ASSESSING THE BABY BOOMER LEGACY

My generation, the baby boomers, are arguably the most celebrated generation in American history. Time Magazine named us Person of the Year in 1966. As youths we fostered peace, love and understanding principally by helping to end the Vietnam War, and we played an influential role in the civil rights and environmental movements. But, did we live up to the high ideals we preached in the four decades since then?

As young people, we vehemently criticized all institutions of power from our parents to government. The lyrics of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ characterized what appeared to be the pervasive sentiment of the baby boomers at the time when he said the “old road” of our “mothers and fathers” is “rapidly agin.”

But, did we really abandon the “old road” of our parents, and take a “new one”?  Now that we have occupied the seats of power in government, business, academia, and media, and are transitioning to our golden years, it’s the ideal time to evaluate ourselves by the same standards we judged our parents.

The centerpiece of our legacy to date has to be the peace movement. However, although the Vietnam War was brought to an end, the U.S. has essentially remained in international conflicts ever since including Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And, if truth be told, we had an ulterior motive in our protests of the Vietnam War. Our necks were in the noose since the military draft was still in full effect and any one of us could suddenly find ourselves fighting an unpopular war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Once the draft ended, war suddenly became more palatable and collectively the baby boomers fell silent in the face of war ever since.

While American deaths have plummeted since Vietnam largely due to weak adversaries, smart weapons, and quicker and better battlefield medical attention; civilian mortality rates are disturbingly high. We were outraged by events that unfolded in My Lai, yet civilian deaths in Iraq alone are estimated to be well over 100,000 since 2003, even by U.S. government measurements. The folly and futility of the Vietnam War are now being replayed simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The record of racial equality in America is also a bit disappointing. Although the 1960’s brought about desegregation, the plight of people of color has not improved much in the decades that followed. The gap between rich and poor has only grown more pronounced, and the digital divide makes the disadvantaged ever more challenged.

Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world. In 2005, for the first time in our history, more than one in 100 Americans was behind bars with a disproportionate amount being people of color. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009, even though they represented only 13.6% of the U.S. population according to the 2010 census. One in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars.

Today we teeter on repealing or amending much of the environmental legislation of the past four decades at the expense of the environment and to the benefit of big business. We have shunned global efforts that deal with atmospheric threats refusing to support the Convention on Biodiversity treaty at the Earth Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. 193 nations ratified the former and the U.S. remains the only signatory out of 192 nations not to have ratified the latter.

All-in-all we have behaved no differently than our parents. Our lofty aspirations and criticism of our parents’ generation were hypocritical in light of what we accomplished. War is pervasive as ever, the plight of people of color is still alarming, and we shun world and scientific opinion in the face of the greatest environmental threats mankind ever confronted. Some of the problems that remain as we fade into our senior years may not be entirely of our doing, but much of it is. Given that we preached such high ideals and lambasted our parents in the process, I think all of us baby boomers owe our parents an apology, not because our principles were wrong, but because we were wrong about ourselves.

AN EXTREME MAKEOVER

A new dawn has come and yet many Americans remain fast asleep. September 11th should have awakened the nation, but for whatever inexplicable reasons we fell deeper asleep.

In the fall of 2001 as the nation patriotically mobilized for an immediate retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan there was little dialogue on what root cause could have precipitated such horrific acts. Why would so many men knowingly sacrifice their own lives to harm others? Politicians and the media were eerily silent on the subject and for good reason. It may not have seemed the ideal time to talk about bad things our government does overseas that foster such hatred and resentment.

Instead, we singled out a highly vulnerable nation in which to exact our revenge and bombed it even further into the Stone Age. There were equally credible suspects, some might argue more credible, like Pakistan, a principal training ground for radical Islamic thought, and Saudi Arabia where at least 15 of the 19 attackers were citizens, as well as Bin Laden. The former is a nuclear power and the latter an oil rich nation which made it too risky to U.S. interests to accuse and offend, let alone invade them. Ironically and tragically, the invasion of Afghanistan only fostered more hatred. The subsequent invasion of Iraq in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that never materialized only exacerbated the bad blood.

Most Americans I encounter see their government as impeccably righteous and truthful, particularly when it comes to global affairs. To them, we are the savior of oppressed people and the greatest philanthropic nation in history. Nations should be grateful for our patronage, not antagonistic. But, in reality we take far more than we give, particularly from weaker nations, and we don’t distinguish between good and evil when we ally ourselves with leaders who will champion our economic and strategic interests. These despots usually profit immensely for their allegiance while their people suffer. Consider just a few: Augusto Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and the House of Saud. Granted some of these relationships soured over time, but only because these despots stopped pandering to U.S. interests, not because they oppressed their people.

Understandably, our citizens see things almost entirely from our government’s point-of-view. The seed of misinformation is first planted in our schools where children are taught a much idealized version of U.S. history. Our genocidal policy toward Native Americans, the Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks and whites for nearly a century after the slaves were freed, the frequent suspension of free speech in times of war, and the CIA’s overthrow of democratically elected leaders to install brutal dictators are just a few chapters in our history that receive little, if no mention in these text books.

Misinformation is also fostered by politicians. Government is supposed to be transparent within reason, but today it operates in unprecedented secrecy under the guise of “national security” undermining the very Constitution and principles that govern this nation. The “War on Terrorism” only broadens the justification for clandestinity with no apparent time limit since terrorism has been around as long as civilization itself.

Narrowly focused, biased, sensationalized, and often jingoistic news media further impedes informed and objective thought.

The Freedom of Information Act and controversial organizations like WikiLeaks help uncover the truth, but people by and large don’t want to hear the uncomfortable truths. Concluding that terrorists are motivated by jealousy of our wealth and freedoms, or simply religious zealots ignores reality.

We have been an aggressive nation ever since the American Revolution. “Speak softy and carry a big stick” was not unique to Teddy Roosevelt’s time. We have never cared who we covertly overthrow or with whom we ally if it benefits our national interests. When people of other nations live in squalor while the U.S. builds its hegemony by exploiting their natural resources and enriching the oppressive regimes who allow such exploitation, it’s inevitable that the victimized citizens will resent and ultimately hate us for this.

No nation except the British in the War of 1812, and some might argue Mexico, has ever invaded the contiguous United States. And although we have fought numerous wars in the last century there were very few times when major attacks on our soil were seriously contemplated.

The steady march of technological advancements has forever changed that. Now any individual or group with a grievance can perpetrate unspeakable harm to American citizens and property. What new mass killing device carried in a backpack or chemical agent concealed in a pocket is just around the corner in development? To think our government can protect citizens from all these threats, known and unknown, is foolhardy. The enemies are real and they cannot be effectively identified and eliminated with conventional warfare, covert acts, or compromising our Constitutional rights.

Government is not going to step-up to this challenge simply because it is heavily influenced by huge multinational corporations who profit immensely from the exploitation of weaker nations and from war itself.

The only solution can come from American citizens who seek and accept the truth. Our lives, our very way of life depend on it. No longer can we afford to remain in denial about our own acts of aggression and allow our government to brazenly “shoot up” the world. This is a public image problem, not a conventional war against a sovereign nation. We can either undergo an extreme make-over to win back the hearts and minds of global citizens or learn the hard way.