Let's Talk About the "Boomers"

I'm basing my comments[in part[ on a Timcast discussion about different generations, including boomers with regard to[current] voting and ideology.

My parents were members of the greatest generation.

Dad fought in WII mainly in the African theater while mom waited back in her childhood hometown-they planned to get married when-and if-he came back. i think that's why they postponed their wedding day. They wanted to be sure he came home and they were working on a ranch style house of their own to set up when they got married.

They lived through so much, from WII to the Great Depression. Dad grew up dirt poor. Mom was part of family that fared a little better. The two of them made incredible sacrifices before and during all of their married life of 60 plus years.

[Yes, people stayed married then].

Like all parents of every generation they wanted to give their own children a better life than the one they had.

Thank you dad for giving me a very happy childhood.One that you couldn't even imagine.

We had lots of friends in our neighborhood and i believe i could say the same for them.

We were't rich by any means but we never wanted for anything. It was the time when i first became aware of an American president. He was popular and a Democrat.The presidency was being referred to as Camelot. The economy was good. Homes were being built. Dad brought home our first television set. i remember the scariest day of of my life. It caught on fire.

I still to this day don't know why but i would have to guess it was cheaply made. You didn't buy anything on credit in those days. You had to save up and pay cash.

Whenever they wanted to update the house it took them years. We had a plastic bank for pennies.When it was full dad would break it open and count.

Mom sewed most of my clothes. She was a remarkable seamstress.Toys/entertainment included a slinky, a hula hoop, a transistor radio and a bike.THe games were Monopoly (too long)and my favorite, Scrabble.You were grounded by being forced to stay in the house. Torture.

Yes, kids even got spankings. The worst thing you could do was 'talk back" to mom. You didn't cross that line more than once.

We hung out with our friends all day long and when the street lights started to come on, it was time go in.

We did our homework, respected our teachers and went to Mass on Sundays. Everyone went to church whichever church it was and the main stores & business were closed. There were a handful that were open but you could count them on one hand.

Dad took us to the newsstand after Mass. There we had our pick of comic books. Next, he picked up donuts from our local bakery. The aroma was killer. I just had to have the legion of super heroes. Superman, Superboy,Supergirl, Krypto (a super dog)... the Flash, Aquaman et al .The whole lineup.

In the afternoon it might be time for our Sunday drive around the country side.Mom said dad always picked the worst roads-he did.

The common thread among all the kids was a 2 parent household.Who doesn't remember those infamous words, "wait till your father gets home" ? Now when we think about divorce the fist words that come to mind are no fault and prenup agreement. When i was growing up the word most associated was rare and almost non existent .Prenup would have sounded crazy to me. We knew divorces happened-out there somewhere- but not to any of the families in our town. I think i speak for most families at the time. Seems like divorce was relegated to Hollywood and the latest sleazy scandal out there.

Thank you mom. Thank you dad. Thank you to all the wonderful childhood friends. Thank you to all the playground monitors we had in the summertime. Thank you to our teachers and the great education we were blessed with.

Then our childhood ended and our whole world changed in 1964.

It was not all peace and love. There were 4 assassinations. John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy (whom i planned on voting for), Martin Luther King and Malcom X.

We had a draft and people we knew went off to Vietnam or were holding their breathe they might be next.

It was the 1st wave of the radicals in the Weather Underground aka Weathermen and Black Panthers.

i had little to no interest in politics; other than we voted and were Democrats. They lowered the voting age to 18. I had my heart set on Robert Kennedy because he was young, a Kennedy and a Democrat.

It didn't require any more criteria than that.Policy? What was that? I was not a deep thinker.

I was a pacifist[probably didn't even know what the term meant] and opposed the war in Vietnam. It was going on too long with no end in sight.

i never joined an organized group or protest but i did team up with a friend to pass out anti war articles on college campuses.Eventuallly, i headed back home, the war ended and my interest in anything political waned again.i know my interest was more in the friend that i found than our anti war 'activity" (if you can call it that). For me it was music, music, music followed by fun,fun,fun.

So let's discuss the boomer generation but let's be honest about it.Let's not romanticize our past.

There was some good that came of it and some terrible.

We were definitely ungrateful for the previous generation. Remember the slogan, "Don't trust anyone over 30"? Think about that one for a minute.

I was a registered Democrat after high school, after the war,after he summer of love, after Woodstock.

Now the issue of our lifetime came up. I don't know why as we always understood abortion was wrong-it was illegal for good reason. A war you could argue over. Abortion was killing a baby .Abortion was a mother killing her own baby.

The Democrat party had to be reconsidered. The boomer generation was pathetic. My parents would be shocked to see where it has gone.

I voted Trump 3x.No regrets.He sent our military into Iran to take out their nuclear platform. I supported this 100%. Majorie Taylor Green wrote a long message on X. I strongly disagree with her opposition to Trump's decision. We'll take that up in the next entry and explain why.

the battle against principalities and powers

Note: i was not a saint because i opposed abortion. In fact i was not only young and dumb i was what was known as a 'free spirit'. The journey to sanity would take more years than i care to count.Again, i have to thank mom and dad and the good teachers of our Catholic grade school. You can chuck the values you were taught out the window but they're ingrained enough to stir in you one day. For me, the first epiphany was the atrocity of abortion sold as a choice, sometimes a right.