The Last Generations,
Baby Boomers, EarlyGen X, & More
On this Independence Day weekend, I’m bringing you three thoughts on three of today’s most prominent issues. All three need to be addressed by more than me. Read on…
(Written between 6/24-6/30)
I can’t help but write this! I am a novelist, not a journalist, not even a true blogger. I’m just a writer, and I write (in alphabetical order): Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, and Science Fiction novels, which means I can visualize a lot of things, in fact most things. I have written about serial killers, plain killers, harassers, medieval knights, parallel worlds, and a series set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world; and, like most writers I know, I’ve written a lot. But for the present, I cannot figure out what’s going on around me. What the hell happened to everyone? Are the lessons of the past doomed? This is why I say the Baby Boomers & early Gen X are the last generations.
Why, you ask, why do I think the last generations are the Baby Boomers and the early year births of Gen X, then you are probably a millennial or a Gen Z.
To those generations I say, you never really heard the music, you never gave much thought to what happened and inspired the anti-war movement back in the sixties and seventies. Most likely you really didn’t understand the width and depth of the civil rights movement either.
Why do I say this? Well, being born on the cusp of the Boomer Generation (actually 2 years earlier but I do identify with boomers since I’ve never been able to be silent). I find that in the fifty to sixty years since the late sixties and most of the seventies, the attitudes of the younger generations have changed dramatically—I want to say radically, but that isn’t the word to apply here..
When I think about what is happening to our world, and I think back to the sixties, to the music, the protests of Vietnam war, the Tricky Dicky Nixon’s bullshit, the Civil Rights movement, and Women’s Movement, I see we have either forgotten what we went through and what we did, or we just don’t care anymore—where are the people taking to the streets?.
Perhaps it was the music that brought us all together, the peace, love, and anti-war music. I can give you a playlist of a hundred top ten songs that dealt with it all. Think Buffalo Springfield and “For What It’s Worth,”
There’s something happening here
but what it is ain’t exactly Clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware
Written and copyright by Stephen Stills
And then there was the song OHIO, about the four students killed by the national guard for protesting the war. And have we forgotten the Chicago 7?
The women’s movement gave us, to name a few, “You Don’t Own Me, Respect, I Am Woman, I Will Survive”, and lest we forget Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen”. What the hell happened to people and to the musicians with social conscience?
I can’t think of hearing one top 10 contemporary song dealing with the political world of today, or of the last 20 years, on the level of what it was in the sixties and seventies. What the hell is wrong with us?
I’ll take that back, the not hearing any protest contemporary (or semi-contemporary) music: think Foster the People’s, “Pumped up Kicks”, not a song about sneakers; but, in actuality both an anti-bully and anti-gun song, which was much misunderstood, and in many instances, especially after the Sandy Hook killings, banned from being played on the radio. So a potential anti-gun song wasn’t enough to galvanize people to act. And then of course there is the controversial Eminem. But in reality, no one has been able to spur these later generations into action. What happened to you Gaga, Beyonce, Billie, Taylor, and so on? Why aren’t you putting your beliefs on the line and stepping forward to lead your generations with songs that fuel the outrage so many now feel?
While people are decrying what is happening, so few put their mouth and sweat and integrity on the line for a cause they believe in. Even while the Marjory Douglass Stillman surviving students continue to vocalize and protest around the country, they still can’t seem to gather the people. Why aren’t the majority of Americans, those who believe what is happening to our country today is wrong, acting? Why aren’t they putting their beliefs on the line and stepping forward? I am, just by writing this and knowing I will lose some readers of my novels because of this.
Where are the protesters, where are the volunteers who go door to door to espouse a cause? I don’t know, all I get is political emails begging for donations, not real people, not people I see out in the streets. (WAIT…PROTESTS UPDATED FURTHER DOWN)
Doesn’t anyone see this is the reason the other side—the ones who prefer autocracy over democracy, the ones who want to control everyone—are the ones who are beating us. These would be autocrats, these pretend Orwellian Big Brothers are loud, rude, crude, and extremely dangerous. They spew lies and expect people to believe them. The only way this will stop, is if we take it to the streets, show how important this is, and how to make those who seem too lethargic to step up, step up, and help stop what is happening by using the ballot boxes
Why do we let these overbearing, lying, and autocratic politicians tell us what we can do? These wannabe Hitlers, demand we ban books about SAME SEX MARRIAGE, about GAY PEOPLE, the entire LBGTQ SPECTRUM, and anything to do with the MISTREATMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE, especially during SLAVERY, and the JIM CROW era. (For those who are unfamiliar with the origins of the Jim Crow laws, and who or what Jim Crow was, click here)
Politically and currently, these people want to return to the past and separate AFRICAN AMERICANS, DARK SKINNED LATINOS, JEWS, MUSLIMS, AND ANYONE ELSE who doesn’t conform to their handmaid’s tale version of their world, or who doesn’t vote for them. I checked and found many instances where The Handmaid’s Tale has been banned in many areas of the country including state schools in Kansas and Texas among other.
