massive dieoff in Europe from famine that never happened because of us, so much else.

The world's nations helped create the role we've played, more than we did probably, because we were and are needed. Nearly two hundred nations are trying to adjust, but we are still needed and instead the scary replacements pushing into the vacuum are Russia and China, neither of whom are motivated by principles of liberalism, equality, and democracy.

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

It's turned out to be the fight of our lives but it's worth it!

And I may be my brothers' keeper, but damned if I'm responsible for their behavior.

All our generations are reaping this whirlwind, and each of us is responsible for it individually according to the choices we've made.

But that's past. I suggest focusing on pride in what we can be proud of and ambitions for the future of our nation because it'll do a whole hell of a lot more get our asses to the polls each election. And those of others.

could "change the world", in reality we were a minority even then. The same problems we have today we had then and the same types of folks that support Trump were in the majority even back then. I always held out hope that the younger generations would step up but that doesn't sem to be the case. Time will tell but I don't think this will end well for those of us that believe in equality, justice, diversity, and the environment. Our generation (baby boomers) have left a hell of a mess for our children and grandchildren and seem to simply not give a shit.

John F Kennedy
Bobbie Kennedy
Martin Luther King

Then we lost the Fairness Doctrine

Greed and self centeredness became the focus ....

Corporations have become “people”

The media consolidated into a few from the many ....

And all who try to pull this ship of state away from the right are demonized.

While the focus was on disturbances and protests, much of the country was mostly apolitical even back then.
That seems to be something Americans are trained to do from early on - don't make waves.

Someone posted the other day:

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

― Sophie Scholl

and to start measuring ourselves against.

trump got lucky in 2016 with a perfect storm of events that converged at just the right time—Comey's letter, Cambridge Analytica mining Facebooks data, Putin's bots, repug vote tampering/vote suppression (who still believes just enough votes in 3 states, 77m, were enough to swing the EC to trump? Just enough out of 130m votes? No.

They cheat. They haven't won a legitimate presidential election since Ike (maybe Daddy Bush but that's debatable). Nixon committed treason with the Vietnamese to win, Reagan committed treason with the Iranians to win, W Bush cheated in Florida in '00 and Ohio in '04 to win, and we've already talked about the orange a-hole.

No, they are not the majority.

One of the greatest frauds of all time.

.

anti-establishment stuff, we got jobs and families. I went from a long haired, mini skirted 18 year old to working for IBM. I can remember many coworkers seeking ways to avoid taxes and being very against government intervening with corporate business.

Over the years and as they accumulated wealth, their political views changed. It's called life. Some of us stayed true to progressive views. I thought I would be fired for protesting South Africa investment by IBM, but guess management never figured it out.

ladder...all the while my DW telling me I was drinking the kool-aid. Then retired early 50's and for the last 17 years have gradually gone back to what I was before I had my spine removed. The corporate expereince taught me a lot. Laying off people who were my friends with no regard for anything except making the numbers to even defending a lot of the unethical actions. It is easy to become indoctrinated but even with that I cannot for the life of me see the attraction to what is happening these days. Nasty, unethical, racist, you can go on and on - who in their right mind could support this stuff?

with the "let's divide the generations and pit one against the other" nonsense.

I'm proud of what MY generation did. Were we perfect? No. But at least we brought attention to some of the problems of our time and did something about it.

Compare what women are allowed to do now compared to back when I was a young woman coming of age in the late 60's.

Once again, someone has to start a thread like this on DU. OK, now who's going to start the "anti-millenials" thread?

For god's sake, can we focus on the disaster we have right now and come together to fix that?

not to say that if I wasn't a privileged white guy I would feel the same.

More importantly we have to all come together and stop this madness before it is to late.

This is one issue where I can see both sides of the coin. There were a lot of things I had to experience or live with as a young, white woman coming of age in the 60's that my daughter doesn't have to worry about because of the many women in the second wave of the women's movement who fought for women's rights. It was always a given that my daughter would go to college and she never felt the pressure to marry right away after high school or even after college for that matter, which I did feel. When she chose to have a child (and yes, she had the options to choose unlike many women of my generation), she got two months of maternity leave. When I had my first child, my employer made me leave as soon as I was "showing". There was no such thing as maternity leave. When she chose to go back to her job there was no stigma of putting her child in day care. Plus, she is able to work from home whenever she chooses because of technology.

There are so many other examples of course, but both of my children have had better lives than I did. I realize that it's just one story out of many and that there are plenty of people whose children don't have it as good as mine do, so I'm not saying this is true for all people.

Hate radio, Fox "News," corporate "news" networks.

And it will kill us unless we decide that lying is not protected speech.

You won't be disappointed.

https://m.

It's just been expressed differently as they've aged.

As older adults it manifests as greed and materialism, seems to be a lack of empathy for the suffering.

Have you any idea how many DU'ers are of that generation and are still fighting for their progressive principles? How is that self-centered? We could just as easily sit back and say, "Let the younger generations fight for what they want. I've done my time. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the rest of my life."

