The generational labels are dumb. Everyone born in the late 50s-early 60s fits your description of growing up with paper and adapting to digital. Just about every boomer grew up outside, drinking from water hoses, riding bikes around the neighborhood without helicopter parents…
With respect, I'm an Xer with Boomer parents and Boomer employees, and I can tell you, our experience -- even of the things you just described -- was different.
Having said that, we've had the joy of listening to Boomers tell us how dumb we are our whole lives. It's always been so very endearing. Mitigated, fortunately, by all the neglect.
Being a REAL Boomer (I can answer the question "Where Were You In 62?" I've lived in a number of Golden Ages. The 50, late 60's, the 80's, ALL Golden Ages where all was sunshine an lolliops. Well Not Really. I can image 20-30 years from now people talking about The Trump Golden Age.
Although in the (late) 50's & 60's We had Better Music.
Obviously I think the 1980s were the highpoint of human civilization, particularly with regard to music (and Presidents), but I certainly can't begrudge you the 50s and 60s. What was remarkable was when I first caught my daughter listening to 70s music (an abomination!) on her then-new iPod. I asked how she even knew Bread and ABBA existed. But the answer should have been obvious. She wasn't getting her musical tastes from the radio (what's that?). She was getting them from Napster, Limewire, and the iTunes Store, where literally everything in the world from all of time was available all at once.
And therein lies an entire shared cultural experience they'll never know. Not that ours is necessarily better. But it's distinct, and it was among the things that shaped us.
Of course, her father was at that moment helping launch PayPal. We Xers created a pretty large part of the world they live in. Elon's about to create the next two world's they're going to live in.
The Trump Golden Age (most of which will take place after Trump, sadly) is going to surpass everything. That's part of why.
You caught my attention first by your article explaining the war strategy created by rockets that can launch, land and relaunch ad infinitum, and I have enjoyed your writing and speaking spots ever since as I try find time working and raising a family of 5. As a child from 1967 I share the core views of your guest essayist esp his song of the time's zietgiest - and kudos to you for replying to your commenters. A q though, what 2 projects of Elon do you reference, robots and the Mars population? And are you as negative about the spacex IPO as others seem be?
I think the SpaceX IPO is going to be incredible. In 25 years, everyone is going to wish they'd bought twice as much as they did, no matter how much they bought. It will be like Walmart and Apple had a baby. It will be as if you could have bought stock in the Spanish Empire in 1491.
But what I meant by "worlds" was not "projects". I meant he's literally about to create the first Lunar and Martian cities, two whole new worlds into which humanity will expand. And it's going to seem slow, like the development of airplanes in the 20s and 30s seemed slow. And then all of a sudden, it's going to amaze the world. Remember: there were only 66 years between Kitty Hawk and walking on the Moon. Or maybe better analogies: less than 20 years between single-seat biplanes and Pearl Harbor, less than 6 years between that and breaking the sound barrier, just 5 more years to the B-52s we still fly, just 5 more years to satellites in orbit, and only 12 more years to the 747 and walking on the Moon.
Once these things get rolling, the world starts changing very fast. We're in the ramp-up now.
Didn't call anyone dumb. Called the labels dumb. And they are, literally, in that they have very little to say. The distinctions they pretend to provide are meaningless to those at the beginning or end of these cohorts. And they tend to be divisive; how is that good? How precisely is a gen X experience of freely riding bikes and drinking from water hoses different? Also, seems like your boomer parents and employees would have a better grasp of how it was different, since they existed during both times lol. But I take exception to his tone in this article, which I'd describe as just a wee bit arrogantly ignorant. "We're the generation that grew up with paper and adapted to digital." Sure, your generation did that, but it wasn't the first, and how myopic are you to think that? Good grief, my 90-year-old mom (obviously a pre-boomer) grew up with paper and ordered an Uber on her phone with aplomb. His focus on these labels weakens his arguments. Further, disparaging groups of people by their age is just as wrong as disparaging groups of people by their skin color. It purposely ignores individuals as uniquely made in the image of God.
Again with respect, I think it would be silly to suggest that there are no generational differences, as evidenced by the radical differences between Boomers in 1968 and their parents. Every age group parents in reaction to their own parents, and that produces a very predictable difference in the next generation...and how that generation parents their own kids.
This is actually a pretty fascinating field of study. I would recommend my (Boomer) friend Neil Howe's most recent book, "The Fourth Turning Is Here", which covers this subject -- and why it matters -- exceptionally well.
Agree that it would be silly to not see generational differences, and your example is a good example. Yes, quite a few young people (not all) in 1968 began seeing the world differently than their parents viewed it. But what were the 4-year-olds doing in 1968, though? Because now they're grouped in with the boomers. Agreed that every age group reacts to its parents, but that's an ongoing never-ending process. Any attempt at breaking a group of them off can only be about half right, because the ones on either end are just as likely to share similarities with people in the other directions, whatever random group label is assigned. There is no "age group" you can label that will stay static, other than maybe all the people who are 25 today, but some of them will join the 26-year-old group tomorrow. I have no quarrel with talking in general about generational differences, but let's focus on something more meaningful and specific, which is exactly why I like your example above. Because there's no "generational difference" between someone born in 1964 vs someone born in 1965. Which makes it all the more annoying for the author to generalize about one of these labels. "Get the hell out of the way boomers, we can do it better" is another example of his being a wee bit ignorantly arrogant (or arrogantly ignorant, IDK). It's also rather the height of modern-day hubris to think we can have the final word on how our "generation" affected the world. People not even born will see us more clearly than we can see ourselves, and they will apply the label that sticks. They will know what generation was the bridge, and to what.
