs combined. They also created the carbon capture fiasco which I believe enshrined the pass it off to the youth energy politics explaining the Gov’s handling of the Dakota Access Pipeline conflict all while facilitating Exxon Valdez, and Deepwater Horizon to unfold into scenarios for the youth to ameliorate. And while it was the youth that created the internet infrastructure, the doomers have certainly bought into this market just as they did the advances of modern world that was built for them in the pre WW2 era. How about the Corporate person created under a perversion of the Constitution? 

3- They did protest in the 60s and 70′s, but allowed the headway they made in this era to fall by the wayside as the Reagan era ensued. In terms of Civil Rights, laws were passed yes, but did racism subside and fall into the cracks of past historical mistakes? No. In fact, many of the Civil Rights leaders were systematically murdered on the cusp of the Baby Doom watch. MLK, Malcom X, Bobby, JFK? The list goes on in international dealings as well...Lumumba, Chile, Argentina. Well perhaps Doomers didn’t quite come to power in time to oversee these travesties, but they’re worth an honorable mention as are our Silent & Great Generations. Anyway, but when the Doomers got into political maturity, they certainly increased an oppresive and bizichst azt euzche agenda through a generic yet remarkably popular, “War On Everything” political/police policy at the International, Federal, and State levels.

As the Port Huron statement hangs on my wall while I write, it reminds me that high-minded goals only realized in ideal, not in actuality, are fallow gestures. What good are the grandest of ideas if they are not realized I ask you? Wouldn’t you agree action takes perseverance and the boomers, as of now, have been too preoccupied with working to save money for “the end.” Where are your grandparents these days? Why is the death rate for 32-year-olds increased by 24% over the last five years (Stone Article)? Problem is, this 9 to 5 and out mentality (while driving a Prius) was never and will never be enough to maintain a healthy State. All this despite what they tell you when you’re 18: “go get a job, money doesn’t grow on trees (when it does), yada yada...ad inf.”

Seems to me, the greatest generation in-fact, aside from building the highway system and prosecuting the war effort, also had little influence on the great American architecture of modernity. Most of this was in fact built in the late 19th early 20th by the offspring of the Civil War era. Think about all the dams and mines already running when the Doomer got to political power, for an example.

- Here I give you other salient civilizational achievements like: the opening of the West, the Colombian Expo in 1893, the Carnegie’s philanthropy, the Transcontinental Railway, and plane travel for commercial and personal purposes; not to mention a vastly superior domestic public transport system in smaller metropolis towns (they’ve done decently in the major metropoli). The Bridges: San Fran, Brooklyn, and the magnificent buildings of our major cities were all started in the early 20th. The Doomers did build the Archway of St. Louis, though again they monetized it. Making money in another half hearted effort resting on the accomplishments of those who came prior. It is symbolic, but you be the judge in the court of Karma, and we, for her history. 

- The Baby Doomers managed to proliferate nuclear weapons (your welcome children), and have stewarded a rise in the police state like nothing our history has witnessed prior. War on Crime anyone? Many too have inculcated their children to believe in apocalyptic visions of the future because of unresolved national conflicts, shortcomings in environmental stewardships, and a failure to conceive civic duties. I say in a very general sense that there were manageable issues in the 50s, 60′s, 70s, and 80′s that were simply ignored. What happened? The Doomers got lazy from the bountiful fruits given to them from the past. Now, they are about to seek congratulations from us for achieving “mission accomplished,”as the suprise heir-apparent G.W. Bush famously and mistakenly retorted at the “end” of the War in Iraq. A War BTW which is the longest reigning conflict in US history. In reality, the Doomers are the beneficiaries of a system which allowed them to succeed, and now they want nothing to do with paying forward into that very system. In a fitting word from the current Baby Doomer executive, #Shameful

- Another misguided problem the baby Doomers cause(d), stems from demonizing socialism while shamefully taking payouts from socialized systems like SSI, Universal Healthcare, and Unemployment Insurance in the same breath. Its not all their fault, I think this because I know they were conditioned to conflate Communism with Socialism (which is a tragic fallacy) and have been taught to fear the Communist “other” as the Capitalist “hero” during the Cold War Era. Here as evidence, we see the best example as the recent reversal of the Cuban embargo set forth by our Doomers in the 1960′s. Again a solution posited by the younger generations, not by many of the representative Doomer-era scumbags sitting currently & cooly in temperate coats of archaic ideology.