I can assure you there is no greed and materialism in my entire adult life, though I had a very comfortable life as an adult. Same for my six siblings.

We're talking about millions of people. Not just you and the ten or twenty other people you personally interact with.

So much wealth is owned by so many of that generation and they continue to want more and actively oppress others to get it - when they should be using it to help.

There are many boomers here who remember Woodstock.

I feel sickened by those corrupted by Fux, but they were not compassionate to begin with.

and every generation does change the world - in many and varied ways.

Problem is, no generation shares a single mindset - we just imagine that the mindset we have is more broadly shared than it is.

or whatever you want to call them. I do realize people get more conservative as they get older but that's not excuse.

and I don't understand it.

We were on our way to making things better for everyone, it was going to take our lifetimes and more but we meant to do it. The ONLY thing I can think of after thinking of this so much was the fact that we were touted as the generation that would do much better than our parents did. I think that was said about all generations until now but I remember how much things changed during my growing up years. The elections and political trends went right.

I don't really know but I am as disappointed in it as my kids are. I am sick hearing all the hate on the boomers, there are so many of us who tried and have worked our asses off all our lives to do what we intended way back in the olden Woodstock years. I guess a good many of us were spoiled and decided we needed it all.

Remember, we did one hell of a lot of good as we headed through the years, a hell of a lot.

I would bet there are many in every generation that are disappointed with their generation as it gets long in the tooth and takes the blame for the ills of the world.

Still, we were so idealistic and it really hurts to see what we, better put our generation, have done.

The WORLD wants things this way, I do not think it can be changed now but will work my hardest on my way out of it to keep it from getting worse.

in the '60s the effin young repugs had tables at the student unions right next to those of Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Student Unions, the Chicano groups, and the socialists. Libertarians were there too but they were as confused as to who they were as was everyone else (the fact that they liked to get high contributed to that).

A 53% to 47% split favoring the reputs sounds a little too high in my opinion as many Boomers stayed home or voted for Stein in 2016 because of the Sanders effect.

I would say the margin of error is a +/- 3%.

Oh, and btw, GenXers and Millennials have a similar dichotomy, they just don't realize it yet (maybe the GenXers do). All those racist nazis at Charlottesville in the khakis and white, polo shirts certainly weren't Boomers.

One of their gripes was government-mandated seat belts in cars. What tyranny! What overreach!

They also seemed to attract the George Wallace segregationist types, along with other social misfits and general assholes.

it's title leans right.

Like most generations they have their downsides.

I greatly respect you ability to see the negative aspects of your generation. But that doesn't tell the whole story.

Sadly, fools of any generation do indeed get fooled, again, and again, and yet again.

and of greatness. Of nihilism and of progress.

But that's only because we're humans. It's out nature.



No one generation is any better nor worse than any other generation. To think otherwise is to needlessly narrow one's perspective of humanity and consciously place blinders on our minds.

When someone else is paying the bills. Especially when you are young and full of sexual energy. Every generation thinks they are the center of everything and will change the world.

When marriage, a mortgage and children arrive, then the bills become more important than revolution.

for a while, while it lasted. And the social acceptance, they love social acceptance. But they were never "authentic", when it was over they were left with their natural greed and selfishness to nurture. Eventually they went looking for new social acceptance and found it at events like "Tea Parties", and eventually morphed into MAGAts. Gun toting, cowboy hat wearing MAGAts.

And it's a mistake to believe that Woodstock is somehow representative of an entire generation because it certainly wasn't for me.
Besides, "generation" is an artificial construct used to more easily pigeonhole people.

have taken this planet to its knees.

Greed and a complete lack of a moral compass are the highlight of this crew which, sad to say I am a part of.

We look around and blame everyone but ourselves:

People of color.
People who acknowledge facts and use them to make decisions.
Criminal gangs halfway around the world.
Countries who compete better than we do.
People of other religions.
Families with children who come here desperate to escape violence from a drug culture we helped create.
People who aren't deluded as we are.

We are the Worst Generation

Please as we age and make money and have kids and buy houses many tend to get more conservative.. especially with RW media constantly blasting in their ears. The same will happen to the current progressive generation if dont figure out how to counter the effects of conservative media.

If you look at US history, especially in the last century, there is some culture upset every 40 years or so.

1920's
1960's
we missed the 2000's so we are definitely due.

"Btw, WTF happen to all the liberal boomers I used to know? Damn. Don't they even remember *their music*?!

It's weird, the older I get, the more wise and more liberal I get. I refuse to go to any of those silly High School reunions and associate with all those dumbass Republicans."

That happened when I was a baby, but the documentaries that I've seen lead me to think many of those concert-goers were hedonists. Hence, I wouldn't expect much self-sacrifice from such people when push comes to shove.

My older liberal siblings repeatedly said that time period was the worst of their entire lives. They wanted more equality and fairness. Meanwhile a bunch of self-centered druggies basically usurped it and made it a disorganized mess, according to them.