JFK

BOOMERANGST: X Marks Their Spot

By Roy Trakin

The reason clichés and stereotypes exist is because they tend to be true, though it does blind you to the exception that manages to put the lie to generalities. As fiftysomethings living in 2008, we hold certain truths to be self-evident. It was historian George Santayana who famously said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I don’t know who was the first to warn, “Be careful what you wish for,” but both fortune-cookie proverbs seem to address generational issues raised by last week’s election results.

My daughter, a freshman at UC Davis who voted for the first time, called on the night of the election, where her classmates were gathered in her dorm room watching the returns on TV and celebrating the kind of moment even I was too young to appreciate back when Kennedy edged Nixon, thanks to his bootlegging dad’s ability to steal Chicago from the GOP in cahoots with then-Mayor Richard Daly.

It was a triumph for the first cyber-election, one in which texting, e-mail, social community and bloggers helped usher in this most remarkable event, and I’m all for giving credit where it’s due. That’s when I happened upon Heading Right! a political blog for “Republican, Conservative and Libertarians,” featuring the story “Beyond 2008: The Bono-Obama Generation,” by one Miss Lizzy, who argues rather pointedly that it’s time to run the Boomers out of the corridors of DC power and presumably herd them into Wild in the Streets-style holding camps in Boca, though she does insist it’s just those in government she’s after. Lizzy points to her X contemporaries as the ones who gave us YouTube and Google, blaming Clinton and the Boomers for everything from Rwandan genocide and the Iraqi war to their obsession with materialism. I admire Miss Lizzy’s youthful ardor and enthusiasm, and I applaud her generation’s desire to have their own political heroes alongside the likes of Martin, Abraham and John, but the world goes in cycles… ashes to ashes, dust to dust, mortage payment to mortgage payment.

Is there an alternative to falling in love, marrying, establishing a career, having children, buying a house, putting your kids through college, living your life out with your family around you? Of course there is. No one’s forcing you to marry, or even have kids, to pretend you have an ideal life. Maybe we Boomers were a little too materialistic--we certainly started out with ideals of peace and love, but in retrospect, maybe we were too naïve. I know I was. Now  I wonder if I made a mistake following my pop culture muse to my current Boomerangst state, rather than going to law school.

Maybe you X, Y, Millennials and Echo Boomers can do it better. I hope you can. Just remember, though, no matter how much you try not to, you eventually turn into your parents. That’s just the way it is. So, don’t ignore the past. It offers clues as to what to expect in the future. And be careful what you wish for….because it could very well come true.