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I appreciated Jesse Poe Holliday’s recent article about the struggles of young men to achieve manhood. He indeed captures the sense of aimlessness and cluelessness exhibited by so many young men today (and to be fair, young women are not showing up much better. Recent polls suggest that as many as half are rejecting motherhood, and I have seen reports that absurdly high numbers of young women are on some sort of anti-depressant of mood elevator drug.)
However, as is natural for younger people, Holliday confines his analysis to a rather limited timeline, one that he can see in his own life. Yes, the problem of young males with no guidance is worse today—but that is because it is the culmination of quite a few generations that have not sufficiently fought off negative trends. I believe that today’s feckless young male is a manifestation of trends that started long ago.
Some of the influences that led us to today were technological or economic rather than intentional. One was the shift of employment from farms to factories. In 1800, 83 percent of men worked in agriculture. By 1900 it was down to roughly 40 percent; today it is approximately 2 percent. Farm life meant that boys worked closely with their fathers from the time they could walk to the time they left home. It also gave boys a natural feel for the cycle of life, for caring for others, and for responsibility. Factory work, on the other hand, took men away from their families, often for 10 or 12 hours a day (fathers absent because of work is hardly a Boomer phenomenon). And it placed boys in a more artificial, urban environment.
Even with fathers gone from the home for long stretches, many boys in the past still managed to spend lots of time in the company of adult men in their formative years. Only around 10 percent of the population had graduated from high school in 1910; it was still only 35 percent in 1950, while today it is around 85 percent. “Back in the day,” boys usually left school to go to work in their early teens (my paternal grandfather went to work in a textile factory at the age of 11), so they were in the company of adult males, performing adult functions.
A related contributing factor that began in the formative years of the Greatest Generation and increased after WW II was that young people began spending most of their time in the company of their age-group peers. As mentioned above, children once worked alongside adults from an early age, and in the days of the one-room schoolhouse, they were around older kids until they became the older kids. But high school attendance rose dramatically in the 1920s and 30s. Spending most of one’s time in one’s own age group instead of around adults encourages the infantilization, or perhaps “juvenilization,” that is omnipresent today. Rather than being forced into an adult focus on doing what is right, young people who spend all their time around their peers tend to be consumed with what is “cool,” popular, or the latest thing. This conformity often gets enforced in Lord of the Flies fashion—as one 1970s song said, “be cool or be cast out.” Driven by the popular media and peer pressure, Jewish thinking on all matters—especially social issues such as race, feminism, homosexuality—became the unofficial law of the land for Boomers.
The process of delaying or eschewing manhood really got going in the years just after World War II. The “Greatest Generation” came back from the war and pretty much handed over their sons over to the “Jewish-centric” media and the leftist education system. It certainly wasn’t deliberate, and it wasn’t that they were more aloof than their own fathers—men have always worked long hours or had alcohol problems. But they failed to notice important new influences that were emerging, including television and rock and roll music in the 1950s, drugs in the 1960s and 1970s, and video games and the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s. These innovations possibly affect the way young minds are wired—according to many cognitive scientists—and can diminish young people’s connection to reality.
Furthermore, the Greatest Generation failed to notice that the culture had been co-opted by a new, largely Jewish elite. There was a war occurring for control of young Boomer minds—and the Greatest and Silent Generation parents were generally AWOL. They assumed that our institutions still had the best interests of the nation’s youth in mind, rather than being intent on indoctrinating them to harmful ideas and habits, and they relied more than ever on institutions to raise their boys. Yes, the Boy Scouts and Little League were generally positive influences, but the schools and media were busy hollowing out the traditional culture. It was during the heyday of the Greatest Generation that Classical knowledge was removed from the public elementary curriculum (the first time I learned anything about ancient Greek or Roman culture in school was in a tenth grade AP Literature class). Prayer ended in public schools in the early 1960s, and white identity was universally deemed a heresy except, perhaps in some particularly stubborn Southern pockets.
The sense of the nation as a people, as an extended form of kinship, was swept away entirely. Gone too was the Burkean sense of a “contract between the generations.” The nation was now just “an idea,” and not even the idea intended by the Founding Fathers—one of a proud, self-sufficient citizenry capable of self-rule—but the idea expressed in Emma Lazarus’s dreary poem on the Statue of Liberty, the idea expressed by Israel Zangwill in his play The Melting Pot, and the idea expressed by Bob Dylan that “The first one now will later be last, For the times they are a-changin’.”
