1968
“As Norman Mailer wrote in his classic “Miami and the Siege of Chicago” about the two national conventions of 1968, “The grand Establishment of the Democratic Party and its society life in Washington would soon be shattered — the world was shattering it.” And shattered it was, a reality noticed by a governor of California elected only two years earlier named Ronald Reagan.
For some younger Americans, the ’60s inspire nostalgia. But for more of them, in my experience, they inspire an entirely understandable impatience with the baby boom generation — my generation — that continues to play out the conflicts of its youth even as newer voices strain to be heard in the din of old songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or Country Joe and the Fish “. Washington Post , E.J. Dionne
And in our late years as the years mount, the Baby Boom is giving yet one more little present to America: fascism driven global warming.
In 1968 the Democratic Convention, that the above quote is referencing the reaction that Mayor Daley and other mainstream Democrats had against, and I use that word on purpose, their own children.
After WWII an entire world generation, those who were left, had been exposed to a total meltdown of civilization. The war was brutal beyond any other. It also showed the world what mechanized warfare with enormous firepower, including at the end the Atomic Bomb could do.
I am currently reading “D Day Through German Eyes…” by Holger Eckhertz. It is a compilation of German journalism during WWII, interviewing survivors of D-Day on the German side.
And the remarks are telling. The remarks support the massive impact the war had on the generation who fight it, we call it still the greatest generation.
First firepower, immense gasoline fueled mechanized heavy weapon firepower, that simply blew people into small parts. Many times the German veterans marvel at the firepower especially of the Americans. They marvel at how many airplanes the Americans had, of the parachutist, of the equipment, the tanks, the overwhelming cannons of the ships.
And all of it, all of it killed millions; culminating in two Atomic bombs that killed almost 1/2 million people in just two drops.
The world suddenly was looking at the extinction of the species through petroleum driven total atomic war.
And then the troops went home and in almost a survival ritual, made lots of babies. I mean lots of them.
Now part of the phenomenon of the “baby boom” was the fact that birth rates had cratered during the world wide depression from 1929 to 1940. But birth rates also declined even further from the stress of WWII and the fact that men were separated from their women by service and yes death.
So, especially in America, who had escaped civilian casualties and damage, the GIs came home and made lots of babies.
And we were born.
I was born in 1947, the Atomic bomb was about two years old, the Cold War was just starting. In 1965 I graduated from High School, just in time for the troop count in Vietnam reached having to use a wartime draft to fill.
And in 1968 I was a Junior then Senior in college playing football at Stanford University counting the days until my deferment ran out.
And during the 60s we, the first of a 30 year baby boom, were the point of a spear of unconventional and yes rebellious/selfish behavior.
And who led us; our parents of course. They had lived through both a Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, AND the worst war in history. And it scarred them. And they did the human thing: “My son/daughter is NOT going to have to go through what we went through”..
I heard that all the time, and not just from my parents. I heard from everyone of my teachers, who were all from the Greatest Generation and most veterans and not just service veterans but COMBAT veterans.
A combat veteran is different. A combat veteran believes that everyone should sacrifice but at the same time believes that nobody should have to go through what they went through.
So we got this mixed message, service to country is essential but not my son or daughter; I don’t want them or anyone to go through what I went through.
A paradox! And they meant it. I remember parents who were very patriotic and very anti-Communist who conspired with their children to keep them out of Vietnam. They had their fill of war. Let Johnnie do it but not my kid. And that built a ring of entitlement around the early baby boomers.
Then 1968 hit. First Reverend King was assassinated, then Robert Kennedy, then the Democratic Convention.
A cultural bomb went off in the soul of the America, and for all practical purposes, that soul had been the Democratic Party since 1929.
The Republicans elected ONE Republican, Eisenhower since 1929…ONE! And Eisenhower was a war hero General who had been in the Army, an apolitical group, all his life. The Congress of the United States had been in Democratic control for over 35 straight years. In fact it would take almost another 20 years until the Republicans would control the House of Representatives.
What caused this? Two things, a Depression of worldwide effect, that put the Democrats in power for decades, spawned fascism in Europe and led to WWII; and the beginning of the end of the south’s steadfast allegiance to the Democratic Party.
M.L. King knew the only way Civil Rights would succeed in the long term was to break the Dixiecrats stranglehold on the Democratic Party. The party of FDR was also the party of Storm Thurmond and George Wallace.