That is certainly a legitimate problem. Nevertheless, "kids who grew up in the 1980s" are meaningfully different from "kids who grew up in the 1960s" or "kids who grew up in the 2010s". So while there's a blending at the margin, distinct cohorts clearly exist.
Bill and Neil assess the generational boundaries as lying at key defining events, which historically have happened roughly every 20-25 years like clockwork, going back to at least the 1400s. So for instance, the Boomers are usually defined as those born from 1946-1965, but they say that's wrong, that the proper dates are 1943 (when the first GI's returned and started having kids) to about 1960 (after which not only had that process ceased but also the world took a much darker turn from the post-war exuberance that went before it). Likewise, while the Census Bureau (no doubt at the behest of Madison Avenue, but that's a separate discussion) claims Millennials were born from 1981-1995 (oddly truncated, as they did to my generation), that's only half right, because while the beginning of the Reagan era certain was formative, the end of that period was pretty clearly 9/11. Everything after was different from everything before, especially with regard to parenting.
There's a cadre referred to as "Generation Jones" - technically "Boomers," but born late 1950's into early 1960's. We're much like the paper-to-digital "X'ers" described by Mr. McKay - e.g., I had one of the original IBM PC's.
[I've noticed that YouTube recently has been popping up with "Generation Jones" videos describing our characteristics.]
In fact, I'd say we have more in common with the X'ers than the Boomers.
In my case, old enough to remember watching Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver (albeit often they were after-school reruns by the time I was a viewer). BUT came of age (junior high / high school / college) during the inflation / malaise / Watergate era / Vietnam defeat era of the 1970's.
We were exposed to the optimism of "The Space Race" and "New Frontier" - but those passed by our time. In many ways, Reagan struck a chord as unlike the "Boomers," we recognized that government is the problem, not the solution.
I would be willing to bet that one would find relatively few "Generation Jones" amongst the ranks of the spawn of The Frankfurt School / Alinsky / SDS, such as Bill Ayers and Hillary Clinton.
By Strauss and Howe's reckoning, that's because half of you actually are Xers, and the traditional dividing lines are off. They put Boomers between 1943-1960, with X from 1961-1980. Nonstandard, but I find their reasoning compelling.
"The greatest of those, arguably, was the fall of the Soviet Union. Unlike the pampered generations that came behind us, my generation grew up in mortal fear of a nuclear war with the Soviets. One of our formative cultural experiences, for example, was when Red Dawn came out in 1984. It was a movie based on an exceptionally plausible scenario whereby the Iron Curtain expanded well into the Western hemisphere and the USA was largely cut off from our allies, and the commies invaded."
I (vaguely) recall reading an article (National Review, American Spectator?) about what to do when The Russians come.
Also
The Third World War: August 1985
John W. Hackett, John Strawson
First published May 1, 1978
The 70's were a bad time for America & The West. Stagflation, Bombings, Disco, poor job market.
Couldn't agree more. And Hackett's books (because there was a sequel, The Third World War: The Untold Story, released in 1983, which updated a few things and also provided a haunting epilogue describing an alternate Soviet victory) were fascinating, and made a real difference in quarters that counted.
Even Gary Trudeau ("Doonesbury") called the 70s "a gallstone of a decade".
I’m a marketing term, and I’m unapologetic about it.
Hahahahahaha...
I am an American and I am not a democrat&republican Usefool Voter or a marketing term, but have fun with all those Usefool Voters and those marketing terms.
Gee, I wonder why the US of A is so fucked-up...marketing terms and Usefool Voters for $100 Alex.
As a Boomer myself, I had to listen to similar diatribes about how lost, dumb, and pointless my life and all of the things I liked were by members of the Greatest Generation. Nevertheless, I strongly agree with the general premise of the article and have often wondered how or why so many people who firmly believe it's still 1970 have become entrenched in power. While experience is a valuable asset, looking to the Janet Yellins, Hillary Clintons, Jerome Powells and others of that ilk for leadership or new ideas is absurd. I myself have retired from medicine and no longer try to give advice to my son the doctor who has done brilliantly. I really wish all of the politician fossils desperately seeking relevance would step out of the way. The country and the world would certainly benefit.
Yet another Trumpian miracle: while everyone else his age is clinging to power, he's launching Xers and Millennials by the dozens. He raised amazing kids who could build greater things than he had, and now he's doing the same thing for the nation. That's how it's supposed to work.
Remembered the song straight away. I pray we have taught the generations after us boomers, to have the moral compass needed to make the next 250 years even better 🙏
As some commenters have noted, there was an attitude in the article: we're better than you. When you actually get into the details, each generation has offered something good, and allowed some bad things.
