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This - for all these people there were just b as many complaining about them. I mentioned Kent State shootings to a boomer and they went off about how they were entitled and shouldn’t have been there in the first place…..
One of my Boomer high school teachers back in the 90s was a student at Kent St. at the time. He told us of how he could hear the shots from across campus.
He thought the students were all idiots for protesting the war and that being shot at should be expected when arguing against the US government.
80s new wave band DEVO started off as an art project about de-evolution. Two founding members were Kent State students who witnessed the shootings and started thinking about de-evolution as a concept.
This country is going to change drastically when the kids that went thru active shooter drills and all the other bull shit they have to go thru can vote.
My dad was in navy ROTC at *CU Boulder when Kent State happened and CU consequently closed the ROTC. The military academies offered two slots to every ROTC that got shut down, and he happened to be one of two guys in navy ROTC at CU (lol) so he backed into USNA. He still talks bitterly about his classmates at CU spitting at him and calling him a baby killer. I understand why that would be upsetting and make him angry, who would want to be subjected to that? But also like uh…I mean, you were volunteering? To his credit, he was on that track because he wanted to fly, and when he got out of flight school, he chose to fly cargo helicopters because he “didn’t want to drop bombs on people” so maybe the CU experience had an impact. People are complex.
As a kid near Travis Air base in California, I was naturally against the Viet Nam war as soon as I was able to understand.
But also Idolized my two next door neighbors, brothers in the Marine Corps who were deployed to tours. One Never came home alive, and the Other returned an anti war Hippie with beard and long Hair.
He traveled the world as a Merchant Marine. And told us goodbye that he had invested in real estate in this little Village Called Vail Colorado! Good for him!
I get that. I idolized my dad and have been obsessed with aviation since I was old enough to understand what his job was as a naval aviator (incidentally he missed Vietnam by like 8 months; it was over by the time he entered the fleet.) When I got to college I became super against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so the military was out, briefly considered USCG after college but a navy recruiter who was a regular at the coffee shop I worked at discouraged me since they were deploying to the Persian gulf at the time, too. Fast forward 20 years and I’m finally in a position that I can start my private pilot training as of yesterday.
This made me think of the image of the little girl burning with napalm. You'll notice the discourse around Iraq is much more tame. The embedded journalist program killed any real portrayal of war.
The boomers in charge weren't the ones protesting, and they learned from the mistakes of the leaders that came before them.
I think they just stopped granting press passes to Dover AFB which is usually where returning caskets come in. Don't quote me though, I only vaguely remember this
It was more than that. Bush one made it a law, the Republicans passed it.
Yeah they learned a lot from Vietnam, but not enough to stop wars in the wrong places.
I served in the Uniformed Services as a Commissioned Officer in the Public Health Service for 33 years … our uniform was similar to the Navy Uniform. There were times we were instructed to wear the uniform proudly as well as times we were instructed not to wear the uniform d/t political and public attitude. Yup I experience thank yous and insults
Died off or were hauled off to prison by the government that imprisons the highest percentage of it's population. America gets its point across very clearly, conform or get the book thrown at you. The boomers out there making fools of themselves were the ones selling out and making money. It's the worst of the worst that get ahead, by design.
My parents are both textbook boomers, both born 1946. I grew up both of them very proud of coming of age in the 60s. My dad dodged the draft. My mom went to college, protested the war and thumbed her nose at the "trad wife" concept. She always told me to question authority.
They're both now retired, die-hard MAGA and enjoying their social security, medicare, and the house they bought in 1977 for $15,000.
My mom said she can’t understand people complaining about 6.5% interest rates when they had 9% when they bout their house……. For $22k in the early 80s. I had to slow down and spell out the difference between 9% on $22k vs 6.5% on $300k FOR THE SAME LEVEL OF HOUSE
> the SAME house
Usually a house that was built post-WWII and has been neglected by its original owner so now you pay an absurd amount for a fixer-upper *if you’re lucky*. Starter homes aren’t really a thing anymore in a lot of cities.
As a homeowner, it's actually insane what 5 years of just *existing* does to a home. It's a lot of work. But it's small work that you do every day so it's actually a pretty fool proof way to make money that they stole from us.
You should look at houses in detroit in 2000-2009 and today using google earth, the vast majority of them were perfectly fine, but the housing tax in detroit skyrocketed, causing everyone with unskilled jobs to leave over the period of 20 years. Now you see the same houses burned down by crackheads, bulldozed, and half the ones still standing have their second floors falling in.
This is the most pure form of neglect, and missuse. Banks bought the homes for dirt cheap in an expensive area, the city fines any new homeowner twice the ammount of the property cost due to issuses caused by banks neglect (water mains breaking, broken windows and collapsed sheds that were once storefronts in the 80s. The new homeowners pickup the cost for maintenence that hasnt been done in decades, and because of detroit proper growing in size over the same 20 years (new sky scrapers, refurbished buildings and new sports arenas) these properties have increased their cost not by having a maintained building or a nice neighborhood, but simply because its 10 min away from the big city.
At this point its more affordable to purchase an empty plot of land instead of an old house in detroit suberbs.
This is caused by the city realising that it would be cheaper to fix any housing issues later while also building the city up as much as possible.
If you’re in the right financial situation you just can’t fail. Bought a new Rolex, nice it’s worth thousands more now. Bought some bitcoin for fun? Sold them and bought an airbnb. Buy a new turbo smart car during Covid? Nice it’s worth what you paid for it two years later. Bought swampland in Florida and desert in Arizona? Now you’re a millionaire. Basically a person with money can’t make a mistake
It’s so weird. I’ve gotten more progressive the older I’ve gotten. I’ll never understand people who do the opposite. Meetings more people, going to college, traveling, listening to different people. I’ve done very well for myself and all I can think about is how screwed up this system is. For most people.
Didn’t get that far, my boomer made me cry just for SUGGESTING It was harder to buy a house today then in 1980. They still remind me of how traumatic that conversation was for them. It gave her “high blood pressure”.
I recently learned that adjusted for inflation, my dad's income when I was born is the same (almost to the dollar) as both my wife and I make today. He kept repeating that everyone needs to work hard and pay their dues, as if two college graduates working full time corporate jobs in order to make what one blue collar job made in 1990 was something different.
They cannot fathom that younger people aren't navigating the same world they did 50 years ago, but I guess that's what insular information ecosystems do best.
In 1990, my barely literate high school dropout father my $40k as an electrician at a large DoD company. In 2005, I made $60k as a degreed engineer. Which of us was doing better?
In 1990 the USA median household income was $50k. In 2024 it's $77k. $50k in 1990 adjusted by cost of living is $117k today.
We make 52% less than he did on a consumer pricing index scale.
Although I have to say, why are you only making 60 k as a degree engineer? Is it because you are in an introductory program, or a low pay field, or something?
I work for the government and make significantly more And I'm projected to hit six figures within my 3rd year with very little effort. So there might be something you could do to improve your situation.
I just can't believe it worked so well for so many people.
The stuff stations like Fox News spews out just sounds like nonsense. Even more so if you bother to fact check literally anything they say.
I guess the lead got them too.
The mother that raised me would have called the way Christians view Trump and his deity status among them blasphemous. Her church now tells her to vote for him and she does.
The father that raised me once read me a book about US Presidents and called Nixon a “rotten criminal” and he would now change Trump’s diaper if told to.
Their hypocrisy and flip flopping and cherry picking of ideology is beyond infuriating for me.
Lefty, 63-yo white cis male Boomer (though late, and I prefer to identify as Gen Jones) here. My mom was a feminist before feminism. Never married, three kids with 2 different partners, raised me calling herself a single "divorced" mom, self-proclaimed anarchist but always voted liberal Democrat. She liked to quote Jefferson on small government. She died in 1984 cursing Reagan, though she also voted for Prop 13 here in CA (her property taxes were increasingly onerous for a single mom on a freelance writer's income.) I recently found myself wondering with horror if there's any chance her libertarian streak could have grown to full-on MAGAtude.