I learned that the times were indeed “a-changin’” at an early age. I was a junior high football player, a bit small at maybe 5’5” and 115-120 lbs., with no real talent. Football players at all levels at my school had to wait in line to turn in some of their gear at the end of practice. The wait was long and boring, and one day the star varsity running back came up to me and told me to fetch his helmet he had left outside (obviously, he just wanted my spot in line). He was black, maybe 5’11 and a muscular 185 lbs., a known bully and brawler (and who was illegally living with non-relatives in our school district to play football). I said “no,” and he upped the intensity of his bullying. Eventually, he just pushed me out of line and took my place, and I had to go to the end of the line. The thing is, there were lots of white varsity players looking on, some of them over 200 lbs. In a previous era, they would have felt a responsibility to defend a much smaller white kid against a large black bully. At the least, one of them could have given me a spot in line in front of them. But they just ignored what was happening—they did not want to be on the wrong side of the racial divide. That was in 1970; the campaign to groom us into sheep was already successful. This transformation was not accomplished by Boomers; we were instead the recipients of our elders’ failure to respond to the subversion.
So the Boomer parents are not the starting point of this process, but merely an intermediate stage. The divorce rate started rising dramatically in 1960, before Boomers were old enough to get married. The worst policy changes that ushered in the current depressing age—Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration Act of 1965– all happened before a single Boomer was old enough to vote; their Greatest Generation parents were complicit in the decline.
With each new generation, because of all the new dangers, there is a need for greater father engagement with their sons, but, because of their own upbringing, in each new generation the fathers turn out to be more confused, self-centered, or feminized than in the previous generation. Into the vacuum comes increased pressure for kids to conform to the woke mindset through the popular media, the schools, and government actions—continuing the cycle and always moving the decay forward.
And that’s how we got today’s Millennial and Generation Z losers. (I wonder how the newer generations will fare as parents). We are all part of this giant stream of history, and we happen to be alive at the (possibly) tail end of a great civilization, all of us with a multitude of influences, bad and good. If so many of today’s youth are feminized or feckless, drifting aimlessly with no sense of past or future, that is how they were intended to be by those who started subverting, manipulating, and taking control of the culture a century ago.
For the record, I am also a late bloomer with an aloof father, just like so many Millennials and Zoomers. But I am a Boomer (1955 model). Dad was part of the Greatest Generation. He was an intelligent and complex man, but he struggled to know how to be a father. He had a strained relationship with his own father, who was an alcoholic and a loner. Dad was educated in a giant inner-city school where, because of his working-class address, he was taught the fundamentals of reading and arithmetic and then shunted off to electrical shop. He enlisted in the Navy in 1943 at the age of 17, where, because of his high aptitude test score, he was plucked out of the enlisted ranks and educated to be an electrical engineer and officer. But he wasn’t just a techie; after being exposed to higher education, he read widely.
Unfortunately, he did not have much guidance in his intellectual endeavors, and he became what the 19th century British writer Matthew Arnold called a “half-educated man.” That is, he could perform high level technical or business functions, and he was sort of acquainted with the world of ideas—though not in a truly educated manner but in a distorted way. Back in the 19th century, Arnold was concerned that such men in England would become socialists, and many did. My father, however, developed his own philosophy with an odd mix of the extreme libertarianism of Ayn Rand and the self-creation theories of the existentialists (tempered somewhat by corporate Republicanism). Somehow he got the idea that the best way to raise a son was to let the me figure everything out for myself. It was a disaster; despite inheriting my father’s native intelligence, I was always behind my peers intellectually, socially, emotionally, and morally. I spent the first couple of decades of adulthood mired in drug abuse, low self-esteem, and depression.
Do I hate him for his failure to understand that the times we lived in required more engagement as a father, not less? No, I love him and miss him (He’s been gone a few years now). He stuck by me through the drug years, as much as he could, and helped me pull out of my downward spiral. As I grew older and, perhaps wiser, I saw how he had been moulded by his own less-than-optimal home environment, his emotionally absent father, and his lack of guidance. I saw how he was conflicted: he was both alienated and attracted by the mainstream culture. One part of him was a corporate conformist—being successful was perhaps the most important thing to him, having come from a poor inner-city neighborhood—and one part was an independent thinker who despised the kiss-ass fools above him, professionally and socially. I watched as he gradually and painfully sublimated his blue-collar race realism over the years in order to fit in. I understand that pressure; if I am more open about race realism than he, it is because the Internet affords me that opportunity. And I thank him for not teaching me to see life through the lens of white guilt, as many of my friends’ more attentive parents did.
