I'm sitting here listening to Cat Stevens songs and thinking about my youth, we had such ideals back then, we wanted so much and dreamed so far. World peace, love, brothers and sisters to all. It's with tears in my eyes that I look at what we've become as America totters on the brink of fascism and we are responsible for the death of close to 1,000,000 people in Iraq. We railed and protested against our parents and their generation for being hypocrites, but looking back now they were practically saints compared to what this generation has become. The worst our parents did was fail to live up to the ideals of what America should be, what the boomer generation has done is throw those ideals to the ground and stomp on them as if they were evil.
I'm now old and tired, as old as my mom was when Cat recorded these songs, 3 years older than my dad ever made it to. Oddly enough there is still fire in my belly, rage against the machine. Too bad it's accompanied by nausea. My whole body hurts and I'm tired down to my bones and my beloved Darcy is about to die soon. And Cat Stevens is now a devote Muslim who did not condemn the Ayatolah's death sentence of Salman Rushdie, so much for peace and love.
And on top of that we stand at the brink of world disaster with global warming. It won't lead to the end of mankind but it will lead to world-wide problems like nothing we've ever seen, millions of refugees across the globe, hunger, misery and death for multiple millions of humanity. I fear the future will look at the baby boomer generation and see us as either monsters or insane, maybe both. We all claim Hitler and the Nazis as the worst evil that men can sink to but future generations will put that label on us.
How did this happen? Christians and rich people, the fundamentalists who have tried to ram theocracy down our throats and the neocons who have gladly used them as the means to power. If any good can come from all this it will be if both such groups are reviled and hated for as long as humanity lasts.
2 comments:
I've been running across comments online from people born after the Boomers. They can't wait to see the last of us. I once had an idea for a play to be titled "The Last Boomer on Earth." Like you, I see a tragic if not horrific ending for us all.
On the other hand, it is not pleasant to have to wear the lable "Baby Boomer" just because a bunch of young post-war couples decided to procreate like bunnies. I rebel against it as much as possible. Actually, I was born too soon -- I have much more in common with the Punk generation than the Hippies.
It's still our generation whether we like it or not. It's just hard to believe that so many of those long haired hippies have become born-agains and voted for Bush. Very depressing.
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