What And Why BOOMERS? The Generation Everyone Loves To Hate

The Based Boomer Mike D'Virgilio gives a stirring analyses of the Boomer generation, their triumphs and many failures... "Boomer kids saw hypocrisy in their parents and a faith that had no substance, so they rejected the faith of their fathers, and embraced a new faith of self-fulfillment."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Living haved It booms dot com. Welcome to the Based
Boomer podcast on Eschatology Matters, part of the fight Lack,
Instant Matter, What and why Boomers the generation everyone loves
to hate. I was listening to Tucker Carlson interview Tim Dillon,

(00:24):
a comedian I'd never heard of. He's a funny guy,
not surprising, but when he and Tucker went on a
twelve and a half minute rant completely trashing boomers, it
was hilarious. Here's a taste.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
There's not a lot of houses on the market. Boomers
don't want to die, and they don't want to sell
their homes. Boomers used to sell their homes go to
Florida Kettaconda. Boomers don't want to do that. They're actually
retiring in some cases bigger homes. It's kind of hilarious
and somewhat sattached because this selfishness is so ingreaded, so
ingrained in them that their whole The thing of the
boomers is they've been alive for a very long time,

(00:59):
many of them have, and absolutely no wisdom. So what
they've done, so what's not easy, by the way, it's
actually impressive. And what they've done is everything's material. So
this big house that they lured around, I mean some
of my friends parents mean, I'm writing a book about them.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Theyre hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
They know nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I mean nothing. I shared it on Twitter and someone
replied with this, this is so true. Broadly speaking, it's
been a bizarre observation to me how much wisdom people
in their eighties and fifties have compared to those in
their sixties and seventies. I don't understand what happened to
that generation, but the stereotype is so real, so many

(01:36):
are like old children. Given my handle on Twitter is
the based Boomer, and I have a podcast of the
same name, I suppose I'm the ideal person to speak
to the phenomenon of the horribleness of the baby boomer generation,
and from what I can gather, my woeful generation is
responsible for every horrible thing that's happened in the modern world,

(02:00):
even it seems the stuff that happened before we were born.
There's the rub at which I have a bit of
a problem with the Boomer blamers. No generation is born
in a vacuum, and each generation is in some sense
determined by what came before. They are the recipients of
all the historical forces coming before and into which they

(02:22):
were born. In fact, I would contend that boomers could
no more help who they've become than any other generation.
This process, a kind of historical determinism, is just baked
into the generational cake. The significance of the Baby Boom
generation is not only their timing and history, but their size.

(02:42):
They are a huge generation. Millions of men fought in
the war and came home ready to procreate, and they did,
Thus the Boom. As this generation, this demographic wave, moved
through society and years, they affected everything the law of
big numbers. As consumers, what they were interested in the

(03:03):
world became interested in, like it or not. Think of
the Beatles and the popular music of the sixties and seventies,
the best there has ever been, says this boomer. To fashion,
to sex, and changing moral standards. The boomers led the
way in the eighties and nineties. As they were growing
up careers, raising the perfect children and real estate became

(03:24):
the thing. As they neared retirement and health challenges increased,
the medical industrial complex took over the world. Why do
you think Big Pharma is the biggest advertiser on television boomers. Culturally,
we boomers have been bad enough, but politically we've been
an unmitigated disaster. I'll talk more about that in due course,

(03:45):
but I think the worst part of this disaster has
been the civil rights revolution that started in nineteen sixty four.
If you haven't read Christopher Caldwell's book The Age of
Entitlement America Since the Sixties, I highly recommend it, especially
if you want to know why America is in the
sorry state she is in. I wrote about it last
year and called it, quote, the most important book of

(04:07):
the twenty first century, no hyperbole. When the Civil Rights
Act passed in nineteen sixty four, Caldwell called it a
new constitution, something that fundamentally changed the nature of the
American experiment. It wasn't intended as that, and wasn't at
the beginning, but it became that the power of the
demographic boomer wave made sure of it. Civil rights soon

(04:29):
came to mean not just race, but, as Caldwell says, quote,
racial integration turned into the all embracing ideology of diversity unquote,
and that literally changed everything. But let's do a brief
look back and see where boomers came from. What created
the modern world and boomers. One of my passions is

