The Babies are Booming

According to the Census Bureau, a government agency and therefore one of the sources from which all knowledge proceeds, the post-World War II baby boom lasted from 1946 to 1964. I squeaked in right at the tail end of it. This meant I missed the good stuff: the Summer of Love, Woodstock, all the best riots. Roseanne Conner well summarized what the era meant for those lucky enough to have been born earlier: “Well . . . there was a war going on! Everything was just a lot more fun!”

When I was little, there was a Saturday morning cartoon about the Beatles. I was very surprised when I found out they were real people. In 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was shot, I was genuinely confused. Having already heard quite a lot about the Kennedy assassination, I didn’t see how it could happen to the same man twice.

Those were chaotic, frightening, fascinating years to be a kid. Though I was only 7 when the decade ended, the spirit of freedom had gotten into my blood. I couldn’t wait to become a teenager and do all the great things that had made youth so exciting for my sister and the older siblings of my friends. But high school throbbed to the inane beat of disco, and in my college years, former flower children advised me that all the fun was over, so if I really wanted to have a meaningful life, I’d need to make piles of money. Our elders would yell at me and my friends about “you kids” and how horrible we were — not because of anything we’d ever done, but because of the antics of those who’d gotten there before us. They kept vigil over us like vultures, just to make sure we never got to do any of it.

Eversince the ’60s crashed into the ’70s and burned to cinders, the baby boomers have been pining for the era’s rebirth. When each new generation comes of age, they urge the youngsters to restart the revolution. The boomers are getting old, but their hope remains forever young.

They think they may be seeing the resurrection among the “millennials.” I agree, but I doubt the wilting flower children will recognize themselves in the current crop. The spirit animating today’s youth is one that the oldsters long ago disowned.

According to one of those ancient sayings the boomers love to quote, we can never step into the same river twice. As a fresh generation sets out to reform the world, it looks very different from what’s been expected by those who grew up in the shadow of the Second World War. These aren’t the children of the GIs who battled tyranny overseas; they’re the grandchildren of those children. The boomers pretty much depleted the store of goodies lavished upon them, and left little for those who come after. Today’s youngsters have to make their own breaks.

I see the Age of Aquarius as a time of promise yet to be fulfilled, though I disagree with the boomers about what that might mean. They evidently imagined it would signal the complete takeover of society by a big, benevolent government, run by Those Who Know Best. There’s always been a strain of that in their thinking. They seem to have forgotten that all through the ’60s, running parallel to that river was one of an altogether different color.

Whatever happened to the maxim that all authority should be questioned? What happened to a wide-eyed inquiry into the world, which accepted no truth secondhand? I haven’t seen very much of that until lately, but more and more I see it in today’s youth. I’m happy to say I probably won’t turn into one of the sour old people who grouse about “those kids.” When I spend time around teens and twenty-somethings, I come away feeling hopeful.

I like these kids. They don’t take anything at face value. They’ve been using computers since they were in diapers, and they connect to each other, via the Internet, with a facility that seems almost occult. Nobody’s going to put anything over on them. When they spot an injustice, they capture it on their ever-present smartphones and send it into viral immortality.

They’re not much impressed because some tired, graying frauds burned their draft cards 40 years ago. Haven’t these same onetime antiwar crusaders complacently permitted a war to drag on in the Middle East for over a decade? A war that has taken the lives and limbs of many in the millennial generation? That war was, evidently, only bad when a Republican was Commander-in-Chief. Since its headship switched parties, there’s been nary a grump from Gramps.

Kids have a built-in BS detector. They can see through a sham. I always wondered why the big kids had so many obviously great ideas, but squandered every chance to make themselves coherently heard. They never seemed to decide whether they wanted to drop out or fit in. Whether to change the world, get laid, or get stoned.

Today they’re as likely to reminisce about the cool concerts they attended as they are about the protests in which they marched. Many never showed up at the protests at all. Getting their heads busted would have been a bummer. Better to let government change the world. As they surrendered more and more of their self-confidence to Big Brother, they settled into a state of complacency they’ve never left.

This hardly seems the same bunch who gave us “Alice’s Restaurant.” Alice has closed her doors and boarded the windows. Perhaps her grandkids will reopen the place as an Internet café. If they do, I’ll be at the corner table.

Maybe it took a kid’s eyes to see the promise of the ’60s clearly. I was too young to get laid, or stoned, or to go to any of the really far-out concerts. I’m just old enough to remember.