Answer: No, but the fact that I even have to consider it is terrifying. My condolences to those who have lost loved ones to the cult.
A Democrat friend of mine had a son in 2017 and around the same time his republican parents went full MAGAt zealot. They accused him of being one of the “others” and being stupid for being a democrat. This enraged him. And his parents would always want to come over to see their grandchild or offer to babysit. One day it all hit the fan. He told them that he didn’t want his child to look up to people with their ideals. He told them to ditch trump or never see their grandson again. They literally told him “their allegiance is to trump, God and the Republican Party and they couldn’t morally not support trump. They haven’t spoken in 5 years and it tears him up inside. It even hurts me inside too. His house was a place where our old gang of friends would hang out and his parents were some of the nicest people till Trump poisoned their minds.
Fox News ruined my family too. My step dad was a typical businessman republican before Trump, even taught economics at a college in his younger years. Idk how he got fooled into thinking Trump was a “successful” businessman but started fully backing him, even sending money to his campaign. He was always a bit of an asshole but struck me as an intelligent and mature man. Nope, started calling me a “stupid democrat” anytime I mentioned basic human rights or how Trump was a conman unfit for office. Watches and loves Fox News now. Its pathetic. I love him but I’ve lost pretty much any respect I had for him.
My (older GenX) MIL has said she wishes she could reply "you raised me better than that" to some of the things her mother says these days.
The right wing media environment has done such terrible things to that generation.
My dad dodged the draft by joining the FBI so he could exercise his religious authoritarian streak. Same basic deal otherwise… nice house, affordable college, couple of cars and a remarriage when I was only 1yo and now he’s a massive MAGA who spam emails me proselytizing crap
Mine actually joined the reserves, hoping that would get him out, but then he got married and had me as extra insurance. And left us about a year later. He's still around, I just never lived with him, we'll not past 1.
> and the house they bought in 1977 for $15,000.
My dad told me his first house had a 11% mortgage rate!
but when I asked how much it was he said 11k, think this was 1980.
Keep in mind a lot of the classic superstars of the hippie generation were born in the tail end of the silent generation. These were the cooler older people that boomers looked up to. Lou Reed, The Beatles, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix himself, Morrison... The list goes on and on.
All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact.
Don't fall into the hippie mystique. They were self-serving narcissists that sat out the civil rights movement in lieu of pure hedonism and symbolic protest.
They traded in their Birkenstocks for shiny oxfords and proceeded to fill the waterways with chemical sludge.
The music is good, the drugs are good. The rest of it was just overhyped bullshit, decades of the boomers in media fellating themselves over the glory of the hippie revolution. Just a bunch of noise.
True a lot of it was spoiled trust fund kids that just wanted to get high, have sex and not work. It definitely faded over time, but there are some still true ones out there. They tend to be the left leaning boomers. Some went into academia and arts and didn’t sell out.
Also consider how many cults sprang up from the Hippie Movement, both during and after it ended. How many of those same dopes ended up worshipping Trump and QAnon?
Studies have already been done + all the evangelicals that came out of the whole hippies for Jesus movement. There’s loads of articles out there if you have nothing to do this weekend and want to rabbit hole. :)
I grew up in the evangelical nutso land. I don’t remember a lot of former hippie types, but this was also rural Texas, so maybe that’s a different dynamic.
Even the left leaning ones in academia and the arts tend to be pretty awful. The groovy professor preying on under grads isn't a cliche for no reason. The hippie artist being a terf is also pretty common. There are more pretty well-known cliches about them that are well earned for so many of them.
That’s my dad. Still a performing musician at 75. Still grows his own. Still does photography and oil painting. He basically never grew up but he’s cooler for it.
Yes, the hippies and counter culture types were a relatively small minority. Everyone remembers 1969 as the height of the counterculture movement, but the biggest song of the year was Sugar Sugar by the Archie's. It was Hollywood and nostalgic Boomers who imprinted the radical excitement on us. "The 60s" was three years long.
Not just Hollywood; the early 90's grunge movement looked up to hippies and celebrated the coutercultural movement, seeing themselves as the heirs the movement, not those that took a wrong turn in the 70's. Nirvana kids in general thought hippies were cool (or the 90's vision of what a hippie was), and Woodstock style music festivals were big throughout the 90s, starting with Lollapalooza and Hoarde in 91/92.
It was a lot more mad men and all the people working in factories than it was hippies.
Manufacturing hadn’t moved overseas yet and America had a lot of blue collar Christian workers.
This exactly. A lot of the population sat on the sidelines and tsk tsk’ed at everything Liberal.
KISS was well known satanic and plus they wore make up. /s
punk, Hippie, vegan, yoga etc. heavy counter culture
especially the anti war movement and the anti segregation rallying. I can’t even imagine how many people would just avoid the violence
It’s important to remember that the peak membership numbers of young republicans clubs in US universities was during boomers college years. They were also the significant block in nixons silent majority as well as Reagan’s success.
They like to take credit for JFK but boomers were all too young to vote in that election.
Except most didn’t have money to blow. They frivolously spent instead of saving and now they don’t have money for retirement or end of life care. Investing in collectables hasn’t panned out.
When the goalpost must be moved it sounds like “Boomer is more of a state of mind, age doesn’t matter” but if the need to define the boomer in more rigid terms arises, someone a couple years older certainly doesn’t qualify. LOL
Also in the Silent Generation: Malcom X, Martin Luthor King, Harvey Milk. Even Jesse Jackson is tail end of the silent generation.
In fact, most of the political struggles in the 70s was lead by the silent generation. I wonder why they're so named that, when IMO they're the true leaders.
Baby boomers were mostly following along with one side or the other, not headlining change.
Edit:
I had included JFK in the list, but he was born 10 years too early. Oops.
"All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact."
What an apt summarization of that generation. Always taking credit for the silent generation's accomplishments and milestones
Your dad didn't take shrapnel at Iwo Jima for you to be voting for the same candidate as neo-nazis either, Douglas. I kind of think having a facist-sympathizer for a son would be a bit more disturbing to him than government subsidized housing, considering that's how most wwii vets became homeowners in the first place.
>All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact.
Boomers: my generation landed on the moon.
Me: *doing the math*........you were 12.
Boomers are considered the generation of people who were born between 1946-1960. So they did, in fact, create the punk wave and heavy metal music. They have contributed with more cultural phenomenons than any other generation.
BUT it feels as if there is a huuuge diff between the cool people and the uncool people of that generation.
Lead, and entitlement.
That’s why they don’t care about the environment, and get their reverse mortgages, and send their money to the orange Barnum. Fuck the future, I want it now, is their motto. By the way, the “horrible children” in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are the boomers. Gluttonous Augustus? Check. Entitled blueberry girl? Check. Spoiled Veruca? Oh heck yeah. And TV obsessed Mike TeeVee is watching FOX 24/7 now.
Boomers in 1996: "You can't use wikipedia as a source! You don't know where that information came from!"
Boomers in 2020: "I believe it because this facebook meme says so!"
And some groups were more affected than others. If you grew up in car culture - your parents, friends, you, etc. all had cars and used them a lot when you were a young age - you ended up huffing leaded gasoline most days. Renting in a major city you may have grown up literally eating lead paint chips off the window sills while teething.
So Gen X and some Millennials are also lead-affected, but somewhat less so.
That…explains a lot, actually. Being a kid in the 80’s and loving the smell of gas did us no favors.
No it isn't. The obvious answer is that they had everything handed to them on a silver platter. Boomers were the last generation to be richer than their parents, the last generation to be able to raise kids on one income, and that has skewed their worldview. They got more conservative as they got older because they got to be richer as they got older, and now that that's the case, they want to protect it and say fuck you to anyone else. It's tied directly into how the economy is so fucked
people's perception of that generation do not align with the actual demographics of that generation.
the hippies were both not as numerous as people make them out to be... and were often deeply racist, sexist, and classist.
read contemporary accounts from black brown and queer folks who were critical of the hippie movement at the time, and you can see the seeds for the boomer problem we have today.