(04:52):
studying intellectual and cultural currents in history to see how
they flowed down to us in the present, and then
how they've influenced who we are and what we think
as a people and as individuals. Nothing happens in a vacuum,
nor does anyone exist in one. We are the product
the result of innumerable forces coming before we ever existed,

(05:14):
and encompassing us at every level of our existence. This
does not mean, in case you're wondering that I'm saying,
we are determined and have no choice about who we
are or who we've become. A fundamental Christian assumption is
that we have agency and that we can change things,
and that our choices matter and have consequences. We are

(05:34):
accountable beings. Thus, as creatures made in God's image, we
are not slaves to these forces, which is why we
study them so we don't have to be. We can
go all the way back to the fall man male
and female. God created them, rebelled against God and introduced
sin into the world. You might think it's silly to

(05:55):
even mention, but in the eighteenth century a French philosopher
came up with the idea that man is born pure
and it is civilization that corrupts him. His name was
Jean Jacques Rousseau, and he introduced the concept of the
noble savage into the bloodstream of Western intellectual culture. If

(06:17):
man is indeed born noble and corrupted by his environment,
then all you have to do is change his environment,
and you will change the man. On the other hand,
if man is born a sinner, corrupted from birth, and
you have to change the man before you can change
the circumstances. Historically, side by side, God and his providence

(06:38):
gave us these two views of man in juxtaposition, so
we can compare how they work in practice. Rousseau's influence
gave us the French Revolution, the triumph of reason, which
gave the world a reign of terror. From September fifth,
seventeen ninety three to July twenty seventh, seventeen ninety four,

(06:59):
upwards of fourteen hundred people were summarily executed, having their
heads mercifully locked off by Madame Guillotine, and tens of
thousands were executed over the course of the revolution. By contrast,
the American Revolution, steeped and Protestant specifically Calvinistic Christianity gave
us the American Revolution two diametrically opposite views of man,

(07:23):
two diametrically opposite results. What you ask, has this to
do with baby Boomers. My fellow Boomers are children of Rousseau,
but coming through Kant and Hegel, Marx and Darwin, Nietzsche
and Freud, and innumerable influences in between, and since starting
with French philosopher Rene Descarte in the seventeenth century, and

(07:46):
through all of these influences. As Mark said, the object
of life became for man quote, so that he will
move around himself as his own true son. This had implicates,
as you can imagine, for both individuals and the societies
they developed. Marx was just parroting Satan in the Garden

(08:07):
that man could be like God, knowing good and evil.
The Boomers exploded onto the world scene in the dreaded
sixties at the apex of the hubris of man thinking
he could be like God on a personal level. This
coincided with the triumph of the therapeutic in the title
of an important nineteen sixty six book by Philip Reef.

(08:29):
Even as a secular Jew, Reef lamented the loss of
religion by modern man. His religion had now become the therapeutic,
his highest good, a manipulatable sense of his own well being.
He explains it in the introduction in compensation, and in
place of where faith once was, men are offered art

(08:50):
and or science. It is true that new religions are
constantly being born, but modern culture is unique in having
given birth to such elaborately argus anti religions, all aiming
to confirm us in our devastating illusions of individuality and freedom.
I'm not sure anything could better explain boomers, except as

(09:12):
Reef fills out the picture a few pages later. Religious
man was born to be saved. Psychological man is born
to be pleased. The difference was established long ago, when
I believe the cry of the ascetic lost precedence to
one feels the caveat of the therapeutic. And if the
therapeutic is to win out, then surely the psychotherapist will

(09:36):
be his secular spiritual guide. And while Boomers didn't create psychotherapy,
as with many other things they popularized, therapy became the
religious replacement of our age. And when refuses the word
religion in his book, he's speaking primarily of Christianity because
his concern is the Western Christianized world. It was the

(09:58):
development and dominance of Christianity that gave us the blessings
of the modern world, as Reef is lamenting its demise
with the rise of secularism. Being a boomer, albeit on
the younger side, I grew up witnessing this social convulsion
in real time. Having been born in nineteen sixty, I
can only experience the wild nineteen sixties as a child,

