On the Morning After the Retirement of the Baby Boomers’ Generation

Some inexplicable notion caused me to pull Joan Didion’s The White Album from a shelf, open it, and randomly flip to and reread her essay, “On the Morning After the Sixties,” which I don’t recall previously reading, and which, no doubt, I would have neither understood nor appreciated when I surely first read it.
I think of the sixties as the baby boomers’ decade. Then again, I think of Joan Didion as an icon for the baby boomers. I see now that she referred to herself as a member of the silent generation—my parents’ generation. My glance at her bio surprises me that she was born in 1934, within a year or two of my parents’ births, definitely making her a silent generationer. In her 1970 essay, she wrote, “I think now that we were the last generation to identify with adults.”
“On the Morning After the Sixties” isn’t about the sixties, or the seventies, but, rather, about some social expectations of the fifties that didn’t survive the sixties. Didion is remorseful.
Today, what she mourned is fuel for the very flashpoint of American society. We just went through an earthquake election in which the winning side babbled about making America great again, while the losing side whined about never going back. All of my personal moral, ethical, philosophical, political, social, and economic understandings and instincts align me with the losers. Yet I think the winners were not entirely wrong in yearning for something worthy to bring back.
In my livingroom I play this little Rodney Dangerfield routine with my Amazon Echo. I ask a question: “Alexa, what’s today’s weather forecast?” Or “Who won last night’s Reds-Cardinals game?” Or whatever. Alexa answers by first addressing me, “Good morning, Scott ….” I follow up with, “Alexa, please call me Mr. Powers,” but Alexa always replies, “I’m not quite sure how to help you with that.” That opens to my stolen punchline, which I deliver as, “I tell ya, even from a computer, I don’t get no respect.” Ha. Ha. Ha.
But, yes, it bugs me. This is not about my lack of patience or competency to program technology to say what I want, though that’s a given. My gripe is: almost no one else wants to call me Mr. Powers either. Even telephone solicitors call me, “Scott.” I know, mea culpa; for most of my adult life, I’ve advised people, “Please, Mr. Powers is my father. Call me Scott.” But now I’m in my sixties, I’m retired from a professional career of forty-some years, I’m a grandfather, I’m wanting to experience the warm glow of social respect, and, and—and I’m not going to get my turn, am I?
I know: tiny personal gripe. Who cares?
In recent years I’ve been to several weddings and funerals in which few men wore coats and ties, and few women wore nice dresses or dressy pant suits. One recent church wedding, the bride and groom wore sneakers. In worship houses, schools, business offices, civic meetings, courtrooms, restaurants, cruises, performance halls, parties, and all sorts of other places where dress codes might have been expected in another era, codes have been relaxed or abandoned. Not everywhere, yet. But far more commonly than not.
Again, tiny, right?
Yet these gripes distinguish the societal atmosphere of our time. They pick at the much broader change in society over the past, oh, let’s say sixty years. Within many settings, social expectations, propriety, protocol, cultural standards, etiquette, manners, civility, mores, nice language, politeness, and sometimes even simple decency have been devalued, diminished, or even discarded.
There is a very large segment of American society—let me say the one that just swept elections—who seem to sense this as a great loss, maybe without being able to articulate it, and even if the individuals themselves couldn’t care less about neckties or thank-you cards. Nearly all pointed conversations and nearly all polling with this constituency show that they think—no, they are certain—that America is much worse now than it was for their parents or grandparents. Economic data don’t back up such a belief. Crime data don’t back up such a belief. Public health data don’t back up such a belief. International relations assessments don’t back up such a belief. Yet to them, America just smells worse. Something’s there.
Don’t think it’s partisan. Sure, some Republicans blame multicultural inclusion, and some Democrats blame anti-intellectualism. But we—a whole generation—we did this. We did this together, in nonpartisan unity.
This is a great legacy of the baby boomers’ generation.
From the start, we didn’t want to trust anyone over thirty. And when we got that old, well, we weren’t going to be like them. We pushed long hair and jeans and sneakers into everything. If older generations wanted something hidden, we wanted it exposed. If something was not to be discussed, we wanted it shouted. We demanded to know why, and why not. When we didn’t like a rule, we ignored it. We reveled in rebellion. We denied respect for authority. We fought with the establishment. We tore down every wall we could. We smashed every glass ceiling we could. We burned social expectations along with our draft cards and bras.
All of that was good—no, it was great. We thought we had it under control. We knew—or at least we thought we knew—there remained things to be respected. The next couple of generations, though, oh, boy. Walls kept falling, like dominoes: respect for civility, manners, social norms, polite language, discourse, law, science, knowledge, intellectual pursuit, and wisdom. All the remaining grownup stuff.
Didion wrote of her own silent generation: we were the last generation to identify with adults.
Just as she nearly always was, she was right.
And now, on the morning after the retirement of the baby boomers’ generation, it looks like we leave quite the mess, much of the old cultural infrastructure in rubble and ash.
I toasted in the new year “On the Morning After the Sixties” with Alka Selzer, thanks to the flu. I thought things couldn’t get worse after a decade of assassinations, war, riots and the election of a scoundrel like Richard Nixon as president, but with another scoundrel just being elected president I’m reserving judgment.