America is not acclaimed worldwide as a land of respect for elders.
Some of our newer immigrants still practice the concept, but most everyone who has lived in this country for a generation or two has bought into our “youth culture.”
I feel somewhat responsible for that. Well, actually, the half of me that is a part of the silent generation — people born between 1925 and the end of World War II — feels remorseful. The half of me that is part of the baby boomer generation really doesn’t care.
I was born nine days after the European portion of the war ended and roughly four months before Japan surrendered, ending the war in the Pacific. I guess that makes me a generational half-breed. (I don’t know if that term is offensive or not. My silent generation half says it is OK. My boomer half feels guilty for using it.”)
I definitely was a part of the post-war youth rebellion launched by my boomer half. I can prove that with my six years of report cards from Hope Elementary School, each with low conduct scores and notes that say “Buddy does not respect authority.”
Then there were the unfortunate events my senior year at Hauser High School when the faculty adviser kicked me off the publications staff for alleged insubordination. This made my boomer half angry and caused me to start a short-lived underground newspaper called “The Protester” — which ran an editorial calling for the dismissal of a teacher and charging two Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Board members were incompetent.
(My silent generation half was likely disgusted by my behavior but could not get my boomer half to shut up long enough to state his opinion.)
In college, I was a boomer on steroids. I enjoyed a lot of parties and dorm debates, and made just good enough grades to keep from being thrown out. I believed everyone over 30 was dead from the neck up and could not be trusted.
Then came marriage and children and years of struggling to make enough money to support it all. Rent, mortgages, credit cards, student loan payments, car payments, clothing, food — all those expenses that come from raising kids, culminating with a second mortgage on my house to send them to college.
Eventually, as I approached my 60th birthday, my silent generation half began to duke it out with my boomer.
How dare all those Generation X neoconservatives, millennial know-it-alls and Generation Z do-gooders treat me as if I am ready for someone to feed me oatmeal and help me across the street. And who knows what kind of youth-centered baloney will come from Generation alpha — whose membership just started being born in 2013 and won’t finish filling their ranks until 2025.
My silent generation half is getting more and more fed up with my boomer half — the obnoxious, rebellious self-centered, hippies who started our society’s journey into sociological hell.
The boomers replaced Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and Doris Day with Led Zeppelin, Fabian and Tiny Tim. They replaced meat and potato home-cooked meals with drive-through burgers and fries.
They killed off “Reader’s Digest” and “Life” magazine and gave us MTV and “The Simpsons.” They turned perfectly good housewives into members of Congress and corporate executives, replacing them with frozen TV dinners.
It is time for us proud members of the “silent generation” to speak up — demand the right kind of changes. We need to challenge the establishment and march in the streets with placards screaming our dissatisfaction.
Seems to me everyone under 60 is dead from the neck up and can’t be trusted.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. Contact him at [email protected].