-Another problem created by the Doomers is the decimation of the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. The fact that my Mom and Dad, and many like them are collecting SSI and a pension at age 65, while I cannot take SSI until I am 78, is a testament to the baby doom imposed upon us. All we need is the same, equal outcome as our parents enjoyed. Seems selfish, no? Meanwhile the debt keeps rising...and the bills keep getting postponed for latter day generations to shoulder. You can keep the Lamp, the Chair, and Steve Martin and his racially insensitive impersonation for all I care; just give us back equality under the law or we’ll have to take it.

- Economy? Hah! Forget about the national debt- which is another major effe you from the baby doomers just as is the military budget which increased exponentially under the Doomer’s watch. 

I mean, what really did the baby doom generation do to improve the republic? Bueller? Anyone? 

- Even Mount Rushmore, that great testament to our forefathers, this too was built long before the baby doom got to state bulding in Korea and Vietnam (which was also bungled by the proto-Doomer) as was the Iran Contra, and the US dealings in the MENA, and in Latin and Mesoamerica. Dynamite? Electricity? Modern Medicine? All previous advancements now corporatized and monopolized by the Doomers to advance profits under tactics appallingly similar to the Orwelian prophecy they likely read in grade school. Let us not even go into land use policy, inflation or incarceration rate expansions, nor the War on drugs, crime, communism, also there’s this war now on terror. Not to mention the actual wars we are still fighting abroad, and the people dying bravely on the daily over seas due to greed, and nationalist philosophies that smell all too familiar like the wretched stench of Cold War-era propaganda. Alot of my friends enlisted after 9/11 and fought under the War policies of the Doomers. I chose to study U.S. history instead of fighting; both noble causes IMO. And like Karma, olfactory memory is a bitch too, although a person always smells Bullshit before they call it ( literally & figuratively).

- Doomers are also are currently handing us a Congressional paradigm that is less Democratic and functional then our nation has EVER experienced. What about kid leashes? Anti vax? And of course, the Doomers greatest false creation: the festival. I mean, total hedonism, right man? Other guy: “totally!” What would we ever do without the advances made by the psychedelic “research” of The Grateful Dead? I’m guessing we might have ruminated more presciently about the path we were on.

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- When the music stopped, they left us a corporatized culture which on the reg, is verifiably toxic to all but the few at the top. With wealth inequality spiraling even further out of control, entire comedy shows are today devoted to the ironic spin of reality just to obfuscate and parse the chaos into a palatable chunk of useful info. And the benchmarks set aside by the Doomers; even our kids will pay whilst the news cycle digresses further into a Cheneyean fantasy (Big Pharma more like big effe you [FU] to us kids as well). Wealth inequality? Pfffff: deserves to be perhaps thrice mentioned as it is so ridiculously unequaled today (we should be asking why this is so in a free market and society).

So Kids, in sum they’re saying: “your welcome children,” “now we are going to retire into obscurity: have at it,” but in essence, what they did is screwed us, and they knew/know well what they were/are doing. If they really can claim to be victims in this purportedly unstoppable dillema, then who is the villain in this unfolding drama?  

Individually, Baby Doomers did their part to maintain family life and built a consumer culture which now consumes the world economy (and all the resources) while at the same time making the institution of marriage more an institution of divorce. - It was the youth whom achieved the juridical advances dictated by LGBT equality, not the Doomers BTW. The Doomers still cannot decide on women’s body sovereignty however, another legacy of my generation I presume, will be the mucking of an archaic Supreme Court and with it, the reformation of the US legal system. Thanks again for all the Fish, Doomers. It is now time to panic with or without your towel in hand. The Doomers are also responsible for the outsourcing of the fine American industrial infrastructure created by the doomer predecessors. All for profit, to be hedonistically enjoyed only in their lifetimes.

In the timely words of the Doomer Era band Rare Earth (which I admit is a pretty damn good tune).