King was much better at politics than most people know. He knew lasting political power would only be accomplished if he could isolate out the segregationists from the Democratic Party. Unfortunately he also was a man of God, and his optimism about human character caused him to miss the mind boggling development that the Dixiecrats would pack up their hateful politics and join the Republican Party; and take it over.
That was just stirring in 1968. And the Vietnam War was fracturing the Democratic Party as well, driving more and more liberals from the north into civil disobedience and away from the Democratic Party.
And there in the middle of it all, sat the Baby Boom.
There are many books written about us, about our largesse, our selfishness, our spoil brat ness (I made that one up).
But as they say, “It is what it is”; and that is a yes spoiled child syndrome that is working itself on America right now in the personality of Donald Trump.
Trump is, ironically, the first year of the Baby Boom, the absolute tip of the spear. Obama was the tail end of the spear, and Clinton closer to to point.
This makes a difference by the way. The closer your birth to the tip of spear the more protected and cherished you were by your parents, after all we were born a few months after Dad came home. Many times the children of 1946 and 1947 were the first born, like me, and got everything….
We were the promise of a better world, the last best hope of mankind.
And we screwed it up.
Trump is one of the most spoiled people on the planet. Clinton was a poor, but brilliant kid, who in his Nuevo Rich status, screwed everything he could get his hands on (see Trump above) in a gluttony of self aggrandizement.
And his peers did the same thing, not always in sexual areas (although the divorce rate skyrocketed in the early Baby Boomers) but in the materialism area.
One was the automobile culture that took cars from simply methods of getting from here to there to Corvettes and Mustangs that defined a person. Your status was determined, especially by young women, by the car you drove.
And a gluttony took place, burning gasoline at unreal rates, in cars that went very fast, and cost a lot of money in gas and ultimately to the climate.
Meanwhile to house the increase in population world wide, to replenish all the people who had been killed, and to rebuild after the war, trees were cut down wholesale, deforesting and ultimately adding to the pollution of the automobiles to actually change the climate.
And who did it? Not the greatest generation for sure, they were dying off.
WE DID IT.
So we sit here as the baby boom ages, after tearing apart the Democratic Party opening up the White House and Congress to a Republican Party now controlled by the same southern segregationists that King fought so hard to eliminate. We lost on that one, as it appears the Democrats, who have actually removed overt racism from its ranks, will have a tough time ever controlling Congress again!
And our selfishness, our ME FIRST, that fueled the draft resistance of 1968, some justified; some the product of Baby Boom white privilege has resulted in a wedge of conservatism hate that has fueled of all things a fascist racist movement in America.
The Vietnam War was the first to use integrated combat units that began to be all Black as the war wore on, since middle class white privilege found ways to avoid the war.
Now I must state the war was wrong, and many (including myself) actually resisted the war, even in the Army.
But most, like Clinton and Trump, used their white privilege to avoid the military like the plague. Ironically, the civil right progress that integrated the Service led to all Black combat units that got ripped apart by a NVA and Vietcong adversary, one of the best combat soldiers Americans had every faced.
The vast superiority in firepower that so impressed the German defenders during D-Day did not work in a jungle guerrilla war.
So the poor and then black once again bore the brunt of combat casualties. What a reward for social progress?!
And the baby boom: Well in many ways, especially those born in the 40s, never got over the coddling we got when Dad got home. We still have a sense of entitlement, that the world owes us…not the other way around.
We are the aging middle class non college graduate male, who voted almost in mass for Trump, who vowed to Make America Great Again, which really meant put the Blacks in their place and give me back my Mustang.
The sad thing is global warming is REAL and deep inside of all of us, the nagging fear that our grandchildren are going to get obliterated.
I use the phrase, “If we don’t act now to slow global warming we will be killing our grandchildren”.
Can you imagine that coming out of the mouths of our parents, those who survived the Depression and WWII, dreaming of a future of death for their children.
That is NOT what our parents wanted. They had sacrificed themselves (50 million died in WWII) for their children and their grandchildren. And they lived to see their grandchildren prosper in a mostly peaceful world.
We badly boomers are, with our spoiled selfishness (see Trump) almost guaranteeing our children and great grandchildren will inherit a world of agony and extinction.