Boomer Hate Is Booming

Again, at least the Millennials are getting a break. For the moment.

I love this, if only to poke at those tiresome old pseudo-intellectual posers who proclaim The Rolling Stones were“better” than The Beatles, if only because the Stones didn’t have three all-time classic songwriters’/vocalists’ egos competing with one another in their band, nor the sense to quit while Mick and Keith could still grind out some hits among their misses. The Beatles took all the time they needed. When they were done, they were done. They remain influential enough for people to be complaining about them half a century after making their last album. The Stones, well, they’re a nostalgia act. Q.E.D.

As much as I understand and even appreciate much of the open contempt for the largest generational cohort aging into oblivion, here’s something no one seems to have thought about: early Boomers born in in the years between 1946-54 were the great bulk of whom served and died in Vietnam. 

Vietnam. Remember that one? In the course of complaining about the stubbornly pervasive stench of Boomer culture and nostalgia for the same, as if their movies and music were the only things that mattered—again, I get this—people forget the huge gravitational mass in the room that sucked so many young men in, some never to return. Of course, that’s because no one brings it up.

Moreover, it was the so-called Greatest Generation who sent the Boomers to Vietnam. And for what? Well, to keep that military contractor gravy train going, that’s why. That’s all. Vietnam fell to  the little men in black pajamas and the world didn’t end. “Oops. Guess we were wrong about that Domino Theory. Sorry about those 58,000 dead sons and fathers and the millions more who came home sick and crazy from what they saw and did. Now, listen, if we don’t get some boots on the ground in [remote sovereign country], then [remote sovereign country’s leader], whom we’re told has weapons of mass destruction will do Very Bad Things.”

Thus the not-so-great Greatest Generation passed their hubris onto the Boomers, and thus did succeeding generations get sick of their nonsense. I only wish those hating on these passing elder generations would keep in mind that many did not live so long precisely because of the nonsense their elders and their fellows sold them and everyone else back when respecting authority was looking more and more like a chump’s game. 

Now it’s generally accepted to be a chump’s game, but it’s the only game in town, whaddya gonna do? I’m not judging. I’m just saying, hey, you notice how everyone just pretends this thing that killed all these young Americans for over a decade never happened? “Yeah, well, they were Boomers. Screw Boomers, I hate Boomers, they had it comin’....”

Never mind.

Just think, all those years from 1963 through 1975, all those young men sweating turning 18 and getting their draft lottery numbers. Young men have been looking forward to turning 18 for a while now, but it wasn’t always so. For the longest time, a young man just out of high school stood a chance of being brought into the Army, forced into weeks of hell at boot camp only to be sent away to a horrible jungle on the other side of the planet to get shot at, and shoot back.

So many sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, best pals, ornery cousins, zipped up in bags...and then there were all those who came home, having seen and done things they could never explain to those who never went. Not all were rattled in the brain pan, but those who were, well, we laugh at them. They’re the ones in the memes who start up “Fortunate Son” on their sound systems when the alphabet bois (BATF, FBI, etc.) kick in their doors and the booby traps start going off. 

Over a decade of civic-induced misery, death, disfigurement, an atrocity of mass-murder and grift for the ages. It was bad enough listening to putative conservatives of the day whining about young people’s loss of respect for authority and institutions, as it never occurred to them that people might resent being lied to, let alone sent off to be crippled or killed for a lie. No, in A.D. 2019, we’ve long since we reduced veterans of the Vietnam debacle to a meme. A punchline.

Of course, they were Boomers. Screw them, right? “Ugh, so sick and tired of hearing about those people....”

Did I mention something about Millennials getting a pass? I’ve read in two places online this week the term “NuBoomers” for particularly entitled types. Let's hope it doesn't catch on. Let the Original Flavor Boomers take the term "boomers" to the grave with them.  Everyone's hating on Boomers; I'm hating on careless generalizations, stupid terminology, and misdirected resentment.