That’s why I’m telling you I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah

Another day of living, yeah

I just want to celebrate another day of life

Had my hand on the dollar bill

And the dollar bill flew away

But the sun is shining down on me

And it’s here to stay

That’s why I’m telling you I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah

Another day of living, yeah

I just want to celebrate another day of livin’

I just want to celebrate another day of life

So in a sense, one of the many reasons for the destruction of the environment, the economy, and the Nation; is the Baby Doomers, whom squandered the greatest boon in economic prosperity and resources this now global-market stands unwilling to admit (As Raphael Sassower points out) is the underlying problem. With this gift of abundance, Doomers did little but live up to the nickname actually given them by the prior generation: the Me Me Me’s. And as Rare Earth’s song points out, they mistakenly saw hedonism as the curative to society’s problems then ran a business as usual political economy without regard for the youth. To say in the spirit of the Archway over St. Louis, the Doomers certainly did not invent even this new appelation of hedonism they espoused is yet another now worn out reality in this essay. In my view, they usurped the ideology of the ancient hedonists like 60s era musicians stole Blues and Folk to “invent” and monetize Rock and Roll. No thanks to Bands turned socioeconomic icons from this era which promoted unbridled hedonism and endless commentary with few concrete solutions, all the celebration with none of the action put us where we are today. Karma in all her wisdom may today be incapable of playing the agent of justice. And Athena, that awesome goddess of the wise and warlike, might also be unable to prosecute the justice which needs to be meted out upon the Doomers. Did Aeschylus ever confront the question: that if everyone in society is culpable, then is no one to blame? Perhaps The Oresteia could be retrofitted somehow to hand the law back to the Gods? Regaining the delicate balance between them which needs to be struck? That of Apollonian and Dionysian demiurges; of chaos and structure; of nature and order.

In sum, we youth should all be fed up with letting the baby boomers get off scot free, and, for allowing them to royally screw us into future ruin! Instead, we jovial youth should be going on a peaceful yet assertive offensive, and doing so in great numbers (if we’ve learned anything from the Doomers) to be effective against the entrenched status quo.

Unlike my parents, I do stuff to serve society (which is one definition of civics). And while one of my parents carelessly enjoys life without regard for the outside world in the true spirit of the “I just want to celebrate” Doomer culture, the other, lazily sits around on a disability that's not really justifiable. Truth is, they both set terrible examples of how to be a Citizen. I volunteer and teach in order to instill the virtues of civic participation into the youth.

In short, by reversing the roles traditionally ascribed and by calling out our boomer parents for their BS, I believe we can point out how to improve things and then we can take action (the latter being summum bonum). I think actually participating in a constitutional republic lay at heart of amelioration of our economic and environmental problems, and the Baby Doomers set a terrific and terrifying example of how NOT to maintain a democratic republic.

We can do better, and I have high hopes for the future because its now a matter of survival. We cannot afford to depend on the free love, celebrationist attitudes as an ameliorant for the socioeconomic woes of our Nation like my parents did, we have to act. 

Epilogue:

- When in 1789, James Madison handily appeared from the constitutional convention, a woman retorted in worry about the unclear future ahead for the nation. She asked Madison: “by god sir what form of government have you given us?” Madison coyly replied: “A Republic Ma’am, if you can keep it.”

I call them the Baby Doomers for many reasons, but above all, it is because I believe they failed to keep the Republic as Madison predicted in his prophetic statement. It is said that the first generation builds it, the second runs it, and the third runs it into the ground. I am calling out the Baby Doomers for being that third generation so that we might strike a new path; redefining ourselves in this cycle of civilization as the 1st generation of useful architects for a viable future.

Freedom and Democracy need constant maintenance, and due to the Doomers it’s currently in a state of disrepair. Since our train is now grinding to a halt due to that lack of maintenace we discussed in the beginning of this essay, there is no more time for philosophies like Me Me Me, nor the dispensationalist attitudes that detract from the reality that the baby doomers effed up. The final thing I have to do then, is to ask you two questions.

-1. How are we going to set ourselves apart in order to correct the error of THEIR ways before this train of ours stops for good?

-2. When we start driving, are we going to rebuild this broken Train of Ours, or are we going to strike a new course and build something new?

