I'm one of the dreaded Baby Boomers

I was born on the tail end of the baby boomer explosion. You may have heard about the boomers; we were the ones born after WWII.

The war had shaken everything from 1939-45 and as slowly as it ramped up it stopped. Or so the men and women newly released from service thought. Marriage and producing children were the primary goals. A surge of children were born from 1947-1952. I was born in 1953 so I am not technically considered a boomer, I am not a Gen X or Millennial and as an outsider, I have remarkable observation skills.

Much has been said of the boomer generation, most of it bad. Apparently, we are the reason for climate change, the debt ceiling being higher than Mount Everest, and the empty morality in the nation. but is that true or are we a convenient scapegoat for a drift that started before WWI started?

A question to ask is when has any generation wanted to change the status quo? For fun, examine past generations that clung to a dead lifestyle rather than adjust to a new reality. The monarchy pre-WWI, the Roman Empire pre-burning and blood-letting, or how about the Bronze Age Collapse of the twelfth century B.C.? (If you don't know that one, check it out on YouTube, it's fascinating.)

The boomers went through radical changes. Many were needed, but many threw out the baby with the bathwater if you catch my drift. Let's start with the assassinations of a few public leaders. President John F. Kennedy Jr. November 1963, Malcolm X June 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. April 1968 and Robert Kennedy June 1968. The Vietnam War troubled Americans in one way or the other.

The 1968 Democratic Convention in which a presidential candidate was to be selected had riots from August 23-29 1968. It was the ultimate protest in a country filled with race riots, war riots, and political unrest.

An unspoken thing that was common was we boomers outnumbered the adults in every room we were in be it family dinners, classrooms, or church groups. Consequently, we raised ourselves. Yeah, give that a thought. Kids raising kids.

More on that next week.