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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Boomers Haven't Fixed the World – But There's Time
By Dr. Vic Strasburger
UNM School of Medicine
"We can change the world. Re-arrange the world."
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1971
"Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world."
Samuel Johnson, 1750
I sometimes wonder: Are we better off today than back when I was 20 years old in 1969? We were only fighting one war then.
Now you've got your choice of Afghanistan or Pakistan. Bernie Madoff and greedy Wall Street bankers have nearly bankrupted the country — if they were greedy back then, as I suspect they were, at least they had the courtesy to keep it to themselves).
We've got one political party that's gone off the deep end and the other that is testing the water temperature, an electorate that's either hopped up on tea or not voting at all, and talk radio and the Fox all-stars. Media are far more graphic with sex, drugs, and violence — and there seems no longer to be any sense of privacy, thanks to camera phones, YouTube and the Web.
Add to all of this the relatively recent phenomenon of schoolyard shootings — do any of you who weren't at Kent State remember being shot at back then? — and you've got a perfect storm.
Are we better off today than 40 years ago?
My generation promised to change the world. What, exactly, have we accomplished? Well, let's look on the bright side, or at least try to.
We've got a very intelligent man in the White House, and he happens to be African-American. That's one for our side. Race relations aren't perfect, but they've definitely improved. So has the role of women in the workplace and society.
There seems to be some interest in nuclear disarmament and in protecting the environment. Fewer people smoke cigarettes. And, of course, we have "The Wire," "Modern Family," Laura Linney and Jeff Bridges.
But when you think about it, that's about all, folks!
On the down side, let me count the ways: We have a government that is torn by partisanship and miscommunication. We have a Supreme Court full of strict constructionists who nevertheless think they can overrule state laws and decide a national election. We have a media that revels in Sarah Palin and Lindsay Lohan.
Our schools are stuck with No Child Left Behind, so now we have No Schools Out Front. We educate our children as if the Internet and instantaneous information did not exist.
Our language has deteriorated so — expletive deleted — badly that it's difficult to watch prime time TV anymore.
Yes, it's absolutely true that each generation thinks the next ones are going to hell in a hand basket. But ours was the first generation to boast about what it was going to do. The preceding generation actually did change the world, but it lacked the narcissism that we baby-boomers seem to have.
About our only accomplishment was helping to end the war in Vietnam. But that was 40 years ago, folks. What have we done for society lately?
It's not too late, though.
Since boomers are turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 19 years according to the Pew Research Center, we have senior power! We can still make changes that will benefit our offspring and their offspring: protecting the environment, changing the tax system, transforming a carbon-based economy, enacting truly universal health care — preferably single-payer — revamping the current educational system, reining-in Wall Street, standing up to the NRA so that our kids can go to school or a "Congress on your Corner" event safely, and altering the national psyche about war so that we don't fight any more of them unless we are directly threatened or attacked. We left ourselves a lot of room.
Sadly, I'm worried that our days are not just numbered, but our glory days are over. We could have changed the world. Rearranged the world.
But we didn't.
Dr. Vic Strasburger is professor of pediatrics at the UNM School of Medicine and a national expert on children, adolescents and the media.
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