Boomers come in many flavors, and rarely do they fit the stereotype precisely, but there are certain vague patterns: materialistic, hedonistic, and lacking self-awareness. Many Boomers are hyper-competitive, as they were far and away the biggest generation at that time; they grew up in large families and went to overcrowded schools, which caused fierce competition for resources and attention. Others are feminized, passive, buying into a bunch of hippy-dippy nonsense from the popular media and education schools. In the broadest sense, many fit into the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” category: they want their “stuff,” but are quick to cuck. But there are also many outstanding Boomers who have pushed knowledge forward, lived exemplary lives, or been tremendous parents. (And I do not mean to be too harsh on the Greatest Generation; they, too, had plenty of burdens to shoulder.)
The key is to keep your sight on rebuilding a culture and an identity that will reverse the long-term trends of the 20th and early 21st centuries. (And remember there is no going back to some Golden Age; the past is how we got here.) Understand that the lack of masculinity and direction happened through a long process rather than blaming it all on one generation–that sort of short-sightedness will prevent the clear vision needed for improving our situation. Our people have behaved as if they had fallen under a spell cast over a century ago; if past generations—Greatest, Silent, Boomer, or X—did not grasp what was happening, they were merely men of their times, not singularly awful. And those who conspired to bring about today’s depressing state of affairs did not exactly make their aims known. Today, the evil done to us is much more apparent than it was in the past; the world still looked promising for white males at the beginning of the process and even into the 1990s. Despite your misgivings about the Boomers, they are still your ancestors, and you are still standing on their shoulders, as did with their fathers.
Each generation has their own demons, their own illusions, their own battles; we all must play the cards we were dealt—or perhaps, the cards we believe we were dealt. In the end, we are all responsible for how we overcome our initial trials. Recognize what your demons and illusions are and who your real enemies are; try to think in broad historical terms rather than in single “snapshots in time” that can give false impressions. Then maybe then you can surpass the Boomers by starting to reverse the still-ongoing decline.
37 comments
The inter-generational warfare that we’re seeing is very destructive. It reminds me in some ways of generational conflict that was promoted in the 1960’s… “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” for example, which was an actual slogan. Some of that stuff was pushed by leftist radicals, and then it was picked up and heavily promoted in advertising and other media. It caused foolish division. Today it seems that it’s being heavily promoted again, this time in DR circles. It also will result in division.
The point in this essay about boys of the past growing up on farms with their dads is an important one. People all over the West have been cut adrift ever since the Industrial Revolution. But my dad grew up on a farm, with his parents, siblings, and grandparents. I can attest that the “natural feel for the cycle of life, for caring for others, and for responsibility” were all instilled in dad, just as the author here described.
Although dad later became a college professor, he always stayed grounded, and tried to appreciate and respect people, no matter what social class they were in. He was in the so-called Greatest Generation. When he was a boy he lived barefoot much of the summer, except when going to church or a Grange meeting with his family. Going off to war had a profound impact on him, but he still kept the values of his conservative farming family, and he and mom tried to pass those on. Sadly my siblings and I didn’t always live up to them, but that’s our responsibility. I sympathize with people in younger generations today who didn’t have the positive guidance that I had. It’s a real problem, especially with fatherless families, divorce, and other pressures. I know it’s easy to say we all need to soldier on, but to an extent that’s true. It’s good to understand where the problems come from, but it’s not good, or accurate, to blame one generation for them.
As this essay describes, there sometimes are some negative patterns that can be seen widely in a generation. But, as with dad, such traits don’t define everyone–not by a long shot. Jared Taylor is a Boomer. So are many others who have done great DR work. My Greatest Gen parents would be called “race-realist” today, even though they were surrounded by the same liberal, egalitarian pressures after WWII that other people in urban/suburban settings were surrounded with. Most white adults back in the 60’s were similar. The ideological pressures that push egalitarianism, anti-racism, and feminism started long before the Boomers, and have been relentless.
Thanks very much for this essay. I appreciate how it incorporated history and data.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, Traddles. One thing Jesse Poe Holliday’s article (and its many comments) showed me is just how serious this inter-generational divide is. If I were a globalist elitist who wanted the destruction and/or subjugation of the white race, I could ask for nothing more than for the most racially aware members of the younger white generations to focus their rage on their own elders rather than on myself and my predecessors. The 1960s slogan “Don’t trust anybody over 30” was clearly created and stoked by the Left to separate the generations. Makes you wonder about the origins of all the anti-Boomer rhetoric.
