askchapo

Well I do know that my boomer dad has never forgiven his mom for having a second child. His dad was an abusive ass, but for some reason he's more mad at his mom, because she "was taken away from me when I was only a year and a half old", by which he means his mom had to split her attention between him and his newborn younger sister.

I don't know how this fits into what you're saying, probably it doesn't, but I do think it's notable that even though my dad hated his abusive piece of shit dad (for good reason!), somehow it's the sadness that every single oldest child has to deal with (including me, fun fact) that has, apparently, caused my dad so much anguish over the course of his life.

I have a hard time empathizing with my father. He truly seems to believe he's the only human on earth who has ever suffered emotionally. Very frustrating to try to talk to him as a fellow human being, because he sure doesn't see me (or anyone else) as one!

yes, but the intergenerational pathology reaches back way further than the parents of boomers. i dont know about the rest of the world, but the west has been beating and traumatizing kids practically since forever.

so you cant blame this on just the ww2 ptsd.

There were actually cool boomers, but they all died. Only the rich ones are alive now.

It's lead, if an entire generation is poisoned with a neurotoxin that ravages the emotional and critical thinking centers of the brain, they're not gonna turn out alright, especially while dealing with the multipliers of ptsd inflicted parents and the baseline atrocities of capitalism

Honestly, I dont think so to your first questions. I think there's a lot there but there is still so much more with their specific class interests, media environs, the revolutions in technology, like especially that last part. Boomers went through their lives with a new technology basically redefining how they lived every 5 to 10 years. You can ask them when they remember getting a phone, a tv, cars, being the first in their family to be college educated. The failure of the college kids in having a social movement that couldnt move the material world. how our society kills poor people much faster than the capricious and rich, which means the olds you run into now being more likely to be fucking evil.

Nah, that has some juice

Idk I think the abuse is on balance more an outcome of the pre existing context than a primary cause of what came later.

Lots of people have faced abuse on a mass scale and with more severity and didn't become the baby boomers because only these people had the material support necissariy to do that.

As to not having the nazis: there were many fascists available to fight during baby boomers youth, both locally and globally. Most were totally disinterested in seizing the opportunity. The difference isn't in being given Nazis, it was in not being organized by the state to fight against rival powers who happened to be fascist.

I think you could overthink it even further and I would enjoy reading it.

My instinct is that this explains a significant portion of the boomer zeitgeist and their effect on the world, but not the whole part.

I think the resentment about no Nazis is a very interesting avenue of thought. I think the boomer predisposition towards xenophobia and interventionism probably has a lot to do with viewing the world through the cope lens of WW2 veterans and the re-framing of their efforts/motives as a heroic struggle against an otherworldly genocide machine.

Sociology is fucking rad

or lead