I belong to the early Boomers; I really think the Boomer generation should be split between those of us born between 1946 and 1955 and the group born later, 1956-1965. The older group, call us Boomers A, were raised by the "Greatest Generation," those who survived the Depression and WWII. Boomers B were raised by the younger cohort of that generation, who were born near the end of the Depression and during WWII.
Boomer A parents came out of WWII as winners, and expecting things to get better, which did happen. At the same time, they remembered all they had been through, and passed that down to us. It wasn't all sunshine and roses, I can guarantee you. But we stuck with it, and then after high school faced the Vietnam War. We handled that, then hit "affirmative action" in the 70s. But we have continued to push through; we're survivors.
The Boomer B group arrived after the prosperity had begun to settle in. They were the ones who became the Yuppies and Dinks, although a few of us older ones did as well.
I suspect, although I don't have any data to support it, that members of our older group were more likely to stay in church, or drop out for a while, then get back in when children came along, which also helped pass along the values of our parents' generation.
Bottom line: we as parents did our best to see that our children understood, and followed the long-standing values of a Christian nation. Those, our children, are the members of the X generation who have to be the ones to keep this country on the right track. So far, they're doing a pretty good job.
I think the real issue here is that the Census Bureau has somewhat arbitrarily defined the generational boundaries, and thus introduced errors.
Bill Strauss and Neil Howe assess the generational boundaries as lying at key defining events, which historically have happened roughly every 20-25 years like clockwork, going back to at least the 1400s. So for instance, the Boomers are usually defined as those born from 1946-1965, but they (both Boomers) say that's wrong, that the proper dates are 1943 (when the first GI's returned and started having kids) to about 1960 (after which not only had that process ceased but also the world took a much darker turn from the post-war exuberance that went before it). I think the very latest one could reasonably argue for is 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis). After that, you're into GenX, and the commonalities are striking even at the margin.
Likewise, while the Census Bureau (no doubt at the behest of Madison Avenue, but that's a separate discussion) claims Millennials were born from 1981-1995 (oddly truncated, as they did to my generation), that's only half right, because while the beginning of the Reagan era certain was formative, the end of that period was pretty clearly 9/11. Everything after was different from everything before, especially with regard to parenting.
Circling back to your opening, did you really just say that a GenXer had an attitude? Wow, I've never heard anyone say that before. LOL
In any case, we collectively appreciate the confidence you express in your closing sentence. The world is at a great turning point, and a lot of that is going to rest on our shoulders. Many of us are very aware of the burden.
My sons are GenX, and I am happy to hand them the reins of our family's and our nation's future. Their halcyon childhood was provided by their father and me, based on principles and priorities we learned from our parents, in an atmosphere of permissive and promiscuous secular pressure, and a lifestyle crippled financially by runaway inflation. They have applied the same godly principles, (also shared by their wives) to their children's upbringing. Call both generations, in large part, a reluctant remnant. However, we rise to intervene for what is right, as witnessed by the Reagan years and their conservative congressional legacy. Recent primary results indicate that GenX is answering the call to redraw the maps, revive the Constitution, and rededicate our nation to God.
Nothing I guess, we're doomed to forever wander in the shifting sands of generational labels.
Some years ago did listen to the audiobook version of "Fourth Turning" while on exercise walks. It made sense then, and has held up well with the benefit of hindsight.
It also reminded me a little of Ravi Batra's "The Great Depression of 1990" (yes, I'm really going back a ways now). That book (as I recall it) was probably more correct about the financial system than might appear in hindsight - Long Term Capital Management as the catalyst for a near systemic financial collapse, later followed by "the subprime crisis," showed that the Fed / central banks had previously under-estimated abilities to paper-over (QE) and buy some more time. But likely not to forever avoid a systemic collapse (hence, "The Great Reset" planning for the other side).
LOL No kidding. And yet they REALLY don't like anything that even seems like it might be criticism. I got an email today from a free subscriber (not even paid) who tore into me like I'm his teenager. I'm 56.
I'm two weeks away from turning 61 and I get a lot of "guff" from some millennials and Gen Z who think that I am "too hard" and I just laugh to myself. My Gen Z daughter knows better than many of her contemporaries. My husband is also Gen X with Greatest Gen parents, so she is more like us than she realizes.
Scott McKay absolutely killed it with this unbelievable piece! Thank you to Dr. Martin for publishing for us to read! It is one of the best pieces ever posted on the Rod Martin Report! The crusty old Baby Boomers need to retire and step aside and let Gen X take over, they have the situation well in hand. Gen X grew up witnessing history right before their eyes with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the collapse of the USSR, the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, the launch of a revolutionary new platform for entertainment by MTV, the AIDS Epidemic, and America’s overwhelming victory in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. Needless to say, they saw the worst and best of the last century. They are strong and independent latchkey kids. They grew up playing outside, drinking water directly from hoses, riding their bikes, playing in the dirt, and profiting from direct experience. They didn’t have IPhones, IPads, IPods, social media, YouTube, or any of those other fancy gadgets.
