BOOMER GENERATION BREAKS AMERICA ON TIME COVER BUT NOT IN OUR HEARTS

via twitter

At some point every generation can take credit for breaking America. The pinata of democracy is strong enough to take a few whacks.

It helps that those swinging the stick are usually too old to do much damage, but watching them still hurts.

Steven Brill explains it all for baby boomers, all our fault, at least the fault of those looking for fault. Note to Steve: not everyone born between 1946 and 1964 is looking for fault. We’ve got enough problems failing from one task to another.

I meant flailing.

Mr. Brill, like Mr. Trump, are New Yorkers through and through. Brill, raised in Queens, was smart enough to look around for a way out, and smart enough to stick with it all the way through Yale Law.

Born in 1950, he was prime draft bait for Vietnam, probably knew a lot of people who went over. When I look at the Time magazine cover with the stars falling off the flag … it hurts.

Attacking the messenger is one way of deflecting an accurate assessment of America, but the guy is Ivy League. Like Mr. and Mrs. Obama, Steven Brill found education, concentration, and dedication as a way up.

Now he’s the voice of his generation? He is on Time. But his guilt, fault, whatever it is, reflects out of his own experience and education, which is a rare accomplishment across the country. Speaking for the public schooled state college segment, I can say we expected more from you and yours, Steve.

The boomer generation breaks down in three segments, Early Boomer (1946-52), Mid Boomer (1953-58), and Late Boomer (1957-64.) I note this because the first group are the only true baby boomers, the offspring of horny service guys coming home after WWII.

The rest of us came along later and didn’t get the full dose of daddy adapting to normal life, civilian life. We showed up after the live wire intensity of wartime duty had calmed down. No subconscious memories of the old man’s screaming nightmares for us. Never felt like the object of blame when dad got that ‘trapped in a bad marriage’ feeling looking at his first kid after his fourth beer.

Middle and late boomers skated while the first wave boomers got drilled. And as a result, they’ve got Steven Brill claiming his generation broke America. Get it right, Steve. The first third of your generation broke America. The rest of us are just grinding along through the shattered pieces.

Your America, the broken part, was born out of a meritocracy where success led to more success and an investment in creating an environment of more success down the line? That’s the broken part? The Rockefellers, Bushes, Kennedys, every family name with multi-generational resonance, is broken?

Or, is the broken part more about the path you took and how it’s too broken now for anyone to follow? If that’s it, maybe you should feel at fault, you should feel guilty. Besides, those are the feelings the rest of us hope an Ive League lawyer might have.

Thank you for sharing. (PS: Presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump? Your boomer generation has to claim them, so you’ve got that going for you.)