I would like to weigh in on the whole “greatest generation” versus “baby boomers” thing.
“You waited till your mother died to write this, didn’t you?”
Well …
“All right, carry on.”
Those of us born between 1945-64 take a lot of crap for having it easy. After all, we didn’t have to live through the Great Depression and World War II. We had the Fabulous Fifties and the Swinging Sixties.
OK, given.
That said, my late father — a charter member of the GG — often told us late in his life that his generation had a lot less stress than ours did. They had more job security, more help with retirement, fewer decisions to make about health insurance.
My dad essentially had one employer his whole life. So did the fathers of my three closest friends.
I had seven in 29 years as a journalist.
Still, I don’t want to argue.
The one question I got a kick out of was someone asking how could the GG be so great if they raised a generation as bad as ours. And I would add the question of how can we be so bad if we raised such a great generation of millennials.
This one resonates with me. My parents didn’t do a bad job at all raising their five kids. All five finished college and managed to own homes. I was the only one in my family who served time.
Not too bad.
But it’s our kids who are really doing the family proud. My sister Hilary’s two sons are truly exceptional. Her younger son Nathan is going to be a great actor, although he could never be in a movie with Tom Cruise (Nathan is 6-3, the tallest ever in our family). Her older son Jacob might just be one of the smartest people in the world. In his last year in high school, he took a number of AP exams. On one of them, I believe it was psychology, 450,000 people took the test. Two got perfect scores.
Who was the other one?
Aw, shucks.
What?
No, it wasn’t me.
Seriously, these two kids are special.
And of course, the other two are too. I know my faithful readers love to hear about my two kids, currently starring as American Adults in the middle of great careers in the U.S. Foreign Service. I don’t want to embarrass them with my gushing, though.
I’ll just say that most of the Boomers I know who have kids have done a great job raising them. That said, I know an awful lot of Boomers who don’t have children at all.
I’m not trying to elevate my generation at the expense of my late parents’ generation, but they had their challenges and we have ours. Without going into line by line comparisons, I’ll just say we’re currently dealing with a different sort of threat than they ever did.
We’re dealing with an existential threat in Donald Trump.
But they had Hitler.
So?
And the commies.
You don’t get it. America is never going to fall from outside pressures. If our country goes down, if we lose what we’ve got, it’ll be because of dry rot from inside, and Trump is a perfect example of that. You might think we’ve survived him, now that he has lost the election.
But we’ve got 27 days to go, and he’s getting more outrageous every day.
By the time January 20th rolls around, we’ll be holding our breath.
If we survive Trump, our greatest test will be how to rebuild our society.
That will be the true test of our generation.