They played with physical toys, watched TV, built sandcastles, swam in lakes, rough housed, got in mud fights, explored nature, and didn’t have any helicopter parents around always holding their hand. They didn’t watch vapid YouTubers and Influencers nor the mind rotting garbage for kids you see nowadays like Baby Shark or Ms. Rachel. They watched The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget, the Smurfs, The Muppet Babies, The Looney Tunes, G.I. Joe: Real American Hero, ThunderCats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Jem and the Holograms, DuckTales, and Transformers. They didn’t watch garbage like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, they watched legendary TV programs like Cheers, The Golden Girls, Miami Vice, Full House, The Wonder Years, Rosanne, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Matters, Saved by the Bell, Night Court, Seinfeld, Alf, Knight Rider, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Baywatch, Magnum P.I., MacGyver, Hill Street Blues, In the Heat of the Night, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Thomas the Tank Engine, Punky Brewster, The Littles, Shirt Tales, The Bernstein Bears, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dink the Little Dinosaur, Danger Mouse, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and Chip N’Dale Rescue Rangers. Is it any wonder half of Gen Z said in a recent survey they want to live in the past?
Look at the great stuff Gen X got in comparison to the c*** kids today get! The vast majority of Hollywood movies today suck. But Gen X had Hollywood in its prime and got masterpieces like Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Full Metal Jacket, The Outsiders, Stand By Me, E.T., Airplane, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Back to the Future, Big, Major League, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Field of Dreams, Blade Runner, Batman, Mississippi Burning, When Harry Met Sally, Stand and Deliver, The Verdict, Spaceballs, The Princess Bride, A Christmas Story, Uncle Buck, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, 1984, Tron, Glory, and The Untouchables. Sit down dine in Pizza Huts with the full salad bar still existed. McDonalds made fried pies not baked pies. Political correctness was nowhere to be found. Let’s just say, Gen X has been around the block and has good common sense and knows what is normal and what is not. That’s why their the prefect ones to take over this country.
Your right Mr. McKay, we need to stop punishing the modern predominately Republican multicultural South that is a shining example of what MLK spoke of in his “I Have A Dream” Speech in 1963. The South is much more integrated than the North and race relations are much better in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas then they are in places like New York & California. You’ll find much more racial strife in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, or Portland than you ever would in Atlanta, Houston, Oxford, Louisville, Nashville, Miami, New Orleans, Richmond, or Raleigh. In the modern day South, you’ll see the Confederate flag flown and Confederate Monuments displayed, alongside statues of black heroes and slavery and lynching memorials. Whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and Arabs, Christians, Jews and Muslims, men and women, gay and straight, able-bodied and disabled all live together with equal rights and opportunities away down South in Dixie! MLK is celebrated alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. This is the South of 2026. Not the ones the Democrats ran in the 19th and 20th centuries that was horrendously racist and was plagued by slavery, racial segregation, discrimination, lynching, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, medical experiments, red lining, laws against interracial marriage, bigoted sheriffs and police departments, and racial violence like that done by groups like the KKK and White Citizens’ Council.
That South is gone forever! Newsflash liberals! George Wallace, Storm Thurmond, Lester Maddox, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, James K. Vardman, Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and James Eastland are all dead. The Ku Klux Klan are a tiny group with 5,000 members. You won’t find a single blackface minstrel show down South these days. Stop punishing the current generation of white Southerners for the actions of their forefathers like you did Gen X. All the bad stuff that happened in the South’s past by the way was the doing of you guys NOT Republicans! The GOP lead the way in passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Abraham Lincoln a Republican President, freed the slaves. Warren G. Harding bravely stood up for civil rights during the nadir of American race relations while Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government. I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais v. Louisiana! The Voting Rights Act should no be used to assign voting districts based on skin color! Democrats can’t use identity politics to increase their political fortunes anymore!
The left’s defining characteristic is cowardice and victimhood. I was born in 1966, have many liberal friends who don’t have the moral fortitude to examine the results of their appalling policies. Bemused tolerance has morphed into total disgust. They believe in nothing they stand for nothing. I remind myself that 2/3 of the colonists wanted to remain King George’s bitch.
They did indeed. But the whole black pill nihilist thing is a very disturbing development. That's another essay or two, but we must push back against it.
The generational labels are dumb. Everyone born in the late 50s-early 60s fits your description of growing up with paper and adapting to digital. Just about every boomer grew up outside, drinking from water hoses, riding bikes around the neighborhood without helicopter parents…
With respect, I'm an Xer with Boomer parents and Boomer employees, and I can tell you, our experience -- even of the things you just described -- was different.
Having said that, we've had the joy of listening to Boomers tell us how dumb we are our whole lives. It's always been so very endearing. Mitigated, fortunately, by all the neglect.
Being a REAL Boomer (I can answer the question "Where Were You In 62?" I've lived in a number of Golden Ages. The 50, late 60's, the 80's, ALL Golden Ages where all was sunshine an lolliops. Well Not Really. I can image 20-30 years from now people talking about The Trump Golden Age.
