Tag: BabyBoomers

This comment should prove educational for those who believe the younger generations are being too hard on the Boomers.

Early Boomer here, Thank You, Knowing that I have in some way Triggered whatever it is you are makes me feel that the pain and suffering I have left in my wake justifies the entire adventure.

They’ve earned their legacy. They fully merit history’s condemnation.

2/5 Pillows.

Speaking of Boomer wickedness, when abortion was legalized in 1973, the percentage of abortions to total pregnancies was 19.3. That percentage rose rapidly and peaked at 30.4 in 1982, the year that the last of the Boomers turned 18. That number gradually declined as Boomer women aged to menopause, and now that the Boomers can no longer get pregnant, the abortion percentage is lower than when it was first legalized, at 18.3 per 100 pregnancies.

That’s still 18.3 percent too high, of course, but it offers clear statistical evidence that the Boomers, as a generation, were considerably more wicked than their successors. Of course, not murdering one-third of your children is not a particularly high bar to clear.

Everyone knows that Boomers divorce at spectacularly high rates, but interestingly enough, Boomers also appear to commit suicide at a higher rate than Generation X, which is not at all what I would have expected given that our generational sins tend toward apathy, anger, and despair.

CDC officials emphasized that the Baby Boomer generation is witnessing the highest increase in suicides (A Baby Boomer is a person who was born post-World War II, between the years 1946 and 1964, when the annual birthrate increased dramatically in the US). “It is the Baby Boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide,” CDC deputy director, Dr. Ileana Arias, told the New York Times. “There may be something about that group, and how they think about life issues and their life choices that may make a difference.”

And that was eight years ago. Since then, the suicide rate among the 55+ crowd has risen by two percent. Apparently pride and materialism are an even more lethal combination than despair.

The Boomer begins, of course, by talking about himself. 

Full disclosure:  I’m a ‘Baby Boomer.’  Born in 1955. Some basic facts on me: [REDACTED because who cares?]

Then he poses three rhetorical questions, which suffice to prove that he doesn’t understand what a “rhetorical question” is.

Now, all you boomer bashers, I have a few rhetorical questions for you (and if you choose to comment, reasoned, rational dialogue welcome, however, you go vitriolic or ad hominem, your comment won’t see the light of day AND you’ll be banned):  

1. What exactly do you have against what I’ve described that MILLIONS of Americans of my generation did?  
2. What exactly have YOU done that’s so much better?  
3. What problems have YOU solved?

1. MILLIONS of US Boomers bought into the civic nationalist lies. This was understandable, as they were convincing and pervasive. What is not so easy to understand, and what is impossible to forgive, is that they STILL buy into those lies and they actively oppose everyone who a) knows what “posterity” means, b) understands the distinction between “nation” and “state”, and c) makes any attempt to salvage as much of the USA and historical American culture for the actual American posterity as possible. Boomers like this simply don’t understand that they are still cheering on, and “getting goose flesh” over an insidious lie that is the primary vehicle for the destruction of the American nation as well as the US state. This is just one example of the continued devotion of the Boomers to the ugly, the wicked, and the lie, but it specifically addresses what he described. It’s very far from the only, or the primary, charge being brought by the historical prosecution.

2. Seen through the lies. Told the truth. Stayed married. Didn’t murder children. Paid attention to our kids. Most importantly, did not call good evil, and did not call evil good.

3. The intellectual sacrifice of thousands of children to the public schools. Alternative tech options. Disabled the primary atheist rhetorical weapon. Comprehensively disproved both the theories of free trade and evolution by natural selection.

PS:  When you finally have the balls to act out your ‘Day of the Pillow’ fantasy, you MIGHT just find that I have a .45ACP under mine….and you’ll feel it…for a second, as the barrel presses against your forehead.  Just sayin’….

First of all, the Boomer will be too drugged and demented to remember his own name, let alone the fact that he once owned a pistol. Second, there is no way he would ever shoot Nnamdi or Ogunna or Amparo even if one of them were holding a pillow over his face. Because that would be racist, and if there is one thing we know about the Boomers, it is that they would much rather die than do anything that would run even the smallest risk of being called THAT. 

0/5 Pillows.

Ask not for whom the pillow fluffs,

Boomer, it fluffs for thee.

