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highplainsdem

(62,193 posts)
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 01:42 PM Jan 2023

Political affiliations/views of ANY generation are always diverse.That does NOT negate progressives

and their influence in moving society forward.

This is a point I believe it's important to make in light of any condemnation of baby boomers, especially in a thread here this morning.

My generation didn't "save the world" in all the ways it had hoped to, but I don't know of any generation, ever, that did.

It's always been a contest between progressives who want change and the inertia of society, with that inertia due to those profiting from the current system plus the fraction of the population, often a large fraction, consisting of people either too busy trying to survive to have much time and energy to focus on wider concerns, or afraid their ability to get by in the current system would be threatened by change even though they see the problems. There's always been that tug of war.

And the baby boomers were always diverse. A Gallup article from 2014 pointed out the split in political affiliations noticeable even in groupings of three years in that demographic.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/172439/party-identification-varies-widely-across-age-spectrum.aspx

As noted in previous Gallup research, Democrats also perform relatively well among baby boomers aged 60 to 63. Democrats have a seven- to eight-percentage-point average advantage among this group of Americans who were born between about 1950 and 1953, and who came of age during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Democratic Party does slightly less well among younger baby boomers, those aged 57 to 59, while the oldest baby boomers, aged 64 to 67, are much less Democratic than other boomers in their party identification.


I fall into that three-year age range of people born between 1950 and 1953.

And if you were coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you know those were amazing times. That's also the period of social change, often revolutionary change, that most people tend to focus on when commenting on our generation. A lot of our musician heroes were a bit older, born in the 1940s, but the late '60s and early '70s were when their messages seemed to resonate the most.

We boomers all had a lot of contemporaries who were NEVER liberal, though in some cases they might love the same music and wear the same fashions, to try to seem cool.

And a lot of those aging conservative boomers do a lot more griping these days, spurred on by the RW grievance industry that RW media has ALWAYS been. It was set up that way - to provoke whining by people who feel threatened by change. People who probably felt their voices were drowned out in the '60s and '70s by their liberal peers.

But that does not mean my generation failed, or that the world will be better off when we're gone, as was suggested here.

Progressives are always moving the world forward. Usually only incrementally. "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

It bends. Every progressive helps bend it.

And what boomers did to raise social awareness and elevate the importance of social justice should never be forgotten or belittled.
12 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Political affiliations/views of ANY generation are always diverse.That does NOT negate progressives (Original Post) highplainsdem Jan 2023 OP
kick highplainsdem Jan 2023 #1
Right on! Ocelot II Jan 2023 #2
✌️ highplainsdem Jan 2023 #9
Just look at where we were before the first boomers came of age. Hermit-The-Prog Jan 2023 #3
Yes. The early '60s were a very different time from the late '60s. highplainsdem Jan 2023 #10
My daughter (b. late 80s) recommended some tv series... Hermit-The-Prog Jan 2023 #12
Well said. scarletlib Jan 2023 #4
They were also 17-20 years old, college age, when Kent State happened. CrispyQ Jan 2023 #5
I recall voting stats for the 1980 election DBoon Jan 2023 #6
Alright! (1953'r here 👍)... electric_blue68 Jan 2023 #7
Dug. cachukis Jan 2023 #8
I'm turning 50 next month JustAnotherGen Jan 2023 #11

Hermit-The-Prog

(36,631 posts)
3. Just look at where we were before the first boomers came of age.
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 02:15 PM
Jan 2023

All we can do is try to advance what we think needs to advance.

I remember the early 60s too well.

Hermit-The-Prog

(36,631 posts)
12. My daughter (b. late 80s) recommended some tv series...
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 03:59 PM
Jan 2023

"Mad Men" -- set in the early 60s. My wife and I didn't make it through the first epsisode. We told her, "We lived through that once and that's enough."

The late 60s was a rebellion against much of what were social norms of the early 60s (and before). It was also a period of backlash over the milestones of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, as well as peak protest over the Vietnam war.

The battles for freedom and acceptance of people who are still socially repressed continue.

CrispyQ

(40,972 posts)
5. They were also 17-20 years old, college age, when Kent State happened.
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 02:15 PM
Jan 2023

I was younger & don't recall that event so clearly, but when I was in college, we talked about it in one of my classes & I remember how hard it hit me that our government sent the national guard to a college campus & opened fire on protesting students.

DBoon

(24,993 posts)
6. I recall voting stats for the 1980 election
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 02:16 PM
Jan 2023

For the boomer generation, Reagan had about 10% lower support than among their parents'.

Politics are relative, any generation has progressive and reactionaries, and it is the shift of a few percentage points either way that tends to define the generation.

Our goal is to bend that percentage in our favor.

electric_blue68

(26,876 posts)
7. Alright! (1953'r here 👍)...
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 02:21 PM
Jan 2023

I was lucky, too, to have liberal parents, live in NYC in a partly liberal section vs like Bensenhurst, Bklyn, Staten Island overall back then.

JustAnotherGen

(38,056 posts)
11. I'm turning 50 next month
Fri Jan 20, 2023, 03:41 PM
Jan 2023

Solid Gen X. Raised by a Boomer and Progressive Silent.

Black (bi-racial) woman who has had tremendous career success. I note my dad and mom did it before me.

Thank you Boomers! Every opportunity I've had is because of you.
Tech - Boomers.
Ceilings Shattered - Boomer women.
Black woman in the board room - Boomers.
Access to education - Boomers
ACA - Boomers
Independence - Boomers

I thank God I was born to the marriage I was, when I was, and got to enjoy so many more opportunities without steel walls.

The job of millennials and Z is to keep moving forward.

There aren't enough Gen X to move the needle. There just aren't enough of us, and no one takes us seriously anyways.

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