There: I said it. We did it. It's all our fault. Everything bad in the US, everything bad in the world, all comes down to the fact that the boomers spent money that should go to their children, voted for idiots like Bush and Bush and Reagan, are latte-sipping, Volvo-driving pansy-asses who can't get off the couch and leave their wide-screen TVs and surround-sound cocoons long enough to do anything good for anyone.
In short, it's all our fault. We take this moment to apologize.
But wait:
We're also the people who marched in the streets to stop the war in Vietnam.
We're also the people who broke the Puritanical stranglehold on things like sex, and abortion; we innovated in music, art, theater, film.
We're the people who went into the Peace Corps by the thousands to help the less fortunate.
Some of us became teachers, a thankless, poor job but one that matters.
Some of us formed community organizations to help the poor and voiceless.
Some of us became social workers and gave up money for the satisfaction of helping others.
Some of us became ministers or nuns or priests and gave our lives to try to do good for the world.
Sure, some of us sold out for the easy -- but, I wonder, why?
As best I can figure out, some of us sold out because we're, well, humans. We succumbed to the wiles of Madison Avenue. We had kids and were told about things like "self-esteem" and shit, and decided that we wanted our kids to be happy.
Mostly I think it's this: we were children in an age when advertising became a science of modifying behavior, and inasmuch as we are humans, we were seduced by the same corporate powers that seduce us now -- and those corporate powers were formed not by the boomers, but by that "Greatest Generation." They're the ones who figured out how to keep people fat and happy. They're the ones who figured out how to make us want, want, want and spend spend spend. They're the ones who convinced us that large corporations were good things. They set it all up. And many of us were seduced.
But only some of us. Not all, not by a damn sight.
So maybe we should stop blaming things on "boomers" and start laying the blame appropriately.