I'll start in on them with all the hell we went through starting in 1963.
Assassinations of our political heroes, the draft, civil rights and women's movement...
and don't give me any horseshit about Nixon being a liberal. Anything he did that people mention as good was strictly for political reasons, not because he believed in it.
And put down that Boomer invented iphone.

But we X'rs did the heavy lift actually creating the smart phone. All the boomer did was market it in his usual cult like fashion.

post that you responded to.

We thought we were pretty tough rebels against our parents. But then we grew up and realized what the. Greatest. Generation lived through and achieved. Also realized that some of us at least got the values that motivated us from the Greatest Generation that we rebelled against.

Every generation finds its own way, in part by.rejecting some things about previous ones and asserting their own views. Your kids will do the same.

My brother is a boomer and a life long progressive. And many in the alt right movement are X'rs and Millennials. None of us should be used as a scapegoat for the worlds problems.

Last edited Sat Dec 28, 2019, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)

the worst president in history?

Where are they?

Boomers, the activist half of the cohort, did freedom rides, anti-war protests, anti-Nixon and Reagan demonstrations, civil rights marches, Black Panther Party, SDS, the Weathermen—should I go on?

GenXers and Millennials it's time while you still have youth to get in the streets against that impeached, orange, ass hole imposter.

No excuses. You've got mobile phones and the internet to organize, communicate nearly instantly and do logistics and fundraising. We did it by word-of-mouth, dial-up phones anchored by cord to a wall and mimeograph machines.

Get out there.

at DU snd not a single one of us has "descended into fascism" or we obviously would not be here.

Marches, protests, hoses, dogs, assassinations, COINTEL spying on us for exercising free speech, J Edgar Hoover's lists of 'subversive liberal commies,' church bombings, bus burnings (with people inside), beatings with clubs by police, fighting to have rape taken seriously as a crime, fighting for domestic violence as a crime instead of a 'private dispute'(or a husband's disciplinary option).

Many things taken for granted today are a result of Boomer activism.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are Boomers. So is Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, snd many more people.

first came to mind.

... to get you off the hook for man slaughter.

But wasn't rape more severely punished back in the 60's ?

I would have answered sooner.

No, rspe was not "punished severely" in the 1960's because it was often not taken seriously. Women who accused a man of rape were ridiculed as sexual prudes, or accused of leading a man on and "asking for it." Often they were accused of malicious intent to ruin a good man's reputation because he snubbed them or offended them in some way.

The vast majority of police and judges were male. They did not relate to the emotional and physical trauma of rape. They related to men's fears of being accused. If a woman was not a virgin, claims of rape were shrugged off "no damage done, even if true."

I used to hear men at work and in social settings say of a woman who was assertive or ambitious, "She needs a good f**k to straighten her out." Also heard them say about women who filed rape complaints, "What's the problem with these silly broads? They should just lie back and enjoy it."

When I was a was a 20 year old young married womsn, a 19 year old, single friend of mine from high school was kidnapped at gun point from a shopping center just before Xmas, driven out of state, brutally raped, left tied up and locked in a motel room while the rapist went out. She worked herself free and escaped the room wrapped in a sheet, called police on a pay phone (free via 0 for operator), and hid in bushes until they arrived, terrified the kidnapper would find her first.

The cops laughed at her and accused her of being a runaway with a.boyfriend. They said she was frightened by the reality of sex and made up the kidnapping and rape story to tell her parents. They asked for intimate details and how many orgasms she had.

She called her father who called the FBI. The FBI took her seriously because her experience and description fit a prison escapee they were looking for.

I heard about it on TV the next morning -- full name and address, and "details" for a 19 year old. The cops' version was reported, but I knew better because I knew her and her family. I called and went to see her, which is how I learned how she was treated. Her father forced the local paper to retract the cop version on threat of a lawsuit.

She quit her job because the men there harrassed her over it and the women shunned and ridiculed her. At my job, I heard women call her a liar, a slut, etc., very authoritatively although none of them knew her. When I defended her.they said she was just dumb then for getting into the situation. Women attacked victims/survivors then out of fear that it could happen to them. They wanted to believe they would be able to do better in the circumstances.

Six months later, the prison escapee was caught and convicted.of her kidnapping and rape. She went through therapy and moved out of town to start over.

Her treatment by cops, media, and everyday people was not at all unusual back then. I read about many similar accounts of how women were treated after rape. I just happened to know one personally. Her experience inspired me to be a volunteer advocate for rape survivors when we succeeded in making society see the need for it.

