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One "theory" I heard was that recent history in the West - and to some extent also elsewhere - basically revolved around baby boomers, partly due to the fact that it is such a populous generation but also due to the fact that so many ideas got discredited as a result of first and second world wars.
The forties and fifties were the times when boomers were born, it was a time of rebuilding, family stability and security.
Sixties and seventies were the times when boomers were young adults full of rebellious energies, experimentation with sexuality and drugs and all that. It was the time of peace movements and mass refusal of military service in the name of communal love and peace and almost teenage ideals.
The eighties and nineties were the times where boomers really came of age, it were the times of risk taking yuppies that proudly destroyed the old stuff in order to unleash creative destruction of this new tide of success hungry urban professionals. It is interesting to see that exactly at the time when boomers were in their most energetic years was also the time the society suddenly discovered that individualism and self-reliance is to be promoted. It was also the time where the society really leaned into gym culture worshiping this youthful vigor, it was the time of Gordon Gekko and Mitch Buchannon.
The Aughts and Tens are the decades of solidification of the previous achievements. At the same time it is the time of bailouts and growth of assets but also the time of glorification of all the ethos and views of how boomers see themselves, as paragons of Civil Rights virtue who carried the torch of progress forward. But maybe right now we should cut back on some of the stuff and strengthen our social security, healthcare and we should also do everything possible in order to save octogenarians from deadly virus. If the price is incarcerating pre-teen kids in their homes, that is the price boomers are willing to pay.
Now take the aforementioned with grain of salt, but once you see this it is kind of hard to unsee. Boomers collectively seem to have quite a grip on our societies to the extent that they literally shape the cultural lense of how society views itself for over half a century at least. One can even better see it if one for instance looks into statistics of average age of let's say US government officials. The first Baby Boomer president was Bill Clinton born in 1946 who became president in 1993 and we are going to have a president either born in 1946 or 1942 in 2024.
Was it Tanner Greer?
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A prior comment I made about hollywood movies on Boomer relationship to history:
There was a whole genre of "relitigating the sixties" movies from the 1980s to 2008 or so. It was the thing for a high concept thoughtful blockbuster. Forrest Gump is the classic, Field of Dreams fits as well, Grease, Gilmore Girls, Almost Famous, That Thing You Do. Even series like Rambo follow that pattern, First Blood is straight sixties rebellion against the squares, First Blood II is synthesis with the Boomer Rambo emerging from prison to be harnessed to relitigate Vietnam and rescue his brethren, and the progressively weirder sequels represent a rising confidence/arrogance of the Washington Consensus synthesis of 1950s establishment and 1960s rebellion.
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