Confessions of a Baby Boomer

Steve Sailer admits to possessing the conventional bulletproof Baby Boomer delusion bubble:

When I was young, music was seen as a zero sum warfare, a blitzkrieg to take social validation away from older people. When it comes to music, my Baby Boomer ego is generationally bulletproof. My generation having won a massive victory, I, like many Baby Boomers, am convinced that all forms of music were already existent by, say, my 23rd birthday, or are merely trivial extensions or recombinations. Flipping through the radio dial, I never have the feeling “Wow, I’m really old.” Instead, it’s like, “Oh, sure that new style the kids like these days … it’s just a combination of Killing Joke and Seals & Croft, with a little Chic guitar and Curtis Mayfield falsetto. Been there, done that.”

Don’t try to persuade me otherwise with your “facts” and “logic.” I am a Baby Boomer, so my ego is the final authority on all questions involving pop music.

I imagine that this imperturbable complacency among us Baby Boomers that our musical tastes are the be all and end all of youthfulness is discouraging to younger generations, making them feel old before their time. As Camille Paglia would probably say, we Baby Boomers are the vampiric Dorian Grays of culture, siphoning youthfulness from everybody else.

The amusing thing about this is the way that the Boomers actually believe they are more youthful than the people who are two and three generations younger than they are. Guys, you’re old, you’re over it, and you’re going to die soon.

Isn’t it time to grow up and get over yourselves already?

I always find the vast gulf between what the Boomers think later generations think of them and what everyone else actually thinks of them to be hilarious. Which, of course, is why Boomers get so upset on the rare occasion that they stop contemplating their collective navels long enough to find out.

Their “imperturbable complacency” isn’t discouraging in the least. It just makes us look considerably more favorably upon euthanasia than we otherwise might.