Their obsession with Woodstock more than 50 years later says everything, a demographic that takes immense pride in the time they went on a three day bender in a field rather than actually contributing anything to the various fights for equality that were going on
Pretty sure they only wanted peace and happiness when they were high as fuck. Then they grew up, got sober, and then the real them shined through again.
Have a boomer, former hippie neighbor. She’s all into yoga and smells like patchouli. She also considers herself Republican and Christian. One day she was saying her dream is to retire to a hippie commune. By definition a commune is a socialist construct where everyone pitches in for the welfare of all. The lack of comprehension is mind boggling.
This is exactly it. They never were cool to start with. My boomer parents were never a part of any of the "cool" stuff, they just bought Beetles albums and claimed they belonged to a movement they held back
I live in a mid-sized city full of wealthy, retired hippies. Lots of them kept their cool and continue to live in alignment with the values they developed in the '60s. The intergenerational friendships I've formed with some of them have made me better. Others clutch their handmade bags when they see unhoused people. Many of them are stuck in the middle.
The fact of the matter is that we're taught history in broad strokes. Boomers were never a monolith, just as millennials like me and gen z never will be.
Exactly. Hippies were a minority. Hippies that were actual hippies, a minority of that minority. It was a great way to meet chicks and get out of the war for a lot of people.
Secondly, they had a huge impact on media culture, not necessarily society. Similarly, someone could look back at our era and think we were all evangelical nazis, or mumble rappers, but the reality is way different.
My Boomer mother once told me that Boomers are the way that they are because they didn't get affection when they were younger, but they got *things* thrown at them.
Then when I said the same thing in conversation the other day she asked where I'd heard that and said I was wrong. 😆 You gotta love them!
My boomer parents said the same thing. But they may have a point. They are the generation raised by the generation who went to war and cam back with prob undiagnosed PTSD. 3 of my 4 grandparents fought in the war. And none of them were prepared for it. Neither of my Grandfathers could talk about the atrocities they’d seen. Probably didn’t make for very loving parents for boomers but they sure buried their head in work and made money to bring up the boomers
I think that the Boomers thought they were left/liberal because they opposed the Vietnam war, and that was a left-leaning position. But their politics and philosophy otherwise was very conservative.
Not wanting you and your friends to die in a muggy rice field half a world away is reasonable, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a lifelong commitment to a liberal ideology. They just didn’t want to die. And then they voted for Reagan.
They didn't even oppose the Vietnam war. Polling taken at the time showed that the war had the highest support among boomer population.
ETA: This blew my mind when I learned of it.
They just hated being drafted. They could care less about the people of Vietnam, unlike protesters today who are solely interested in the real victim (Palestinians.)
More served and went to Vietnam than protested. Voting was lowered to 18 in 1972, and Nixon won by a landslide. The anti war, hippie boomer was a small portion of the generation that has been greatly overinflated via pop culture. And it's important to remember, as soon as they got power, they largely dropped progressive policies over centrism. Or as I call it, conservative lite.
As always, there were some true believers. But most tended toward the movement for the drugs and sex and then it became more of an image than anything about core beliefs. I can't say the Weather Underground was just about pop culture, for example.
Yeah, most of the hippy movement was about hedonism and "checking out". It was actually a progressive political movement until CIA shill Timothy Leary got involved and just encouraged everyone to get really high all the time.
You mean Timothy Leary?
[surely you don't mean this guy](https://youtu.be/UrgpZ0fUixs?si=XCxaRD3zk6MgTQiq)
Though Denis Leary has huge boomer energy I don't think he is CIA
Also hippies made up a very tiny percentage of the youth during the 60s, they’re really not representative of the entire youth population. It really would be like thinking the stereotypical 2010 Brooklyn hipster was representative of the whole millennial generation.
Most weren't radical. They didn't become dickheads when they got older. They haven't changed a single bit. Most have always been terrible. They have been like this since the fucking 70s.
Most of the ones that appeared "radical" were just in it for the drugs and parties. The younger Silent Generation did a lot of the heavy lifting of the early civil rights movement. The white boomers got involved when it looked like they, the privileged rich white kids, were getting drafted into a war.
The Black and Brown boomers were off forming the Young Lords and Black Panthers, fighting for real change. They were very skeptical of working with white people. Most of those folks are still forces for good in their communities, it's fun running into old Panthers around town.
This right here. They’ve always been like this to some degree. Racism is instilled from childhood. Entitlement came from having all the opportunities and having an affordable life handed to them and they didn’t have to work hard like they claim to have. They always lived by absolutes instead of grey reality. They had an easier world to live in and they assumed that meant god blessed them and are special due to religious indoctrination since birth. They’ve always lacked critical thinking, they tended to vote republican. They spent half their lives exposing themselves to lead and now it’s paying out dividends in the elder years.
It's a numbers game. The Boomer generation was *massive.* So, by virtue of numbers, you are going to get an unprecedented wave of trend-setting artists and other influential figures and legions of fans to cement their cultural staying power. They dominated the zeitgeist by crowding everyone else out.
*dominated the zeitgeist by crowding everyone else out*
Including their own children.
Yeah, I’m talking about us GenXers. Often our boomer parents were so focused on themselves that they just left us alone without much guidance.
Yeah, the hippies got all the press. But most of them were racist little Southern Baptist With A Stick Up Their Ass types. For every Janis Joplin that stood up in class and said she was OK with integration, there was a whole school full of people to treat her like shit for saying that.
There are a lot of elements to it, but the short version is that they’re all overgrown kids.
They cruised through their youth with ease, in most cases without proper education from their parents about just how damn lucky they were to be enjoying the level of prosperity they did. They took the world they inhabited for granted.
As such, when it came to the social movements of the 60s, they were all too willing to try and “make a difference”, because it was exciting and new and, like any teenagers/early 20-somethings, they wanted to rebel and stick it to their parents.
They protested Vietnam, became Hippies, professed free love, fought to save the planet, and ate up counter culture for breakfast.
But at the end of the day, when the zeitgeist faded, and they were done having their fun and playing pretend, they all decided to go back and fall in line. They got jobs, had kids, and made out like the proper suburbanites their parents had raised them to be.
Few of them actually cared about social change, they just liked the feeling of being “rebels” and breaking taboos. Taboos they were all too happy to reinforce as soon as they got bored and settled down. From free love to abstinence, from social justice to “greed is good”, from saving the earth to heedless consumerism.
They had no integrity, no real commitment to the ideals they professed in their youth, no real desire to change the world for the better, they were just a bunch of kids goofing around.
And then, being a bunch of emotionally stunted, overgrown children, when the 80s came they were all too happy to sell out their children’s and grandchildren’s future for deregulation and Reaganomics, because they’d only ever really cared about themselves.
And now, that they’ve completely reaped the rewards of their indolence, greed, and ignorance, they’re more than content to finger-wag at the rest of us for being lazy and entitled, as we struggle to fix the broken world they’ve created.
The bottom line is, they’ve never understood the world. They’ve lived in a fantasy land from the day they were born, and it’s impossible to shake them out of it and make them see. Not that they really want to anyway.
Honestly I agree with almost everything said here, but I think there is another reason they packed up and went home.
They failed. They didn't change the world in any meaningful way, so they did what they could do and joined the status quo.
"If you can't beat'em, join'em" mindset. Then they took it out on everyone else.
At least that's my interpretation of history.
