THE COLUMN: Bust Go the Boomers

Michael Walsh24 Apr, 2023 5 Min Read
So there we were at Woodstock... or was it Nam?

When the first wave of Baby Boomers reported for kindergarten duty in the early/mid 1950s, they got a shock that has lasted throughout their – our – lives. Waiting for them were tens, dozens, scores of other kids in their classrooms, each one ready to eat your lunch. Welcome to the politics of scarcity, kids.

American families tended to be large in those days (women had not yet fully entered the workforce, and so could attend to their primary duty of birthing and raising the next generation), but the sheer numbers of the cohort was still a shock. In the ensuing years, the Boomers gradually realized they would be competing against each other for the rest of their lives for advancement, prestige, power, sex, and money. If they had to claw their way to the top and fend off all who would try to take their throne as King of the Generations, so be it.

Then they came of age during the revolutionary Sixties. They chose up sides. Woodstock hippies vs. the Ohio National Guard at Kent State were the shots heard 'round the world. Mutual loathing burgeoned and increased. Politically, the nation split in half: Nixon over McGovern; Carter over Ford, Reagan/Bush over Carter and Mondale; Clinton over Bush and Dole; Bush Jr. over Gore and Kerry; Obama over McCain and Romney; Trump over Clinton; Biden (!) over Trump. The dreary litany of the Zeitgeist continues apace, and yet here we remain, in Zugswang forever. 

Some years back, writing as my deracinated lefty character "David Kahane" in the pages of National Review Online, I coined the phrase "the Cold Civil War" (often incorrectly attributed to my friend, the late Angelo Codevilla, but he got it from me). My thesis: 

Despite all the evidence of the past several decades, you still have not grasped one simple fact: that, just about a century after the last one ended, we engaged in a great civil war, one that will determine the kind of country we and our descendants shall henceforth live in for at least the next hundred years — and, one hopes, a thousand. Since there hasn’t been any shooting, so far, some call the struggle we are now involved in the “culture wars,” but I have another, better name for it: the Cold Civil War

Your side admired strength, resolve. and purposefulness; we were stuck with weakness and indecision. You saw the world as something to be conquered; we saw the world as a hostile force needing to be appeased. You dealt with life head-on, never complaining and never explaining; we ran home and told our mommies. Think of us as Cain to your Abel, hating you from practically the moment we were born, hating you for your excellence and your unabashed pursuit thereof while we were the ugly stepchildren. Well, Cinderfella — how do you like us now?

Today, we are cock of the walk, king of the world, all our vices are made virtues, and all us sinners, saints. While you were out trying to make your way in the world, earning a living, being responsible, raising a family, paying your taxes, we infiltrated your every institution: the schools, the law, Hollywood, the culture, the government. We learned to train your own weapons upon you and, while you weren’t looking, we shot you in the back with them.

That was an excerpt from my book, Rules for Radical Conservatives, published in 2010. How right was I? Don't bother answering, because the evidence is all around us. From the safe and secure world of the Boomers' childhoods (until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, nobody ever really believed the Rooskies would drop the Bomb on us) to the present mishegoss of open borders, "identification," black urban lawlessness, violent white storm troopers calling themselves "Antifa," a weaponized FBI, IRS, and Justice Department all in service to the Democrat Party and its senile, resentful president, an intelligence community now openly boasting about they can affect domestic political politics by planting disinformation, men competing in drag in women's sports, and tranny chic, the norms of post-war America have been shattered beyond repair, and we have to live in the resultant mess. 

And so it came to pass that Woodstock has been transmogrified into Altamont; the Beatles have passed but their satanic majesties the Rolling Stones are still with us.