Although in the (late) 50's & 60's We had Better Music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fowldx4hRtI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixhkdO_IdU
Obviously I think the 1980s were the highpoint of human civilization, particularly with regard to music (and Presidents), but I certainly can't begrudge you the 50s and 60s. What was remarkable was when I first caught my daughter listening to 70s music (an abomination!) on her then-new iPod. I asked how she even knew Bread and ABBA existed. But the answer should have been obvious. She wasn't getting her musical tastes from the radio (what's that?). She was getting them from Napster, Limewire, and the iTunes Store, where literally everything in the world from all of time was available all at once.
And therein lies an entire shared cultural experience they'll never know. Not that ours is necessarily better. But it's distinct, and it was among the things that shaped us.
Of course, her father was at that moment helping launch PayPal. We Xers created a pretty large part of the world they live in. Elon's about to create the next two world's they're going to live in.
The Trump Golden Age (most of which will take place after Trump, sadly) is going to surpass everything. That's part of why.
You caught my attention first by your article explaining the war strategy created by rockets that can launch, land and relaunch ad infinitum, and I have enjoyed your writing and speaking spots ever since as I try find time working and raising a family of 5. As a child from 1967 I share the core views of your guest essayist esp his song of the time's zietgiest - and kudos to you for replying to your commenters. A q though, what 2 projects of Elon do you reference, robots and the Mars population? And are you as negative about the spacex IPO as others seem be?
I think the SpaceX IPO is going to be incredible. In 25 years, everyone is going to wish they'd bought twice as much as they did, no matter how much they bought. It will be like Walmart and Apple had a baby. It will be as if you could have bought stock in the Spanish Empire in 1491.
But what I meant by "worlds" was not "projects". I meant he's literally about to create the first Lunar and Martian cities, two whole new worlds into which humanity will expand. And it's going to seem slow, like the development of airplanes in the 20s and 30s seemed slow. And then all of a sudden, it's going to amaze the world. Remember: there were only 66 years between Kitty Hawk and walking on the Moon. Or maybe better analogies: less than 20 years between single-seat biplanes and Pearl Harbor, less than 6 years between that and breaking the sound barrier, just 5 more years to the B-52s we still fly, just 5 more years to satellites in orbit, and only 12 more years to the 747 and walking on the Moon.
Once these things get rolling, the world starts changing very fast. We're in the ramp-up now.
Didn't call anyone dumb. Called the labels dumb. And they are, literally, in that they have very little to say. The distinctions they pretend to provide are meaningless to those at the beginning or end of these cohorts. And they tend to be divisive; how is that good? How precisely is a gen X experience of freely riding bikes and drinking from water hoses different? Also, seems like your boomer parents and employees would have a better grasp of how it was different, since they existed during both times lol. But I take exception to his tone in this article, which I'd describe as just a wee bit arrogantly ignorant. "We're the generation that grew up with paper and adapted to digital." Sure, your generation did that, but it wasn't the first, and how myopic are you to think that? Good grief, my 90-year-old mom (obviously a pre-boomer) grew up with paper and ordered an Uber on her phone with aplomb. His focus on these labels weakens his arguments. Further, disparaging groups of people by their age is just as wrong as disparaging groups of people by their skin color. It purposely ignores individuals as uniquely made in the image of God.
Again with respect, I think it would be silly to suggest that there are no generational differences, as evidenced by the radical differences between Boomers in 1968 and their parents. Every age group parents in reaction to their own parents, and that produces a very predictable difference in the next generation...and how that generation parents their own kids.
This is actually a pretty fascinating field of study. I would recommend my (Boomer) friend Neil Howe's most recent book, "The Fourth Turning Is Here", which covers this subject -- and why it matters -- exceptionally well.
https://www.rodmartin.org/p/my-10-favorite-books-of-2024
Or if you prefer, you can read my own "The Fire This Time":
https://www.rodmartin.org/p/the-fire-this-time-2nd-excerpt-from
Agree that it would be silly to not see generational differences, and your example is a good example. Yes, quite a few young people (not all) in 1968 began seeing the world differently than their parents viewed it. But what were the 4-year-olds doing in 1968, though? Because now they're grouped in with the boomers. Agreed that every age group reacts to its parents, but that's an ongoing never-ending process. Any attempt at breaking a group of them off can only be about half right, because the ones on either end are just as likely to share similarities with people in the other directions, whatever random group label is assigned. There is no "age group" you can label that will stay static, other than maybe all the people who are 25 today, but some of them will join the 26-year-old group tomorrow. I have no quarrel with talking in general about generational differences, but let's focus on something more meaningful and specific, which is exactly why I like your example above. Because there's no "generational difference" between someone born in 1964 vs someone born in 1965. Which makes it all the more annoying for the author to generalize about one of these labels. "Get the hell out of the way boomers, we can do it better" is another example of his being a wee bit ignorantly arrogant (or arrogantly ignorant, IDK). It's also rather the height of modern-day hubris to think we can have the final word on how our "generation" affected the world. People not even born will see us more clearly than we can see ourselves, and they will apply the label that sticks. They will know what generation was the bridge, and to what.