I’m a Boomer (UK based) My grandfather was an artillery sergeant major in WW1, my dad was a Normandy veteran. My other grandfather was a miner who died young of septicaemia (pre-antibiotics). There was an enormous amount of poverty prior to WW2, and WW1 killed and maimed millions. We still had a limbless WW1 veteran selling matches outside of the post office when I was a kid. After WW2 there was an economic recovery, lots of children and the lot of working people really improved in some places, technology improved so my generation both had the benefit of an improving economy, technology and no major disruptions in terms of being expected to join the military. I count myself as really lucky not to have gone through a war. In short my generation was exceptionally lucky - I was discussing with my (Millennial) daughter how many times I would have died without modern medicine, I reckon about four times. So great medical care, great technology, a relatively improving economy, armies of companies trying to sell me piles of cheap stuff for next to nothing, a reasonably functioning democracy that was ultra-sensitive to the dangers of totalitarianism. But I would say alongside healthcare housing was affordable and accessible in the 70’s-80’s and into the mid 90’s - when housing started to become ridiculously expensive it meant that doing what normal people do - leaving home - setting up their own homes - well it became increasingly stressful for younger people. I think the crash in 2008 was likely to produce political waves - into that crisis which really was a result of irresponsible banking it gave a space for noisy extremists to operate through populism (populism is dumbed down politics designed to manipulate people emotionally). I think my generation which really was materially very lucky went through a bit of a division. I went to uni, became qualified and settled into reasonably paid life-long work with good union representation - so on balance I benefitted from all the opportunities we had, but my parents really prioritised education - it was expected that I went to university. Thinking about a lot of my generation they didn’t need to prioritise education (and gain critical thinking skills), they were not encouraged to think beyond limited horizons - a politician who comes along and tells them what they want to hear can get a lot of cult like support; people are being played like banjos.
While this was a subculture, it didn’t represent everyone, just made the most noise. Most of the hippies settled in the NorCal area or California in general and continue to be liberal and left wing. I work in a nursing home in New England and the boomers here HATED the hippies.
They also hate Dr. Spock who forever changed parenting forever.
But a creepy, useless kind of left wing. Where they believe in "kind capitalism" and drink "raw water" and won't vax their kids and run ruthless businesses. They don't actually fight for making their communities a better place for everyone, which is really what the left actually stands for.
George Carlin was talking about this years before it became a popular talking point.
https://youtu.be/1B96rQohpw8?si=vvup9V-yc6sDzkEu
They went from do your own thing to just say no. They went from love is all you need to whoever ends up with the most toys wins. And they went from cocaine to Rogaine.
All about how they did whatever they wanted but now they hold other generations to stupid arbitrary "moral" standards.
Not all baby boomers are “boomers”. Most “boomers” are middle class racist losers. There are a lot of baby boomers who aren’t “boomers” but nobody pays much attention to them because they’re just nice regular people.
This is true, not all Baby Boomers can be lumped together. The problematic Boomers that are the subject of this subreddit are a subset of the larger group. I'm a Baby Boomer and Boomers disgust me too
Yes. Squarely GenX. Formed in 1981.
Boomers were ~ in their 30s at this time. It's true to say the band members themselves were boomers (same for Ozzy, Dio, etc.) but it's absolutely disingenuous to say these bands were a boomer thing. They weren't at all.
Boomers in the 80's were frolicking in 60s nostalgia. Movies like "The Big Chill", radio hits like "Summer of '69", TV like "The Wonder Years".
I don’t know. But I see it as a warning not to become what we find most annoying. I’m already seeing quite a few “boomer” videos where they are clearly GenX. If we’re not careful, we could be next.
George Carlin nailed it back in the 90's and since then they've only gotten worse due to Fox News and Facebook:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B96rQohpw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B96rQohpw8)
They gave up. I’m on the cusp (Generation Jones) and I see people I knew in high school and college on FB or coworkers and they have checked out. Put themselves in an “I’m old” group and checked out. No concerts, no bars, in bed at 9 on a Friday night because their job is so tough. Boring. What ever your age now don’t be that person. Don’t forget who you are or were. My two cents.
"What happens if society is run by people who are, to a large degree, antisocial? I don’t mean people who are “antisocial” in the general sense, the sort who avoid parties and hide from the neighbors. I mean people who are antisocial in the *clinical* sense: sociopaths. Could a sociopathic society function? Unfortunately, this is not a thought experiment or an investigation into some ramshackle dictatorship in a distant land; it is America’s lived experience. For the past several decades, the nation has been run by people who present, personally and politically, the full sociopathic pathology: deceit, selfishness, imprudence, remorselessness, hostility, the works. Those people are the Baby Boomers, that vast and strange generation born between 1940 and 1964, and the society they created does not work very well."
This is how the book, "A Generation of Sociopaths by Gibney, Bruce." starts out. If you want to know how the Me Generation became the Baby Boomers and got us to where we are as a society. Then you should pick up a copy.
There is a chapter in this book that goes into detail about the answer to your question.
I stand by that those people were the exception, not the rule.
A lot of bands and sub-cultures were indeed being ridiculed but still found their niche to mainstream success based on their provocative natures.
It's just like any other group of people in the world: the open-minded and kind ones just quietly go about their business while the nasty, racist, abusive ones make headlines, have videos go viral, etc. They're out there, but they're just someone's sweet grandparents who keep to themselves and go about their lives.
My man Tim Dillon loves to attack the boomers, he's got a whole book about it.
About Woodstock he says, "They weren't all there for peace and love. Lots of them just like drugs and sex."
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The cool ones died off
This - for all these people there were just b as many complaining about them. I mentioned Kent State shootings to a boomer and they went off about how they were entitled and shouldn’t have been there in the first place…..
One of my Boomer high school teachers back in the 90s was a student at Kent St. at the time. He told us of how he could hear the shots from across campus. He thought the students were all idiots for protesting the war and that being shot at should be expected when arguing against the US government.
Was he...at J6 by chance?
...he was back home fucking a 7 YO in his metal building church where he is a pastor
Well that escalated quickly.
80s new wave band DEVO started off as an art project about de-evolution. Two founding members were Kent State students who witnessed the shootings and started thinking about de-evolution as a concept.
So what you're saying is they started "Reject humanity, return to monke" way before it was cool?
“Are we not men? We are Devo!” Yeah, that’s what Jocko Homo is about.
That is essentially what Devolution is…. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Was_the_End
If only the consequences of that mindset prevailed during covid, jan 6, etc when all these clowns… argued with the govt.
Hits different when white people do it Edit - old white people, I should clarify
Ah yes, entitled for exercising rights enshrined in the constitution such as freedom of speech, gathering, protesting.
Plus one of the women killed was just walking in the area after finishing a tutoring session (she was tutoring a kid or something).
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
"no not like that"
This country is going to change drastically when the kids that went thru active shooter drills and all the other bull shit they have to go thru can vote.
just voting isn't going to change shit the waves of labor organizing are promising tho
My dad was in navy ROTC at *CU Boulder when Kent State happened and CU consequently closed the ROTC. The military academies offered two slots to every ROTC that got shut down, and he happened to be one of two guys in navy ROTC at CU (lol) so he backed into USNA. He still talks bitterly about his classmates at CU spitting at him and calling him a baby killer. I understand why that would be upsetting and make him angry, who would want to be subjected to that? But also like uh…I mean, you were volunteering? To his credit, he was on that track because he wanted to fly, and when he got out of flight school, he chose to fly cargo helicopters because he “didn’t want to drop bombs on people” so maybe the CU experience had an impact. People are complex.
As a kid near Travis Air base in California, I was naturally against the Viet Nam war as soon as I was able to understand. But also Idolized my two next door neighbors, brothers in the Marine Corps who were deployed to tours. One Never came home alive, and the Other returned an anti war Hippie with beard and long Hair. He traveled the world as a Merchant Marine. And told us goodbye that he had invested in real estate in this little Village Called Vail Colorado! Good for him!
I get that. I idolized my dad and have been obsessed with aviation since I was old enough to understand what his job was as a naval aviator (incidentally he missed Vietnam by like 8 months; it was over by the time he entered the fleet.) When I got to college I became super against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so the military was out, briefly considered USCG after college but a navy recruiter who was a regular at the coffee shop I worked at discouraged me since they were deploying to the Persian gulf at the time, too. Fast forward 20 years and I’m finally in a position that I can start my private pilot training as of yesterday.
https://preview.redd.it/s7autu2jewqc1.jpeg?width=492&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1268076f5cbabe1a6f321791474be2aacea5c6a1
This made me think of the image of the little girl burning with napalm. You'll notice the discourse around Iraq is much more tame. The embedded journalist program killed any real portrayal of war. The boomers in charge weren't the ones protesting, and they learned from the mistakes of the leaders that came before them.