I would like to bring your attention to a trend in western history which I believe many historians have already noted concerning the discourses of the past. I propose we take note of a trend in typology implicit in western history which has occurred in ancient and modern epochs. Since Herodotus sought to classify the territories of the Greek world and Polybius documented his timeless topographically-founded ethos; historians have grappled to represent change over time regarding the animus of organized power structures. Yet if we are prescient of resource-use history in western civilization, we must acknowledge this evolution, this need for resources which power-structures essentialize to sustain power. In other words, hegemony, or ideology, is not enough to explain the great contests which so regularly ensue in the western metanarrative. There is a more-basic material reality underneath the ideological currents of historical agency. I think a trend is extant in western histories: that a quest for material resources (which begins with typology and classification) often becomes an ideologically-founded endeavor. In historiographies of the West, I posit that material animus is often overshadowed by ideological agency. Thus, there is a dynamic between ideology and animus which underscores my supposition that, ideology became the agent which historians used to negotiate and justify the ubiquitous yet underdeveloped need for simple resources in their treatments. Basic human necessity, and historical pragmatism prompts us then to consider that just as Hannibal and his father Hamilcar topologized southern Iberia for land, resources, and labor, so too did the European settler-colonialists look upon North America with similar designs. In antebellum-era economies a great ideological debate emerged which was directly informed by “material” circumstances. Yet in each case just mentioned, the conflicts are most often treated in metanarratives as displays of great strategy, or extraordinary political, rhetorical and philosophical debates which fomented stasis. So, I posit that ideology is a last expression of the simple human need for resources: on Iberia, on the U.S., and on the Navajo Nation alike; resources determined the initial scope and trajectory of consumption on the one hand, and conflict on the other. In the case of the U.S. Civil War, a war for resources like iron, lumber, and labor evolved into a noble struggle for liberty indeed. In ancient Iberia, a war for control of the Mediterranean in the second and third-centuries B.C.E. between the adaptive-yet land-based Roman legions and the naval power of Carthage was largely determined by the resources which each Empire sought to control. Yet, it is the war designs of the Scipios and Carthaginians which are the main agents in this struggle which history remembers. I posit that the material resources which armored and paid Hannibal’s armies were just as important as the strategies that ensued in victory and defeat. That in the Civil War, the basic material necessity for iron and the machines of modernized warfare, and the need for labor to supply the armies and industries, prompted Lincoln’s ideological transformation from an ambivalent “free soil” advocate, to the abolitionist he has become over time in the legacy of his history. On the Navajo Nation, the 20th-century need for new materials of dominance inspired by WWII ultimately evolved into an international movement of nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. In this case too, in which a host of ideologies collided in a globalized capitalist and communist binary, the need for materials at home on the Colorado Plateau, was very much an ideological struggle for power and/or peace (whichever way you look at it). Paradoxically, just as wars for resources do indeed evolve into conflicts about ideology, so too do ideologies prompt the need for resources. If resources are in-fact bound to constructions of power in a free-market, does it follow then that the stuff of war is bound to constructions of liberty in a free-world? Only time will tell. Yet lest I digress further, I will end.

Historical analysts (among others) know how difficult it is to measure changes as they happen. In real-time, measuring how the technological revolution sweeping across the world is changing society is a daunting task compared to understanding the effect Gutenberg’s contribution in the 1440’s to the enlightenment-era thinkers like Rousseau, Locke, and Descartes. While looking backwards across time gives us what P. T. Cohen called the gift of historical hindsight, much has changed since the advent of the printing press some five-hundred-eighty years ago.

In the last two-decades no less, we have witnessed a cacophony of digitized technologies with which to connect to each-other and to the seeminlgy endless archive of information entrenched throughout the world wide web. This has transformed us at the societal level, yes, but most heavily at the site of the individual. What has occurred in this short time is worldwide sea-change in knowledge access and production. Put most simply, it is a severe change in the way we access information.

In twenty-years, the whole of humanity has accepted this drastic act; this trend of turning away from physically accessing books, atlases, newspapers, etc. All in leu of accessing these forms in digitized realms. What’s more, as the decline in physical mail and the rise of volume in digital inboxes attests, the speed of rapport has now increased to real-time speed: these effects of these major changes needs to be examined further. What’s more, the smartphone revolution only intensifies this transition, and in some sense, exacerbates a widespread sense of disconnection all the while gripping society at the family, community, national, global, and individual levels.