That is certainly a legitimate problem. Nevertheless, "kids who grew up in the 1980s" are meaningfully different from "kids who grew up in the 1960s" or "kids who grew up in the 2010s". So while there's a blending at the margin, distinct cohorts clearly exist.
Bill and Neil assess the generational boundaries as lying at key defining events, which historically have happened roughly every 20-25 years like clockwork, going back to at least the 1400s. So for instance, the Boomers are usually defined as those born from 1946-1965, but they say that's wrong, that the proper dates are 1943 (when the first GI's returned and started having kids) to about 1960 (after which not only had that process ceased but also the world took a much darker turn from the post-war exuberance that went before it). Likewise, while the Census Bureau (no doubt at the behest of Madison Avenue, but that's a separate discussion) claims Millennials were born from 1981-1995 (oddly truncated, as they did to my generation), that's only half right, because while the beginning of the Reagan era certain was formative, the end of that period was pretty clearly 9/11. Everything after was different from everything before, especially with regard to parenting.
Anyway, it's a fascinating area.
There's a cadre referred to as "Generation Jones" - technically "Boomers," but born late 1950's into early 1960's. We're much like the paper-to-digital "X'ers" described by Mr. McKay - e.g., I had one of the original IBM PC's.
[I've noticed that YouTube recently has been popping up with "Generation Jones" videos describing our characteristics.]
In fact, I'd say we have more in common with the X'ers than the Boomers.
In my case, old enough to remember watching Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver (albeit often they were after-school reruns by the time I was a viewer). BUT came of age (junior high / high school / college) during the inflation / malaise / Watergate era / Vietnam defeat era of the 1970's.
We were exposed to the optimism of "The Space Race" and "New Frontier" - but those passed by our time. In many ways, Reagan struck a chord as unlike the "Boomers," we recognized that government is the problem, not the solution.
I would be willing to bet that one would find relatively few "Generation Jones" amongst the ranks of the spawn of The Frankfurt School / Alinsky / SDS, such as Bill Ayers and Hillary Clinton.
By Strauss and Howe's reckoning, that's because half of you actually are Xers, and the traditional dividing lines are off. They put Boomers between 1943-1960, with X from 1961-1980. Nonstandard, but I find their reasoning compelling.
Wow! Perfectly stated. If only more left leaners would have enough humility to see Truth when it is so clear.
"The greatest of those, arguably, was the fall of the Soviet Union. Unlike the pampered generations that came behind us, my generation grew up in mortal fear of a nuclear war with the Soviets. One of our formative cultural experiences, for example, was when Red Dawn came out in 1984. It was a movie based on an exceptionally plausible scenario whereby the Iron Curtain expanded well into the Western hemisphere and the USA was largely cut off from our allies, and the commies invaded."
I (vaguely) recall reading an article (National Review, American Spectator?) about what to do when The Russians come.
Also
The Third World War: August 1985
John W. Hackett, John Strawson
First published May 1, 1978
The 70's were a bad time for America & The West. Stagflation, Bombings, Disco, poor job market.
Couldn't agree more. And Hackett's books (because there was a sequel, The Third World War: The Untold Story, released in 1983, which updated a few things and also provided a haunting epilogue describing an alternate Soviet victory) were fascinating, and made a real difference in quarters that counted.
Even Gary Trudeau ("Doonesbury") called the 70s "a gallstone of a decade".
Thing is there was a time when Serious people were writing about this not just nutters. The Soviets were making A Move.
They were indeed. We nearly lost the Cold War. God raised Reagan up at just the right moment.
"I’m a Gen Xer, and I’m unapologetic about it."
Hahahahahaha...
I’m a marketing term, and I’m unapologetic about it.
Hahahahahaha...
I am an American and I am not a democrat&republican Usefool Voter or a marketing term, but have fun with all those Usefool Voters and those marketing terms.
Gee, I wonder why the US of A is so fucked-up...marketing terms and Usefool Voters for $100 Alex.
No one made you read it. So I guess I win.
Typical "marketing term" response...lol.
As a Boomer myself, I had to listen to similar diatribes about how lost, dumb, and pointless my life and all of the things I liked were by members of the Greatest Generation. Nevertheless, I strongly agree with the general premise of the article and have often wondered how or why so many people who firmly believe it's still 1970 have become entrenched in power. While experience is a valuable asset, looking to the Janet Yellins, Hillary Clintons, Jerome Powells and others of that ilk for leadership or new ideas is absurd. I myself have retired from medicine and no longer try to give advice to my son the doctor who has done brilliantly. I really wish all of the politician fossils desperately seeking relevance would step out of the way. The country and the world would certainly benefit.
Yet another Trumpian miracle: while everyone else his age is clinging to power, he's launching Xers and Millennials by the dozens. He raised amazing kids who could build greater things than he had, and now he's doing the same thing for the nation. That's how it's supposed to work.
Remembered the song straight away. I pray we have taught the generations after us boomers, to have the moral compass needed to make the next 250 years even better 🙏
We're doing our best.
Glad I waited until after a workout to jump in.
As some commenters have noted, there was an attitude in the article: we're better than you. When you actually get into the details, each generation has offered something good, and allowed some bad things.
