Young end of Boomer political spectrum skews right of the middle

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06025/643601.stm

They staged sit-ins on college campuses, they protested against Vietnam, they grew their hair long, smoked pot, made love not war.

Politically speaking, the baby boomers were liberals, right?

Wrong. There's a whole other group of boomers out there who wouldn't know a love bead if it popped them on the head.

"I don't remember 'The Howdy Doody Show.' I was 10 years old when Woodstock happened," says J. Brad Coker of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research. "And I was in college when Ronald Reagan was elected president."

Timing is everything when discussing baby boomer politics, Mr. Coker argues. The first wave of baby boomers came of age during the 1960s, but the group born after 1954 or 1955 grew up with Watergate, Jimmy Carter and the hostage crisis, and for the most part, became voters during the Reagan presidency.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. The IGMFU syndrome?

[calico1]

2. Yep.

The younger boomers (like me) were too young to really have a grip on Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, etc. And we didn't need abortions in the 60's. This is why I think its easier for younger boomers and gen-x'rs to be more Conservative. They didn't live what others fought to get them and they take so many of their rights for granted. Fortunately, I love history and having a lot of older friends.

[BlueEyedSon]

9. I was thinkin' economically/capitalism-wise

Fuck the poor
Cut my taxes please
Keep the oil flowing for my SUV

[calico1]

11. I agree but it all stems from the same.

If you didn't have on hands experience with knowing what less fortunate people were going though, then its easier to not have any feeling toward them, don't you think? The farther away we get from the 60's the easier it becomes. Until of course the full result of the GOP experiment has its effect.

[BlueEyedSon]

12. I think greed is blinding, 60's experience or not.

[MichiganVote]

13. I disagree. The same young boomers watched or lost family to VietNam,

the tension in families was palpable on a daily basis. To say that they didn't live through VietNam, Civil Rights or the Women's movement underestimates what their experiences brought them and how they framed it. The defining moment between young, mid or older boomers rests within the draft for the war.

[CottonBear]

3. I'm a boomer born in 1963 and I'm a liberal.

I think lots of people my age simply were not paying attention. How could they not remember the Vietnam war on TV every night, Walter Cronkite's reporting on the war, Nixon and Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the ERA, Jimmy Carter, the Iran hostage crisis and the Reagan-Bush October Surprise. My (John Birch Society) dad read two papers each day, watched the evening news and all of the Sunday talk shows and 60 Minutes. I learned to be an informed citizen and voter through his example.

[tularetom]

4. I have 2 kids in that "younger boomer" group

and I have yelled at them until they just turn me off about the direction the country is taking. One has a spouse who has drunk the bush kool aid, the other is totally apolitical although able to see the hypocrisy of pub policies. Neither is going to be able to retire at an early age nor enjoy a secure retirement unless something drastic happens. They'll have to be smacked upside the head to wake up.

[fasttense]

5. I was born in 1957. I saw how Watergate tore the constitution to shreds,

Not to mention tore the country apart into pro-war and anti-war factions, pitting son against father. I saw how Iran decided our election for us during Carter's re-election campaign. I was in the military when Reagan was voted in, though I benefited because they finally raised our pay, I saw how the economy skewed to the wealthy. I saw how most of my pay increases went to paying for Social Security increases, which I thought I would get back.

This guy is full of it. True I was too young to join in Woodstock and the hippy movement but I knew they didn't have the answers anymore than the "Greed is Good" repukes. I can not forget boys dying in Vietnam and girls dying from back-alley abortionists.

If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them.

[Skittles]

6. I could have typed your post word for word

yes INDEED

[fasttense]

10. Thanks skittles. I think Mr. Coker is looking for any reason

to justify this right-wing take over. It is not as simple as he makes it.

[MichiganVote]

14. 1955 and I couldn't agree with you more.

[JHB]

7. I wasn't even the proverbial twinkle in my father's eye when JFK was shot

...but thanks to "Boomer Bracket Creep" I'm still counted as one.

But while tempered by some of the excesses of the real boomers, I've always been a liberal.

And while I do see some points, the article is awfully skimpy on the details and particulars. Rest assured they're plowing an entire forest of nuances under to fit that nifty headline.

[mntleo2]

8. Not Me EVER!

See most of these so-called boomers were sent to college by Mommy and Daddy. They lived in the dorms or frats and liked to pretend they cared when all they wanted was to get into the pants of that cute professor or the frat boy with those wild sideburns.

Many of us cared and were never one of the bourgeoisie college grads just going to a "Be In" for the sole purpose of being "in". Many of us like me actually listened to, believed and were set on fire by the words and deeds of MLK, RFK, Cesar Chavez, and the push for social justice. Then we went out and spent our lives working for it rather than going to wine tasting parties and getting our infants into baby college. For all out labor we now have these morons in power, still buying a bunch of pap because THEY are comfortable and THEY have it, while the ones of us out there on the ground lived in poverty.

Still I would not trade those boomer's empty pathetic lives for anything with all the richness of people and cultures I experienced right in my back yard! I watch the Suits of my generation and just shake my head thinking, "I hope you enjoy your cocktail around your sterile swimming pool ~ alone or with some people who do not give a rat's ass about you. While you are doing that, I am going to have dinner with a Salish elder and listen to his stories around the dinner table with lots of love, laughter, drumming and all her grandchildren running and playing outside..."

Cat In Seattle <---white and proud of it thanks to my African American, Latino, African, Asian, East European friends (and others) who taught me how to love myself for who I am.