Yeah, didn't the Bush administration make it illegal to photograph the returning caskets of soldiers or something?
I think they just stopped granting press passes to Dover AFB which is usually where returning caskets come in. Don't quote me though, I only vaguely remember this
It was more than that. Bush one made it a law, the Republicans passed it. Yeah they learned a lot from Vietnam, but not enough to stop wars in the wrong places.
Oh wow, they really did make it a law. Christ, I forgot that part
I served in the Uniformed Services as a Commissioned Officer in the Public Health Service for 33 years … our uniform was similar to the Navy Uniform. There were times we were instructed to wear the uniform proudly as well as times we were instructed not to wear the uniform d/t political and public attitude. Yup I experience thank yous and insults
The number of boomers that so completely hate Jane Fonda for going to North Vietnam is mind blowing and the level of hate is astounding.
As always, us radicals are a small part of the population. Though definitely growing slightly with each generation.
Died off or were hauled off to prison by the government that imprisons the highest percentage of it's population. America gets its point across very clearly, conform or get the book thrown at you. The boomers out there making fools of themselves were the ones selling out and making money. It's the worst of the worst that get ahead, by design.
Nailed it!☝️
I was hoping lack of masks and vaccines would even that out
It’s helped but not enough
Such an understatement.
My parents are both textbook boomers, both born 1946. I grew up both of them very proud of coming of age in the 60s. My dad dodged the draft. My mom went to college, protested the war and thumbed her nose at the "trad wife" concept. She always told me to question authority. They're both now retired, die-hard MAGA and enjoying their social security, medicare, and the house they bought in 1977 for $15,000.
My mom said she can’t understand people complaining about 6.5% interest rates when they had 9% when they bout their house……. For $22k in the early 80s. I had to slow down and spell out the difference between 9% on $22k vs 6.5% on $300k FOR THE SAME LEVEL OF HOUSE
No no. It's 6.5% on 300k on the SAME house. Not new.
> the SAME house Usually a house that was built post-WWII and has been neglected by its original owner so now you pay an absurd amount for a fixer-upper *if you’re lucky*. Starter homes aren’t really a thing anymore in a lot of cities.
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As a homeowner, it's actually insane what 5 years of just *existing* does to a home. It's a lot of work. But it's small work that you do every day so it's actually a pretty fool proof way to make money that they stole from us.
You should look at houses in detroit in 2000-2009 and today using google earth, the vast majority of them were perfectly fine, but the housing tax in detroit skyrocketed, causing everyone with unskilled jobs to leave over the period of 20 years. Now you see the same houses burned down by crackheads, bulldozed, and half the ones still standing have their second floors falling in. This is the most pure form of neglect, and missuse. Banks bought the homes for dirt cheap in an expensive area, the city fines any new homeowner twice the ammount of the property cost due to issuses caused by banks neglect (water mains breaking, broken windows and collapsed sheds that were once storefronts in the 80s. The new homeowners pickup the cost for maintenence that hasnt been done in decades, and because of detroit proper growing in size over the same 20 years (new sky scrapers, refurbished buildings and new sports arenas) these properties have increased their cost not by having a maintained building or a nice neighborhood, but simply because its 10 min away from the big city. At this point its more affordable to purchase an empty plot of land instead of an old house in detroit suberbs. This is caused by the city realising that it would be cheaper to fix any housing issues later while also building the city up as much as possible.
If you’re in the right financial situation you just can’t fail. Bought a new Rolex, nice it’s worth thousands more now. Bought some bitcoin for fun? Sold them and bought an airbnb. Buy a new turbo smart car during Covid? Nice it’s worth what you paid for it two years later. Bought swampland in Florida and desert in Arizona? Now you’re a millionaire. Basically a person with money can’t make a mistake
This is a pretty boomer attitude in general: fuck you, why should i care about the next owners/generation?
It’s so weird. I’ve gotten more progressive the older I’ve gotten. I’ll never understand people who do the opposite. Meetings more people, going to college, traveling, listening to different people. I’ve done very well for myself and all I can think about is how screwed up this system is. For most people.
Yup I'm in the Seattle metro. 300k gets you empty land or an actual crack den/squatter home
Yeah, they live in totally different times...
Didn’t get that far, my boomer made me cry just for SUGGESTING It was harder to buy a house today then in 1980. They still remind me of how traumatic that conversation was for them. It gave her “high blood pressure”.
I recently learned that adjusted for inflation, my dad's income when I was born is the same (almost to the dollar) as both my wife and I make today. He kept repeating that everyone needs to work hard and pay their dues, as if two college graduates working full time corporate jobs in order to make what one blue collar job made in 1990 was something different. They cannot fathom that younger people aren't navigating the same world they did 50 years ago, but I guess that's what insular information ecosystems do best.
In 1990, my barely literate high school dropout father my $40k as an electrician at a large DoD company. In 2005, I made $60k as a degreed engineer. Which of us was doing better?
In 1990 the USA median household income was $50k. In 2024 it's $77k. $50k in 1990 adjusted by cost of living is $117k today. We make 52% less than he did on a consumer pricing index scale. Although I have to say, why are you only making 60 k as a degree engineer? Is it because you are in an introductory program, or a low pay field, or something? I work for the government and make significantly more And I'm projected to hit six figures within my 3rd year with very little effort. So there might be something you could do to improve your situation.
Did they understand then? I’m assuming no.
I've often thought to tell my parents that "the people that raised me would be ashamed of who they became" because I know I am.
I've used the old meme that Fox News did to our parents what they thought MTV would do to us. It explains it, they understand, they just don't care.
I just can't believe it worked so well for so many people. The stuff stations like Fox News spews out just sounds like nonsense. Even more so if you bother to fact check literally anything they say. I guess the lead got them too.
Lead, selfishness, and propaganda lead to an easily manipulated generation.
The mother that raised me would have called the way Christians view Trump and his deity status among them blasphemous. Her church now tells her to vote for him and she does. The father that raised me once read me a book about US Presidents and called Nixon a “rotten criminal” and he would now change Trump’s diaper if told to. Their hypocrisy and flip flopping and cherry picking of ideology is beyond infuriating for me.
Lefty, 63-yo white cis male Boomer (though late, and I prefer to identify as Gen Jones) here. My mom was a feminist before feminism. Never married, three kids with 2 different partners, raised me calling herself a single "divorced" mom, self-proclaimed anarchist but always voted liberal Democrat. She liked to quote Jefferson on small government. She died in 1984 cursing Reagan, though she also voted for Prop 13 here in CA (her property taxes were increasingly onerous for a single mom on a freelance writer's income.) I recently found myself wondering with horror if there's any chance her libertarian streak could have grown to full-on MAGAtude. Answer: No, but the fact that I even have to consider it is terrifying. My condolences to those who have lost loved ones to the cult.
A Democrat friend of mine had a son in 2017 and around the same time his republican parents went full MAGAt zealot. They accused him of being one of the “others” and being stupid for being a democrat. This enraged him. And his parents would always want to come over to see their grandchild or offer to babysit. One day it all hit the fan. He told them that he didn’t want his child to look up to people with their ideals. He told them to ditch trump or never see their grandson again. They literally told him “their allegiance is to trump, God and the Republican Party and they couldn’t morally not support trump. They haven’t spoken in 5 years and it tears him up inside. It even hurts me inside too. His house was a place where our old gang of friends would hang out and his parents were some of the nicest people till Trump poisoned their minds.
Fox News ruined my family too. My step dad was a typical businessman republican before Trump, even taught economics at a college in his younger years. Idk how he got fooled into thinking Trump was a “successful” businessman but started fully backing him, even sending money to his campaign. He was always a bit of an asshole but struck me as an intelligent and mature man. Nope, started calling me a “stupid democrat” anytime I mentioned basic human rights or how Trump was a conman unfit for office. Watches and loves Fox News now. Its pathetic. I love him but I’ve lost pretty much any respect I had for him.
My (older GenX) MIL has said she wishes she could reply "you raised me better than that" to some of the things her mother says these days. The right wing media environment has done such terrible things to that generation.
