But boomers clearly take the prize in the nostalgia sweepstakes. Perhaps the most self-mythologizing generation of all, those feisty postwar babies have demonstrated a singular talent for foisting their remembrances on the rest of us, like a neighbor freshly returned from a painstakingly documented African safari.
Just wait, though: The next few years should be even worse. We’re approaching the 50th anniversaries of all the events of the late 1960s. For the remainder of the decade, we can expect a brand-new wave of melodramatic retrospectives, each designed to remind us of a magical time when boomer heads were packed full of idealistic notions and covered in lustrous, free-flowing hair. But just as what goes up must come down, what frolics in the mud of Woodstock must eventually sulk in the fluorescent chill of the cardiology office. Somehow, as boomers age, their commitment to dragging that dusty ’60s archival reel out of the basement yet again seems to grow exponentially.
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Through sheer repetition and force of will, boomers have so thoroughly indoctrinated us into their worldview that we all now reflexively frame most current affairs through the lens of another generation’s formative experiences. Every war is compared to the Vietnam War (forget that there’s no draft anymore); every plea for peace dredges up 50-year-old songs and slogans; every music festival is filtered through hazy memories of Woodstock’s incomparable magic (that is, when Woodstock itself isn’t being outright reenacted); and every civil rights protest is held up to those legendary marches on Washington and Selma of half a century ago.
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Of course, pretty much everything that ever happened to boomers when they were younger marked the end of an era. Culturally, boomers shut down the club, then set it on fire, then blew it up, then boarded the last train leaving the station, and nothing that’s happened since can possibly measure up.
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Likewise, instead of hearing, in maximally melodramatic terms, how the crises of the ’60s changed American culture forever, it could be instructive for some first-person witness to marvel at how swiftly the American public returned to its vise-like embrace of the status quo after the smoke cleared.
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Originally Posted by angelatc
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