Today we hsve female cops, doctors, and nurses to immediately treat survivors for shock, injuries, and get bodily samples, with a trained advocate or counselor present. Media do not publicize names. DA's do prosecute. A woman does not have to be a virgin to get a conviction. Cops are trained on how to handle rape survivors' reports.

I agree with you.

then, but now we've got a predator in the WH who would turn them back if we let him.

Things have changed so much for women over the years that I sometimes wish I could be young again. But today's young people face other challenges, as well as the old ones presented in new ways.

Sorry you had your bad experience. I had some difficult ones, but not as horrific as my friend's. I believe that we oldies are a testimony to strength and endurance.

Thank you for sharing.

While we've come so far, I still despair we'll ever mature fully.

But, although kidnapping like that was not so common, the attitudes and treatment she faced were so common as to be the automatic default to expect. Not even a kidnapping at gunpoint was taken seriously because attitudes about men, women, and rape were so entrenched that the cops preferred their made up story over what a traumatized young woman was telling them. And they were so sleezy that they got off on getting details from her

It's bad enough for anyone, but it was especially sad in my friend's case because she was the shyest, sweetest, and most innocent in the group we hung out with. I lost touch with her after she moved away,but another friend from our group told me years later that, after a couple hectic years, our friend stabilized her life, married, had a couple kids and seemed to be doing ok. I doubt that she could ever completely forget, but at least was able to function and find happiness.

After all, we survived the Middle Ages.
And live out our lives aware of our inexorable demise.

I'm relieved to learn your friend recovered from the trauma's aftermath, and achieved a meaningful life for herself. Too often, cruel events of our past will never remain suppressed. I know this first hand from my own mother's experiences.

And other people who knew her rallied around her against public attitudes. She said the FBI attitude helped after the terrible treatment by police. But then she had to relive the experience when she testified at his trial.

It took theraoy and some years for her to cope. It had totally disrupted her life, self identity, ability to feel safe, and her perspective on people in general.

Without family and therapy, the eventual outcome would have been very different.

following dates: 1946 to 1964, so you're right about Barack. I was sure I read or heard during his first campaign that he had just missed s cut off date of 1960. Must have remembered wring.

boomers. While 1946 to 1964 are the most commonly accepted.dates now, there were other dates proposed earlier, e.g. 1960 and even 1955 as end dates. The article points out something I have observed, that culturally, we fall into 2 large groups, the leading edge (1946 to1955) and the trailibg edge, 1956 to 1964.

Leading edge boomers tend to be Dems and trailing
edgers tend to be R's. Leading edgers identify with the social changes of the 60's and 70's and remain more committed to them. For trailing edgers, the movements were more adolescent rebellion and 'cool' that they gave up as adults.

There are exceptions, of course. This is a general picture. The overall dates span 18 years. The oldest were 18 when the youngest were born. Different growing up experiences.

differences between individuals. But boomers were a definite phenomenon. Returning vets from WW2 were eager to use GI bills for college and buying homes, settling down to family life. The result was a surge in births. I'm on the leading edge, born toward the end of 1949. I remember grade school teachers telling us we were the largest classes they ever had, usually 30 to 35 in a classroom.

In high school, we used the entire auditorium for study halls to accommodate everyone, with 3 or 4 teachers patrolling the aisles to maintain order I went to a city school. My younger sister went to a suburban high school so crowded that they developed a staggered starting and ending schedule for the school day and half days on Saturday. .

Advertisers targeted us; teachers talked about us; sociologists studied us. We developed an identity of our own as a result.

in some sort of unique and same cookie cutter category, I can say that we were the last of America's warrior generations, with 10 million of us serving in the military including fighting our last major war and facing the world's most dangerous empire.

accurate, except with cookies. Even then there are always the ones, like my recent Xmss cookies, that vsry from the pattern.

Let the fun begin!

Tommy Siegel (@TommySiegel) Tweeted:
Some candy hearts comics I drew, a thread: https://t.co/VyHGoKr5rE

Link to tweet

Thank you!

Some of us white baby boomers are your lefty friends. Please remember that

... get up and leave the convo (stating with forced humor "I don't belong in THIS conversation&quot or engage in a private chat with my table neighbor and block out cultish worshipping spewing forth.

I gave up trying to argue a few years ago.

Screaming, spitting, and plate throwing.

we were countering agression there, at least.

United Nations list

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Turkey
Australia
Philippines
New Zealand
Thailand
Ethiopia
Greece
France
Colombia
Belgium
South Africa
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Medical support
Denmark
Italy
West Germany
India
Israel
Norway
Sweden
Other support
Taiwan
Japan
Cuba
El Salvador
Spain

And leave the fire-starting for one of the hundreds of other days of the year.

Just saying.

(And shit, I'm not even close to being a Boomer.)