2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Why the Millinnials are following a 73-year-old Democratic Socialist [View all]senz
(11,945 posts)we didn't know what was coming. Boomers rejected "the system," agitated for civil rights, protested the war, joined the peace corps, tried to live close to the earth and without social distinctions. We were young, we were amateurs, many of us were naive (guilty as charged), and we had no idea what the big boys in think tanks were planning for this country. Where were we when Reagan began the rollback of the middle class? Youth doesn't last forever; many Boomers had launched careers, started families, become distracted -- and were also a little bewildered by what was happening to our country -- the disappearance of main street, the pop-up shopping malls with identical chain stores, the erosion of local traditions, small communities, the sheer, bland, faceless enormity of the corporate takeover.
No, we weren't perfect, we weren't even wonderful. But damn, many of us really did try.
I personally think the "Greatest Generation" were relics of a former time; they thought in terms of duty, responsibility, law and order, etc. They were tough and self-controlled. They respected institutions. The silent generation, what I know of them, were interested in private, not public, life. They either did what they were told or rebelled quietly, like the Beats. I think your generation got caught amid the sea change occurring in America and sought ways to establish personal identity in what had become an impersonal world -- piercings, tattoos, styles like punks, goths, corporate types, etc. -- But I'm sorta guessing, here...