To everyone’s complete surprise, a Boomer is upset about my open contempt for his g-g-generation. And he’s particularly upset about The Day of the Pillow:

For the second time in a week, a very popular Blogger who’s name I won’t mention and to who’s site I won’t link to, has come out with posts trashing the Boomer Generation.

Reading through the comments, there seems to be a slathering wish for what they are calling “The Day Of The Pillow”, where they feel perfectly justified by their perception of Boomer self centeredness and greed, to suffocate us in our beds when we get old and feeble enough to be unable to defend ourselves.

Both posts are full of vitriol pointed towards the Boomer Generation but upon closer inspection, I see a lot of anger issues from Gen X’ers who’s main self righteous anger seems to be stemming from their common claim that they were “Latch Key Kids”.

Just so you know, I had that exact same experience growing up but for some reason I haven’t figured out how to blame the entire generation of my parents.

Funny that.

This claim exposes the true reasons for their anger without them apparently being able to see it when I can, from space.

They feel abandoned.

Poor widdle snowflakes gots the Daddy Issues but can’t seem to put 2 and 2 together so hey, lets attack that whole generation because our parents were too busy partying and being self centered to love us, right?

You try and tell them hey, you little fuckers are all growed up now and are beginning to hold office and take over the joint. If you don’t like what The Boomers In Charge are currently doing, then walk away from the Pity Party and fucking do something about it .

OH THE HOWLS OF OUTRAGE WHEN YOU POINT THIS OUT!

It’s more than a little ironic that this Boomer doesn’t understand that suffocating Boomers in their beds would be doing something about it. Of course, he’s too Boomer to grasp that the Day of the Pillow reference is to Boomers being suffocated by the very immigrants whose entry they celebrated working in the nursing homes that will keep them alive just long enough to make sure they don’t leave anything but debt to the succeeding generations. 

GenX doesn’t “feel” abandoned. It was decimated en masse by the Boomers, after which the survivors were abandoned. They literally had to invent one term to describe how the Boomers were leaving their school-age kids to fend for themselves. Then they had to invent another one, “Gray Divorce”, to explain how even old Boomers were too self-centered to stay married to each other.

Contrary to popular belief, the divorce rate in America has been steadily declining in the last 20 years. Unless of course, you’re a Baby Boomer. So, why are we still getting divorced at a record rate? The divorce rate since 1981 has doubled for people older than 50 and tripled for people over 65.

At every stage of their lives, Boomers have required the coining of new terms just to describe how collectively awful their behavior is. We don’t like what the Boomers did. That’s why we homeschooled our children even though every fucking Boomer in our social circles tried to tell us we should sacrifice them to the public schools instead. That’s why the women taught themselves to cook, and clean, and keep a house despite their mothers never bothering to teach them what their parents did. That’s why the men worked hard to find a way to let their wives stay home and take care of the kids even though the employment odds were stacked against them.

That’s why we fight for our marriages and don’t get divorced and do our best to stay out of debt and live within our means and don’t waste our lives in pursuit of ephemeral happiness despite what the Boomers have been telling us to do for decades. Both GenX and the Millennials have demonstrated our determination to raise our children ourselves, rather than let the combination of public school and television do it.

All we really ask of the Boomers is to get out of the way, and for the first time in their lives, Shut The Fuck Up. And yet, they can’t even do that.

Anyhow, I don’t think the wicked generation will have to worry overmuch about immigrants and pillows now that they’ve all self-euthanized themselves with spike proteins. As for what the Boomer considers to be an “EPIC” response, I’ll address it in a future post; for now let’s just say that Boomers neither meme nor rhetoric well. 

As for this one, I rate it 1/5 Pillows.

It seems a few Boomers are beginning to chafe at my lack of respect for their g-g-generation. There is no need to address them all at once, but here is one from the blog:

Go pretend that your comic books are important.

I’ve explained, at length and repeatedly, why I, a confirmed elite book snob, who collects old leather-bound books and reads for pleasure in four languages, have been assiduously laboring in the low-status literary ghetto of fumetti, otherwise known as comic books. To no avail, apparently.

So, let me put this the only language a Boomer understands.

Arktoons is on track to pass, in terms of quality, marketability, and traffic, a competing site in about one year. That site just sold for $150 million.