Thank you, Derek. I also appreciate how you described your own experiences. As a boy I too learned first-hand about the violence of blacks, which remained with me as a reminder of reality. Although my parents both were very conscientiously involved in raising me, I still made several bad choices as a young adult. And I floundered around for several years in adulthood. I recognize that not everyone was so fortunate in being given the positive groundings that I was given in childhood, which later served me well.
In school I encountered that “be cool or be cast out” reality a lot. I always hated the idea of “coolness,” and I was struck, even in elementary school, by how powerful a force it was. In some naive white circles of kids, even back in the 70’s, it was considered “cool” to have a black friend. Well, my experiences had taught me differently.
I agree that post-WWII adults tended to trust institutions more than those institutions deserved, and this was devastating, since those institutions had been subverted. And you can see harmful media influence at work in TV programs and films even of the 1950’s. Anti-whiteness wasn’t as blatant then as it became later in the Norman Lear years of the 70’s, but it was hard at work. It’s now easy to see how so many white minds have been twisted for so long. That praiseworthy, trusting nature of many whites has been used against us.
Earlier institutions were much better at looking out for our interests, when WASP’s were more dominant in authority. Now our job is to create new ones that are healthy again.
I look forward to your future essays!
A lot of what Norman Mailer put out was anti-white propaganda with those ridiculous sitcoms back in the seventies. Whites were made to look stupid. They weren’t realistic, but they help form people’s perceptions of reality. As an adult watching reruns of those shows, it’s obvious that too many people were asleep at the wheel. How do you go from The Andy Griffith Show in the sixties to Maude and Good times in the seventies?
Yeah those anti-white sitcoms were so pushy in their messages, but people kept watching them. You’re right that people started believing it was reality!!! “Maude” and “Good Times”–uggh!
Maybe peer-pressure had something to do with it too. Since I was a non-conformist by the 70s I was kind of inoculated, but I remember how so many kids in school just soaked it all in from TV and movies. And they’d use the catch-phrases all the time, just like everybody started using phrases from “Saturday Night Live” later on. That helped make you “cool.”
Remember “Roots”?! “Roots” was pushed hard in schools in the 70s, just when TVs became the new “educational tool” (partly so that teachers didn’t have to work as hard). And you could see the textbooks pushing the same anti-white lies. Benjamin Banneker became more important and more heroic than George Washington, according to the new textbooks.
Bigfoot, I think you mean Norman Lear. You are correct that something like All In The Family was anti-White in intent, what with the lampooning of Archie’s racist and sexist opinions, so called. The strategy backfired because most of the audience liked Archie and identified with his frustrations and complaints, especially when it came to putting Meathead in his place. The audience realized how perverse it was for an entitled liberal college kid like Archie’s son in law, played by Rob Reiner, to constantly lecture the patriarch whose roof he lived under on social justice, while Archie busted his bump to provide not only for his own wife and daughter, but for a sponging ingrate.
“Fiscally conservative, socially liberal” is the perfect description of Boomers. They invented that mentality.
It is true that Boomers are not responsible for everything that is wrong today, but this doesn’t negate the fact that Boomers were generally bad parents who left a trail of destruction in their wake. I suspect this is the real reason for a lot of the anti-Boomer feelings.
It’s also true that constantly blaming your parents for your problems is self-defeating, and it does eventually come down to sink or swim in life. There’s no easy answers, here.
I hate to say it, but lot of Whites are going to sink.
They may’ve adopted it with alacrity but surely it was invented by Jewish neo-conservatives.
I’ve been guilty of bashing the boomers. I never had a father (or grandparents), so I was sort of criticizing the whole generation. Given that we live during part of a longer decline, it is both fair and short-sighted to vilify the most recent link in the continuation of that chain. Depending on the family, often the boomers are the only ones alive to still take it! But it’s true most of the causes of our current decline go back further, and it is up to us to slow and reverse these trends.
The causes go back further, and it is unfair to singularly blame Boomers or to act like all Boomers are equally responsible. At the same time, it’s certainly true that Boomers accelerated the decline markedly.
Still, most of the resentment I and other young people feel is not about the past, but about now, about the fact that even right wing Boomers tend to be completely clueless politically. Even when they occasionally stumble onto something marginally productive, like the anti-woke movement, they never seem to fully understand the causes of extent of the issue. Sadly, they often take positions that make even their good ideas turn into something retarded. For instance, I personally know multiple boomers who have made their chief example of wokeness the alleged plague of antisemitism at Ivy League universities. That kind of thing happens all too often with them.