(10:20):
but as a teenager in the seventies, I could participate
in some of the more enjoyable aspects of the era,
not having to think too much about the politics or
be worried about being drafted into the Vietnam War. Sex, drugs,
and rock and roll were our pastime, but thankfully I
wasn't too successful on the sex part, and I was
too much of a scaredy cat to do more than

(10:40):
a few brief experiments with the heavier drugs. I mostly
indulged in beer in the weak part of the time
and loved it. Rock and roll was my passion. Say
what you will about the boomers, but we gave the
world the greatest era in popular music ever. Boy Seeing
these images brings back Boomer memories. I was going to

(11:02):
be a rock star, but thankfully God had different plans.
It wasn't until I became a born again Christian in
nineteen seventy eight and then embraced conservative politics in nineteen
eighty that I began to look back critically at this era.
I started learning about these forces that would create possibly
the most consequential generation of the modern world. And it
wasn't just the implications for the personal and relational, but

(11:24):
how my generation saw America and the world. Boomers and
the progressive American dream. As a generation, the Boomers would
be well prepared to build a modern tower of Babel
and inherit the hubris to try. We are fortunate, the
Lord revealed. Any Babel like aspirations are not good. The

(11:46):
Lord said, as if one people speaking the same language
they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan
to do will be impossible for them. Nothing will be
impossible for them. Was pretty much the vibe of the
post World War TOI period. People in the nineteen fifties
and early nineteen sixties pre Vietnam believed anything was possible,

(12:07):
and they prepared the way for the Boomer generation Kennedy's
administration was staffed with the best and brightest young guns
who never doubted their ability to do great things with
their power. Unlike the generations before them, who went through
a global conflagration that developed in them a certain kind
of modesty, there was nothing modest about the Boomers, who

(12:29):
believed they could use technology to create anything. This wouldn't last.
Just as the thinking of Titanic was a blow to
the spirit of optimism of the early twentieth century, so
too was Kennedy's assassination a blow to the optimism of
the early nineteen sixties. This we can do anything dynamic,

(12:49):
combined with shattered dreams of greatness, would create a generation
of schizophrenics, delusions of grandeur on the one hand, psychosis
on the other. Looking back at the sixties and seventies,
Christopher Lash wrote a surprising best selling book whose title
explains this dynamic well, The culture of Narcissism American life

(13:11):
in an age of diminishing expectations because of sin. All
human beings are self centered, curved in on themselves, but
the Boomers especially so. The generation giving them birth was
determined to give them a better life than they had,
which was as I was growing up. A common refrain,
of course, you try to give your kids a better

(13:33):
life than you had, but that created a rather self
absorbed generation. One of the common criticisms of my generation.
It turns out all of these many forces made the
Boomers the perfect generation to inherit the progressive American dream.
I blame the Enlightenment for pretty much everything wrong with

(13:54):
the modern world. But once reason was exalted as the
ultimate means to knowledge, called ration, babel builders were inevitable.
Secularism was the unavoidable result of rationalism, which meant God
was persona non grata, unwelcome at the societal table and
eventually unwelcome at the personal one too. The Boomers became

(14:16):
the generation living out fully agnostic lives. God only an
occasional player, if at all. God, however, would not be
completely ignored, so he had to be taken out. As
secularism spread its tentacles throughout the Western world. In the
nineteenth century, German biblical scholars declared war on the credibility

(14:37):
of the Bible with higher criticism. There are two forms
of biblical criticism. Lower is an attempt to find the
original wording of the text. Since we no longer have
the original writings and higher studies the historic origins, dates,
and authorship of the various books of the Bible. Biased
German scholars approached the Bible with the anti supernatural assumption

(15:00):
of the Enlightenment. So we're looking for ways to explain
away any such references with natural or scientific explanations. Because
secularism had not completely engulfed Europe yet, the Germans wanted
to keep their non supernatural Christianity, out of which flowed
what came to be called liberal Christianity. Americans were enamored

(15:22):
of all things European, especially all things German, and higher
criticism made its way to America and blew up mainline denominations.
The progressive movement of the late nineteenth century was also
in many ways inspired by the Germans. Prussia, a state
in northern Germany, was known for their commitment to efficient bureaucracy,