Peter Hitchens reviews Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, a book written in the style of the highly influential Eminent Victorians:

While not quite impaling (among others) Steve Jobs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor, she deals brief, eviscerating sideswipes at the ideas and follies that brought such people into being and sustain them now. For this reviewer, a partially reformed 1960s bohemian, Bolshevik, and general scapegrace, these sideswipes were pure joy, the sort that make me cry out with recognition, or pound the arm of my chair. I say “partially reformed” because the things once inside me that the 1960s broke remain forever broken. I cannot be what I would have been if this had not happened, and I am not at all sure I would want to be. My main use to civilization, as a resister and critic of these things, comes from knowing who and what is now my enemy, in a way that very few conservatives do. It is a skill I largely retain, which is why I think that “Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll” is a much clearer statement of the revolutionary program than “Workers of all Lands, Unite!”

So I saw repeated flashes in this volume of another book I very much hope Andrews will write, a lament for the great loss we have all suffered and which cannot possibly be repaired until we admit it, if then. Such a book will be so sad that it will make the sound of bagpipes played after a funeral on a windy hillside sound cheerful. But it has to come from someone at the beginning of life, not from some gnarled survivor of the lost world before the revolutions. Her opening chapter, a general segment on Boomers rather than on any individual, is the best part. Here is perhaps the most poignant passage in the book:

As a woman, if I had been born in another century, my schooling might well have stopped at age twelve. On the other hand, in this age I attended some of the best schools in the world until I was twenty-one and still didn’t receive an education those benighted eras would have considered standard. Is this necessarily an improvement?

Andrews cannily observes another often overlooked convulsion in thought: “The most glaring objective consequence of the boomers’ embrace of mass culture has been the death of both folk culture and high culture. Earlier generations felt obliged to graduate from the good-time music of their youth to opera and classical, upon reaching a certain age. Not the boomers.” I had never seen anyone make this point before. Yet it was exactly my decision to graduate in this way that opened a tiny gap between me and my contemporaries, which has widened over fifty years into an immense gulf. I am glad to have even a poor and sketchy knowledge of a part of the musical classics, but I think what I gave up is even more important than what I gained. For in abandoning it I learned how not to conform, and how not to care when found out. And I also ceased to hear that incessant pied piper, with his false promises of untold joys to come if I would just follow the others.

This brings us back to the destruction of formal education, the acquisition of defined knowledge based upon authority. I was caught in the middle of this change and am cursed and blessed with a constant painful knowledge of what I have lost. But those who came very soon after me do not even have that. They live unaware of it, in a fog of unknowing. It was this incredibly rapid removal of all landmarks, signposts, objective measures and maps which left us where we are now, lost boys and girls trying to invent our own ideas of the good, condemned to repeat every stupid mistake in human history, which really defines our age. Yet in the world of the boomers, the uneducated think they are educated. As Kingsley Amis long ago pointed out, we are at a party where the wine tastes like kerosene, the canapés are stale, the music is badly played on inferior instruments, the conversation is lumpish and dull, the clothes ill-fitting—but nobody cares because nobody has experienced anything different or knows that it could be any better.

The histories of the wicked g-g-generation are already being written, and the general tone of the verdict is already clear. They will whine and snark until they completely f-f-fade away, but it will all be in vain.

If I ever write a book on the Boomer g-g-generation, I don’t think I’d focus on the famous individuals as archtypical examples of the whole. While the approach is informative and can unquestionably be very effective from the rhetorical perspective, which is why even serious historians like Paul Johnson have utilized it, I tend to view it as an unnecessary distraction from the more significant points at hand.

And in his criticism of the book, Hitchens explains why it is so important to indict and prosecute the Boomers in the court of intellectual history, contra the incessant complaints from the guilty parties. There are few things more tedious than Boomers crying about the younger generations damning them for their damnable choices, behavior, and social mores, especially doing so is a vital part of convincing those younger generations to reject the Boomers’ collective path toward societal and civilizational suicide.

Any proper discussion of the cultural and moral disaster of our age cannot really concentrate on that age and those who grew out of it. That is just a tour of the ruins, without an explanation of why they are ruins. It needs to look a little further down, into the minds of those who inherited an ordered, free civilization and chose to throw it away. This is the mystery and tragedy of our time, and until we can solve it, it will go on forever, and perhaps be repeated in civilizations to come.

Dear Boomer,

No one, since the literal creation of Man, has accepted “but the Devil made me do it” as an excuse. No one forced you to reject your history, your traditions, your nation, and your ancestors. No one made you neglect your children and your grandchildren. No one forced you to go into debt and eat the seed corn.

