NEW BOOK REVIEW: Not Okay, Boomer
Helen Andrews displays the Baby Boomers’ failures for the world to see.
By Chris Queen
For years I’ve lamented the Baby Boomers’ hold on politics and culture. I was arguing for my generation – Generation X – to have a shot at the presidency before the 2012 election, and it’s easy to look back at the last five presidential terms to see what Baby Boomers in power have given us.
The Boomers have also given us the sexual revolution, rebellion for its own sake, and declining church attendance and religious adherence. The “do what makes you happy” ethos of the Boomer generation has led to countless ruined lives in the pursuit of selfishness.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to paint all Boomers with too broad a brush. My mom is a Baby Boomer who didn’t fall into the trap that Boomers in power seemed to (I just found out that my late father doesn’t qualify as a Boomer because he was born one year too early), and I have plenty of family members and friends who seem to have their heads on straight.
For years, the Baby Boom generation was the most idealistic group of people. Think of the hippies and the earnest middle-aged politicians who sought to transform the world. Did they? Yes, but not in ways that you’d think.
Writer Helen Andrews eviscerates the liberal Boomers in her new book Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. It’s a quick read – or listen, in my case, since I bought the Audible edition. Andrews takes the tack of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians and profiled a set of prominent Boomers to peek into the legacy that this generation left on the world.