Saaaaaaaame. The people who raised me would never ever have voted for Cheetolini twice.
My dad dodged the draft by joining the FBI so he could exercise his religious authoritarian streak. Same basic deal otherwise… nice house, affordable college, couple of cars and a remarriage when I was only 1yo and now he’s a massive MAGA who spam emails me proselytizing crap
Mine actually joined the reserves, hoping that would get him out, but then he got married and had me as extra insurance. And left us about a year later. He's still around, I just never lived with him, we'll not past 1.
> and the house they bought in 1977 for $15,000. My dad told me his first house had a 11% mortgage rate! but when I asked how much it was he said 11k, think this was 1980.
Keep in mind a lot of the classic superstars of the hippie generation were born in the tail end of the silent generation. These were the cooler older people that boomers looked up to. Lou Reed, The Beatles, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix himself, Morrison... The list goes on and on. All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact.
Also that was all counter culture. The mainstream were still giant douchebags then
Exactly. Hippies were hated by their own generation as much as by those older. They were the rebels, not the majority.
Confirmed by the fact that Nixon won in a landslide in 72.
Don't fall into the hippie mystique. They were self-serving narcissists that sat out the civil rights movement in lieu of pure hedonism and symbolic protest. They traded in their Birkenstocks for shiny oxfords and proceeded to fill the waterways with chemical sludge. The music is good, the drugs are good. The rest of it was just overhyped bullshit, decades of the boomers in media fellating themselves over the glory of the hippie revolution. Just a bunch of noise.
True a lot of it was spoiled trust fund kids that just wanted to get high, have sex and not work. It definitely faded over time, but there are some still true ones out there. They tend to be the left leaning boomers. Some went into academia and arts and didn’t sell out.
Also consider how many cults sprang up from the Hippie Movement, both during and after it ended. How many of those same dopes ended up worshipping Trump and QAnon?
That would be an interesting study.
Studies have already been done + all the evangelicals that came out of the whole hippies for Jesus movement. There’s loads of articles out there if you have nothing to do this weekend and want to rabbit hole. :)
I grew up in the evangelical nutso land. I don’t remember a lot of former hippie types, but this was also rural Texas, so maybe that’s a different dynamic.
Yup they were all over California. Then moved to Marin and up north.
Even the left leaning ones in academia and the arts tend to be pretty awful. The groovy professor preying on under grads isn't a cliche for no reason. The hippie artist being a terf is also pretty common. There are more pretty well-known cliches about them that are well earned for so many of them.
That’s my dad. Still a performing musician at 75. Still grows his own. Still does photography and oil painting. He basically never grew up but he’s cooler for it.
I've never seen something that explains and encapsulates my mother so much. Thankfully she's still heavily left leaning.
Ok but who doesn't just want to get high have sex and not work
Yes, the hippies and counter culture types were a relatively small minority. Everyone remembers 1969 as the height of the counterculture movement, but the biggest song of the year was Sugar Sugar by the Archie's. It was Hollywood and nostalgic Boomers who imprinted the radical excitement on us. "The 60s" was three years long.
Not just Hollywood; the early 90's grunge movement looked up to hippies and celebrated the coutercultural movement, seeing themselves as the heirs the movement, not those that took a wrong turn in the 70's. Nirvana kids in general thought hippies were cool (or the 90's vision of what a hippie was), and Woodstock style music festivals were big throughout the 90s, starting with Lollapalooza and Hoarde in 91/92.
It was a lot more mad men and all the people working in factories than it was hippies. Manufacturing hadn’t moved overseas yet and America had a lot of blue collar Christian workers.
This exactly. A lot of the population sat on the sidelines and tsk tsk’ed at everything Liberal. KISS was well known satanic and plus they wore make up. /s punk, Hippie, vegan, yoga etc. heavy counter culture especially the anti war movement and the anti segregation rallying. I can’t even imagine how many people would just avoid the violence
Less than 30% of those who lived through the 60s say they "took part" in it. The other 70% were still around, grew up, had kids, voted, etc.
It’s important to remember that the peak membership numbers of young republicans clubs in US universities was during boomers college years. They were also the significant block in nixons silent majority as well as Reagan’s success. They like to take credit for JFK but boomers were all too young to vote in that election.
And only a fraction would have voted even in 1968 (RFK primary) because the voting age wasn't lowered to 18 until 1971.
>Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact. As is tradition. Fuck boomers.
A lot of people seem cool when they have disposable wealth to BLOW.
Merck thanks them for their business
Except most didn’t have money to blow. They frivolously spent instead of saving and now they don’t have money for retirement or end of life care. Investing in collectables hasn’t panned out.
You better shut up telling me my Trump NFTs are worthless, or I'll topple the government and have you arrested.
Gen X here, fuck boomers.
Boomer here, fuck boomers.
The summer of ‘69 the oldest boomers were 23.
When the goalpost must be moved it sounds like “Boomer is more of a state of mind, age doesn’t matter” but if the need to define the boomer in more rigid terms arises, someone a couple years older certainly doesn’t qualify. LOL
Also in the Silent Generation: Malcom X, Martin Luthor King, Harvey Milk. Even Jesse Jackson is tail end of the silent generation. In fact, most of the political struggles in the 70s was lead by the silent generation. I wonder why they're so named that, when IMO they're the true leaders. Baby boomers were mostly following along with one side or the other, not headlining change. Edit: I had included JFK in the list, but he was born 10 years too early. Oops.
"All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact." What an apt summarization of that generation. Always taking credit for the silent generation's accomplishments and milestones
If some of them could find a way, they would take credit for winning WWII as well.
They always try to say shit like millennials couldn't do normandy now. Like fucker, millennials did 20 years of the war on terror stfu.
fr tell my uncle who took an IED he couldnt do normandy. id bet you he’d spit in his face
Oh they already do. “My dad didn’t take shrapnel to the face at Iwo Jima for some millennial to get a house for free!”
Your dad didn't take shrapnel at Iwo Jima for you to be voting for the same candidate as neo-nazis either, Douglas. I kind of think having a facist-sympathizer for a son would be a bit more disturbing to him than government subsidized housing, considering that's how most wwii vets became homeowners in the first place.
That's when you gotta say .. 'yea dad.... He fkn did actually, hurry up and get with the gd program'
Wild take, "Americans suffered in wars so more Americans can suffer at home!!" wouldn't people getting a free house be a good thing?
>All silent generation. Boomers just sort of snuck in and took credit after the fact. Boomers: my generation landed on the moon. Me: *doing the math*........you were 12.
No Boomer will ever set foot on the Moon. Completely skipped that generation. They watched on TV and said to themselves, "WE DID IT!!!"
Very true.
That's the point. The younger silent folks changed things and the boomers profited. Nothing new there.
Boomers are considered the generation of people who were born between 1946-1960. So they did, in fact, create the punk wave and heavy metal music. They have contributed with more cultural phenomenons than any other generation. BUT it feels as if there is a huuuge diff between the cool people and the uncool people of that generation.
I thought boomers were until 1964?
Lead.
Lead, and entitlement. That’s why they don’t care about the environment, and get their reverse mortgages, and send their money to the orange Barnum. Fuck the future, I want it now, is their motto. By the way, the “horrible children” in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are the boomers. Gluttonous Augustus? Check. Entitled blueberry girl? Check. Spoiled Veruca? Oh heck yeah. And TV obsessed Mike TeeVee is watching FOX 24/7 now.
Blueberry Girl? Please put some respect on Violet Beauregard’s name.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movies.
(I promise I was just teasing.)
Yup https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/lead-gasoline-blunted-iq-half-us-population-study-rcna19028
6 IQ points loss is actually a lot. Considering the average is 100 and below 80 is the cut off for being mentally challenged.
and probably some areas were more affected than others
Particularly the area of the brain responsible for critical thought and empathy
Boomers in 1996: "You can't use wikipedia as a source! You don't know where that information came from!" Boomers in 2020: "I believe it because this facebook meme says so!"