Having put down the Democrat-led rebellion of 1861-1865 (which began when Democrats refused to accept the results of the 1860 election), the former United States are once again on the brink of dissolution, its citizens slowly but surely separating themselves into enclaves, making ever clearer the likelihood that the nation that (according to Leftist mythology) began as a "proposition" – in fact, it began as an outpost of the European Enlightenment, and once that tribe disappeared so also did most of its founding principles – will revert to a Balkanized collection of non-Western ethnic groups and their squabbling discontents. Absent a strong sense of national purpose and the shared inheritance of Greco-Roman culture, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and into the ash heap of history we go. 

The signs are all around: the fading of the dollar as the world's safe-harbor currency; the decline of the American military into a combination of meals on wheels and a social experiment in leaderlessness; the complete lack of trust in the electoral system (how can there be any when one side, the Democrats, is adamantly against any secure measures regarding voting?); and the utter disbelief in the most fundamental tenets of biological science while at the same time celebrating the Covid fascism of Faucism? As the saying goes, what cannot go on won't go on.

This morning, conservatives were stunned by the news that Tucker Carlson, 53, the highest-rated host on the network and the most popular media figure on television, was abruptly terminated in the wake of Fox's hefty financial settlement with Dominion Voting Services over allegations prominently pushed by Donald Trump supporters, including some at the network. The triggerman was most likely the nonagenerian Rupert Murdoch, an increasingly erratic media mogul who recently called off what would have been his fifth marriage. Other prominent media figures have been defenestrated recently as well, including Dan Bongino and CNN's Don Lemon. Forget Bud Light: now even the media (still dominated behind the scenes by the ancient gentry) is cracking up.

Meanwhile, wars and rumors of wars. The U.S. is fighting Russia in a disgraceful proxy war over the Ukraine's ahistorical pretensions to nationhood. Meanwhile, militarily inept China, the gold standard of a country that's never won a war against a Western power, is making noises about the South China Sea and eyeing Taiwan, the last bastion of Chiang's losers in the most recent Chinese civil war. No one except perhaps senator minority leader Turtle McChao, 81, will care if an when China invades with a good chance of winning. As history shows, the only people the Chinese can beat in an armed conflict is themselves. 

And so the elderly Boomers and gerontocrats find themselves at the end of the road with no place to go. Facing the hideous prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch next year, when Biden will be 82 and Trump 78, the Boomers have finally got their wish to stay on top of American society, locked in mortal combat with each other like Holmes and Moriarty going over the Reichenbach Falls. Another analogy might be Sammy Glick in Budd Schulberg's great novel What Makes Sammy Run?, conniving and hustling his gonoph rear end to the top of Hollywood, only to find himself condemned to a living hell from which the only escape is death.

It was never in our nature to go quietly. We arrived in those freshly built schools kicking and screaming, went muling and puking and toking through high school and college, dodged the draft as best we could, got laid as often as possible, stayed in graduate school until they kicked us out, infiltrated every organization on earth, found a comfortable, undemanding safe spot in the bosom of governments, where we found we could indulge our taste for the torture of other at no expense to ourselves, and then went about whole-heartedly tearing down every institution, just because we could.

Sure, we're on our way out. But just ask Biden, Trump, McConnell, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Maxine Waters, and all the other superannuated public officials — too old even to be Boomers but dearly supported by them! From our cold dead hands, baby, and if we have to take you all with us, nothing could make us happier. After us, the deluge. It's the least we could do for you, America. 

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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26 comments on “THE COLUMN: Bust Go the Boomers”