I belong to the early Boomers; I really think the Boomer generation should be split between those of us born between 1946 and 1955 and the group born later, 1956-1965. The older group, call us Boomers A, were raised by the "Greatest Generation," those who survived the Depression and WWII. Boomers B were raised by the younger cohort of that generation, who were born near the end of the Depression and during WWII.
Boomer A parents came out of WWII as winners, and expecting things to get better, which did happen. At the same time, they remembered all they had been through, and passed that down to us. It wasn't all sunshine and roses, I can guarantee you. But we stuck with it, and then after high school faced the Vietnam War. We handled that, then hit "affirmative action" in the 70s. But we have continued to push through; we're survivors.
The Boomer B group arrived after the prosperity had begun to settle in. They were the ones who became the Yuppies and Dinks, although a few of us older ones did as well.
I suspect, although I don't have any data to support it, that members of our older group were more likely to stay in church, or drop out for a while, then get back in when children came along, which also helped pass along the values of our parents' generation.
Bottom line: we as parents did our best to see that our children understood, and followed the long-standing values of a Christian nation. Those, our children, are the members of the X generation who have to be the ones to keep this country on the right track. So far, they're doing a pretty good job.
I think the real issue here is that the Census Bureau has somewhat arbitrarily defined the generational boundaries, and thus introduced errors.
Bill Strauss and Neil Howe assess the generational boundaries as lying at key defining events, which historically have happened roughly every 20-25 years like clockwork, going back to at least the 1400s. So for instance, the Boomers are usually defined as those born from 1946-1965, but they (both Boomers) say that's wrong, that the proper dates are 1943 (when the first GI's returned and started having kids) to about 1960 (after which not only had that process ceased but also the world took a much darker turn from the post-war exuberance that went before it). I think the very latest one could reasonably argue for is 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis). After that, you're into GenX, and the commonalities are striking even at the margin.
Likewise, while the Census Bureau (no doubt at the behest of Madison Avenue, but that's a separate discussion) claims Millennials were born from 1981-1995 (oddly truncated, as they did to my generation), that's only half right, because while the beginning of the Reagan era certain was formative, the end of that period was pretty clearly 9/11. Everything after was different from everything before, especially with regard to parenting.
Circling back to your opening, did you really just say that a GenXer had an attitude? Wow, I've never heard anyone say that before. LOL
In any case, we collectively appreciate the confidence you express in your closing sentence. The world is at a great turning point, and a lot of that is going to rest on our shoulders. Many of us are very aware of the burden.
My sons are GenX, and I am happy to hand them the reins of our family's and our nation's future. Their halcyon childhood was provided by their father and me, based on principles and priorities we learned from our parents, in an atmosphere of permissive and promiscuous secular pressure, and a lifestyle crippled financially by runaway inflation. They have applied the same godly principles, (also shared by their wives) to their children's upbringing. Call both generations, in large part, a reluctant remnant. However, we rise to intervene for what is right, as witnessed by the Reagan years and their conservative congressional legacy. Recent primary results indicate that GenX is answering the call to redraw the maps, revive the Constitution, and rededicate our nation to God.
Amen.
Ahhh, 1956 here. So they'd still have me as a Boomer.
I'll have to respectfully disagree - still consider myself more "Generation Jones."
Or maybe it's because I'm a Gemini - so on any given day I'm either a Boomer or Gen Jones. ;-)
What can we do with you guys? LOL
If you get a chance, pick up "The Fourth Turning Is Here". Fascinating book. Also, here's a much smaller time commitment that I wrote last year:
https://www.rodmartin.org/p/the-fire-this-time-2nd-excerpt-from
>>"What can we do with you guys?"
Nothing I guess, we're doomed to forever wander in the shifting sands of generational labels.
Some years ago did listen to the audiobook version of "Fourth Turning" while on exercise walks. It made sense then, and has held up well with the benefit of hindsight.
It also reminded me a little of Ravi Batra's "The Great Depression of 1990" (yes, I'm really going back a ways now). That book (as I recall it) was probably more correct about the financial system than might appear in hindsight - Long Term Capital Management as the catalyst for a near systemic financial collapse, later followed by "the subprime crisis," showed that the Fed / central banks had previously under-estimated abilities to paper-over (QE) and buy some more time. But likely not to forever avoid a systemic collapse (hence, "The Great Reset" planning for the other side).
As a Gen Xer raised by Greatest Generation parents, I can relate to much of this article.
And as you can see above, some of our Boomer friends are horrified by it, even though it barely referenced them.
It's hard to take for Boomers. Maybe they are "too sensitive?" I was raised to be resilient.
They are very sensitive people, man.
It's hard to be that way when all I heard growing up was "suck it up... someone else is worse off than you are."
LOL No kidding. And yet they REALLY don't like anything that even seems like it might be criticism. I got an email today from a free subscriber (not even paid) who tore into me like I'm his teenager. I'm 56.
I'm two weeks away from turning 61 and I get a lot of "guff" from some millennials and Gen Z who think that I am "too hard" and I just laugh to myself. My Gen Z daughter knows better than many of her contemporaries. My husband is also Gen X with Greatest Gen parents, so she is more like us than she realizes.
