OVER EMPATHETIC? YOU MIGHT BE A BOOMER, OR BOOMER RAISED

Empathetic, or over empathetic?

Save the whales, or save the oceans?

Boomers raised their kids with more awareness than any generation before or since.

At least that’s what the narcissists in the group claim. They alone have persevered through the murky swamp we all sprang from

Boomers build this world by themselves? Or, boomers are ruining this world by themselves?

The normal answers are yes and yes.

How can this be?

Boomers have been tagged at the savior of decency, and the epitome of evil.

The evil part comes in a package of concern and hopefulness. It exhorts followers to do the bad thing in order to restore decency and calm.

It’s an old coal baron in a backward state railing against clean energy in the future; or a governor of a former slave state enacting laws to prevent the descendants of slaves from access to important things like voting for candidates with plans to improve their lives through traditional means like education.

Did someone say Texas?

SB 3 says that at least one teacher and one campus administrator at each school must undergo a civics training program. Also, it says teachers cannot be forced to discuss current controversial topics in the classroom, regardless of whether in a social studies class or not. If they do, they must not show any political bias, the law says.

Singling out Texas as an educational example feels like the move of a bully punching down, but they’ve got the same backward momentum going forward as many states.

“They get stuff done in Texas,” is not a rally cry, it’s a warning. You’re not being over empathetic if you know the difference.

Last Gasp From Old Boomers

Too many early boomers have decided this is correct:

“If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain.”

Later boomers, and the generations following, have taken it to heart and skipped the ‘liberal at 25’ part.

They’ve gotten busy after an addled failure with no experience got the biggest job in the country and pumped them up. The skeevy old boomer enabled a large slice of Americans to embrace their deepest feelings.

At the end of his term he opened the doors of darkness on Jan. 6.

A 58 year old Texas man stepped up:

“Prepare Our Weapons, and then go hunting. Lets hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are,” Smocks wrote. “This includes, RINOS, Dems, and Tech Execs.”

Smocks said the hunting was justified, adding “We now have the green light” after Rep. Mo Brooks “asked the Patriots to pledge Our live and wealth to fight for Our country” and President Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters to “fight like hell.”

Did he f*ck around and find out?

On October 22, 2021:

A Texas man received the longest sentencing related to the January 6 riots so far despite not even being at the Capitol

Let’s hope his feelings have changed, or will change.

The Fading Boomer Dream

Baby Boomer used to be synonymous with ‘hippie.’

Or Vietnam Vet.

Some Vietnam Vets became hippies, some hippies got drafted for Vietnam.

What were hippies all about back then? The rumor was long hair, free love, and passing that joint my friend.

Dedicated hippies were the personification of peace, love, and understanding. Some of them went back go the land, grew organic crops, made their own clothes, home-schooled their kids.

Others stayed in town and gathered in places like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.

The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people of various ages: teenagers and college students drawn by their peers and the allure of joining a cultural utopia; middle-class vacationers; and even partying military personnel from bases within driving distance. The Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate this rapid influx of people, and the neighborhood scene quickly deteriorated. 

Some of the part-time hippies wore a hat like the one with the ponytail and cruised the neighborhood for other reasons.

From an article published in 1967:

If there is anything most parents fear, it is that their adolescents might turn hippie. And if there’s a magnet for teeny hoppers, it’s San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, the nation’s hippie capital. Tile result is trouble. Runaways are flocking here to the hippie world of wild costumes, LSD, marijuana, electronic music and easy sex. Juveniles are turning up from Miami, Washington, New York, Montreal and points in between, as well as nearby communities. Recently, 14 teen-age girls from Fresno, Calif., were picked up by police.

Over Empathetic?

All of the cool people from those days got old, or died. Some had health problems to reconcile.

Looking back from today it all feels like ‘a phase’ the kids were going through before moving on to the rest of their lives.

The hustlers grew up, but remembered the hustle and how easy it was to fake empathy.

The lasting influence of early boomers radiated from their time in San Francisco.

The Diggers were at the forefront of what would soon become a nationwide commune movement, thousands strong, whose legacy would include everything from food co-ops to organic farming methods, home birth practices, green technologies, recycling systems, and legalized marijuana. Even today’s internet culture, with its emphasis on user networks and information sharing, traces its history in part back through the Whole Earth Catalog to the cluster of communes that sprang up in the Southwest immediately after the Summer of Love. In this way, it wasn’t the summer itself that brought about some of the hippie era’s most lasting influences — it was the dispersal of its most original and ardent idealists.

What’s the difference between the boomers who embraced the times and tried to create a better future than the one laid out for them by their parents, and the boomers who saw new marks to work?

I call it empathy that’s not over empathetic. But I’m a sixty six year old who was born in San Francisco and returned on an airplane before boarding the bus to Fort Ord.

What would you call it?