Exactly, the toughest part isn’t the past but our experience in the present trying to discuss these matters with boomers. With few exceptions, they either don’t understand or don’t want to understand. I used to think I simply wasn’t explaining things well, but it’s been a long time since I thought that. They want to be allowed to cling to their delusions until the day they die, so can’t we just change the subject until then? Can’t we employ euphemisms and deflect for another…10-20 years? And because they are usually the ones with the money, and because Dissident Right movements are in dire need of funding, this breakdown of communication between the generations is not some cute variance of styles. It is a dereliction of duty that continues to this day.
And exactly how will Boomer-bashing and treating them like the enemy encourage them to fund you? Why would I fork over my money to a bunch of people who exclude me and attack me because I was born in a certain year? Money flows according to incentives, and exactly which incentives are you trying to create with Boomer-bashing?
There are something like 40 million or more white Boomers still alive, as diverse a group politically as could be, from self-loathing communists to life-long race realists. It is true that many have misleading ideas about the world they were given by the media–a statement that describes US every generation alive since WW II, at the least. And much of the stereotypical Boomer image that everybody complains is one presented by that media. The same media that wants us at each others’ throats so we fail to see what they and their fellow travelers are up to.
The Conservative Inc attitudes you complain about in your comment are not limited to any generation. I’ve worked in Con Inc, and most younger conservatives have the same delusional beliefs you describe. Almost all young professional conservatives are Christian Zionists, almost all favor the “melting pot” vision of America–it’s not a generational thing. Seek allies by convincing them to your point of view instead of driving them away because of your own lack of vision and refusal to understand.
I’m not sure who is “excluding” you, as we’re talking on a forum right now about your article. No need to get defensive, I acknowledged the points you made. They are nuanced and generally fair. Having stipulated that, there is still a lot to say about our experience trying to discuss these topics with our older family members. They largely fall under the generation of boomer, hence my use of the word.
Tye,
I’m responding to your comment in which you talk about discussing things with older family members–I didn’t get a reply button. Understand that this is a “fish in water” analogy; they have lived their whole lives in water and now you–a young upstart without their experience–are telling them that there is a world above that is dry and one walks on legs instead of swimming. Of course their initial reactions will be disbelief. It is the same when your elders hear that our people have been subjected to a soft, subtle, but effective genocide. The ideas of racial dissidents–meaning those on the outside of the mainstream by definition–are just beginning to make some inroads into most right-wing fringes of mainstream conservatism. I was semi-successful in Conservative Inc because I kept my true ideas hidden–the only thing I would have accomplished by speaking out was to get fired and be stuck working low-paid jobs. That was just how it was for most of my life. Now, I have a forum to speak out, and I have some savings that, as my time comes near, I will dole out to race realist groups.
You need to be gentle and patient with these people, not confrontational. Show, don’t tell. Find commonalities that you can expand on. Be satisfied with small gains. Reality is on our side. The shift in attitudes I have seen in just the last few years seems miraculous after living in Norman Lear’s America for 70 years. But victory will not happen tomorrow, probably not in my lifetime, maybe not in yours. But it will come.
Great piece. I appreciate the push back. I didn’t intend to outright condemn Boomer fathers—I am aware that there are various other forces that negatively influenced Boomers and subsequent generations that were generally out of our hands. I can also comfortably say that millennials have their follies too and have failed in many aspects in their lives. Boomers were indeed the most propagandized generation probably of all time. So even thought they collectively failed as fathers, I realize they were programmed from childhood to embrace modern liberalism.
However, Boomers still double down and vehemently defend their parenting and lifestyles while bashing millennials for their failures. That is my biggest hang up with them. They can never take criticism. The fact that they can tear down their own children for their failures and not even consider that they might have failed in some way as a parent is baffling to me. The poor quality of their children is a direct reflection on their bad parenting and they don’t seem to understand that logic.
Notwithstanding, I appreciate the minority of boomers like the author, who can have empathy for the younger generations and be honest about Boomers.
I’m afraid you’re still not getting it, Jessie. Please read my response above to Traddles’s comment above. Can’t you see that you’re falling into a trap? The white race is in trouble; we have very clever enemies who have been able to exploit our good natures to diminish us. Do you really think the smart move is to hate a large segment of your own people and drive a wedge between us? Or is it to try to unite our people, to recreate the “contract between the generations?” Who is deserving of your condemnation: those who have long manipulated to destroy us, or those who under-performed in some areas because they were manipulated?