(15:43):
and American progressives loved it. It is from the Prussians
we get the idea of the rule by experts. For progressives,
government was instrumental in creating the just society of America's
founding promise. Without government intervention, problems of the modern world
would remain insoluble, an anarchy in suffering would reign. The

(16:06):
government of America's founding, built for an agrarian society of
primarily farmers and ranchers with a relatively small, homogeneous population,
was no match for a modern industrial society. Holding the
firm conviction that with science and technology, no problem seemed
too big to overcome, Progressives were determined to apply this

(16:27):
mindset to government. Scientific management or planning by experts would
become the rallying cry of the twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson
is the founding father of the American administrative state. As
an academic, Wilson wrote a paper in eighteen eighty seven
arguing for quote the science of administration, which speaks to

(16:50):
the rule by experts. This started with Wilson's administration, and
with Roosevelt's New Deal, government became dominant in American society.
But it wasn't until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in
the sixties and his Great Society and War on Poverty
that the progressive vision was fully realized. The Greatest Generation

(17:12):
fought in World War II and saved the world from tyranny,
but they also gave us the dreaded post War consensus
of the modern liberal welfare state. You can't blame that
on the boomers. It was something they inherited and they
ran with it. Liberals and conservatives alike, Government in some
way was always their answer. Since the nineteen eighties, Cohn

(17:35):
Ink has been filled with Boomer conservatives who I eventually
came to see as just liberals in skirts. The conservative
movement was adept at losing, going along with progressive gains,
all the while pretending they were against them. Then Trump himself,
a boomer of a very different kind, came along and
messed everything up. Looking back, we can see the COVID

(17:58):
disaster was the beginning of the end for the Babbel
building boomers. The experts didn't come out looking so good,
and it so happens. People the world over prefer being
governed more locally than by an unaccountable globalist elite. Were
just beginning to see what comes after the post World
War II consensus, the Boomers and the end of secular history.

(18:24):
The Greatest generation grew up in the depression and fought
a World war, and as I said, they were determined
to give their children a better life. They did. Materially.
The changes in economic growth in post war America meant
Boomers were the first generation to live with the illusion
they could have it all, and it seems many parents
didn't abuse them of this notion. But the explosion of

(18:46):
feminism in the invention of the pill in the early sixties,
the sexual revolution was off and running. Unfortunately, the boomer
parents didn't prepare them for the radical moral changes, and
we got the sixties. Francis Shaeffer's ministry was to these
boomers kids whose parents in the fifties had a faith
that was a mile wide and an inch deep. In

(19:08):
the nineteen fifties, Christianity was dominant in America but lacked substance.
Schaeffer published The God Who Is There in nineteen sixty eight,
and as a result of his ministry to these disaffected
Boomer children. He starts the book with his assessment of
the problem. The present chasm between the generations has been
brought about almost entirely by change in the concept of truth.

(19:31):
Young people from Christian homes are brought up in the
old framework of truth, then they are subjected to the
modern framework. In time, they become confused because they do
not understand the alternatives which they are being presented, confusion
becomes bewilderment, and before long they are overwhelmed. That pretty
much describes an entire generation who turned into relativists. What's

(19:54):
true for you is true for you and not for me.
We've seen where that leads. Boomer kids saw hypocrisy in
their parents and a faith that had no substance, so
they rejected the faith of their fathers and embraced a
new faith of self fulfillment. Having said all this, I
make the point I started with. Boomers are easy to hate,

(20:16):
but they are products of societal forces into which they
were born and were in some sense determined by. I
see the Boomer generation as the fulcrum generation. They were
the final generation in Western history who put the finishing
touches on the secular Berlin Wall. Like the physical one
in Germany. It appeared impenetrable, but all along was made

(20:37):
out of paper machet. The cracks started appearing a while ago,
but Covid revealed just how weak it was as people
started pushing on it, and lo and behold it fell.
Younger generations are more conservative than older generations, which has
never happened before in the modern world. This is because
secularism has proved as hollow as the old East Germany

(20:58):
and the Soviet Union that propped it up. As Dylan,
not a boomer, but of that generation, saying the times
they are a change in you did you at my
ride and the Lord to my lord command for all
the d Then I well man fucking linked food stove

(21:22):
for your shame, Lord,