Scott McKay absolutely killed it with this unbelievable piece! Thank you to Dr. Martin for publishing for us to read! It is one of the best pieces ever posted on the Rod Martin Report! The crusty old Baby Boomers need to retire and step aside and let Gen X take over, they have the situation well in hand. Gen X grew up witnessing history right before their eyes with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the collapse of the USSR, the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, the launch of a revolutionary new platform for entertainment by MTV, the AIDS Epidemic, and America’s overwhelming victory in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. Needless to say, they saw the worst and best of the last century. They are strong and independent latchkey kids. They grew up playing outside, drinking water directly from hoses, riding their bikes, playing in the dirt, and profiting from direct experience. They didn’t have IPhones, IPads, IPods, social media, YouTube, or any of those other fancy gadgets.
They played with physical toys, watched TV, built sandcastles, swam in lakes, rough housed, got in mud fights, explored nature, and didn’t have any helicopter parents around always holding their hand. They didn’t watch vapid YouTubers and Influencers nor the mind rotting garbage for kids you see nowadays like Baby Shark or Ms. Rachel. They watched The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget, the Smurfs, The Muppet Babies, The Looney Tunes, G.I. Joe: Real American Hero, ThunderCats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Jem and the Holograms, DuckTales, and Transformers. They didn’t watch garbage like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, they watched legendary TV programs like Cheers, The Golden Girls, Miami Vice, Full House, The Wonder Years, Rosanne, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Matters, Saved by the Bell, Night Court, Seinfeld, Alf, Knight Rider, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Baywatch, Magnum P.I., MacGyver, Hill Street Blues, In the Heat of the Night, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Thomas the Tank Engine, Punky Brewster, The Littles, Shirt Tales, The Bernstein Bears, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dink the Little Dinosaur, Danger Mouse, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and Chip N’Dale Rescue Rangers. Is it any wonder half of Gen Z said in a recent survey they want to live in the past?
Look at the great stuff Gen X got in comparison to the c*** kids today get! The vast majority of Hollywood movies today suck. But Gen X had Hollywood in its prime and got masterpieces like Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Full Metal Jacket, The Outsiders, Stand By Me, E.T., Airplane, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Back to the Future, Big, Major League, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Field of Dreams, Blade Runner, Batman, Mississippi Burning, When Harry Met Sally, Stand and Deliver, The Verdict, Spaceballs, The Princess Bride, A Christmas Story, Uncle Buck, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, 1984, Tron, Glory, and The Untouchables. Sit down dine in Pizza Huts with the full salad bar still existed. McDonalds made fried pies not baked pies. Political correctness was nowhere to be found. Let’s just say, Gen X has been around the block and has good common sense and knows what is normal and what is not. That’s why their the prefect ones to take over this country.
Your right Mr. McKay, we need to stop punishing the modern predominately Republican multicultural South that is a shining example of what MLK spoke of in his “I Have A Dream” Speech in 1963. The South is much more integrated than the North and race relations are much better in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas then they are in places like New York & California. You’ll find much more racial strife in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, or Portland than you ever would in Atlanta, Houston, Oxford, Louisville, Nashville, Miami, New Orleans, Richmond, or Raleigh. In the modern day South, you’ll see the Confederate flag flown and Confederate Monuments displayed, alongside statues of black heroes and slavery and lynching memorials. Whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and Arabs, Christians, Jews and Muslims, men and women, gay and straight, able-bodied and disabled all live together with equal rights and opportunities away down South in Dixie! MLK is celebrated alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. This is the South of 2026. Not the ones the Democrats ran in the 19th and 20th centuries that was horrendously racist and was plagued by slavery, racial segregation, discrimination, lynching, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, medical experiments, red lining, laws against interracial marriage, bigoted sheriffs and police departments, and racial violence like that done by groups like the KKK and White Citizens’ Council.
That South is gone forever! Newsflash liberals! George Wallace, Storm Thurmond, Lester Maddox, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, James K. Vardman, Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and James Eastland are all dead. The Ku Klux Klan are a tiny group with 5,000 members. You won’t find a single blackface minstrel show down South these days. Stop punishing the current generation of white Southerners for the actions of their forefathers like you did Gen X. All the bad stuff that happened in the South’s past by the way was the doing of you guys NOT Republicans! The GOP lead the way in passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Abraham Lincoln a Republican President, freed the slaves. Warren G. Harding bravely stood up for civil rights during the nadir of American race relations while Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government. I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais v. Louisiana! The Voting Rights Act should no be used to assign voting districts based on skin color! Democrats can’t use identity politics to increase their political fortunes anymore!
The left’s defining characteristic is cowardice and victimhood. I was born in 1966, have many liberal friends who don’t have the moral fortitude to examine the results of their appalling policies. Bemused tolerance has morphed into total disgust. They believe in nothing they stand for nothing. I remind myself that 2/3 of the colonists wanted to remain King George’s bitch.
They did indeed. But the whole black pill nihilist thing is a very disturbing development. That's another essay or two, but we must push back against it.
Yes