You did those things. No one did them for you or to you. You were presented with more freedom than nearly any other generation in human history and you freely chose to be wicked. You created the “latchkey children”. You failed to pass on a functional society. You failed to pass on the knowledge that your fathers passed on to you. You planted no trees. You strip-mined the economy. You left your wives, and left your husbands, and you shattered your families, simply because no one forcibly stopped you. And if anyone tried to convince you otherwise, you dismissed them as fascists and religious freaks.

So don’t blame your parents, society, the Jews, Vietnam, the black community, the communists, Kondratiev waves, or anything else. None of your excuses matter and none of them will be accepted by anyone. The more you defend yourself, the more you will be despised by the younger generations and the generations still to come. You’re not sexy, you’re not cool, and the Beatles will be forgotten about five minutes after the last Boomer dies. Seventy is not the new twenty.

You will never be forgiven because you will never repent of your wickedness. So, eat, drink, and be merry today, for the Day of the Pillow is coming.

Ok, Boomer?

UPDATE: Milo wrote a succinct but favorable review.

It’s been nearly a year since a man made me this hard.

 No, it’s not MIDNIGHT’S WAR, it’s what a society based on Boomer economics looks like:

When baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) hit a median age of 35 in 1990, they collectively owned 21{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} of the nation’s wealth.

The millennial generation will hit that 35 median age in four years and they are nowhere near owning that percentage.

As a whole, boomers have fared better financially than Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) throughout every stage of their lives. Boomers currently boast more than half (57{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08}) of the nation’s wealth, while Gen X owns just 16{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08}, and millennials 3{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08}.

Adults under 40 have been accumulating less and less wealth over the past 30 years, plummeting from owning 13{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} of the wealth in 1989 to less than 7{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} today.

Indeed, at a median age of 35, Gen Xers owned just 9{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} of the nation’s wealth in 2008 — less than half what boomers had at that age. And millennials will have to triple their net worth in the next four years to catch up to Generation X at 35, and increase their wealth sevenfold to catch up to boomers at that age.

That will be a difficult feat indeed considering most are saddled with student loan debt which has hit a record collective $1.6 trillion. The Federal Reserve estimates that more than a third of the 45 million Americans burdened by that debt are under 30.

When the Boomers said “never trust anyone over 30” they were warning the generations to come about themselves.

It also shows how ridiculous it is for Boomers to pull resort to their “when I was your age” nonsense.

There’s been an interesting discussion on SocialGalactic about one’s responsibility to parents who refuse to listen to one’s advice about the Covid “vaccines”:

My take on the matter is that they are adults, they are responsible for their own actions, and all you can do is advise them honestly to the best of your ability. If it kills them, then bury them and mourn them. If it harms them to the point that they can’t care for themselves, then warehouse them at their own expense.

Your primary responsibility is to your wife and your children. You should not, and you are not expected to, impose a lower standard of living on them simply because your parents are narcissists seeking to live forever. Given their grasshopper nature, most Boomer parents are not going to be leaving you or their grandchildren the sort of legacy that their parents left them. (Yes, I am very well aware there are exceptions, and that’s wonderful, but we’re talking about the macro average here.) That’s as it is, and there is nothing you can do about it, but you can control your own actions in this regard.

Honoring one’s father and mother does not involve financially supporting their every fear and whim. Sometimes it means keeping your mouth shut. Sometimes it means speaking out. Sometimes it means helping them out, and sometimes it means permitting them to experience the consequences of their decisions.

I do not, however, recommend actually telling them this in advance. That’s manipulative. Just tell them what you see as the risks, as best you understand them, do your best to dissuade them if you think that’s the right thing to do in their particular medical situation, and then let the dice fall where they fall. Because, in the end, it’s their choice, not yours.

Let the Boomers boom. They’re going to anyhow.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like it will take much longer for scientists to confirm the hypothesis that the “cure” poses higher risks than the disease:

At least 181 people have died in the US according to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), after taking experimental vaccines meant to combat a 99.4{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} to 99.8{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} survival rate virus, the death toll for which a team of researchers in one state found may be inflated by as much as 40{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08}.

A number of international groups of doctors and scientists have issued warnings over the vaccines, which are still in the experimental stage and have not been approved by the FDA for general use, but are being injected under FDA “emergency use authorization.” The UK Guardian reports that in UK, health authorities warned people with food or other allergies not to take the Pfizer BioTech vaccine. Severe allergic reactions have also been noted in the Moderna experimental vaccine.