That the same fears and doubts Gutenberg may have had about the widespread access of information via his press are the same doubts we must confront concerning the transformation of our society in the digital age.

If at any point, let it be now that we ask ourselves not if, but how this digital turn in history is shaping knowledge production in our society? Furthermore, how is the aforementioned major shift in our frequency of rapport related to the reduction in our capacity to digest large pieces of information? If hindsight reveals Gutenberg’s press really was the mechanism underneath the Enlightenment, then is the digital revolution the mechanism behind the veil of our greater future? Let us hope so.

As news media streams of information become more and more frequent and less and less informative; as social discourse online prevails in public domains, more users get information in short packets of highly scripted information, much of it propaganda designed to cater to your conditioned reality. That you need this item rather than you want this item is the subconcious credo of the first world propaganda machine.

As data collection prevails with government and private firms, the race to collect an individual’s personal data is now big business. Through the monetization of your information, it is then sold to the highest bidder in an effort to customize an online advertising experience specifically designed to sell to you, the end user.

New fears and concerns for safety have emerged as well, as social networking becomes more ubiquitous at all age levels, the risks for privacy and security are increasing. Not only is cyber-bullying now a predominant social issue, the separation of real-life and one’s digital reality has become difficult for masses of unfortunate users. Now even Speilberg’s adaptive screenplays reveal this reality with a sobering sense of accuraccy. In some cases, real life retaliation as punishment for digital misdeeds is as much a reality as the student’s tangible fear of dying in the next mass killing.

In social-networks, users reveal a self which in most cases, does not fit the reality of the organically embodied user. And while contact with those we cherish is no less sacred via US Mail; Facebook and Instagram, amidst a slew of iterations, now supplant means by which we seek each other out.

All this amidst an unsustainable population growth rate society wants to silence and nobody wants to talk about.

This perversion of human contact is no more apparent than in dating platforms designed connect those unwilling to undertake the endeavor of first contact on actual terms. In this digital turn in history, as Augustine’s ‘City of God,’ is been repurposed and fitted to become the ultimate social network; where Man places faith and reason into a digital embodiment of the ego-self. All while the urban counterpart in Augustine’s allegory becomes the city of earthly actuality. Where human contact still constitutes the means of human connection. And at the library, the archive, the holy sepulcher, and on the ground beneath one’s feet, a time tested tradition of hugs and handshakes persist amidst this digital turn in history.

Our conversation that evening was punctuated by talk of a dream the Barman had in

which he wandered a vast and distant wilderness only to end up wintering alone in a dark secluded cabin; "the only thing in the damned lonely place," he said, "were two book collections which rested on shelves symetric on either side of a cold hearth like the wings of a great raven." "I remember the collections were almost identical; both black, emblazoned with gold lettering. But after looking more closely, I noticed there was one distinct difference. One collection was entitled Kristol, and the other, labelled Howe."

Digressing as he often did when the bar volume dipped he described the end of his dream: "I remember vividly I needed to get warm so I had to start a fire in the hearth with the books." "So," as he cooly wiped the counter for an approaching customer, "I remember being warmed by a fire fueled only with the works labelled Kristol."

"And in the light of that warmth,” he said, “as the cool darkness descended,” he jeered,

“I then read the full un-singed works of Howe with an empty belly and a full heart.” "Your so full of shit, your teeth are brown sonny," I said.

“Irving a neocon deserves a little hearth time” he scoffed, as he measured obscenely a jigger of self-administered sauce (and one for me too) as a nurse might administer drugs to a patient; like clock-work.

“Now I want a tip for this freebie here bud,” he said; his beady eyes gazing like a rat upon the moon. Most stay only for the casual conversation, but I know him well enough to be privy to the fact that this Barman drinks a shot to the clock to hide from himself and the others, a sadness I estimate ever implicit in his lowly nature.

He’s a smart kid, and he knows that if he lets the patricians see the servants sadness they win. Then I win.

As before, so it is again, the Patricians trump the Plebeians.