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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 6-Nov-06
Liberal Boomers feel victory in their grasp in tomorrow's Congressional elections.

Web Log - November, 2006

Liberal Boomers feel victory in their grasp in tomorrow's Congressional elections.

But there's a generational disconnect that leaves the future in doubt.

Liberal Boomers are exultant, feeling victory in their grasp. One says, "Finally, the country's problems will get solved after Tuesday!"

Conservative Boomers (people in the "Baby Boomer" generation, born after World War II) are depressed, and warning of coming disaster if the Democrats win as expected.

Expected election results as of Monday, November 6, 2006

Expected election results as of Monday, November 6, 2006

Polls continue to show substantial leads for Democrats. It's now considered almost certain that the Democrats will control the House of Representatives, and at least possible that Democrats will control the Senate.

I report on dozens of different countries on this web site and, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, I'm always looking for massive changes in public opinion, since they almost always mean significant generational changes.

Now it's America's turn. There seems to be a massive move toward the Democratic party in this election.

But there's a big disconnect in what's going on: The issues are dominated 99.9% by Boomer issues, but a generational change means that it's people in the younger generations that will be dominating the voting.

So there's a big question: What's going to happen after the election, if the polls hold and there's a big Democratic win?

Will things be as wonderful as the liberal Boomers think, or as disastrous as the conservative Boomers warn about?

The thing that's really amazing me is the extent to which Boomers are reliving the 60s. Its about as Freudian as you can get.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what they were saying on Sunday's This Week With George Stephanopoulos -- multiple Congressional investigations of the Bush administration, restricting war spending to force withdrawal from Iraq. Well, that's EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN VIETNAM.

Bob Woodward wrote his State of Denial book, saying almost EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS HE SAID ABOUT NIXON in the 70s.

John Kerry trashes the armed forces, which is EXACTLY WHAT HE DID IN THE 70s.

Seymour Hersh talks darkly about massacres by American soldiers, which is EXACTLY WHAT HE DID IN THE 60s, when he wrote about My Lai.
One of the many things that are completely different today from the 60s and 70s is that the Vietnam soldiers were HATED. They were not considered heroes; they were considered murderers. Many of them hid their Vietnam experiences for years. That's the attitude that Kerry and Hersh are reliving.

A long article in Sunday's Boston Globe bemoans the fact that there are no massive demonstrations against the Iraq war:

"In 1969, as George Herring, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky and a leading authority on the Vietnam War, points out, "there were big demonstrations not only in San Francisco and Boston, but in cities like Lexington." And when the bombing of Cambodia began, "there were protests all over, campuses closed down all over the country, even in its most conservative areas."
Why is it, then, that at a time when the Iraq war has grown as unpopular as Vietnam was in the late 1960s, we don't see the same sort of antiwar movement? Historians, political scientists, and activists offer a mix of answers: There's no draft; Iraq is a thornier problem than Vietnam; the '60s, politically and socially, were an anomaly."

Of course, as I've written many times on the web time, including a lengthy analysis in June, antiwar demonstrations don't interest today's college students; the only people who are interested are Boomers, the same Boomers who protested the Vietnam war, but are now 40 years older.
Following up on Monday is the Boston Globe's regular op-ed columnist, liberal Boomer James Carroll, saying that it's a "harsh fact that the only way out of the war is to accept defeat" -- just like Vietnam.

This is increasingly bizarre to me, but I guess it's part of the real "state of denial" that most Boomers are in. They're trying to relive the excitement of when they were children, just as old soldiers in the 60s were trying to relive WW II.

Just as a general rule of life, there is absolutely no chance that things today are going to go the same way that they did in the 60s and 70s. It just never happens that way. In particular, I've said many times that my personal expectation is that we'll still be in Iraq until we're forced to withdraw by the "clash of civilizations" world war.

And this is the point of the disconnect. All anyone ever talks about is Boomer issues -- the "quagmire" in Iraq, the gay sex scandals, abortion, cost of the war, feminism, health insurance.

Some people would argue that these issues are important to people in younger generations as well.

But if you make an analogous argument for the 1960s, then you could list important issues -- preventing World War III, stopping Communism, fiscal discipline -- that were important to the old soldiers at the time, and arguably should have been important to the people in the younger generations of the 1960s (i.e., the Boomers). Only, as it turned out, those issues weren't important to them after all.

The only way to understand the 1960s-70s protests is through the "generation gap." Boomers didn't hate the Vietnam war so much as they hated their overbearing parents, who feared another Great Depression and another World War. For a 1960s Boomer, hating your father meant hating the Vietnam war. Hating your father meant hating soldiers in Vietnam who were collaborating with your father. Hating your mother meant burning your bra. Today, those same people are 40 years older, and they have a new "anti-war" movement. Today, hating your father means hating George Bush.

However, younger generations today have none of these motivations. Generation-Xers tend to be more motivated by fury at Boomers than anything else.

And the kids in today's college-age generation don't hate their parents at all; it's more likely that they worry about whether their parents will be OK. They aren't motivated by any of the emotions that drive Boomers and Xers, but are sick and tired of all the arguing. Few college-age kids are against the war at all, and most are willing to serve, if necessary.

So there's plenty wrong with this picture. The liberal Boomers feel victory in their grasp, thanks to shifts in opinion by younger generations of people who don't share the liberal Boomers' motivations. And if they don't have the same motivations, can they really agree on the issues?

I don't think so, and that's another reason why we should expect the government to continue to be paralyzed, and the vitriolic arguing to get only worse. (6-Nov-06) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 6-Nov-06 Liberal Boomers feel victory in their grasp in tomorrow's Congressional elections.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 6-Nov-06
Liberal Boomers feel victory in their grasp in tomorrow's Congressional elections.