You’re 38 and doing well after a slow start–good on you. But maybe it’s time for the next bit of growth, to let go of the misplaced anger of youth. Just about all people, since the dawn of man, have been flawed.
You’ve just written one of the best rebukes to boomer criticism I’ve seen in years, and you proceed to undermine it with your overly defensive comments.
Is that really overly defensive? It looks to me like an argument that is honest and doesn’t pull punches. Every comment I’m getting from Millennials has the form, “Yes, you make good points but the Boomers are bad.” I’m trying to get through to you that this is a losing, divisive attitude. Boomers not singularly bad, but are part of a stream of history, influenced by their time. Are you not that too? This generational divide is exactly the attitude our enemies want us to have.
This generational divide is partly emphasized by the majority of boomers (not you) not knowing or acknowledging who the enemy is. That is why it is sometimes useful to speak of “some boomers” or “many boomers”. I’m sure you’re familiar with NAXALT.
Tye,
Responding to your comment that “Boomers” sort of started it with Millennial bashing. Yes, that happened–you guys were pummeled relentlessly (although the Silent Generation and Gen X were right there with us). However, much of that is really just part of the historical process as earlier generations try to make sense of these strange newcomers and interlopers. And the intensity has increased with time, as bigger changes occur in each new generation. Boomers got hammered in a big way when we emerged in the 1960s and 70s–we were dubbed “The Me Generation.” Still not as much as Millennials have been attacked more recently; the leftist media back then wanted to seduce us into being sheep, whereas much of the complaining about you came from the new conservative media (didn’t really exist back then in a big way) who noticed all the negative trends and want to reverse them.
Remember this discussion began with Millennial Jessie Poe Holliday’s observations about how “off” his own generation seems.
The title of Jessie’s article is “Fathers Have Failed Millennials”. While he discusses boomers in the article, he mentions other generations as well. The title of your response is “In Defense of Boomer Dads”. So you felt the need to defend your generation. Do you think next week we’ll see an “In Defense of Gen X Fathers” piece or one from the Silent Generation (they’re silent!)? Doubtful.
So Jessie and I agree with you that we’re all part of the decline, and need to exercise agency to reverse these trends. But I think your two titles, and the order in which your articles came out, is indicative of this generational divide. You made it about yourself, or your generation. Jessie was talking about the Millennial experience. In his comment above he acknowledges your points, and continues with some of his first-hand experiences with how many boomers don’t take criticism well. He then again appreciates you and your take. You turn around and tell him he still doesn’t get it and that he hates “a large segment of your own people”. Really? He hates? This is someone not taking criticism well, and strawmanning.
Anyway, I appreciated both articles.
I don’t agree with the notion that Boomers are the most propagandized generation ever. Perhaps they were until the next one came along. And we did not grow up with the “electric Jew” or the ready equivalent of Boob Tube screens carried in our pockets.
Also, another aspect of this “the Boomers fücked us” mentality is that most people don’t even understand the generational demarcations. When they say “Boomer,” how often do they really mean X-ers or even Millennials with some gray in their beards?
Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. I am a younger Boomer in the astrology. I never had to worry about being drafted to go to Vietnam. I never smoked dope. I pretty much agree with “fiscally-Liberal, socially-Conservative,” not the other way around.
I have been “hard Right” in orientation since I was a teenager because I witnessed or at least was exposed to the miasma of the political and economic disruptions of the mid to late 1960s, and the 1970s ─ when Third World states were able to take hundreds of hostages at American embassies with little consequences, and one had to wait in line at the pump to buy a few gallons of gasoline to commute to work. High unemployment and inflation is nothing new, and as I have said before, wages have not kept up since 1968 ─ long before 1992 Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” prediction.
I remember waiting to catch the schoolbus in 1972 during the Olympic games in Munich wondering if anyone was safe from masked terrorists (LINK).
I could easily blame my elders for not preparing me better ─ but they were just as clueless about the changes happening, and with an ever-advancing pace.
That is why I made it a point to try to talk to my Grandparents before they were gone about what their lives were like when they were young, because these were far different realities than even from those of my parents (Silent Generation).
My Grandmother (born 1917) grew up during the Depression and the earlier agricultural change, and once wryly said that my Dad (born 1938) never knew a day of hunger in his life.
In fact, once I asked my Grandfather, who was born in 1911, if he thought that there really was such a thing as the Generation Gap.