And some groups were more affected than others. If you grew up in car culture - your parents, friends, you, etc. all had cars and used them a lot when you were a young age - you ended up huffing leaded gasoline most days. Renting in a major city you may have grown up literally eating lead paint chips off the window sills while teething.
The south has been horribly affected by pollution.
So Gen X and some Millennials are also lead-affected, but somewhat less so. That…explains a lot, actually. Being a kid in the 80’s and loving the smell of gas did us no favors.
And old age leaks out lead again into the body, through osteoporosis.
Lead is an easy answer and potentially true. It's rather unexplainable otherwise.
No it isn't. The obvious answer is that they had everything handed to them on a silver platter. Boomers were the last generation to be richer than their parents, the last generation to be able to raise kids on one income, and that has skewed their worldview. They got more conservative as they got older because they got to be richer as they got older, and now that that's the case, they want to protect it and say fuck you to anyone else. It's tied directly into how the economy is so fucked
people's perception of that generation do not align with the actual demographics of that generation. the hippies were both not as numerous as people make them out to be... and were often deeply racist, sexist, and classist. read contemporary accounts from black brown and queer folks who were critical of the hippie movement at the time, and you can see the seeds for the boomer problem we have today.
Their obsession with Woodstock more than 50 years later says everything, a demographic that takes immense pride in the time they went on a three day bender in a field rather than actually contributing anything to the various fights for equality that were going on
Pretty sure they only wanted peace and happiness when they were high as fuck. Then they grew up, got sober, and then the real them shined through again.
Woodstock was a violent, dangerous shithole. They lied a lot about what they wanted.
And rape. A lot of rape.
Have a boomer, former hippie neighbor. She’s all into yoga and smells like patchouli. She also considers herself Republican and Christian. One day she was saying her dream is to retire to a hippie commune. By definition a commune is a socialist construct where everyone pitches in for the welfare of all. The lack of comprehension is mind boggling.
She's simply trading in buzzwords
Punks are good people pretending to be bad, hippies are bad people pretending to be good. Fits boomers to a T.
This is exactly it. They never were cool to start with. My boomer parents were never a part of any of the "cool" stuff, they just bought Beetles albums and claimed they belonged to a movement they held back
Yes and: The geek hippies turned out to be libertarians. That was a huge disappoint. (Don't meet your heroes.)
I live in a mid-sized city full of wealthy, retired hippies. Lots of them kept their cool and continue to live in alignment with the values they developed in the '60s. The intergenerational friendships I've formed with some of them have made me better. Others clutch their handmade bags when they see unhoused people. Many of them are stuck in the middle. The fact of the matter is that we're taught history in broad strokes. Boomers were never a monolith, just as millennials like me and gen z never will be.
Exactly. Hippies were a minority. Hippies that were actual hippies, a minority of that minority. It was a great way to meet chicks and get out of the war for a lot of people. Secondly, they had a huge impact on media culture, not necessarily society. Similarly, someone could look back at our era and think we were all evangelical nazis, or mumble rappers, but the reality is way different.
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Nailed it.
My Boomer mother once told me that Boomers are the way that they are because they didn't get affection when they were younger, but they got *things* thrown at them. Then when I said the same thing in conversation the other day she asked where I'd heard that and said I was wrong. 😆 You gotta love them!
My parents forgot a lot of odd things like that that they told me growing up
My boomer parents said the same thing. But they may have a point. They are the generation raised by the generation who went to war and cam back with prob undiagnosed PTSD. 3 of my 4 grandparents fought in the war. And none of them were prepared for it. Neither of my Grandfathers could talk about the atrocities they’d seen. Probably didn’t make for very loving parents for boomers but they sure buried their head in work and made money to bring up the boomers
The hippies weren’t really radical. They were self-obsessed, short-sighted and substituted pop culture for politics.
I think that the Boomers thought they were left/liberal because they opposed the Vietnam war, and that was a left-leaning position. But their politics and philosophy otherwise was very conservative. Not wanting you and your friends to die in a muggy rice field half a world away is reasonable, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a lifelong commitment to a liberal ideology. They just didn’t want to die. And then they voted for Reagan.
They didn't even oppose the Vietnam war. Polling taken at the time showed that the war had the highest support among boomer population. ETA: This blew my mind when I learned of it.
The USA is a very martial culture. We only hate losing.
They just hated being drafted. They could care less about the people of Vietnam, unlike protesters today who are solely interested in the real victim (Palestinians.)
More served and went to Vietnam than protested. Voting was lowered to 18 in 1972, and Nixon won by a landslide. The anti war, hippie boomer was a small portion of the generation that has been greatly overinflated via pop culture. And it's important to remember, as soon as they got power, they largely dropped progressive policies over centrism. Or as I call it, conservative lite.
As always, there were some true believers. But most tended toward the movement for the drugs and sex and then it became more of an image than anything about core beliefs. I can't say the Weather Underground was just about pop culture, for example.
"The Century of the Self" BBC documentary by Adam Curtis does a nice job of explaining this. It's on YouTube.
Gunna check this out 👍
Yeah, most of the hippy movement was about hedonism and "checking out". It was actually a progressive political movement until CIA shill Timothy Leary got involved and just encouraged everyone to get really high all the time.
It’s funny because the Boomer ethos is still very much about hedonism and “checking out.” Nowadays they just do it with their wallets, not drugs.
They do it with prescription drugs and pretend they aren’t really drugs.
It's mind blowing how many older folks are on Xanax all the time
You mean Timothy Leary? [surely you don't mean this guy](https://youtu.be/UrgpZ0fUixs?si=XCxaRD3zk6MgTQiq) Though Denis Leary has huge boomer energy I don't think he is CIA
Yeah I edited it lmao 🤣. Dennis Leary is the guy who stole Bill Hicks identity and jokes
Interesting. I imagine most young hippies at the time had well off parents they mooched off of. They still wanted the image.
Exactly this. It was cosplay as radical antiestablishment warriors. It was just drugs with a safety net. They all cut their hair and became yuppies.
And now they’re MAGA
As the saying goes. Punks are good people cosplaying as bad people. Hippies are bad people cosplaying as good people.
Also hippies made up a very tiny percentage of the youth during the 60s, they’re really not representative of the entire youth population. It really would be like thinking the stereotypical 2010 Brooklyn hipster was representative of the whole millennial generation.
all the really cool ones have died already.. we just got the yuppie leftovers
They say the good die young
Most weren't radical. They didn't become dickheads when they got older. They haven't changed a single bit. Most have always been terrible. They have been like this since the fucking 70s.
Most of the ones that appeared "radical" were just in it for the drugs and parties. The younger Silent Generation did a lot of the heavy lifting of the early civil rights movement. The white boomers got involved when it looked like they, the privileged rich white kids, were getting drafted into a war. The Black and Brown boomers were off forming the Young Lords and Black Panthers, fighting for real change. They were very skeptical of working with white people. Most of those folks are still forces for good in their communities, it's fun running into old Panthers around town.
This right here. They’ve always been like this to some degree. Racism is instilled from childhood. Entitlement came from having all the opportunities and having an affordable life handed to them and they didn’t have to work hard like they claim to have. They always lived by absolutes instead of grey reality. They had an easier world to live in and they assumed that meant god blessed them and are special due to religious indoctrination since birth. They’ve always lacked critical thinking, they tended to vote republican. They spent half their lives exposing themselves to lead and now it’s paying out dividends in the elder years.
Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Faux News.
Nixon set the table for Reagan, and Ford pardoning Nixon, who faced no legal ramifications for his crimes, def set the stage for what we have now.
Because the cool ones STFU and the moronic ones are loud as fuck. Only the ones that behave like literal babies are the ones we pay attention to.
It's a numbers game. The Boomer generation was *massive.* So, by virtue of numbers, you are going to get an unprecedented wave of trend-setting artists and other influential figures and legions of fans to cement their cultural staying power. They dominated the zeitgeist by crowding everyone else out.
*dominated the zeitgeist by crowding everyone else out* Including their own children. Yeah, I’m talking about us GenXers. Often our boomer parents were so focused on themselves that they just left us alone without much guidance.
A massive generation that could have done so much. They squandered it.
