Of Boom and Bust

A group of Baby Boomers of my acquaintance were recently lamenting among themselves at how far we had fallen short, as a generation, from accomplishing the kind of changes we intended back in the Sixties. One felt that the powers that be turned out to be too well entrenched. Another suggested “I’d feel guilty only if we hadn’t tried.”

As a Boomer myself, I see it rather differently. I'm not sure what we Boomers could have accomplished that we haven't, in terms of our objectives at the time. We are the powers that be now, even if we weren’t then.

Where have we failed?

We ended segregation.
We ended the Vietnam War, short of an American victory.
Feminism has become the received wisdom. It is dangerous now even to challenge its assumptions.
Environmentalism has become conventional wisdom.
We closed down the nuclear plants, and ended nuclear testing in the West.
The sexual revolution has become the accepted norm, even if there is still some grumbling among the religious. But remember, in 1960, being at least nominally religious was the norm. Now, they are an embattled minority.
Marcusian relativism and the assumptions of the "new left" have become the establishment position, if a bit less than a consensus.
Greater awareness of non-Western cultures has become mainstream.
Rock and roll are here to stay.
Everywhere, in every field and profession, baby boomers are now in power: Tony Blair, George Bush, Stephen Harper.
Paul McCartney, Elton John, even Mick Jagger are knights of the realm. You don't get more establishment than that.
With this, and our demographic heft, the world is necessarily just about as we wanted it.

Some might argue that Bush and Harper, though Baby Boomers themselves, do not represent the ideals of the Sixties as just cited.

I would argue, though, that in terms of the time, the differences are pretty marginal. Clinton, also a Baby Boomer, was probably more representative than Bush, but the differences among them are matters of nuance. All would certainly oppose segregation and speak only praise of Martin Luther King Jr. All would endorse feminism in principle, insist they are better environmentalists then the next guy, and, I think, agree that the US should not have been in Vietnam. Blair used to have his own rock and roll band. All would publicly accept without criticism, if not actively endorse, the reality of the sexual revolution, and would avoid any public comments condemning, say, out-of-wedlock mothers, or insisting that abstinence is the proper thing outside of marriage.

The one clear split I see from the list of principles given is that Harper and Bush would reject Marcusian relativism and the views of the New Left--postmodernism. I think Blair would too.

But that probably represents the views of many other Baby Boomers as well, including myself, who have come to the conclusion since the Sixties that we really were not right about everything, and our ancestors were not actually total idiots.

And we probably also forget that we Baby Boomers of the Sixties represented a far more diverse set of views than we commonly see today. It might have been the decade of Marcuse and the New Left, but it was also the decade of the Jesus Freaks, the Hare Krishnas, and the Moonies. Some of us even hoped specifically for it to become a spiritual revival. It was in part a reaction to the mechanistic and materialist views of the Fifties.

For my money, that's the one thing we definitely got right. And the one thing we did not pull off, or haven't yet.

So why are my friends so sure they have failed? It seems to go without saying--they do not outline how or in what areas we failed.

Perhaps, it always seemed to me, the whole thing was based on a preconception of necessary failure. As Romanticism commonly is. It is hard ever to declare a victory if your motto is, as the Who put it, “Hope I die before I get old.” Or, “Never trust anyone over thirty.” Or, "We want the world, and we want it now." Failure seems to me to have been part of the plan from the beginning; which is one reason the Kennedy assassination seemed so seminal.

We have met the enemy, and they is us.