I did not know what that was ─ probably just heard it on the news, I guess in the mid or late 1960s. I remember that he was a little surprised by my question and gave me a really thoughtful answer, but I was so young then that I have forgotten exactly what he said.
🙂
I’ve never been quite sure about these generational ideas. If the youngest boomers were born 1964, then they came of age in the early 80s, which hardly seems very boomerish. They wouldn’t even have been old enough to be punk rockers, let alone hippies.
If the Boomers are allowed 20 years (1946-1965),* then why isn’t Gen X allowed to be 1966-1985 instead of ending 1979, like someone above wrote? It’s 20 years each generation or nothing.
*Innumerates think this is 19 years but it’s inclusive of the entire years 1946 through 1965.
The Baby Boom is a span of about 19 years:
1/1/1946 – 12/31/1964.
The peak year was 1957 with over 4 million births in the U.S.
The X-ers start being born on 1/1/1965, but there is disagreement about when they actually stop and the Millennials (aka Generation Ys) begin, etc.
I would say that the generational demarcations should be another 18 or 19 years, but too many are analyzing stuff like absolute fertility trends, size, etc., so the definitions do vary.
Contrary to popular belief, the postwar fertility leading to the births of the Boomers was not anything compared to the typical size of turn-of-the-20th century families (ca. 1900).
Some have tried to make the argument that Boomers suck because there were “so many of them” and they just won’t fücking die (quantity vs. quality, I guess). The Boomers owe the yoots a living I guess.
The Baby Bust after the end of 1964 is ameliorated somewhat by there simply being more offspring from the larger Boomer cohort that either did (or sometimes didn’t) have very many children.
Richard Spencer once complained that no X-ers like himself have ever been elected President. There have been to date three Boomers elected ─ Clinton, Obama, and Trump ─ but so far no younger generations, with the youngest Millennials increasingly coming of age to qualify for that office (age 35).
Some of these generational arguments remind me of Marxists who excuse the non-accomplishments and poverty of Blacks with the argument that Whitey mustuh stole all dat cotton dey done picked. Okay, and what about after 1865?
Furthermore, as I’ve stated before, the idea that the Boomers are all rich is total balderdash. They don’t call the oligarchy the 1 percent for nothing.
In my experience, those with all the answers who say that the Boomers had it made barely know much history.
🙂
This article mentions lyrics from a song “be cool or be cast out”. That is the song “Subdivisions” by the band Rush. That song came out in 1982 and is on the album Signals. It’s about alienation and the difficulty of trying to fit in suburbia at the time. Rush is a Canadian band. The inspiration for the song was about life in the suburbs in Toronto. Most of the video for the song was filmed in Toronto. However, it could have been about the suburbs of any North American city at the time. If you haven’t seen the video, watch it on YouTube. It’s pretty much a “Lord of the Flies” situation that has existed in high schools since the latter part of the twentieth century, especially among white teens. Previous generations didn’t have to deal with social stratification on that level. As this article points out, people left the farms for the factories. Eventually most people settled in the suburbs. I doubt the band Rush meant for the song and video to be from a white, middle-class perspective, but they might as well have.
I saw RUSH live in concert in 1978 in Pocatello, Idaho. It was when they were still doing Hard Rock, drug, and mythological themes before their Progressive Rock era, which I like some of. Uriah Heep opened and they seemed a bit past their prime.
I went with some High School friends, and my Dad let me borrow the car. He was really worried that there would be nudity on the stage, or something degenerate like the 1967 Broadway musical Hair. I managed to convince Dad that this was all nonsense, but I didn’t tell him that when the lights first go down as the bands come out to play, the thick cigarette smoke in the air goes from Marlboros to weed. At least he didn’t infer a connection between the band’s name Rush and snorting cocaine or whatever.
🙂
I believe it is also important to remember that during previous generations, the Boomer generation in particular, media sources were limited. Up until recently, there were three main alphabet channels on the TV, all left-leaning – perhaps a few local stations, as we had in our area – and that limited and controlled information that households received – along with a major city newspaper, all of which tended to be left learning (the LA Times, in my home). People’s warped views of the world – of reality – were formed by these Jewish dominated media sources, shaping (more like warping) their ideology. I well remember my parents taking these sources of “news” as if from the word of God himself – old Commie Walter Cronkrite “The Most Trusted Man in America,” for example It formed everything they believed about politics, education, international affairs and more. IOW, they were told what to believe and took it all at face value, warping their political views and ideology.
