Thoughts of a boomer
I was born squarely in the middle of the “baby boom” generation. We had daily bible readings in my first grade public school class. We said the pledge of allegiance through high school in my public school system.
Boomers are sometimes identified with the protests, rebelliousness and non-conformity of the ‘60s, but many or most of my contemporaries were conformists conforming to the hippie culture. When everyone wears long hair, beards and bell bottoms and listens to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, that’s not rebellion, that’s conformity. I knew a guy in college who grew his own dope out on the Oak Ridge reservation and was opposed to legalization of marijuana.
Now, many of those aging “hippies” vote Republican. Color me unsurprised.
Boomers are sometimes identified with the protests, rebelliousness and non-conformity of the ‘60s, but many or most of my contemporaries were conformists conforming to the hippie culture. When everyone wears long hair, beards and bell bottoms and listens to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, that’s not rebellion, that’s conformity. I knew a guy in college who grew his own dope out on the Oak Ridge reservation and was opposed to legalization of marijuana.
Now, many of those aging “hippies” vote Republican. Color me unsurprised.
Joel:
Things were quite different in the late sixties. Everything you said is true. We did not have bible readings. We did do the Pledge of Allegiance the first thing in the morning. I believe I remember holding our arm up towards the class room flag which was in the front corner of the room, elevated so all could see it. It was more a habit than a pledge.
Out of an all-boys High School and classified as eligible for the draft, I enlisted before the letter from the draft board showed up. The changed rapidly for us, a mixture of high school and college kids (which we were).
I know I did not become a
conservativeRepublican. I had no basis for being anything other than surviving the years I was in the military. Did not support Viet Nam even when I was in the military. It was a quagmire of mental and physical injury and many times death. Lost some friends and never saw people I knew in the military again for the most part.New life when I was discharged at 22. Enrolled in college after a few months.
I do not get it. That after the lates sixties and early seventies when Vietnam was winding down why so many of my generation when conservative. After what we experienced, it did not make sense.
Good post. Thank you.
My memory of those times is that two areas were very prominent in the political development of many young people:
securing civil rights for African Americans and the war in Vietnam.
Neither of those map very strongly into the politics of the 2020s in my view.
Civil rights for African Americans are so secure these days that the conversation is dominated by quite nebulous concepts like “structural” racism and “dog whistling”. There is no significant publicly racist slice of the electorate to cater to and neither major political party tries.
As for Vietnam, it is a very open debate if either of the major parties is trustworthy when it comes to avoiding foreign wars not in our interest. So a half-century on, if the current voting patterns of Boomers do not mesh with a somewhat emotional fond remembrance of youthful days, I suspect these two areas play an important role. As a side note, the “villains” in our Vietnam policy were LBJ and – to a lesser degree – Nixon . . . both parties. The prime “ villains” in the Civil Rights era were overwhelmingly Democrats, but they had heros also.
dixiecrats