Let’s start out with some statistics, also known as reality therapy:
What is known as The Greatest Generation, is no longer here. They are substantially all deceased.
The Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945; there are 20.87 million still alive.
Of the Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964, there are currently 69.56 million of us left.
Generation X, born 1965-1980, there are 65.17 million members of this group.
The Millennials, born from 1981 to 1996, there 72.1 million.
These groups make up the bulk of adults fully engaged in public life. Generation Y is certainly active as well, but as a demographic group, it’s still forming and of those who are adults, many are still engaged in the education process.
Speaking from my experience as a ‘boomer’, and having followed political news since my teens, I perceive one huge change trend, unique in my observation. It is this; the elder group which I’ll classify as anyone over 61 years of age, now the average actual retirement age, have fallen silent as a group. It’s like a change of season where you expect to hear a cacophony of seasonal birds and as the calendar changes you go out and hear only a few lone chirps. They’re gone.
My demarcation, the line I draw, is made up of both The Silent Generation and most of the Baby Boomers. For short, I’ll just call them elder – I won’t say elderLY because that conjures up an automatic assumption of infirmity. During my many decades of observation, those that eased into the elder group were always loud, often mad as hell, and kept lists. They were a political force, fighting for every little advantage that could be had on social security, Medicare, estate and capital gains tax policy. AARP showed up in the news a lot, they protested, carried signs, badgered their congressmen relentlessly and ended up in the news on a regular basis. Consequently, they were feared. They were responsible for decades of holding the line on senior benefits, some which were good, some perhaps not, but they were to be admired for their tenacity. More than almost any other interest group, they forced Washington to be responsive and to at least pretend to be public servants. What do we have now? Crickets.
I’m not going to suggest that there are absolutely no elder activist. Certainly, they’re out there, but where? Here are some ideas:
They’re fighting for other causes left and right. They’re old liberals, old conservatives or Trumpists. I’m certain of this, but in these roles, they have little visibility. They’re fighting for what they’ve always fought for but now they get no press at all.
The organizations that they used have squandered their influence on other things. AARP swerved progressive and are mainly devoted to feeding their bloated selves. Once upon a time, they were visible on senior issues. I can’t recall seeing their name anywhere in the past decade except in membership and ubiquitous fund-raising mail.
The elder demographic really IS different – read compromised. They’re wealthier as a group than any prior elder generation before them and they’ve dedicated themselves to the golden good life in a way that prior generations never dreamed of.
They no longer have a mass unified financial incentive to act politically in the same way that prior generations did. They’re prosperous and the preponderance of their numbers that would have the platform to be more vocal doesn’t need to be, and the ones that have no such platform but do have cause, they remain hidden and silent.
They have lost their own value base. Thousands of books have already explained that Boomers were different, spoiled, lived with a unique set of benefits not afforded their predecessors. They received the good life, but they are not all passing it along. Perhaps this is an over-generalization with a significant grain of truth. Some have given as it was given to them and yet many have squandered it.
They have lost a sense of passing along a heritage of American values because many of them substantially gave up on it over the years. It is certainly true that a significant number of Baby Boomers took a hard left in the 1960s and 70s.
They are inherently selfish. Perhaps this is the case with more than any elder generation that came before.
In 9 years, all baby boomers will be at least 65 years old. 10,000 are crossing that threshold every day. By 2050, in 29 years, there will be no more Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers will be substantially all deceased. We talk about; ‘What kind of life will we leave our children?’ We’re still here, we’re here with ever increasing longevity, and while our money and estates will certainly be passed along someday, somehow – if we don’t blow it all on European cruises, we as an elder group are leaving very little moral guidance in a desperate decaying society.
When we look at news makers today, aside from career politicians, the administrative, policy, and academic positions are substantially staffed by Gen X and now even with Millennial generation players. Younger faces. It is with irony that the woke new apparatus now starting to man the administrative state is led by a figurehead puppet near-octogenarian. We’re watching them in real time, destroy the American heritage, social fabric, and even core identity norms that have existed since the beginning of time, being annihilated in the blink of an eye, with every news cycle, by perverse theorist. Are they failing? No, we failed them, and our grandchildren will reap the fruit if it.
There’s something very sad to see the elders cross a boarder, disengage and loose their voice. Certainly, we live in a fascist time when the wokeocracy has demonstrated that they’ll intimidate even the elderly on the street. They’ll attempt to malign and mock anyone that speaks up for conservative values on social media. To this, the vast majority will put their tail in between their legs and saunter off in silence. “I don’t want to make any trouble”, “social media is such a bad place, why go there?” We need to ask ourselves, why are leftist activist on social media then? They are they there? They are there to bully and confront anyone that challenges their narrative, ‘their’ also including the hierarchy of handlers that gave them marching orders that they’ve carried out. They are there to make sure that the ignorant only hear their side, that they don’t hear from conservatives, and to run off any that show up and try to speak. If they think it’s worth their time, maybe it should worth ours as well.
We can’t do much about the CNN’s of the world except avoid it and their advertisers, but when a leftist shows up on social media to promote an idea, there should be 100 conservatives defying those ideas and supporting those that lead the counter argument. The elder generations have one last chance to make their mark on this nation and leave a witness for their children and grandchildren. What they do with it is what they and their descendants will have to live with. Until then, silence is deadly.