It is the Internet that has set us free – and why Jews are constantly trying to control its content, banning anything they don’t like, as they are in Europe.
As Peter Brimelow states: “The Internet is as important an invention as the printing press.”
Consider this, prior to the 1940s, nobody “named” generations. Everyone considered themselves to be a part of a vertical lineage. The “Smith family” for instance. It wasn’t until after WWII that we were trained to identify more laterally with our age group through pop culture, music, fashion fads, and events that created intergenerational conflicts (by design).
Boomers are more the first victim of this problem than the cause, but continuing to indulge in the problem and even amplify it only makes younger generations even more to blame.
(edited to add that nobody called “the silent generation” or “the greatest generation” those terms until about 20 years ago, when Tom Brokaw wrote a book about them)
I think it’s terribly important if parents and other adults encourage racial realism in children through small comments and jokes. Like my grandmother always made some funny face whenever a black or other dark-skinned person was on TV. My parents always told racist jokes, but at the same time told me not to tell them at school.
I was very crossed that LEGO sets now contain so much diversity. Three quarters of the mini-figures are dark-skinned people, weird women who are probably lesbians and who knows what else. So I suggested to my sons that we build a prison for them and lock them up. Like I said, we did. My sons also beat black and Asiatic minifigures with short sticks!
I am very grateful to my grandfather for always using various racial epithets and insults in front of me (otherwise he was a gentle and decent man). In retrospect, I think it’s terribly important for White children to be free to experience the instinctive revulsion that Whites feel towards persons of color. The use of racial slurs in the family leads to that sense of freedom to think and say what they want, at least in private.
Something else that needs to be pointed out is that since the seventies there has been a dramatic increase in stepparents, blended families, cohabitation with a partner that has a child or children from a previous marriage or relationship, and single mothers. These trends can have negative consequences depending on the people involved. Boomers didn’t have to deal with these trends much. I’m not blaming boomers or any demographic, it’s just a dramatic shift in the culture that is due to a lot of different factors.
Both of my parents (Silent Generation) came from broken homes and this is nothing new. They learned from it and have been married for over 64 years. I think we have a tendency to project cliches like “no-fault divorce” being reasons why relationships don’t work out. A couple of my four sisters had nasty divorces too. I have had relationships with women whose childhoods were so insecure in spite of (or because of) their parents never divorcing that they simply could not trust anyone and had a tendency to stockpile grievances like inccndiary ammunition. When a partner can’t tell the truth and will lie when the truth sounds better, that is a major red flag.
🙂
Many, many things have changed the past several decades… feminism, civil rights, more people traveling far away for college, blue collar wages earning less, demographic shifts, delay in childbearing, and so on. Trying to find a single culprit to blame is futile and comical. The left blasts “Toxic Masculinity” and the right notes a “Crisis of Masculinity”. Ironically the most toxic masculine types tend not to be white.
One thing is for sure. What goes around comes around. Excessively blaming your parents for everything will be observed and noted by your own kids. Even those parents who seemingly are doing a decent job are occasionally excoriated by children suffering from ‘issues’, egged on by media types who want to fan the flames. Witness all the press Elon Musk’s trans child has gotten for curing cancer. Ok, that’s wrong, the kid isn’t known for jack shit other than being Musk’s kid, being critical of him and offering the usual quotable sage wisdom of a 20 year old.
As a person from Eastern Europe who started visiting the West after 1989, I always had the impression that anti-white ideology was very convenient for Western rich people. The American, German and British upper middle class thrives on anti-white liberalism and globalisation and doesn’t care what happens to other Whites or whether European civilisation as we remember it from the 19th century canon disappears.
This debate shows how NAXALT (Not all X are like that) thinking can lead to this sort of fight. The boomers are to blame for this mess. Gen X are a bunch of slackers. The millenials, gen z, gen alpha, etc are too soft and couldn’t fight their way out of a Chinese finger trap let alone a war with China. And any other generation I forgot to mention is too lame to bother with. The broad brushstrokes of that thinking find allies in some and stoke resentment in others. Anyhow, I feel for the younger generation. It’s been a rough decade. But a lot of folks have been hit hard elsewhere.
Of course, the young have always disparaged the older for holding power and being out of touch. The older have always disparaged the young as clueless and lacking the wisdom of life experience. There is nothing new under the sun. Our kids will someday be on the young side of the debate, then later in life be on the elder side of the debate. But we all have to get along at some point to get anywhere.
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