I am one of them. I am a baby-boomer. We blew it. We had the numbers and, temporarily, the will to do something. But then 'Nixon the wise' ended the draft and poof, rebellion was a thing of the past. We started buying our designer shades and designer jeans. We bought tract homes in suburbs, BMWs, minivans and voted in Reagan. Now that our shallowness has come home to roost and the jobs are gone that we thought assured us a life on the gravy train, we stir slightly in our comfy chairs. We filled landfills with disposable diapers and the air with CO2. Some held true, some kept up the good fight, but the majority turned into their parents, only not quite as tough.
The current generation of 'youth'...
... has it's faults, as a generation, if not individually. We know about the video games and the endless text messaging and their detestable music (like ours used to be... ah nostalgia!). But the truth of the matter is that they are going to inherit a feces buffet, and we boomers left it to them. The boomers probably won't be around to see 2/3 of Florida underwater, but the 20-somethings might. As we boomers retire we will outvote the younger generation to make sure we get our Social Security checks, no matter that we let the trust fund money get pissed away for chicken-change tax refunds. The giant deficits won't be repaid by boomers. The toxic waste won't be cleaned up by boomers. But rest assured we will fight to the death for those cost-of-living-adjustments to our Social Security checks.
Since I have been of voting age, I have seen Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and now... another Clinton, possibly. Whatever imagination we had, whatever rebelliousness we had, whatever spark may have existed is buried under a vast pile of self-indulgence. Some of us long for the good old days of the '90s, when we were at the height of our earning power and hadn't been outsourced, off-shored or downsized. Many of us defend our candidates as we would our favorite sports team or favorite singer (or rock group... remember those?) As a group we are still selfish, narcissistic and self-indulgent. Perhaps the next generations are no better, but they are the ones who will suffer most from every bad decision made today. I think they deserve more than a little respect for that reason alone, if nothing else. We had our chance, fellow-boomers, and we blew it.