  1. I remember now in what seems to be such an impossibly long time ago Dr. Kahane,what
    you brought to the forefront. Brevity of wit, no prisoners without actionable intelligence and above all else clarity.
    My first Presidential vote was Nixon’s first run and even back then I shuddered when I
    knew while it was a false alternative, Nixon was the preferred one, while not giving due weight to the Left’s hatred of him for hanging the commie spy and his wife, years later they would extract their vengeance ( they never sleep they never rest they never stop)
    with the coke bottle lensed Hillary making her bones in Watergate.
    And decades later her husband Slick Willie after much hand ringing and pontificating
    that it was not fair that China was excluded from the missile technology that could enable them to successfully launch their nuke payloads much less orbit satellites,
    and sold that tech though Loral Huges Space and thecommerece dept. for re-election campaign cash.
    Less than a decade later a jugeared bastard breaks the political scene oozing a corruptive pore clogging hatred of America never before seen, whom in his waning year or so as president in his second term announces that going forthward all public bathrooms must be shared by all at all times. All patriots wondered what the hell was
    afoot?
    Less than a decade later it is now clear what the jugeared bastards almost final evil blow stroke was and is still slicing through, America’s
    Covenant with God, without which there would be no America, from its beginning.
    The superannuated believe that they and their DNA are immune from the consequences of not only their tyranny but their affront to God and will be remembered in reverential tones much like the frozen in time figures of Pompeii have been for generations.
    I believe that they will be remembered for as how they will be cast when the “ adjuste de cuentas” receipts become payable: with them being stuffed into barrels with just the correct amount of quickset necessary to retain their PC Rictus grin of never having a clue as to what they unleashed, that would be their all fronts attack on the most innocent, that would be God’s children. Because after all, they were the best and the brightest and
    the ones that they have been waiting for.

    was.

  2. A lot of the variation in Boomers comes from social class. Those that headed directly to college rather than work/military/marriage were the Elite, or their Wannabes. I married years younger than the Elite did; started having kids by 25, finished by 29. Even with some time spent as the primary caregiver, I had time to complete a college degree and re-enter the work world, this time as a teacher (Science). I retired at 66, in no particular need or desire to keep plugging along.
    Others spent years enmeshed in drugs, random hookups, and Save-the-World schemes.
    I raised a family, stayed with the same man (just celebrated our 49th anniversary this January). There are millions like me.
    Please don't continue the false narrative of what ALL the Baby Boomers did. Most did not.

  3. A civil war which one side has been successfully prosecuting for decades, while the other side acknowledges it only as an abstraction, and has no coherent idea on how to fight it. After a while, learned helplessness sets in, and we console ourselves with evanescent, symbolic gestures. We drink Miller Lite instead of Bud Light, and wear our MAGA hats as we dodge and weave around dirty needles and mounds of human feces on our sidewalks.
    Give the left credit. They played the long game and they played to win. They won every battle. They won the war.

  4. That was fun. I quite frequently feel similarly.
    Amongst other things, it is, I think, curious that the Boomers created the music of whine. Post-Boomers may have perfected it in Grunge and the Seattle sound, morphing, I suppose, into rap -- an idea, I admit, which may be completely wrong, but which will be the most offensive to the modern day segregationists, a fan base always worth trolling.
    Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Rolling Stones -- and all downhill from there. Paul McCartney having to ask the question: what's wrong with silly love songs?
    Am I whining or merely observing?

