Recently musing about a heated conversation I’ve been having on line, I was trying to understand the cause of the gulf between the role of government by my liberal Boomer friends (hopeful, moral and generous) and those I’ve been debating from Gen X (cynical, selfish and suspicious). It didn’t take long to realize that those of us who came of age in the 60s had a memory of government which ‘worked’. The launch of Sputnik, by the Russians, united and galvanized the populace and produced a response which created NASA dedicated to saving the nation from attacks originating in space. But faced with the international peril of the Coronavirus pandemic, Gen Xers had a government which falsely claimed the disease was a political hoax, bungling the response so badly that more than half a million (and counting) Americans have died. For Boomers faced with the threat of world dominance by an avowed enemy, increasing the number of scientists and engineers was deemed a security priority and the National Defense Education Act was born, funneling millions of dollars into achieving that goal. Students of that era could get a low cost loan from the government and repay it by means of public service after graduation. The Gen X population found that student loan administration had been handed over to banks and universities with often usurious rates and harsh laws making it impossible to expunge those loans by any means, regardless of circumstances, causing many in that cohort to emerge from college burdened with an extraordinary debt load.
As we were growing up, President Eisenhower’s interstate highway system blossomed across the country.
For our first president, Boomers had the joy of the youthful enthusiasm of the Kennedys and flocked with their first vote, to support him and his generous world view.
Confronted with a corrupt President Nixon, Boomers saw the integrity of elected Senators, as members of the President’s own party made it clear that if he failed to resign, he would be impeached, and they would find him guilty.
In a more balanced economy, it was possible for a Boomer family to live comfortably on one salary, frequently buttressed by union contracts. Back then, women, in the main, worked outside the home by choice, not as a matter of survival
By contrast, Gen X came to their first vote with Reagan winning the presidency and beginning to dismantle all the structures which had supported a strong middle class, beginning with unions.
Boomers worked for equality with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and women mobilized to fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, (which has yet to be ratified).
Idealists in the Boomer contingent, faced with an unjust Vietnam War, mobilized against their government, demonstrating, embracing conscientious objector status, or leaving the country. Eventually, with no public support for the war, there was no choice for the government but to abandon the effort.
Gen X was lied into a war which killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized the entire Middle East.
We liberal Boomers cheered the ascendance of President Obama as a return to the ideals of equality and racial harmony, only to see his promise hamstrung by a reactionary Tea Party contingent, nurtured, and embraced by the Republican Party.
To sum up, my liberal Boomer friends have the luxury of remembering a time when government actually worked for and was responsive to, the needs of the populace. I can think of no similar characterization of the government which met the Gen X cohort. We Boomers remember our growing up and becoming adult years as a time of expansive promise. It was not perfect, of course. Racial disparities (which persist in housing, educational opportunities, employment, and criminal justice) still need resolution. Affordable healthcare remains elusive for far too many. Women, despite a near fifty-year effort, still do not enjoy equal rights. These inequities remain on the bucket list of those who celebrated the election of Joe Biden.
Given their radically different formative experiences, it’s no wonder that Gen X has such a jaundiced view of politics and government.
