Easy Rider was an iconic 60’s movie. One line of dialogue by the hero encapsulates those “Baby Boomers” who give my whole generation a bad name.
“We blew it.”
We were spawned and raised by the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ who lived through the Depression and WWII. Somewhere along the line the values that enabled that generation to survive those hardships were lost on many Boomers.
Growing up, we had unprecedented opportunities. A thriving economy enabled us to become whatever we wanted to be. I went to college (working my way through, and on the GI Bill), while my brother went to trade school and into our father’s plumbing business. For many years, he earned more in that trade than I did with my law degree.
But those opportunities spoiled the Boomer ‘elites’. They attended college on daddy’s dime without having to work, affording them time to pursue sex and drugs while impressing each other with sophomoric erudition about politics, philosophy and their own brilliance. When the ‘Greatest Generation’ got us into Vietnam, some of us served in the military, while the elites protested. But not for the noble reasons with which they deluded themselves.
As former Clinton administration official Paul Begala wrote in Esquire in 2017,
“[T]he reality is that most campuses did not become hotbeds of unrest until the Boomers’ precious butts were at risk as the Vietnam War escalated. They didn’t want to end the war because they were bothered by working-class kids being blown apart; if they had been, they wouldn’t have spat on those working-class kids when they came home from Vietnam, or tried to make heroes out of the Communists who were trying to kill them…
The same Boomer elites who hid in classrooms to avoid Vietnam while poor and minority kids got shot at, used their elite education in the eighties to lay off the folks who got shot at and survived. … No more of this hippie, sixties, share-the-wealth crap now, fellow Boomers… it’s every man for himself!”
After college elites insinuated themselves into our education system, which they dominated as “experts” based on their education degrees. That’s funny! It was common knowledge during my college days that an “education” degree is what you got when other majors — no matter how easy — were too tough.
Public schools gave these “educators” jobs where teacher unions fostered and protected their ineptitude. So it’s no surprise that over the next 40 years, under the elites influence, public schools deteriorated into what they’ve become.
We have barely literate high school graduates who can’t do the rudimentary math necessary to work behind a counter without a cash register to calculate change for them. But they’ll preach to us about which gender pronouns to use.
Public schools no longer educate children. Government bureaucracies cause more problems than they solve. It’s no coincidence that those are careers to which elites gravitated. They are reminiscent of the commune farmers in Easy Rider trying to raise crops in a desert without rain. Impractical idealism blinds them to real world facts of life, with predictable failed results.
Boomer elites “blew it”! Having been handed the world on a platter, without having to earn it, they passed on a distorted work ethic to their own children, who in turn had none for their kids. Now a majority of Gen-Z aspire to being a “social influencer” as an occupation.
Elite Boomers “blew it” by begetting a society that encourages narcissism. The media elevated self-absorbed elites to hero status, proclaiming them the face of the Boomer generation — which only stoked their egos. Elites passed their inflated self-image to succeeding generations which now have what Bill Maher describes as a whole new “level of narcissism”…
The reputations of Boomers who weren’t elites; who worked our way through college, or went on the GI Bill; or didn’t attend college at all but pursued trades and other career paths, are forever tainted by elites. “Boomer” has become a derogatory term directed at my entire generation because of the conduct of the elites who comprise only a fraction of us.
Now the children and grandchildren of non-elites are the parents fighting the elite’s legacy for control of public schools. Those parents are considered “domestic terrorists” by an elite Boomer President and Attorney General for doing much less than elites themselves did during their Vietnam protest days.
Once again, Boomer elites are “blowing it.”
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.