The Train Kept a Rollin'

Since 7:00 last night, I've had the Aerosmith version of the song "Train Kept a Rollin'" stuck in my head.  As far as stuck-in-your-head songs go, you could do worse, so that's only on my mind insofar as it informs something that's been bugging me.

Baby Boomers.

 That was them then, this is us now

Every generation, I'm sure, chafes at the very presence of its parents after a certain age and I mean other than being pissed at your mom busting into your room when you're trying to wing one out into the unmatched gym sock you keep under your bed.  In this case I'm talking about the broader sociological context - their values, their beliefs, their tastes, all that business.

In that, I'm no different than my own parent's generation getting all blah-blah angry and bothered about my grandma and grandpa and their white picket fence / Oldsmobile / duck and cover...okay, I know nothing about my grandparents.

In a much older post, I talked about people my age rejecting the way the boomers dressed - they fought tooth and nail for casual Friday, we wear suits and ties with flair.  That seems to be about as far as it's going to go for now though, because the boomer's still wield disproportionate power, as they always have.

My old history professor, himself a member of the "greatest generation," meaning he was old as all hell, talked about the boomers as the "pig in the python" of American history.  As such, they are a disproportionately large segment of the population.  This doesn't mean that there are more baby boomers than Gen Xers or Gen Y kids - it means there are more baby boomers than there should be compared to other generations and other comparably aged cultures.  The nice, even graph of population growth over time has a huge swell in it that spans about 1945 to 1955, and that swell has moved as these people age.

This looks shopped - I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time

Now here's a bit of dime store sociology for you - don't take this as gospel, but take it as a writer's hunch:  large groups of people with something in common tend to reflect that something back to a point of narcissistic critical mass.  This goes beyond commiseration into extravagant vanity - when one person does something (like, say, graduate high school and go to college) then one person has done something.  When two people do that same thing, they compare their experience not only to what preceded it (high school, in our example) but also to others having that same experience.

Take a good look - they run the world now

Now, it's not just about having an experience.  Now, it's a case of "we had an experience that you didn't" and then eventually "we had an experience AND you didn't" - never mind that others may have very well had the same experience - it's not OUR experience. WE are doing this NOW and that makes it special!

And that's the way it's always been for the boomers - they are a giant swollen "we," and in that wallow of commiseration and shared experience, everything becomes unique and incomparable.  They'll say things like "remember not having a TV?" as if we ourselves could not remember a time without internet access.  This same generation talked about 1969 and the summer of love while at the same time moving to shut down rave culture in 1999. 

That's what I'm talking about here - that sort of narcissism of majority, this big swollen "we" that achieved critical mass and made up its own reality.

Now, of course, the boomers are the first generation ever in history to approach retirement age and the end of their lives, and predictably this mob clings tenaciously to control, to life itself, and they don't care who they smother in the process.

Or choke, amirite?

Our parents in their 50's and 60's are in many cases more virile than their parents were in their 40's, and on one hand I'm tempted to say "good for them," and also give a hearty pat on the back to modern medicine.  On the other hand:  WHEN are you people going to fucking retire?

Generation X males, per Wikipedia, make 12% less in real dollars than their fathers did.  Could this possibly be because their fathers are still in the work place, holding onto their jobs with an unfaltering iron grip?  It's not like half of these people are even qualified by virtue of experience -  I remember this from my time at GM, the menagerie of incompetent jack-offs hiding behind their seniority even as the company crumbled around them.  No, they are still working because "bawww, I can't afford to retire."

Aren't you boomers now the "tough shit" generation now?  The ones who want to disband unions and federal assistance programs?  The ones who want to close off the borders to immigrants and slash education funding?  Well tough shit, boomers - you should have known the whole thing was going to bust.  Your broken nest egg is not my problem.

 Love where this is going

Except, of course, it is my problem.  It is my problem and your problem and everyone's problem.  For better or worse, the boomers are going to hold on to power for another decade or two.  In their dotage they will continue to vote, to hold high-ranking corporate positions, to drive slowly in the fast lane with their blinkers on and, most terrifying of all, continue to fornicate with the help of increasingly potent boner pills.  

And we come back to Aerosmith - see how clever I am?  I can totally tie things up in neat bundles with cohesive beginnings, middles, and ends!   Aerosmith did not finish their 2009 album, but they did release Honkin' on Bobo in 2004.  Did you listen to it?  Do you know anyone who did?  Can you name any Aerosmith song produced after 1989 that doesn't make your skin crawl?  Yet they keep getting support from their label, they keep touring, they keep producing mediocre record after mediocre record, and getting paid for it while "fresh new talent" is given an increasingly short shrift.

For the remainder of our adult lives, we generation X'ers will be passed by.  The boomers will diminish, the culture will shift, and we will essentially be the bearings that the generation before us rolls over to get to the grave. Hopefully when that's done there will be some sort of peace and sanity.  In the meantime, enjoy listening to old hippies talk about how they thought the ended racism, and old fascists prattling about how we should have nuked Vietnam.  

Also, WHY should I have to press ONE to speak ENGLISH????

If you are over 50, this is what you look like to me