  5. For the Record, the Boomers are supposed to be offspring of people married AFTER The WAR. Since my parents married in 1940 and their 4 children came in 1941, '44, '47', and me in '52--I'm NOT an "Exploding Infant". Most of my classmates were the youngest or next to youngest in their families. But ALL of us raised in that birth cohort (as such things are termed) had inculcated in us a sense of Sacred Mission to somehow Improve the World, no matter whether that world was that of Barry Goldwater and Wm F. Buckley, Jr. or that of the various Kennedys and the New Left and their ilk. We were taught/raised by those who had spectacularly seen the World Blow Itself Up and not having that good an idea of What Had Gone Wrong Anyways. As the years went by that became more and more obvious they had mislearned and misread a lot of things. We were born into what I used to call The Great Age of Intelligence, the Fifties and the Sixties; one could easily see that by visiting the bookstores in Cambridge, Mass. among others. Of course I knew from looking in peoples' libraries how Dumb people had been in the 1920's and '30's with few but sometimes memorable exceptions.
    Since the late 1970's things have been going downhill; the Great Age of Intelligence is largely over more and more. Even that Great Research Engine The Internet has declined as a research tool. I got a history degree from BU (now of AOC infamy) in January 1974 (under Nixon, the 1st POTUS I voted for and would again) so I know how to make indexes work for you in the first step of Research. Then the Great Goal was always "What Had Been Going On" at any particular time; yes, we quickly became aware that people thought differently back then--something that few people in fact realize!
    So what went wrong. New Left infiltration of Academe and all its branches. How? Probably plotted at faculty lunches and then fleshed out at " faculty retreats". I don't want to spend even more time here...but ideas to throw out there:
    Biden was and is the only man the Democrats can win with. It's the Irish vote basically. That carried PA and maybe MI and a few other states. Because of the closeness of the vote a small change of maybe 100,000 voters changed things. Biden is a virulent Irish Nationalist--and they abound. There are Americans willing to see their country ruined just to see an Irish-Catholic Irishman succeed. Even if he's a Bad Catholic! Sorry.
    American foreign policy is more waged on the American people than done for American interests. The governing principle is that The Dead of Anzio, Guadacanal, and Normandy Beach Shall Not Have Died in Vain. Thus in the crunch America has to back The Left; sure, Korea happened--but it shouldn't have. The Chinese Communists, like Castro's Cuba, should have been our allies. Think the movie "The Way We Were" which I've read of (I saw the last two minutes once) and gather was about Leftists.
    But this waging of foreign policy on their own peoples may be a feature of ALL Mass Democracies. The widely-held myth that the Kaiser started The Great War for World Conquest (which is NOT true!) is the foundation of the foreign policy of the West; basically this is why the US is now enslaved to the Leftist regimes of France and Britain. Now this is somewhat different than the situation in countries with non-representative governments: the old Soviet Union vs. modern France and Britain and America.

  6. Michael,
    After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the part of that empire’s nuclear arsenal which was stored in Ukraine, became the property of that country. They (Ukraine) gave up the nukes in return for a legally binding agreement signed by all parties that the United States and Russia would guarantee their borders and safety of their citizens.
    What part of that do you not understand?

    1. I understand that the Ukraine is a province of Russia, temporarily given up as a war loss against the West, and will soon enough be a province of Russia again. Nukes have nothing to do with it.

  7. I got that education, nothing but know nothing ( except one good history teacher and an Emglish teacher - good seed planted there). Years later, I found the western civ bug and absorbed the classics, American lit up until the 20th century, classic poetry and Enghlish lit, all that. I got it. I relished it. But the professors still wanted to deconstruct, to put them in boxes, and to look away. I left college dejected in academia, and so called experts. I some times chuckles when I pull out my English Lit degree from the box. Then God brought me in with biblical history and scripture, and it all made sense. I converted. And I have loved more than I thought possible.

  8. I am the generation of your kids. I looked at my parents, and could not find them, they were slaying the dragons or making themselves...something. GenX left to sus out the world with the house key in their pocket and visitation weekends with dad. Got the history, the lessons, and then, nothing. Silent running. I served in the military, did what was expected, even excelled there ( first time getting caring structure in life), Never asked to be revered or to lament being looked down on. I bided my time, held off marriage and kids, wanted to be left alone, just seeing where the world was going. And what have GenX always got? Our parents. The world always seemed about the parents petty will to themselves. GenX, the forgotten generation, is now the new blood. Are we now, just now worthy? *Shrug* Maybe we can try, or just go get a beer and laugh. We will see. as always.

