"Everyone [in the United States] born after 1945 is a boomer. The only difference is that, over time, precarity increases and technological sophistication also increases."
-- Matt Christman, Hell of Presidents Ep. 10
This is it. This is the one good take on yankeedom's generational politics. The generation we traditionally define as "boomer", people born within the first twenty years after the end of WWII; that generation has far more in common with subsequent generations than any of us do with any generation before. In the broad view of history, we're the same.
The early boomers were the first to attend a nationally standardized schooling system -- what is, by and large, still the same system we have today. The early boomers were the first generation to grow up with television -- with audio/visual mass media dominating not just the public consciousness, but also the early developmental phases of children. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they were probably also the first generation of US citizens where the majority reach adulthood without knowing chronic hunger. Hell, the first generation in which the majority have not seen the unadulterated night sky.
We have all these things in common with them. Getting mad at them for being how they are is an understandable response. But, I also think it's kind of silly. Those first boomers had to navigate all that without the benefit of older adults who had grown up in similar conditions.
I developed this same take from watching old USA television from the 1950s.
You look at places like NY suburbs depicted back then, they look exactly like suburbs now, just different cars and people wear suits and it's all crackers
I wouldn't say the take is completely correct, it's more like Boomers are a transitional group with one foot in each world, and then the rest of us are all solely from the second world. Kinda like how Millennials are half IRL people and half internet people, and Zoomers and later on have only known the internet. Boomers still have a lot in common with gens before them, and Millennials still have a lot in common with gens before them
Yeah, I overstated the generational delineation a bit. When an era is defined by technological progress, access to that technology changes your relationship to the era. For example, plenty of people grew up concurrent with television but without access to it.