A CDC registry reports that, as of the end of December, experimental COVID vaccinations have so far caused over 7,844, adverse reactions, at least 3,150 of which have rendered people “unable to work,” or perform “daily activities.”

Last February, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar granted blanket immunity from lawsuits to COVID vaccine manufacturers, so that companies “cannot be sued for money damages in court” over injuries related to the administration or use of products to treat or protect against COVID.

I very much look forward to seeing how Boomers will attempt to defend their fellow Boomers from the charge of narcissism and lifelong immaturity given this city literally built to warehouse them and keep them away from any alarming reminders of their age and the evil consequences of their historical legacy:

The sprawling expanse of flat emptiness in central Florida is an unlikely place for America’s fastest growing metro area in the nation. Yet, just 70 miles northwest of Orlando sits ‘The Villages’ – the world’s largest retirement community that surpasses the size of Manhattan and encompasses five zip codes with an ever-growing population.

Spanning 32-square-miles, The Villages is a veritable boom-town for baby boomers aged 55+ who flock to the geriatric paradise in droves for its endless margarita mixers (happy hour starts at 11am), unlimited golf courses (50, to be exact), and notorious for its laissez-fair attitude towards sex, thriving swingers scene, and controversial politics. 

The rambling 33,000 acre property is made up of 78 smaller neighborhoods that range in size from 100 to 1550 houses. According to the US Census Bureau, population ballooned by 37.8{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} (more than any other American city) between 2010 and 2019. In order to keep up with rapid growth, The Villages is always expanding with an average of 250 new homes and 200 pre-owned homes sold per month.

The self-contained AARPopolis has everything a boomer needs to sustain their twilight years in comfort: dozens upon dozens of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, gift shops, jewelry stores, churches, movie theaters, medical facilities, a Walmart Supercenter and even a ‘fountain of youth.’

From its inception, the gated complex was meticulously engineered to simulate the rose-tinted idea of Main Street, USA– predicated on convenience, leisure and good ol’ American values (even if it’s an illusion). It was tailor made for a demographic that mythologized a wholesome, suburban fantasyland evoked in ‘Father Knows Best’ and ‘Leave it to Beaver.’

‘They were very perceptive about how Baby Boomers actually craved an inorganically organized landscape, an alternate vision of what America used to be, or how they imagine it having been,’ said Oppenheim to InsideHook. ‘A utopia, but a fake utopia based on an America that doesn’t really exist.’

So strong is the gravitational pull of nostalgia – The Villages were imagineered to imitate old town squares like a theme park, complete with phony histories. ‘We needed to create this place not brand new. We wanted to create it old, we decided to bring the Baby Boomers to a home that they were familiar with when they were young,’ said Richard Schwartz.

Draconian rules and restrictions dictate every aspect of ‘life in the bubble.’ Repainting your home requires board approval, (and only then can you select from a bland pallet with 10-shades of beige). No more than two vehicles are allowed per driveway, all vehicles must be regularly used (defined as twice per week) or stored in the garage. Lawn ornaments are strictly prohibited including but not limited to: windmills, religious symbols, gnomes, animal figurines, Christmas decorations and flamingos (bummer!). Even the most tasteful decor can turn into a red button topic.

TV antennas and satellite dishes are forbidden; as are clothing lines, window air conditioners and commercial vehicles. There is a two pet maximum policy, weighing no more than 40 pounds each. Retractable leashes are illegal, and can be no longer than seven feet. Villagers must make sure their lawns are properly edged at all times and hedges can be no greater than four feet (planting new ones will require Home Owner’s Association approval).

The most controversial rule, is also the cardinal rule: no persons under the age of 55 are allowed to live in The Villages. That decree extends to children and grandchildren, who are not permitted to visit for more than 30 days within a calendar year.

It sounds rather like a sterile prelude to the Hell toward which they are hurtling headlong. And if you ever had any doubts about the charge of “radical, lifelong immaturity” applying to Boomers, this picture of the “cheerleading squad”, for which there is a two-year wait to join, should erase them for good.