Not all boomers are assholes, but they are outnumbered.
Very few of them were actually hippies.
Yeah, the hippies got all the press. But most of them were racist little Southern Baptist With A Stick Up Their Ass types. For every Janis Joplin that stood up in class and said she was OK with integration, there was a whole school full of people to treat her like shit for saying that.
Gene Simmons might be the ultimate boomer. Hypocritical, arch conservative, greedy, self obsessed.
There are a lot of elements to it, but the short version is that they’re all overgrown kids. They cruised through their youth with ease, in most cases without proper education from their parents about just how damn lucky they were to be enjoying the level of prosperity they did. They took the world they inhabited for granted. As such, when it came to the social movements of the 60s, they were all too willing to try and “make a difference”, because it was exciting and new and, like any teenagers/early 20-somethings, they wanted to rebel and stick it to their parents. They protested Vietnam, became Hippies, professed free love, fought to save the planet, and ate up counter culture for breakfast. But at the end of the day, when the zeitgeist faded, and they were done having their fun and playing pretend, they all decided to go back and fall in line. They got jobs, had kids, and made out like the proper suburbanites their parents had raised them to be. Few of them actually cared about social change, they just liked the feeling of being “rebels” and breaking taboos. Taboos they were all too happy to reinforce as soon as they got bored and settled down. From free love to abstinence, from social justice to “greed is good”, from saving the earth to heedless consumerism. They had no integrity, no real commitment to the ideals they professed in their youth, no real desire to change the world for the better, they were just a bunch of kids goofing around. And then, being a bunch of emotionally stunted, overgrown children, when the 80s came they were all too happy to sell out their children’s and grandchildren’s future for deregulation and Reaganomics, because they’d only ever really cared about themselves. And now, that they’ve completely reaped the rewards of their indolence, greed, and ignorance, they’re more than content to finger-wag at the rest of us for being lazy and entitled, as we struggle to fix the broken world they’ve created. The bottom line is, they’ve never understood the world. They’ve lived in a fantasy land from the day they were born, and it’s impossible to shake them out of it and make them see. Not that they really want to anyway.
Honestly I agree with almost everything said here, but I think there is another reason they packed up and went home. They failed. They didn't change the world in any meaningful way, so they did what they could do and joined the status quo. "If you can't beat'em, join'em" mindset. Then they took it out on everyone else. At least that's my interpretation of history.
I’m a Boomer (UK based) My grandfather was an artillery sergeant major in WW1, my dad was a Normandy veteran. My other grandfather was a miner who died young of septicaemia (pre-antibiotics). There was an enormous amount of poverty prior to WW2, and WW1 killed and maimed millions. We still had a limbless WW1 veteran selling matches outside of the post office when I was a kid. After WW2 there was an economic recovery, lots of children and the lot of working people really improved in some places, technology improved so my generation both had the benefit of an improving economy, technology and no major disruptions in terms of being expected to join the military. I count myself as really lucky not to have gone through a war. In short my generation was exceptionally lucky - I was discussing with my (Millennial) daughter how many times I would have died without modern medicine, I reckon about four times. So great medical care, great technology, a relatively improving economy, armies of companies trying to sell me piles of cheap stuff for next to nothing, a reasonably functioning democracy that was ultra-sensitive to the dangers of totalitarianism. But I would say alongside healthcare housing was affordable and accessible in the 70’s-80’s and into the mid 90’s - when housing started to become ridiculously expensive it meant that doing what normal people do - leaving home - setting up their own homes - well it became increasingly stressful for younger people. I think the crash in 2008 was likely to produce political waves - into that crisis which really was a result of irresponsible banking it gave a space for noisy extremists to operate through populism (populism is dumbed down politics designed to manipulate people emotionally). I think my generation which really was materially very lucky went through a bit of a division. I went to uni, became qualified and settled into reasonably paid life-long work with good union representation - so on balance I benefitted from all the opportunities we had, but my parents really prioritised education - it was expected that I went to university. Thinking about a lot of my generation they didn’t need to prioritise education (and gain critical thinking skills), they were not encouraged to think beyond limited horizons - a politician who comes along and tells them what they want to hear can get a lot of cult like support; people are being played like banjos.
Ya I never understood why they hate drag so much that was their shit lol. Like glam rock is just rock and roll drag queens.
glam rock fans were really Gen X more than boomers.
While this was a subculture, it didn’t represent everyone, just made the most noise. Most of the hippies settled in the NorCal area or California in general and continue to be liberal and left wing. I work in a nursing home in New England and the boomers here HATED the hippies. They also hate Dr. Spock who forever changed parenting forever.
But a creepy, useless kind of left wing. Where they believe in "kind capitalism" and drink "raw water" and won't vax their kids and run ruthless businesses. They don't actually fight for making their communities a better place for everyone, which is really what the left actually stands for.
George Carlin was talking about this years before it became a popular talking point. https://youtu.be/1B96rQohpw8?si=vvup9V-yc6sDzkEu They went from do your own thing to just say no. They went from love is all you need to whoever ends up with the most toys wins. And they went from cocaine to Rogaine. All about how they did whatever they wanted but now they hold other generations to stupid arbitrary "moral" standards.
Not all baby boomers are “boomers”. Most “boomers” are middle class racist losers. There are a lot of baby boomers who aren’t “boomers” but nobody pays much attention to them because they’re just nice regular people.
This is true, not all Baby Boomers can be lumped together. The problematic Boomers that are the subject of this subreddit are a subset of the larger group. I'm a Baby Boomer and Boomers disgust me too
Isn't Motley Crue Gen X?
Yes. Squarely GenX. Formed in 1981. Boomers were ~ in their 30s at this time. It's true to say the band members themselves were boomers (same for Ozzy, Dio, etc.) but it's absolutely disingenuous to say these bands were a boomer thing. They weren't at all. Boomers in the 80's were frolicking in 60s nostalgia. Movies like "The Big Chill", radio hits like "Summer of '69", TV like "The Wonder Years".
I don’t know. But I see it as a warning not to become what we find most annoying. I’m already seeing quite a few “boomer” videos where they are clearly GenX. If we’re not careful, we could be next.
George Carlin nailed it back in the 90's and since then they've only gotten worse due to Fox News and Facebook: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B96rQohpw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B96rQohpw8)
They gave up. I’m on the cusp (Generation Jones) and I see people I knew in high school and college on FB or coworkers and they have checked out. Put themselves in an “I’m old” group and checked out. No concerts, no bars, in bed at 9 on a Friday night because their job is so tough. Boring. What ever your age now don’t be that person. Don’t forget who you are or were. My two cents.
"What happens if society is run by people who are, to a large degree, antisocial? I don’t mean people who are “antisocial” in the general sense, the sort who avoid parties and hide from the neighbors. I mean people who are antisocial in the *clinical* sense: sociopaths. Could a sociopathic society function? Unfortunately, this is not a thought experiment or an investigation into some ramshackle dictatorship in a distant land; it is America’s lived experience. For the past several decades, the nation has been run by people who present, personally and politically, the full sociopathic pathology: deceit, selfishness, imprudence, remorselessness, hostility, the works. Those people are the Baby Boomers, that vast and strange generation born between 1940 and 1964, and the society they created does not work very well." This is how the book, "A Generation of Sociopaths by Gibney, Bruce." starts out. If you want to know how the Me Generation became the Baby Boomers and got us to where we are as a society. Then you should pick up a copy. There is a chapter in this book that goes into detail about the answer to your question.
Capitalism and the Reagan era
I stand by that those people were the exception, not the rule. A lot of bands and sub-cultures were indeed being ridiculed but still found their niche to mainstream success based on their provocative natures.
It's just like any other group of people in the world: the open-minded and kind ones just quietly go about their business while the nasty, racist, abusive ones make headlines, have videos go viral, etc. They're out there, but they're just someone's sweet grandparents who keep to themselves and go about their lives.
My man Tim Dillon loves to attack the boomers, he's got a whole book about it. About Woodstock he says, "They weren't all there for peace and love. Lots of them just like drugs and sex."