Right and Wrong

The 60's and 70's counterculture got it right and then horribly wrong

I am a child of the 70's, a Gen X'er, a post "do what ever feels good" baby boomer. Much has been written about subsequent generations being self-centered and irresponsible. However, when it comes to those two monikers, no generation can hold a candle to the feats of the baby boomers. They inherited a post Nazi, post fascist world, and rode that wave through the greatest economic and technological revolutions in human history. The boomers were handed a cold war victory with Russia by the last remnants of the Greatest Generation and yet squandered it all into a pile of excrement filled with chunks of moral and fiscal decay. Current baby boomer leadership gave the United States a larger public debt than WWII’s greatest generation. Yet the boomers fought for nothing of virtue or honor and still managed to squander the freedoms secured by their parent’s generation. For the good of the human race and the survival of our Republic, the sun can’t set fast enough on the boomer generation of leaders that paradoxically gave us free love, free welfare and free healthcare and then handed their grandchildren the 31 trillion-dollar bill.

When it comes to generations, one can tell a lot about them by the art they produced. Growing up in the seventies, exposed me to movies like Animal House and Caddy Shack. Both brilliant examples of 60’s counterculture brought forth in the age of polyester and disco. The writer of both films, plus co-founder of National Lampoon, Douglas Kenney was the quintessential baby boomer. He was born in 1946 and came of age in mid-60’s. His writing and directing mocked self-aggrandizing elites and established societal norms. “Double Secret” Dean Wormer and his wife Marion lampooned the juxtaposition of stuffy blue bloods with loosening sexual norm of the sixties. It was Al Czervik in Caddy Shack (played by Rodney Dangerfield,) who dubbed Bushwood Country Club “a snobby crematorium.” Kenney, along with director, Harold Rimes, guided a generation, my generation, to collectively give the “establishment” the digitus impudicus.

Generation X also consumed the music of the boomer generation as well. When we were not “climbing a stairway to heaven,” “carrying on a wayward son,” or “dreaming on” we were listening to Buffalo Springfield telling us to “stop, children what’s that sound? Everybody look, what’s coming down?” Roger Water’s, The Wall echoed our generation’s sentiments about authority with the immortal lyrics, “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control.” In fact, most of the music from the boomer class, when it wasn’t outright promoting non-consequential sex and drugs, toed the line of counterculture ideals and antiestablishment crusaders. Who knows how many military draft cards were burned because of the Broadway smash musical, Hair?

In the 70, America had Dirty Harry and England had James Bond. Both characters took on the bad guys with rugged individualism, but James Bond did it with restraint bound by love of queen and country. Harry Callahan did it because he knew the system was simply inept. In fact, most of Clint Eastwood’s performances spanning his five-decade career were some form of “get the hell out of my way (insert institutional dumb ass,) I will do it myself.”  I came of age knowing that there was a distinct difference between a Clint Eastwood character and Ian Fleming’s 007. An Eastwood character took on vigilante justice because he knew country and leadership are filled with humans and thus inherently susceptible to corruption. For Eastwood, unlike Bond, evil was not a supervillain, it was the guy next door, the desperate bounty hunter, or the small-town sheriff, too bigoted and self-centered to bother with justice.

The baby boomers got the diagnosis right that the stuffy societal norms of the sixties and seventies served an over privileged and underwhelming class of elites; elites that were insufferable and offered no real substance to the world. What that baby boomers got horribly wrong was the medicine they dispensed. They did not build a freer society after winning the cultural war. They did not use their power and influence to break down institutional walls and free the minds of their fellow neighbor. Quite the opposite, when they themselves assumed the roles of institutional leadership, they used their power to usurp freedom and bend people’s will towards the very tyranny they once protested. For examples of this look no further than the progressive income tax and emerging ESG standards. Those are both, top down, “do as I say” mandates design the thwart freedom and press unambiguous and meaningless compliance. Compliance for the little people of course, but not for those baby boomers comfortably seated above the stench of the hoi polloi. Baby boomer leaders delivered a society today less free and more divisive than the innocuous one they protested in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s.

The generation that devoured Tolkien’s work and made “The Lord of the Rings” a literary icon never bothered themselves to light the beacons of Gondor; never bothered to warn society of impending danger. Instead, they cultivated a self-perpetuating political machine pitting the powerful Two Towers and the freedom fighters from west against each other while protecting the one ring at all costs. The boomer leaders made sure to always pit the forces of high finance, communism, and freedom against each other in a sophisticated game of triangulation. Boomer leaders, after tearing down the cultural walls of conservative complacency, did not free minds through education but played broker and master manipulator to the various institutions that actively worked to close the minds of our youth and with that, they concealed their big grift.

The biggest political news story of the 70’s was Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein became household names for using the power of a free press to uncover the Watergate scandal and topple a corrupt presidency. No other case of boomer pride sticking it to the American people is more overt than how the media leaders preformed their roles post-Watergate. Instead of Watergate teaching the country that a free media can bring truth to power, thus preserving a free country, boomer leadership took from that lesson that the media is an instrument of power, a mighty club to be used to kneecap political enemies. The corporate medias of the United States have been applying that cudgel to political opponents ever since. Since Watergate, the “fourth branch” has been selling American freedom down the river and has have no qualms about cashing in the 30 pieces received for their betrayal.

The 60's and 70's radicals are now in charge of our governments, our universities, our industries, and our financial institutions, and they are "the man" they warned us about 50 years ago. Although, when it comes to “boots on the ground” military engagements, the modern radical leaders prefer the "pull-out" method of a teenage boy. But when they can fund a proxy war with billions of dollars on the backs of taxpayer’s, the boomer inspired pundits preen in front of the cameras like pro wrestlers fresh off a testosterone boost. Yes, the draft card burners from 70’s now spend dollars, instead of sons and daughters, on foreign entanglements. If Nixon could have figured that out, he would have finished his second term.

What amazes me about the ageing boomer leadership is that, even though they correctly pointed out that massive governments and institutions were filled with corrupt and inept leaders that are self-serving, they got all the solutions to their reckoning dead wrong. That kind of track records can only happen with a concerted effort, a nefarious effort. But for a generation that lives to separate church and state, turning their back on the One who inspired the freest country in the history of the world has had horrible consequences.

A message to those of you boomers out there reading these words and growing ever hot at my incendiary ageist remarks. Before you go to your boomer friends in governments, in medias, in industries of power and influence to have my words censored, take a good look in the mirror. Remember back to those midnight rap sessions in college. The ones where you were discussing movies, literature, and philosophy while listening to the music of Bob Dillon. Remember those ideals you said you supported, those ideals that you would use to change the world. Look at your life now, the politicians you support, the mega institutions you frequent, the medias you watch, and the music you listen to. Are they espousing those ideals? Or are all those institutions you support representing exactly the notions you detested 50 years ago. Look at today's counterculture phenoms talking about the same antiestablishment topics you championed in your 20's. Look at Tim Poole, Steve Deace, Joe Rogen, Steven Crowder and Russel Brand. Look again at that reflection in the mirror. Are you and your boomer friends giving them the space to call out the establishment or are you silencing them. If it is the later, congratulations, you have earned the honorific title, "the man." and you have become precisely what you once hated with every fiber of your being. But your apology is not to me, nor any of today's counterculture icons, we all know you sold out long ago. Your apology is to your maker. I recommend you get right with your Lord sooner then later as your feet are a lot closer to the grave then today’s counter-culturalists calling for Truth to power.