I guess book burning is next.
I understand I’m venting to you, whom I feel safe with, considering most of the people who read my blog are my readers, and you know my worlds. And I’m certainly not doing this just for political reasons, not at my age. I’m just hoping some of my younger readers will see this, think on it, and act as their conscience dictates.
But the fact remains, we are now living in a world with lopsided values. This is far from sudden. The rich, yes they are getting richer, and a fair amount of them are boomers as well. But what were they doing in those formative years? And those of us who aren’t wealthy, who consider themselves in the middle class (upper, middle, lower, it doesn’t matter which) who live on a set paycheck, or are retired and live on Social Security and whatever might be left of pensions or 401k’s as the market goes down and down, we are now becoming part of the NOT MIDDLE CLASS.
And who are the NOT MIDDLE CLASS? You know who they are, where they are, and know the chances they weren’t given because of who they are.
I have been a victim of racism, and I’m a white guy, born in the mid-forties, bred initially in the North, and who really grew up in the fifty and sixties. And when I say racist, I mean it, because when a racist antisemitic jackass talks to me or looks at me, he does so with a hatred I have seen too often in the faces of other racist, and I have experienced this hatred throughout most of my life. Even as a kid.
It’s getting worse too. I do expect mail from this, primarily hate mail, but I hope not. The only purpose of this rant, is to put my feelings out there and hope somehow, I get through to those younger people, my younger readers, who yet might be able to reshape the future, because it looks dark, overcast, and dirty from where I sit.
I know those who have read my sci-fi fantasy series understand where I believe we are headed, which is to a world so vastly different than where it appears to be headed that I cannot believe in 2014 – 2015 when the first rumors of Donald Trump running for the presidency were being whispered, I sat down and wrote the outline to the first book of my Tales of Nevaeh series, “Born to MAgic” never, ever, in my wildest dreams thinking he would get to where he did.
Now, I wish I had been even heavier handed. But when he challenged Iran, I thought everything I had written would come to be. So far, the trend is not yet in that direction. Let’s see what happens in November, and then see what 2024 brings.
PROTESTS AT LAST!
HOORAY FOR THOSE BRAVE WOMEN and MEN!
Perhaps there is still hope. As I write this post, the decision to reverse Roe V Wade came out, and people are protesting, finally. I have been watching the rallies since the announcement of this newest effort to destroy Women’s Rights, and maybe this will be the fight for the newest generations, for this isn’t just about abortion rights, it’s about a person’s inalienable rights to control our privacy, to control our bodies, and to keep the conservatives of the government out of our bedrooms, and out of our marriages. It is time stop them from stripping our freedoms which are now at grave risk. Yes, perhaps there is hope; yet, I fear it may not be so for time is not on our side. I fear for my children and my grandchildren.
GUN STUFF
There have been several recent happening in Washington, and close together as well. The passage of a pretty weak gun ah ‘safety’ law, one which may or may not do anything unless the states themselves follow the program.
What we need is good gun sense, and the banning of any military style weapon. A hunter doesn’t need to destroy its prey. One shot of a hunting rifle should be enough to bring down a deer. If you need to use a semi-automatic weapon to bring down a deer, using the favored 5.65 NATO bullet, you’re not hunting, you’ve declared war on the wildlife you go after.
For thousands of years, men and women have been able to hunt without the use of rapid-fire weapons. Bows and arrows, even spears did the job. Then there were firearms, and they worked well, take the Marlin 336C, a lever loading hunting rifle that is still high among the top choices for true hunters. But weapons of war, why? Are the hunters who use these AR 15 style weapons so impotent it’s the only way they can ‘hunt’?
Welcome to the United States of Dystopia
Talk about The Handmaid’s Tale, and the reversing the Roe V. Wade, seems fitting, but wrong. This is a conversation that everyone believed was put to bed fifty years ago. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the world…perhaps I’ve misread certain things in the constitution, but the preamble itself makes it all crystal clear: We the people: We the people doesn’t say we the men, or we the women, but WE THE PEOPLE: It makes no distinction about which sex people are.
These are the first words of the constitution of the
United States of America: The Preamble
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In the English language, which is one of the most difficult languages in the world, and because there is no distinction between men and women together, such as they have in the romance languages, it has always been a given that the use of the word men or man, is for both sexes when used as a generality.
So if men have control of their bodies, to do as they see fit, why isn’t the same true for women: or, more specifically, why isn’t it the same for the conservative men who want to hold onto their power, no matter what it takes?
We seem indeed heading toward an autocratic United States, helped by a suddenly ultra conservative Supreme Court, which is the first step into the dystopian world George Orwell warned everyone about in his novel, “1984”. It is the world of Hitler, Stalin, Putin, and Xi Jinping. Will it be the same for whoever the next president is?
THIS CHOICE IS UP TO YOU, and the only way you can help assure you get the answer you want, is to make certain you and everyone else whom you know votes in November and then again in November of 2024. Until then, take to the streets, peacefully. Tell them what you believe is right! You aren’t the other side’s minions… Not yet anyway.