They’re now being written, and already it is very clear that history is not going to regard them or their dismal legacy well:

If you want to understand the Baby Boom generation you might start with this epigram: Extremism in the defense of vice is our liberty. I don’t think anyone ever put it quite that way, but it could be a Boomer slogan. And it’s part of unlocking the secrets to their generation and to many of the problems they have inflicted on America. Never has any generation in this country—or perhaps any other—so monopolized every aspect of society, for so long, and for such selfish ends while congratulating each other on their selfless righteousness.

Tear apart the family, the churches, the charities, the schools, and everything else in your path; encourage mass drug use, promiscuous sex, and spend, spend, spend-materialism; even saddle your kids and grandkids with tens of trillions of dollars of debt to make sure you can keep the party going “Big Chill”-style, until the very last Boomers depart for the Strawberry fields where it’s always 1967. 

Until the past few years, not many people noticed what the Boomers were doing. It’s no surprise—they started their victory tour, celebrating themselves while they were in college in the 1960s, and haven’t stopped since. It’s only now that many of them are in their 70s that space has opened for a reassessment.

If you want to really understand the full Boomer cycle (and I suggest you do, because their long ascendancy is a big part of the story of America from about 1960 until, well, right now), there are three books you need to read—the holy trilogy of Boomer pathologies. They are The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, written by Tom Wolfe in 1968, The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch published in 1979, and the Götterdämmerung of this cycle, Andrews’ Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, published in January.

Boomers is an astounding book. Modeled on Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey’s sharp 1918 reassessment of the British generation that dominated the 19th and very early 20th centuries, Andrews examines six high-profile members of the Baby Boom generation: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor. Each represents an element of the essential Boomer character. None of them are natural villains. Rather, each is hobbled by a fatal flaw that leaves him permanently stunted. 

The one possible exception is Jobs. When compared to the others, Jobs seems like a man out of time: in some ways, the Apple co-founder is the essential Boomer. But while he shared—and in some ways defined—the Boomer aesthetic, his soul belonged to another generation. He did, after all, insist that the Apple MacIntosh be manufactured in the United States. It was Tim Cook who later shifted manufacturing to China. And Jobs kept porn out of the App Store. “We believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone” Jobs said in 2010. “Jobs had some very un-Boomerish views,” Andrews observes.

Every profile in the book is fascinating and Andrews is in her element. Her penetrating gaze leaves the subjects of these character portraits naked and vulnerable, but her elegant writing and humane style turn what could be acid takedowns of caricatures into the human, all too human, failures of the “Me” generation. 

Where Tom Wolfe described the Boomers in their rebellious, countercultural, drug-addled youth, Christopher Lasch picked up the thread as they were starting families, advancing in their careers, making some money, and taking over the institutions they had rebelled against just a few years before. But don’t worry—they didn’t sell out. No, not the Boomers. They put a deadhead sticker on their Cadillacs. And they parked the Caddy in front of a nice house in the suburbs that steadily rose in value. 

But the Boomers were the last generation that could support a middle-class family on one income. And that house they’re living in that has appreciated so nicely over the years? It’s become so expensive that their kids, the Millennials, can’t afford to buy one—let alone have kids. In fact, the Boomers had about four times the wealth the Millennials currently have as they enter their 40s.

Throughout the book, Andrews paints a picture not just of unrelenting narcissism, but of radical, lifelong immaturity. Her profile of Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing,” was striking in this regard. But the chapter on Camille Paglia is particularly jarring, mostly because it seems to hit dead center and lay her bare. She describes Paglia’s decadence as “a mauve decadence: corrupt but nonthreatening.” And her mimetic, yet one-sided, rivalry with Susan Sontag exposed a petty side to Paglia that diminishes her cultivated reputation for brassy independence.

And yet most of them are still confused that the younger generations fail to consider their music “the greatest ever recorded” and can’t grasp the way the younger generations gleefully anticipate “the Day of the Pillow”. But then, “unrelenting narcissism” does tend to inhibit accurate self-reflection.

The “dismal legacy” epitaph is actually more favorable than the Boomers deserve:

Ultimately, Andrews concludes that “the Boomers leave behind a dismal legacy. In all the fields touched by the six Boomers profiled here—technology, entertainment, economics, academia, politics, law—what they passed on to their children was worse than what they inherited. In some cases, as with Steve Jobs and his products or Camille Paglia and her books, they left behind accomplishments that are impressive and worthy of gratitude. But the overall effect of the Boomer generation has still been essentially destructive.”