Boomer Bust

Why the boomers can't quit protesting:

To a certain extent, these tantrums are the result of these folx sitting around the campfire, reliving their glory days when they burned bras and draft cards, dropped acid, and fled to Canada. The legends of the '60s grew in the telling. I know this, having grown up in a house full of copies of Ms. magazine, a soundtrack of Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary, and reminders that when I turned 18, I had better register for the draft as a conscientious objector if I knew what was good for me. These people drew a fair amount of their identity from those things, and the ones who didn't go on to grow up and maybe become dot-com millionaires are still clinging to the mythos. Exclusively for our VIPs: The Nation’s Moral Vacuum on Display Of course, the issue is that they continued to tell those stories to the following generations. They may not have sung "The Ballad of the '68 Convention Riot," but they passed the ideals down to their children, students, and others in their charge, who, in turn, kept the mystique and romance front and center for the next generation. In the era of TikTok, Instagram, a jaded, compromised media, and a corrupt education system, the rebellious acts of today are magnified and fed back on themselves until they are unbelievably amplified, making the participants even more destructive and dysfunctional. The old guard has some serious competition in the "Free, free, Palestine" crowd. I know there are boomers out there who matured, and not all of you are Abbie Hoffman retreads. But the ones who stayed behind are still muddying the waters. The Ghost of Protests Past will haunt us for a while.

Even when they die, the boomer probably won't want to give up...