  9. Born at the apex of the boomer wave and hangin' ten shootin' the curl. Have my wife, kids and grandkids near me and taking in the new reality with the same approach I've always had...stay aware, do the right thing and know that nobody cares more about me than I do (thanks Mom!) About 20 years ago one of my sons recalled me telling him when he was young "You'll never know the freedoms we had when I was kid". I think we raised them as close as we could to how we were raised and living in a small town instead of what has become of our big cities gives our grandkids a taste of what the past was like. I had a good run during my career in Houston and always believed if you had a pulse you could make a decent living there. I sure hope some of that endures.
    I got out of the city 4 years ago and worry about my friends that have not or can not. The oldest boomers are about 77 now and the youngest are 60 or so. Still a few years left for us torment the whiners.

  10. No, Christopher is right. "Gonoph" doesn't reflect the correct pronunciation, so even if one knows what it means, one might be puzzled by this particular use and not identify it correctly.

    You wrote a great article there, Matt. Don't be so prickly.

  11. "Turtle McChao" Yeahhhh, there is the pinnacle of I 'represent' America while my wife's family owns the Asian Foremost Group. Gee, I wonder why he deliberately withheld millions of Trump generated PAC cash from at least four America First senate candidates their states chose in 2022(AZ, AK, NV, NH)?

    Thks for allowing comments, Mr. Kahane(g-d do I miss that character)

  12. "his gonoph rear end "
    Gonif or sometimes goniff. I think screwing up colorful ethnic words is worse than screwing up normal English ones.

  13. I was born in 1952 so I guess I've been a "late stage boomer"! There have been so many articles that seem to CONDEMN US for being decent, hard working, family oriented, and Patriotic! It's as if those are/were BAD qualities! We are the GRANDPARENTS who keep a couple of generations together and supply the only SANE lifestyle most see today! Now there were the usual anti-social hippies who later infested our Government and have helped to create the mess we see today, but for the most part the rest of us "boomers" wanted nothing more than to live our lives, raise our kids, pay our taxes, and live in a FREE USA! The DEMOcrats/rinos then decided to "fundamentally transform" Our Nation! Led by communists idiots and elected by idiots who falsely believed they were "healing the planet" and "ending racism" by electing a FOREIGN BORN COMMUNIST have done more damage to the USA than any army ever has on Our SOIL! Yeah, us boomers are on our way out - and so are COMMON SENSE, LOYALTY to Our Nation, and hopefully, the scum of our Generation who have infested Our Government! One thing for sure, people will look back (the ones dealing with reality and honesty) and WISH we were here and just getting started!

  14. Excellent piece, Michael. Bookmarked especially so I could find the last para easily. I wonder if TPTB have underestimated those of us who have run our race and have nothing much to lose.

  15. Neither Biden nor Trump are Boomers. Nor is anyone in your list in the last paragraph. This is the last gasp of the Silent generation. That generation's give-a-shitters broke as soon as it left the end of their noses. Trump's narcissism and Bidens next level corrupt graft machine are good proofs.
    I have contended that Boomers are idealists who, upon reaching that certain age of awareness found out that too many of the ideals they were taught by Howdy Doody and John Wayne were either lies or had been driven over. Some of us revolted, became hippies, war protestors and eventually reactionary leftist. Some of us went in the system and became Republicans. Both bunches can be traced to the Tea Party-MAGA and Occupy Democrat-antifa who both have a ton of identical complaints and diametrically opposed solutions. But the idealism still burns inside.
    Lastly, the youngest boomers should they decide to challenge the staying power of the Silents still have 30 years left. Ha!

  16. Biden is not a Boomer. Neither are Feinstein, Pelosi, McConnell, Grassley, Clyburn, Hoyer, or Waters. In your article about Boomers, you successfully identified exactly one-Trump. Your caveat about many of them too old to be Boomers should have said all but one.

  17. "The U.S. is fighting Russia in a disgraceful proxy war over the Ukraine's ahistorical pretensions to nationhood".
    Can't believe that this Russian gynocidal propaganda is being promoted on this website.

  18. So, we lose the Boomers. After them, their progeny having had the full benefit of a Billy Ayers "education."
    I better stick my head in a gas oven now, before they're banned and all I'll be able to do is broil myself to death.

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